Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to why they Fail, the podcast that pulls back the curtain on why continuous improvement efforts fail. Buckle up, because we're not here for motivational fluff. We're dissecting the short sighted decisions and leadership agendas that sabotage CI success.
But don't worry, we'll clue you in to the few simple keys to success to avoid these pitfalls. If you're ready for the truth, let's do this.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Have you ever seen a leader publicly champion continuous improvement only to back away the moment it challenges their personal agenda? That's lip service leadership, and it's a silent killer of progress and morale. I'm Kevin Clay, and on this episode of why they Fail, two of our master black belt mentors, Frank and Lola, tackle this exact issue head on. Let's listen in to their conversation.
[00:00:59] Speaker C: Welcome to the deep dive. We're here to cut through the noise and give you clear, practical insights. And today, we're diving into something we see all the time as master black belts here at Six Sigma Development Solutions. It's that really frustrating gap, you know, between what leaders say about continuous improvement and what they actually do.
[00:01:17] Speaker D: That's exactly right. We call it lip service leadership. And it's this really destructive thing that makes so many good CI initiatives just fizzle out. They crash and burn. It leaves companies kind of stuck, always starting over something we know well because frankly, we're often the ones called in to help pick up the pieces and try to get things moving again after they failed.
[00:01:39] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. So our goal here today is simple, Give you a real shortcut to understanding this critical issue. We want to share some maybe surprising facts and solid insights so you can spot these problems and maybe understand why they're happening where you are. You can think of this as building on the kind of, you know, blunt honesty you might get from experts like Kevin Clay in his why they fail YouTube series. He talks about this stuff too.
[00:02:02] Speaker D: Absolutely. Because just seeing the signs, understanding the dynamics underneath, it's not about pointing fingers. It's truly the essential first step if you want to build a CI culture that actually works, that lasts. Without that clarity, you're basically fighting an invisible battle.
[00:02:20] Speaker C: So let's unpack a scenario, one we see constantly. A leader calls us up super enthusiastic about Lean Six Sigma. You know the type, they're excited. They want transformation. They want to train a green belt, maybe even a black belt, and they'll say something like, we need this person to go save the world. They genuinely seem to think this one newly certified person can just poof, lead the whole CI effort and fix the company.
[00:02:43] Speaker D: And what's really striking, honestly, is how common that is.
From our experience here at Six Sigma Development Solutions, I'd say conservatively, nine out of ten students walking into our classes, they're in exactly that position. They get handed these arbitrary projects, things pulled from whatever the leader is worried about that week. It's a totally haphazard approach. They're basically set up to fail before they even really grasped. Dmaic that define, measure, analyze, improve, control framework.
[00:03:13] Speaker C: Right.
[00:03:13] Speaker D: It's like giving someone the plans for a race car, but only a screwdriver, and telling them to build it. They had the knowledge, maybe, but zero support structure.
[00:03:22] Speaker C: So connecting that back then. Is this what you mean by lip service leadership? That big enthusiastic handshake, the announcement, but then nothing. Just a total lack of real solid support. When that green belt actually tries to do something, yes, it feels like they want the idf, CI, the bragging rights, maybe, but only if it's easy. Only if it doesn't mess with their own plans or that shiny new system they just bought.
[00:03:43] Speaker D: That nails it. It's the gap. Rhetoric versus reality. They want the outcomes, sure, but they often seem unwilling to do the foundational work that actually makes those outcomes possible.
[00:03:54] Speaker C: You know, it's interesting. We can often tell how successful a CI deployment will be after just one or two meetings with the leadership.
[00:04:00] Speaker D: Really? How?
[00:04:01] Speaker C: It's not about the initial excitement that fades. The real indicator, the metric we look for, is their actual visible engagement and importantly, account.
Are they just nodding along or are they truly committed even when it gets hard or inconvenient, or, you know, when the data tells them something they don't want to hear.
[00:04:19] Speaker D: Okay, that makes sense. It brings us to the practical signs, then the symptoms you can actually see happening. And this is where it gets really useful for anyone listening who's trying to make CI work. One of the biggest red flags for lip service leadership is simply how projects get chosen.
In a healthy CI culture, a real one, projects get pulled from a project hopper.
