Last week in the fourth of this five-part series, I covered improving the situation by mitigating or eliminating the root causes will keep you on the path to ensuring the change you’re making is a sustainable solution for your organization (Click here to revisit Part 4 - Improve the Process). The third step was to analyze the process and identify the root cause(s) of the defects (Click here to revisit Part 3 - Analyze the Process). The second step was to measure the critical to quality (CTQ) characteristics of the process you think is causing the problem (Click here to revisit Part 2 - Measure the Process). And the first step was to really define the problem using voice of the customer (VOC) and critical to quality (CTQ) characteristics (Click here to revisit Part 1 - Define the Problem). Now comes the fifth thing you can do to ensure your change is here to stay in the organization.
5. Control the process by putting a control plan in place.
Those who have been in organizations for a while, have seen time and time again, an organizational change effort comes up, leadership gives it a lot of focus and energy for a while, the change is made, and then everyone goes back to their day jobs. What happens then? Many times the organization reverts back to their old way of doing things and any benefits the change brought to the organization disappear. How do you stop this from happening? By putting a control plan in place.
What is a Control Plan? At a high level, it’s a document that describes:
What will be measured in the process
How often the measurements will be taken
Who or what system will be taking each measurement
Who the measurements will be reported to
What corrective actions will be taken by whom if a measurement shows the improvements are backsliding
Is it additional work to put this plan together and obtain agreement on it? Yes. Is it worth the effort? Absolutely, unless you’re one who enjoys repeating the change management process all over again for the same improvement.
Take recent events for example, once we’re past the peak with COVID-19, and without a Control Plan in place, the virus could flare back up in the population. Some key parts of this Control Plan seem to be being able to:
Accurately test who does have the virus so they can be quarantined
Perform contact tracing so the people the COVID-19 positive person was in contact with can quarantine to avoid further spread of the virus
Accurately test who does and doesn’t have antibodies to the virus so it’s clear who can safely return to their workplace
That concludes this five-part series. To recap, the five things you can do to ensure your change will be a sustainable solution for your organization:
Define the problem (Click here to revisit Part 1 - Define the Problem)
Measure the process where you think the problem lies (Click here to revisit Part 2 - Measure the Process)
Analyze and identify the root causes (Click here to revisit Part 3 - Analyze the Process)
Improve the process and remove / mitigate the root causes (Click here to revisit Part 4 - Improve the Process)
Control the process by putting a Control Plan in place
For those of you familiar with Six Sigma, you’re probably saying to yourself, well this is the Six Sigma DMAIC Process, and you’re absolutely right! For those unfamiliar with Six Sigma, the Define Measure Analyze Improve Control (DMAIC) improvement methodology is for existing processes that could use some improvement, optimization, or stabilization. And it works for delivering sustainable change in organizations!
Call to Action
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About the Author: Rosanne Essiambre helps change agents and departments in one-on-one and group settings to be seen, be heard, and be effective in bringing about change in the organization and/or in their personal lives. She provides consulting and facilitation to organizations to improve communications and collaboration, smooth out the change / transformation journey, get to the root cause of an issue so it can be solved for good, improve processes, and implement successful lessons learned. And she conducts workshops, trains, and speaks on Energy Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, Resilience, Being a Change Agent and more. If you or your organization could use support with your change effort or some inspiration, contact Rosanne for a complimentary consultation. Rosanne is a Change Agent Coach, Facilitator, Six Sigma Black Belt, Change Management / Continuous Improvement Consultant, Speaker, and Energy Leadership Index Master Practitioner with more than 20 years experience working on a variety of transformations across a diverse set of industries both domestically and internationally, while continuously improving herself.