12 Days of PEXmas, Day 10: Who typically leads your process improvement initiatives?

One of the ways to get incremental buy in throughout the organization is by focusing on getting business leaders involved in actually leading process improvement projects.

According to survey respondents, process Improvement projects are typically led by Process Improvement experts (44.5% of respondents indicated that projects were led by these experts versus 28.6% said it was typically Line of Business Managers who were responsible for leadership of these projects (see Chart 18, opposite). Many of the telephone interviewee felt, though, that this was not the best model to encourage linking process improvement with strategic objectives.

"The best models are what I call the mixed models where you have the full time process improvement professionals – Black Belts, Master Black Belts – working on projects as part of their day to day work but where every level of the organization and every person in the organization does some project work within either the business group they work in or expanding beyond in cross business groups," says Paul Sandell from Intel.

"You want to put process improvement knowledge in the hands of everyone," comments Goodwill Industries’ David Behling. "If it’s always the process improvement experts who are leading process improvement, then it’s not building culture."

Learn more about how to build and refine that process improvement culture at this January’s PEX Week USA. Download the Agenda for more information.

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