Its All About the Money

Complete a project with undeniable hard savings and you'll get your support. 

I'm a Black Belt in Japan and its the same bull crap(barriers like no support, etc) over here too.   My first project was a classic NON-Classic SS Project.  I did the best I could and produced soft savings.  Not a lot of respect with soft savings.  

2nd project was much better as I used Money as my main metric, Finance numbers worked better (at convincing people and getting their support) than any other data I've used. 

Its all about the money.    When upper management saw the hard savings, they supported Six Sigma that much more.  The Process Owner was a total nightmare until the project closed with decent results.  When the employees saw the hard savings on the posts of metrics I put up everywhere, they began to feel that their summer and winter bonuses might get better and not cut like the last couple of years.  My team members show more support now because they walk around saying "Hey, I helped do that".   

There is still a lot of bull that I have to deal with all the time, that will never change.  Maybe I should put together some data to prove it.  Either way, the more hard savings I see created, the less I care about the crap I have to deal with to make it.  Just as long as I know / believe or have faith in / there will be benefit from the projects I lead, I can be Patient with it all. 

But It can be a real drag most of the time.  Don't lose your cool, I do that sometimes and it is very effective in damaging project support among other things.  Enthusiasm and persuasiveness and knowing how to deal with people helps alot, plus a lot of other stuff.  But sometimes we can skip the Leadership skills and just show them the money. 

Thanks Joe, I'm glad to know you have it tough too. 

Nice Post