So what does it take to be a Six Sigma Master Black Belt?

You got your organization committed; you’ve got your team trained. Now the onus is on you to guide the process to achieving its objectives. For that, you may be required to:

Demonstrate you can bring about positive change and enthuse everyone to participate in it.

Be a trainer, coach and mentor to everyone from line level employees to top management.

Know the business and the be able to demo nstrate how your project is critical to the desired business results.

Manage a project in its entirety – scope, requirements, resources, timelines.

Have the technical know how to collect and analyze data to decide the path forward – Six Sigma after all, depends critically on this. ‘Gut-feel’ has no place here.

Lead a team – get along with people, have good influencing skills, and motivate others.

Produce real financial results.

Have a deep knowledge of the process. Simply because you need to know the process thoroughly, so you can detect and remove defects!

Have multiple perspectives. The ability to look at a process from the eye of a client or customer is important in being able to keep the focus on customer satisfaction.

This is just the basic minimum. The Black Belt must go further, because this is the member who

Identifies Six Sigma process improvement projects.

Assists in the development of strategies to improve processes.

For this you must know Six Sigma philosophy, theory, and application tools/tactics in their entirety to attain world-class levels of quality.

The Master Black Belt must go even further – he must be able to enthuse the management to agree to Six Sigma processes, select the right people for the job, guide the entire team from A to Z, and take the ultimate responsibility. You must know your statistical principles inside out because you will be the decision-maker, and Six Sigma decisions are based strictly on data and analysis.

Detailed documentation and presentations on how to achieve each of these levels are provided in the leadership and Communications Framework.

Remember, this is really the big mountain you have to climb. Once you have reached some Six Sigma proficiency, the actual implementation of the processes will become much easier. More on that in the next blog.