After reading the headline, you're probably asking, " What is Six Sigma and how can it help me?" In brief, Six Sigma is a measurement system as well as a management philosophy developed to help companies eliminate defects from existing processes, and create new ones to enhance efficiency, profits and/or savings.
The Greek letter s (sigma) refers to the standard deviation of a population. Six Sigma quality is the level of quality equivalent to achieving fewer than 3.4 defects per million opportunities.
It may sound tailor-made for manufacturers, but Six Sigma can play a key role in building and sustaining a successful, metric-driven communications program. If you take the time to rigorously review, analyze and improve the processes that underlie your communications initiatives with the discipline of Six Sigma, you will produce higher quality output and free up time and talent to focus on more productive activities.
A central tenet of Six Sigma states that if you can measure the number of defects that exist in a process, you can eliminate them and get as close to "zero defects" as possible. While this may sound tailored to a manufacturing environment, it can have profound impact on the communications function.
A core principal of Six Sigma states that if a process is not working, don't blame the person - examine the process used to accomplish the objective. Management guru W. Edward Deming noted that, "Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure to meet customer expectations are related to deficiencies in systems and process…rather than the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better."
The Basics of Six SigmaSix Sigma is typically divided into five consecutive phases: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control or DMAIC. Each phase has several components within that require detailed analysis.
Define customer need
- Define the problem
- Identify customer needs - areas that they deem critical to success
- Determine how best to measure the process
Measure the defects
- Map the process
- Develop a cause and effect matrix
- Measure the process based on earlier metric definition
Analyze the process
- Establish process capabilities
- Determine factors that most impact process
- Identify variation sources
Improve the inputs
- Screen potential causes for defects
- Design new process
- Implement new process
Control the improvements
- Develop plan to ensure and monitor success
- Define areas of potential weakness in the process
- Monitor those potential vulnerabilities on a regular basis
A Case In Point
To better understand the value of Six Sigma for PR professionals, let's look at an abbreviated example of a communications project. The following Six Sigma project was designed for an e-business to increase the quantity and quality of customer-focused case studies and press releases.
The project focused on reducing the cycle time necessary to generate completed customer examples, and reduce the percentage of opportunities aborted after significant time and resources are expended.
Key Findings
After weeks of intensive effort, by a five-member team, ranging from interviews with sales leaders, to rigorous process mapping sessions, to implementing a pilot program - the team uncovered the following impediments to its processes:
(1) there were insufficient conduits to the customer; (2) the sales account executive (AE) was apprehensive about approaching the customer for publicity purposes; (3) there were low to no incentive for the AE to participate in PR activity.
After analyzing the data, the team developed a new process to decrease the number of defects. Some key outcomes include:
- Conduct additional analysis at the beginning of the process to better discern the likelihood that a specific example will be aborted or completed.
- Develop a brief, easy to use electronic tracking form for sales to complete that provides valuable data to PR team early in the process.
Provide online tool to sales that demonstrates the value of joint PR efforts to customer. - Audit tracking documents (i.e. duration, outcomes, etc) every six months. In addition, measure and analyze new data, as well as determine the effectiveness of the new process.
As a result, the team reduced cycle time by 86%, while maintaining high quality customer examples for use in PR campaigns. Productivity of the team increased because they spent less time on aborted opportunities and more time reaching measurable objectives.