Financial Services Six Sigma

Yellow Belt, White Belt, Purple Belt, Green Belt, Black Belt... you have to stop at one point and ask yourself what do all these colors really mean? It really means the end-buyer is at risk.  This dilution effect in the world of Six Sigma training has come about for one central reason- The Six Sigma training and certification market is not standardized.

When you are dealing with a deregulated marketplace such as the Six Sigma training and certification market, the seller has taken on the task of defining what the training should look like.  Eager to enter new marketplaces - healthcare, services and financial services - some firms have begun to introduce new, (never existed before) Six Sigma training platforms like yellow belt and purple belt.  The problem with these platforms is that they are nothing more than the waterd-down version of the manufacturing training platform.  For the most part it is the original 4 week training, stripped down to 3 days or 1 week of training.   In the end it is a feeble attempt to make a maufacturing based methodology fit a transactional based market segement - trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. The impact to the buyer is great:

1. You are getting training that doesn't have enough depth to be applied to anything tangible in your world.  Therefore there is no ROI that you can apply to that training.  It is just sunk cost.
2. You incease your chances of failure because you will have a trained base that has only a cursory understanding of the methodology - leading to misapplication of the tools and Six Sigma rigour.  In the end the failure will be blamed on the methodology instead of the inappropriate training.

So if you are interested in deploying Six Sigma which will require training, do not dilute the intiative from inception by getting an array of people trained in some new color that seems to match your budget and scope.  Stick to the fundementals and train a select few in a financial services Black Belt and Green Belt platform. 

Look at this way: how is it that for the past 20-30 years, while Six Sigma was only in the manufacturing realm, did companies only need two tiers of training and certification: Green Belt and Black Belt.  And now that we have entered new marketplaces do we need a rainbow colored variety of training?  When it comes to problem solving, regardless of the sector, organizations need the same level of rigour and sophistication.  So could it be that this new phenomenon is just a money making tool created by few, and that it has turned into a frenzy in a deregulated market? 

There will be more to come on this subject.

Sheila Shaffie - ProcessArc, Inc.