Michael Webb:     B2B sales and marketing works to find the highest quality prospects, reach decision makers, and sell value. Operational excellence uses data and systems thinking to make changes that cause improvement and eliminate waste. My name is Michael Webb and this is the Sales Process Excellence podcast. In the next 30 to 40 minutes, we're going to destroy the myth that these two groups conflict, and show you how to bring both strategies together to create more wealth for your company and your customers.

Michael Webb:     I'm pleased today to have a fantastic person on our show. His name is Robert Tripp. He has a very long career as a consultant and a trainer and a master black belt. Robert, welcome here.

Robert Tripp:          Yes, thank you Michael. It's good to be here on the call with you.

Michael Webb:     Robert is with a firm, Argo LLC. Robert, for our audience, please provide a little, you know, where did you come from and how did you get where you are and what does Argo LLC do?

Robert Tripp:          When I began my career a few decades ago, I never would have thought that I would, I guess, evolve into a space that allowed me to concentrate in process improvement, and process excellence, and quality management systems, but it all really began back in 1995. I had been working in the finance community in a manufacturing organization back in 1995, and I got tapped on to engage in a Six Sigma training effort to become a black belt. I thought it seemed new and unique and different, and I thought yes, let's give it a try.

I started down the path in 1995, which eventually certified as a master black belt. Soon after that, and by 1998, I was consulting, and that was just at the time when the industry was really starting to become active. There were a couple of small deployments early on, starting with Motorola and then it moved into a little bit with Texas Instruments and ABB and then Allied Signal. I was working at Allied Signal at the time.

But then beginning in 1998, I was able to begin working with a lot of different clients and that's when my consulting career started, and I started down the path of designing deployments, creating content, delivering training coaching projects, developing people and leaders in the organization to drive Six Sigma within their own communities.

Somewhere along the line there was a merger between the whole concept of Six Sigma and Lean and the ideas around both and how they really compliment each other and so. I'd say around the mid-2000s it became more of an effort around marketing and involving myself in Lean Six Sigma, and really that's what I've been doing since then. For the last few years I've been working with a number of different clients, but really in a small cluster of course partners, and in the last six months I've been independent, so it's been an interesting path.

The company that I have created is Argo LLC, and we basically work with organizations, large, small, and medium size to deploy continuous improvement tools. It ranges from grand corporate-wide deployments, which I'm working on right now, to smaller deployments, which just involves training and coaching a few project., You know, the landscape has changed, so the versatility and being able to apply the tools in different environments is important, and based on the, you know, the history I think we're able to argue that.

Michael Webb:     You've been at a perch where you could watch the industry sort of unfold and watch the changes that have taken place, so what have you observed?

Robert Tripp:          Well, I think one of the most interesting things that I've observed, it's really in the late nineties, early two-thousands, Six Sigma was a foreign concept. Winning was an important concept and well, maybe, you know, maybe organizations coming out of the manufacturing arenas had great familiarity with similar tools, if not tools of the same name. The broader scope of the industries, including financial services, health care, a lot of different government offices, things like this, they did not have exposure to Six Sigma. But as we sort of evolved and developed through the two thousands and in the last, you know, five to 10 years, it's really becoming ubiquitous.

Almost everybody you run into certainly has heard of Lean and Six Sigma. In addition to that, they've had some exposure either in terms of participating in Lean Six Sigma deployments, or former employer or being part of the projects or even maybe taking classes through collegiate courses and things like that. It's been interesting to watch the general level of awareness increase, but with that also comes a level of lack of awareness in the same way, so in other words, that people are getting exposed to it at a very superficial level. They know conceptually what it is, but they are not familiar still with how to deploy it and how to execute to really drive results for the organization.

Michael Webb:     What is the percentage of Six Sigma deployments that actually achieve the goals that their companies start out with?

Robert Tripp:          You know whether it's the stated goals as they are put down on paper and published to the rest of your organization to justify the resources being the time and effort being spent to deploy it.  That may be a little bit different than the vision and the hopes than the people who deploy it who want to achieve, so just starting with the stated goals, you know, it's 90 to 100%. I don't think that, you know, the payback on Lean and Six Sigma is never, or I don't think it's ever a negative payback. The challenges, you know, are you really reaching the cultural, you know, DNA of the organization and that's where things fail, and it takes time to do that.

It takes patience and persistence to make that happen, but in addition, that sort of cultural transformation is difficult to measure so to say that there was a specific goal in that arena I think is a little bit difficult, but I would also say that there are a lot of people that are not satisfied with the way that their deployments are, I guess sustained within the organization's management system over time.

Michael Webb:     I have heard statements not just about Six Sigma deployments, but about also other kinds of deployments, Lean deployments and so forth that, you know, it's typical in the industry that more than 80% of these initiatives they end up being disappointing, they end up not actually achieving the goals and objectives. Have you heard that?

Robert Tripp:          Yeah, I have heard that sort of thing, and we agreed to the extent that they have not achieved the sustainability and the cultural transformation that the proponents are looking for. However, what they do achieve is certainly bringing some level of improvement in customer satisfaction and the level of improvement of internal, the process quality performance, and with that financial results that pay for the resources invested in the deployment. That being said, yes, no question there are a lot of deployments that do not exceed, or might exceed, but achieve the overall goal, but I would not say that they were a waste of time.

Michael Webb:     Let's examine that dark side there for a minute about not achieving the cultural, I mean, I have heard the term even Six Sigma Nazis inside of a big company. The Six Sigma department ends up attempting to enforce some standards on how projects are do...