6 Sigma Online

When it comes to simplifying problems in your business, what is the most effective and efficient way to do it? Well, if you are incharge, the owner, all you have to do is convey what you want. Your verdict is unquestioned and the group has to do what you say. But are you sure that the decision you made is the best possible answer to your problem? Is the response that you came up with what will solve the situation or just postpone the unavoidable? Is only asking the view or input from a single colleague the very best way to go about solving a predicament or is it better to get a view and ideas from various people? Of course, a problem can better be dissected and identified with diverse participants working on it. When various viewpoints and various perspectives are viewed through, the better it is to come up with new ideas. The shared familiarity and worldview and understanding of lots of different employees is much broader and much more varied than if it is restricted to just one person. That person may have a lot of skill and be very educated, but when you add access to many thoughts and many ideas, you are almost always more likely to get a better outcome.

This grouping of individuals, this team that you choose to assemble will need some help getting started. Who is best to put on your team? It is always going to be slightly different and for each situation you may want to have a different team leader. You want your leader to be somebody that all members can get behind and that everybody respects. You also need them to be competent about what they are working with and if they are valued and liked by the rest of the team, then more than likely they are all of the above. This group is going to be responsible for a big task and they will be looked at to solve the situation and do it as capably and cost effective as possible. You will want somebody on the team that has skill working with these types of teams and has experience with groups and lean manufacturing in general. You will also need group members that are diverse in their job responsibilities and are up and down the chain of command. You do not want a team that is merely comprised of upper management or only employees on the floor. If you do this, then you will not get the views and the varying perspectives that you require. The more viewpoints that you consider, the more opportunities you will get an suggestion or point of view that you weren’t expecting and that might be innovative to everybody on the team. The ideas that come from a team can often be a combination of ideas that come from the whole group. Often, the final product is a combination of all of the brainstorming that has come before it, but fleshes out the thoughts more completely.