Is A Solution Mindset Limiting Your Business?

By George Lee Sye

The vast majority of medium to large organisations in the western business world have initiated some form of business improvement. However, without a better understanding of the psychology of improvement and the presence of a robust process for identifying opportunities, most companies will continue to limit their ability to really capture the value that is locked within their business.

Let’s take a simple example to explain what I mean. The following is a list of business improvement initiatives for a medium sized clothing manufacturing business.

Notice that the list of initiatives is simply a list of SOLUTIONS.

By solution I mean each idea is a way of solving some perceived problem. For example, renegotiation of unit supply rates is one way to solve the problem of cost per unit of production increasing.

Business Improvement Without Lean Six Sigma Comes Up Short

In the absence of an improvement strategy like Lean Six Sigma, this tends to be the way business improvement is approached.

Ideas for making the business better are generated, consolidated and undertaken as improvement projects. Managers genuinely believe they are doing business improvement and have no idea why they would have a need to add a methodology like Lean Six Sigma to what they do. I have even seen the situation where some managers believe they are already doing Lean or Six Sigma.

What’s missing?

The main shortfall with this approach is that many opportunities for genuine performance improvement are missed. When we only work on initiatives for which solutions are known, we miss all of those value adding opportunities for which we don’t know the solution.

By limiting our inquisitiveness to just one question; ‘WHAT CAN WE DO TO IMPROVE OUR BUSINESS?’ (which is the mistake many companies make), we can never realise the full potential of the business.

Ask a New Question to Broaden Opportunities for Improvement

A company’s approach to business improvement is significantly broadened when improvement ideas are captured for which solutions are not known. A second question needs to be asked.

‘WHERE CAN WE IMPROVE THAT WOULD ADD VALUE TO OUR BUSINESS?’

In the case of our clothing manufacturer for example, answers to this question might generate ideas like these.

Order Processing – We could work on reducing the number of incidents of incorrect order processing

Order Processing – We could work on reducing the cycle time for turning around an order

Creditor Payments – We could work on increasing the proportion of on time payments from invoiced customers

Any of these are worthwhile projects to undertake because of their impact on customers and on the business itself.

Notice these are not solutions; rather they are areas where improvement needs to take place in order for the business to generate greater value. The solution for achieving these improvements is not yet known.

Now we need to use our improvement methodology to find those solutions; that’s where Lean and Six Sigma come to the fore.

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George Lee Sye is the author of best selling text-book; Process Mastery with Lean Six Sigma 2nd Edition, and a thought leader in the area of Lean Six Sigma Training and Leadership Education. To read more visit http://www.soarent.com.au/lean-six-sigma-training