Tag Archives: business

Why People Leave a Business

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This is from a LinkedIn discussion group. The question being discussed was” Do people leave a business because of its managers?” The following was my response.

“I believe the character, soul and values of a business are manifested by its leadership. This applies even if the stated mission, vision and values of a business say something different. It is a “you are what you do” sort of thing. If I am right, then people leave a business because of its leadership when there is no alignment in these areas.”

Personal Development and Six Sigma

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You might ask why I write about personal development on a website that is supposed to be focused on Six Sigma. This is a question that I hear from those who are trained in Six Sigma, but I rarely hear by those who are not.

The answer is that I see Six Sigma as a paradigm change for business people, not a just statistical business management program. At the end of the day, businesses are operated and managed by people. Any real change in the way things are done will happen at the people level. Failure to understand statistics will not cause a business to fail. Failure to understand the underlying, people focused reasons for why things happen in a business will lead to failure. The “why” is more important than the “what”.
Let me give an example. Business arrogance will cause a business to have a deaf ear toward customers and employees even if the business metrics show a problem. Six Sigma processes and statistics will not solve the problem of a manager who is not a believer or is protecting their turf. Therefore, a paradigm change at the individual manager level has to take place in order to bring business processes in alignment with customer expectations.

The majority of Six Sigma consultants are probably aware of the importance of existing corporate culture and its ability to adapt to the Six Sigma paradigm. At the same time, they probably do not know how to fix the problem and (or) are unwilling to walk away from the job opportunity. The resulting Six Sigma roll out fails because of failure to change the leadership culture. No one is happy as a result.

From a cultural perspective, the change is from the inside out not the outside in. No consultant can push change in an organization. Change is pulled. The impetus of pushed change comes from desire that is outside the organization. The impetus for pulled changes comes from the organization’s internal desire to change. This is where the rubber meets the road in Six Sigma.

Voice of the Business

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Some of the first questions that a business must answer are:

• Why do we exist?
• Who are our customers?
• What is our mission or purpose?
• What is our vision?

To understand the importance of the answers to these questions, we must first understand that different stakeholders in a business have different perspectives. The stockholders wish to get a return on their investment. Workers wish to get a good wage for their work. Managers and officers wish to meet the business performance metrics set forth by the owners (stockholders, etc). The community wishes to have a neighbor that provides jobs, pays taxes, supports the community, and has no negative environmental impact. These are just a few.

Understanding the answers to these questions from the stakeholders’ perspective helps to define problem areas within the business and its ambient environment. It allows the business to have clearer vision. In the final analysis though, there are two high level purposes of a business. In a capitalistic society, businesses exist to make money, to make a profit. Without this, the business would not exist. Secondly, when the business is profitable, it ideally gives back stability to the community in which it exists.

When a business correctly defines its problem areas, from the customer and business points of view, it is ready to take the next step to improve processes connected to the problem areas.

So what does process improvement mean to the business? It means lower cost, higher efficiency, and higher profits. These manifest themselves in higher customer satisfaction, improved market share, and larger margins. The tie between customer satisfaction and profitability is evident.

Similar metrics apply to organizations like non-profits. For them the metrics may be lower cost and higher efficiency. These may manifest themselves as lower dependence on outside funding and improved margins. The commonality between businesses and non-profits is that the focus is upon doing more with less, thus returning more margin to the stakeholders and more value to the customers.

These bottom-line metrics in a healthy business are in alignment with their strategic planning. Furthermore, when strategic planning is in alignment with customer expectations, improvement projects will improve customer satisfaction and profitability.