Prior to joining Minitab, if I had heard the term “black belt” I would have thought of martial arts. After all, I grew up on the original Karate Kid and have even recently enjoyed Netflix’s spin-off Cobra Kai. If you google “black belt,” you’ll be served up with various types of stylish black belts (duh!), various articles related to martial arts and eventually an article about Six Sigma Black Belts.
Why am I bringing this up? Because when you have an army of cost-cutting ninjas in your organization – and you’re not thinking about them – you’re missing out on a significant opportunity.
While Six Sigma is one of the most popular continuous improvement methodologies, this isn’t just about Six Sigma Black Belts. There are so many management approaches and methodologies to continuous improvement, you may not even know the name of one being employed at your organization. And that’s okay. What you should know is that you have a group of employees trained in operational excellence forging ahead on projects – that you may not be aware of. And that you also potentially have a group of quality professionals with similar skill sets (note they’re not the same, but they travel in the same circles).
You may be thinking “Great! No one in the C-suite ever woke up to a higher margin and was disappointed!”
That may be true, but just because your continuous improvement folks are driving savings, it doesn’t mean they’re doing the best activities or the most they can.
For example, if you have a product line that every investor focuses on – and your group of black belts are improving the cost structure of a different product – wouldn’t you want them to target the apple of your investors’ eye? What if the competitive dynamics have shifted and prices are contracting, wouldn’t you want the team of OpEx pros to lower your cost structure in that area? Or wouldn’t you want to redeploy quality engineers to focus on one of these two key areas?
Here's what else you may not know: that there are even more opportunities to save costs and improve your product or service right now. By proactively engaging with your continuous improvement and quality professionals, you may learn that investing in this group – instead of throwing more money at sales and marketing (And this coming from a Chief Marketing Officer!) – may have a greater impact on your organization’s top line (yes, better quality does drive higher revenues) and bottom line.
If I told you that you were missing out on opportunities to save costs and improve your product or service, you’d want to meet. So don’t meet with me; meet your continuous improvement and quality team. These could be two of the more impactful meetings on your calendar. And if you don’t have either of these groups, perhaps it’s time to build and develop each of them.
Just like every other department, technology has evolved and market leaders like Minitab are enabling these two groups to have a much larger impact than ever before. If you want to have a greater impact on your organization, get updated, involved and invested in these departments. Unlike many of the investments made at the top, these two groups will demonstrate a significant and measure return.