Teaching The Leopard To Change Its Spots

“You want to do what?” responded the Master Black Belt. “It’ll never work - Six Sigma is too complicated to teach using on-line eLearning.” The list of excuses can go on and on – “eLearning is too boring”, “I need to look into their eyes to be sure they are getting it”, “You don’t understand - this Six Sigma stuff is complicated, and you can’t do that on-line.”

And so goes many a conversation about re-engineering Lean Six Sigma training programs. Six Sigma professionals, experts trained to confront the status quo, to make fact-based decisions, to understand the relationships between customer satisfaction and critical inputs in achieving that goal, are valued contributors to thousands of companies. Indeed, the market rewards such skilled practitioners with six figure salaries and performance incentives. Ironically, however, when confronted with the prospect of evaluating (and possibly optimizing or adapting) the process of training others how to use the skill sets we call “Lean Six Sigma,” these very same professionals often respond with broad statements of opinion rather than delving into the facts.

Doug Evans, Master Black Belt and Director of Six Sigma Training for medical diagnostics manufacturer Quest Diagnostics Incorporated, faced pushback from his colleagues when exploring possible changes to Quest’s training programs: “I had to keep asking ‘where’s your data?’ when they questioned new approaches as being less effective than our existing training program.”

This is not to say that skeptical reactions are unprofessional – the fact of the matter is that change is difficult, and bringing change onto oneself is doubly challenging. Because many Six Sigma training programs are conducted by the most experienced practitioners, questions of training effectiveness often are taken personally, at least initially. Consequently, the fundamental issues of the analysis can be camouflaged with a thick coat of opinion. Only by substituting valid data for opinion can we clear away the illusion created by strong, but unfounded, statements to assess the effectiveness of alternative training methodologies. “We eventually got down to hard data,” says Evans, “but getting to the data required us to take a step back from our current training practices and to apply objectivity to our evaluation of them.”

What is eLearning? Can it really work when applied to Lean Six Sigma training? How do organizations experience benefits from eLearning? This article explores these questions by reviewing various studies and the experiences of organizations applying eLearning to their Lean Six Sigma training.

Applying Lean Six Sigma to Training

Most Lean Six Sigma practitioners would agree that mission critical processes should be studied to answer the following questions: Is the purpose of the process properly aligned with the business’ goals? Are the process owners actively creating value, increasing flow speeds and pull along the entire process while concurrently eliminating waste? Are the process owners/operators each making the process better? These questions apply equally to the process of training students to make Lean Six Sigma a part of their work lives.

Is the purpose of the training process aligned with the business’ goals? As applied to Six Sigma training, the general point to teaching the Lean Six Sigma toolset is, or ought to be, to improve business performance, not merely to have better trained employees. Most Lean Six Sigma training initiatives likely start out with this premise. But how many deliver? A properly designed training initiative will increase the alignment between the corporate imperative of better performance and the product delivered by the training. Sound instructional design increasingly means adopting e-Learning as a component to the training solution.

The technological advances used to deliver images and sounds for communications and entertainment purposes now also deliver training content. Consequently, the phrase “e-Learning” generically refers to a broad spectrum of content delivery technologies. E-learning can mean computer-based learning (such as by content on CD or DVD media), web-based learning (accessing content on the internet), virtual classrooms (close circuit television/web-based conferencing), and digital collaboration. Whenever electronic technology enables delivery of instructional content or otherwise provides a learning experience, it’s e-Learning.

To break down the vastness of e-Learning, estimated to be a $21 billion industry by 2008, a couple of simple but significant distinctions can be drawn. For example, much e-Learning is delivered “asynchronously.” Unlike the “tele-courses” of years gone by – think of part-time students tuning in their television to catch this week’s lecture – various mechanisms for content delivery now permit instructors and students to act independently. Specifically, an instructor can prepare materials for later access by students. The instructor organizes materials into logical order, with relationships highlighted by links between various materials, to form courses. Typical course arrangements feature combinations of information-giving materials, exercises, such as problems to solve, solution sets, and audio/visual slides. Students access the materials independent of the instructor and experience the materials, largely on the student’s terms.

Poor e-Learning designs employ the “death by PowerPoint” model – an endless series of slides, accompanied by note pages and possibly some audio effects. Similar but more advanced methods of beating students into submission are heavy with graphics (maybe even animated images), and appear at first glance to be more entertaining due to the slicker presentation. However, highly produced training products are not always effective. Drawbacks include lack of interactivity and pacing to accommodate the “slowest” common denominator.

More sophisticated, and effective, e-Learning differs in subtle aspects. Among the key features are delivery formats affording self-paced study, interactive gadgets requiring student engagement, drag and drop exercises, simulation-based practice exercises, quizzes, links to supplemental resources, case studies, immediate feedback, and animation. Skills assessments are also typically used to determine students’ knowledge of material prior to their embarking on a course of study. The data shows that when two comparable courses are offered to students, one by web-based instruction and one by classroom instruction, the students’ performance (and satisfaction) are comparable.

