Team Leadership in Practice

Corporations that want to be successful listen to their customers and make the required decisions that continuously supply the product that the customer expects. But sometimes they can fall short of customer expectations by having product component, or material failures which produces dissatisfaction with their customer.

Word of mouth and bad reviews can cause an organization to look like their product has “a buyer beware” sign attached to it which give them a less than favorable impression to others that are interested in the same purchase. That is why it is so critical to utilize Engaged Team Performance (ETP) principles in a company culture so that issues can be dealt with and resolved in house instead of when the product reaches the end user. “ETP powerfully combines great process improvement methods with strong teamwork and performance management concepts” (Starbird & Cavanagh, 2011). In this paper I will present to you how three separate companies were able to use ETP principles to successfully tackle the issues they encountered, and one company that struggled with the concept due to poor team development and lack of upper management commitment.

The first company that I have chosen is Motorola. Motorola started its journey implementing quality improvement measures back in the 80’s when competition was very high. The Japanese companies in particular were already operating more efficiently and had quality programs in place so their defects were substantially lower than the American companies. The Six Sigma approach was actually created by an engineer and scientist with Motorola, Bill Smith.

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He understood that statistics and different formulas could be used to figure out process improvements. As Six Sigma was adopted by the company, they began focusing on all levels of the organization. The term “Six Sigma black belt” was first introduced by the Motorola Corporation to “describe employees who are trained and experienced in applying statistical techniques to business processes and procedures”(Black belts save Motorola a billion, 2002). This is also where the standardized phases of Six Sigma, (DMAIC - define, measure, analyze, improve, and control) were created.

So why was Motorola successful utilizing Six Sigma? There were several reasons. The first reason was due to them making quality and reducing defects a priority in their company. Secondly, they understood how to collect and read data in order to use it to define a starting point with their process issues. Lastly, they created highly functioning, engaged teams that were used throughout the organization to address process issues. Teams were specifically created by utilizing Six Sigma black belts, who were considered the team leaders on projects. They were also experts in their fields and had a strong background in statistical analysis.

Everybody at the company was trained on the basic principles of Six Sigma, so when a project was assigned to their area, they were able to grasp the approach and assist the team. After implementing Sig Sigma, Motorola realized how important the methodology had been in improving their processes. “In fact, they have documented more than $16 billion in saving as a result of Six Sigma adoption” (Tahiri, 2017).

The second company I have chosen to review is General Electric (GE). GE was a growing company back in the 80’s, and due to the competitive nature of their environment, they wanted to put an emphasis on producing a quality product while reducing defects in production. This was during the time when Motorola was making headlines on how they had effectively implemented lean Six Sigma principles in their processes and were reaping the rewards from it.

Their CEO at the time was Jack Welch, and he took notice to the advantages that were created by Motorola utilizing Six Sigma and realized that it was necessary for GE to start implementing the practices they were using. He understood the need to concentrate on data driven changes derived from their processes, and develop their employees to comprehend how the Six Sigma principles and philosophy applied to the processes and their own jobs.

Developing GE employees meant that everyone from the leadership team on down would need to become familiar with it, not many were excluded. Once the employees understood how Six Sigma along with the DMAIC philosophy worked, they could then apply it to projects in their departments. That is when training programs were developed and facilitated by Six Sigma back belts (experts) so that they could become familiar with Six Sigma and immediately go back to their areas and work on projects implementing what they had learned. After the initial training was completed, mentors were assigned to departments whose jobs were related to key company processes. This type of engaged team performance would give employees additional knowledge, experience, and support while working on the various projects they were tasked to complete.

The key to the success of GE was that once they recognized the value of Six Sigma, they made it a part of their company’s culture. The benefit of doing that was their employees understood coming into the company that it was going to be part of their job, which made them more receptive to changes they would experience while performing their jobs.

GE’s focus is always on the quality of the product and the customer who was purchasing them. “Our goal is to ensure that there are no problems with any product or service that GE provides” (Henderson, K. M., & Evans, J. R. 2000).

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