[00:04:40] Speaker C: And this isn't just a fancy spreadsheet. It's a system. Any one CEO down to the person on the line can flag problems, suggest improvements, and then, crucially, these ideas get prioritized based on data, based on their likely impact on the key performance indicators. The KPI's objective in those places where.
[00:04:59] Speaker D: Lip service rules, that hopper is either ignored or it's just, well, not really there in practice. Instead, leaders handpick projects. It's based on where they feel the pain right now.
[00:05:11] Speaker C: Yeah, the squeaky wheel.
[00:05:12] Speaker D: Exactly. Or worse, it's to prop up their pet project, something they started. Or maybe it's tied to that new ERP system or some big equipment purchase they need to justify. So the new green belt or black belt, they become reactive. They end up just trying to put out fires or validate the leader's choices instead of tackling the real systemic problem.
[00:05:31] Speaker C: Oh, I have seen that so many times. And it's incredibly frustrating for the belts involved. I remember1 a CI team got tasked with, get this, reducing queues in the company cafeteria.
[00:05:41] Speaker D: Oh classic.
[00:05:42] Speaker C: Because the CEO apparently had a long wait for lunch one day and mentioned it. Meanwhile their on time delivery KPIs absolutely tanking. Customers were screaming, the bottom line was hurting. It's just textbook sub optimization, isn't it? You might make the lunch line faster, great. But it does zero nothing for the core business value stream.
[00:06:03] Speaker D: Precisely. And look, sometimes a quick visible win can be use useful to build momentum. I get that.
[00:06:08] Speaker C: Build some belief.
[00:06:09] Speaker D: Yeah. If it's intentional, if the leadership says okay, let's prove the method here, then tackle the big KPI.
But with lip service, often those small non critical, high visibility things are the only projects that get any real support. It's a deflection. The investment in CI wasn't meant for cafeteria lines. It was meant to improve the business. And this kind of misdirection, it often leads straight into another huge symptom. Projects are just impossible. Scope.
[00:06:34] Speaker C: Ah yes, the boil the ocean projects.
[00:06:37] Speaker D: Exactly. A leader task. A brand new green belt. Maybe fresh out of training with something like optimize on time delivery for the whole company which has say 2500 different products.
[00:06:46] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:06:47] Speaker D: To the leader it sounds clear ambitious.
[00:06:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:50] Speaker D: But for that belt, it's overwhelming. It's like asking them to solve world hunger with, I don't know, a napkin.
[00:06:56] Speaker C: And the result is always the same, isn't it? It's so predictable. The belt gets completely swamped, just drowned in data or lack of.
The project timeline stretches out forever. Leadership loses interest, gets impatient and eventually they just demand some kind of quick fix. A band aid doesn't solve the root cause. Project dies a slow death. The belt feels like a failure. And the leaders, they shrug and say see, Lean Six Sigma doesn't work here.
[00:07:23] Speaker D: It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Failure baked in from the start. Not because of the methodology, but because of that missing genuine sustained leadership commitment.
[00:07:32] Speaker C: Right. And that failure doesn't just kill the project, it damages morale across the board.
[00:07:36] Speaker D: Absolutely. And this brings us to maybe the most damaging part where the real erosion of trust happens. It's when a promising project, one that's actually making progress, suddenly hits a wall because it bumps up against a leader's personal agenda.
[00:07:49] Speaker C: The turf war.
[00:07:50] Speaker D: That's it. The team does the work. They follow dmai, they analyze the data, find a root cause, identify a solid solution.
But maybe that solution requires a change an executive just doesn't like. Or worse, maybe it exposes a flaw in a system they put in place years ago.
Suddenly the data is inconvenient, it challenges their baby or their authority or a comfortable assumption, and the project gets seen as a threat.
[00:08:17] Speaker C: So this is where that I support CI mantra really gets tested, right? It quickly turns into no, this project is dead. The second it gets personally uncomfortable for.
[00:08:25] Speaker D: Someone high up, that's the turf war in action, Frank. When the buy in is only superficial, only lift service, personal agendas or ego, they will win out over the CI project nearly every time. And the tragedy here isn't just the lost improvement opportunity, it's the signal it sends. It tells everyone that the CI process, the data, the hard work, it doesn't really matter if it makes a powerful person uncomfortable. Blame often gets shifted too, onto the method it's too complex, or onto the belt they weren't experienced enough.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: Yeah, never the real cause, right?