But e-Learning is only part of the optimum solution. Notably, according to Department of Defense - Advanced Distributed Learning project studies, a combination of classroom instruction and e-Learning products produces a learning premium – an increase of approximately 20% for “procedural” learning, i.e., learning skill based knowledge, and increases on the order of 16% for “declarative” learning, i.e., learning facts and figures, when compared to either e-Learning alone or to classroom instruction alone. These studies are borne out by companies that have applied the comparison to Lean Six Sigma training.

The lesson learned? Blending classroom or synchronous instruction with asynchronous e-Learning components is the way to go – it achieves better results and advances the deployment. Blended learning combines delivery methods to capture the positive aspects of online and face-to-face instruction and to minimize the disadvantages of each. As a generic term, blended learning applies to combinations of multiple methods of training. For example:

As with e-Learning, mixing the blend of learning experiences runs the gamut from the simple, e.g., students access the instructor presentations on-line with no interactivity, to the more sophisticated, e.g., asynchronous online learning combined with in class, instructor led training featuring simulations and realistic practice exercises. Some companies, such as Mattel, have successfully leveraged a relatively small number of experienced Senior Quality Engineers to support their Lean Six Sigma deployment and their training. Nancy Maclean, Mattel’s Six Sigma leader, observes that using a blended approach to Mattel’s Lean Six Sigma training has simply met pragmatic challenges: “Our deployment is a grass-roots type of effort. Using an e-Learning base allows a more productive use of our existing Black Belt body of knowledge expertise to work on process improvement resources. We have standing meetings scheduled for the more experienced to informally meet with Lean Six Sigma students. This approach has worked well for us, and has kept us on track for several years now.”

Of course, the more sophisticated model of blended training is also the most difficult to execute (and most challenging to the instructor). Yet, here is where alignment between the Lean Six Sigma training deployment and the bottom line is most likely. Consider the training program that provides students with Lean Six Sigma principles, tools and exercises via self-paced, on-line delivery, and complements the information-giving/practice phase of training with face-to-face mentoring in the context of deployment projects. Specifically, what if the Master Black Belt didn’t just lecture on, for example, what is a charter, what makes a bad charter, and what makes a good charter (all of which is more effective presented by e-Learning). Rather, what if the students come to class prepared and with draft charters, the Master Black Belt actually works with students on preparing their project charters? That learning exercise cements the training by putting the prior-acquired information to practice, and the deployment is actually advanced by completing properly prepared charters. Now that’s alignment.

Does Your Lean Six Sigma Training Still Use A Large Batch Method?

Are the process owners actively creating value, increasing flow speeds and pull along the entire process while concurrently eliminating waste? How does your Lean Six Sigma training stack up? According to The International Journal of Training and Development, organizations start using e-Learning to (1) Provide consistent, worldwide training; (2) reduce delivery cycle time; (3) increase learner convenience; (4) reduce information overload; (5) improve tracking; and (6) lower expenses. Applying e-Learning to Lean Six Sigma can also achieve these benefits.

Geographically dispersed organizations can realize significant cost savings in travel expenses and productivity by adopting technological solutions to content delivery. Furthermore, many organizations want consistent material for their employees to learn from and to use as a resource throughout their employment. Utilizing a technology solution meets this objective in at least two ways. First, technology eliminates the variability in instructor effectiveness (not all Black Belts are equally adept at completing projects and teaching others to do so). Adds Evans of Quest Diagnostics, “implementing our blended learning model has also made the training more interesting for these experienced black belts, and allows some of them to spend more time on the difficult problems our deployment generates.” Second, by using a central source of materials, e.g., by web-based instruction, course materials need not be printed (thereby avoiding waste in the form of outdated materials) and can be modified/adapted to reflect the organization’s maturation and evolution.

The capacity constraints involved in delivering e-Learning to a large group in a short amount of time is easily solved by e-Learning solutions. For example, it is reported that Xerox Corporation has trained in excess of 30,000 employees in Lean Six Sigma techniques. Notes Norm Fowler, Xerox’s manager of Lean Six Sigma strategic initiatives, “utilizing an on-line training facility allowed us to roll out our Lean Six Sigma training globally. We couldn’t have scaled our training throughput without an e-Learning training component”

Asynchronous learning also offers the convenience of anytime and anywhere training provided that you have the technology on hand. This “just in time” training to a batch size of one, dovetails nicely with the fundamentals of Lean Enterprise theories. Delivery of information over a longer period of time is also conducive to the learning. Instead of being force-fed the information in a classroom setting (constrained to times when the learning is not necessarily needed and only when the instructor is available), the learner has the ability to digest the information at their own pace and at a time when the training is needed by the learner(a pull system of training).

In short, Lean Six Sigma training programs benefit from application of Lean methodologies.

Obstacles To Adopting Blended Learning

Are the process owners/operators each making the process better? How is your Lean Six Sigma training team improving its process? As Lean Six Sigma deployments mature, as companies adapt to changing competition, and as we learn to optimize Lean Six Sigma training, the professionals responsible for the training may also need to adapt. Yes, teaching the leopard to change its spots can be difficult, and the “experts” delivering training via traditional classroom methods may be personally threatened by change - but the data show that efforts to develop the proper blend of e-Learning and personal interaction can deliver a learning premium and reduce the cost of training (and advance your deployment).

By Tim Kelley, MoreSteam.com LLC