[00:08:54] Speaker D: Never the leadership team that wasn't willing to truly commit, to embrace data, even when it was tough to do that foundational work. It's incredibly toxic.
[00:09:04] Speaker C: It really is disheartening just talking about it because you see the potential being wasted. So for you listening right now, if you're in this situation, what's the alternative? What should leadership be doing if their job isn't picking projects or expecting miracles from one person? What is their actual role in making CI successful? It sounds like it's more about building the stage, not being the lead actor.
[00:09:26] Speaker D: That's a great way to put it. Building the foundation and the core responsibilities. They're actually pretty straightforward, but they require real commitment.
First, leaders need to work with their teams to set up meaningful KPIs and crucially, make sure these are understood not just in the boardroom, but all the way down.
Everyone needs to know what winning looks like, okay?
[00:09:46] Speaker C: Shared goals.
[00:09:47] Speaker D: Second, they need to champion that project Hopper system we talked about and empower everyone to feed into it. Make it safe, make it easy. Third, ensure projects get prioritized based on data, based on impact on those KPIs. Not gut feel, not politics, not the shiny object of the month, data driven decisions. Exactly. And maybe Most importantly, their job is to be the bulldozers. Their primary role is to remove roadblocks for their improvement. Teams smash down barriers, cut through red tape, get people the resources they need, clear the path, they create the environment where the experts, the belts, can actually succeed. They aren't supposed to dictate the how of the project, but enable the doing.
[00:10:28] Speaker C: Okay, I like that bulldozer analogy, so let's use another one. When leadership just gives lip service, when they don't build that foundation, don't act as bulldozers. It's like asking a plumber, your green belt or black belt specialist to build an entire house. You've trained this expert in piping, maybe, and then you tell them, okay, now build the whole structure. But you don't give them a blueprint. There's no foundation pour, they don't have the right crew or materials. The outcome is inevitable. Right? It's going to fail. It wastes time, resources, money, and worse, it kills any belief anyone had that improvement was even possible. And the plumber gets blamed.
But the fault wasn't the plumber or the plumbing tools. It was asking them to do the architects and the general contractor's job without any support. The leadership failed to build the system.
[00:11:13] Speaker D: Exactly. So let's quickly recap. Lip service leadership is that huge destructive gap, what leaders say versus what they do. It's choosing personal agendas, reacting to short term pain instead of following a disciplined, data driven strategy for real lasting improvement. It's sending skilled people out to save the world, but giving them no map, no tools, no backup. It just leaves everyone feeling defeated and.
[00:11:36] Speaker C: Cynical and the key to success. The thing we always stress here at Six Sigma Development Solutions is simple, conceptually at least, build the right foundation first. It starts with leaders who are genuinely involved, who are accountable, and who are brave enough to let data lead. Even when it's uncomfortable, even when it challenges their ideas. It means defining those clear KPIs and using them relentlessly to prioritize work that actually moves the needle for the business and for customers. It's not about turning everyone into a black belt. It's about creating a system where a black belt can actually deliver results.
[00:12:10] Speaker D: So let me ask you, listening now, do these signs sound familiar? Do you recognize this lip service leadership in your own workplace? Do you feel like you're constantly pushing uphill trying to make improvements in a culture that pays lip service but doesn't back it up? If you do, please know you are definitely not alone. And the first step isn't trying harder on your current project, it's recognizing the real problem. Acknowledging that the challenge might not be the methodology or the people doing the work, but a fundamental lack of true leadership commitment. Understanding that is step one.
[00:12:41] Speaker C: And as you think about that, here's something to really chew on.
What does genuine leadership commitment actually look like day to day in your organization, especially when the data gets tough, when it challenges those comfortable assumptions or reveals truths people might rather ignore? Are your leaders ready to be those bulldozers, or are they just, well, paying lip service?
[00:13:02] Speaker D: And just remember, at Six Sigma Development Solutions, navigating these kinds of challenges is exactly what we do. We help organizations build those solid foundations, get past the lip service, and actually reinvigorate efforts that have stalled. We're here to help make continuous improvement real and impactful.
