CHANGE MANAGEMENT

A Roadmap For Change

by Joseph A. DeFeo and William W. Barnard

he Juran roadmap for change is a systematic, but not prescriptive, approach for going from here to there. It provides a guide for incorporating long-term business goals related to the intended change with the organizational resources required to carry them out.

In 50 Words Or Less
In this excerpt from Juran Institutes Six Sigma

Breakthrough and Beyond, Joseph DeFeo and William

Barnard discuss a five-phase roadmap to attain leadership in quality and explain how to reap the benefits of a cultural transformation and achieve sustainable results.
Adapted from Juran Institutes Six Sigma Breakthrough and Beyond by Joseph A. DeFeo and William W. Barnard. Copyright 2003 by the McGraw-Hill Co. Inc. All rights reserved. This book is available from ASQ Quality Press, item number P1089 at http:/ /qualitypress.asq.org.

This roadmap does not attempt to answer every question. It is not intended to be the greatest strategy. It does not provide all the detail your organization may need to carry out the change. It does, however, define the major activities that upper managers and change agents must include in their change process if they desire to achieve sustainable results. Whether your organization has begun a change process or is contemplating one, this roadmap can be useful. For those who are beginning their journey, it provides a set of sequential activities that need to be implemented to achieve sustainable change. For those who may have already begun the change, it can help identify gaps in your current plan or roadmap. It is important to note that we did not try to identify and include all the possible change or transformation approaches. We focused on achieving Six Sigma breakthroughs and beyond and have provided a roadmap for this type of change.

Going From Here to There

During his 60 years of focus on implementing breakthroughs in organizations, Joseph M. Juran found that all organizational change must be integrated into an organization slowly to give it time to

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adapt to the change. His experience and ours have demonstrated that organizational change is similar to an antibiotic attacking a virus. Consider this scenario: A patient who takes a daily drug will slowly build up an antibody to attack a virus (the old culture). As the virus (old culture) invites this drug or antibody into its sys-

tem, the drug begins to kill the virus and a new health (culture) takes over, often leaving the patient healthier and free of the virus. The best change processes must invade a culture slowly, through a pilot effort, to begin to attack the culture. This enables the culture to accept the change. In other words, the change was tested on
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Before we describe the roadmap for change, lets review what we are changing from and to. A typical organization that wants to change might look like this: It has high operating costs and lower than expected profit. Productivity comes before customers and quality. Quality is often sacrificed for schedules. Its slow to respond to comFIGURE 1 Breakthrough Thinking plaints or needed corrective action. Radical Theres a lack of creativity and change initiative in new process or Incremental product and service designs. change s Carryover clas Theres a lack of employee/ n i t modules Bes management trust, which can Fix as fails lead to turnovers or unionizaCustomer focused self-inspection tion. Redesign Theres little collaboration or As-is Creative thinking/TRIZ employee participation. Check Minor modifications Quality improvement Innovation/DFSS Quality is someone elses job. Inspect 5S Lean manufacturing Six Sigma DMAIC This organization would rather Control Root causes are Process flow revisions Benchmarking not always identified be best in class and knows it must Revise New technology have: 5S - five terms beginning with "s" used to create a workplace suited for visual control and lean production. Greater profitability through TRIZ - a Russian acronym for theory of inventive problem solving. DFSS - design for Six Sigma. leaner processes and greater DMAIC - define, measure, analyze, improve, control. productivity. A customer focused staff that quickly responds to complaints. FIGURE 2 The Roadmap Continuous quality improvement of all processes. Employees empowered and in Phase five a state of self-control to mainIntegrate, audit, measure, assess, tain performance. review, inspect, focus Flat, flexible organizational Phase four Sustain structures. Expand training across the The attitude that quality is organization Phase three Expand everyones job. Transition training Initial Vision driven leadership. training Phase two Pilot Launch Values: high morals, ethics, projects Upfront teamwork, involvement and planning risk taking. Established Prepare Phase one infrastructure An organization that is not meet Executive Yes to council ing executive, shareholder and cusDecide deployment tomer satisfaction is an organization Organization/partner that needs to change. The resources, Time energy and desire to change must the culture, and it worked. At that point, the organization can expand the change to other parts of the organization with greater success and less resistance. Our roadmap includes a pilot phase to test out the intended change on the organization. This phase can be used as a testing ground for any change being contemplated.
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determine the level of change needed. It is difficult to quantify change, but looking at Figure 1, youll get the idea that transformational or radical change is different from incremental change. A breakthrough means different things to different people. This figure lists tools that are often associated with each of the different levels of change. The roadmap for change focuses on the radical changes required. If your organization is not looking for radical change, you should modify the scope of your change process. The roadmap includes five phases (see Figure 2). Each phase is independent of the others, but the beginning and end of each phase are not as clear as it may appear. Each organization reacts differently to change, which can lead to one business unit remaining in one phase longer than another. These phases are simply a managerial guide to change, not a prescription.

FIGURE 3

Phase One (Decide)

Sustain

Expand Launch

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Prepare Decide

Learn about the transformation methodology. Assess your organization's status to identify strategies and the goals. Integrate and align quality goals into business plan. Determine how the transformation initiative will be integrated with other methodologies and initiatives already in the organization. Identify desired scope of changes, such as the spectrum of deployment. Discuss other initiatives and their impact on resources. Determine preliminary scope, goals and business case for deploying the change system and make decision to deploy. Select an external partner to help deploy the changes needed and keep you on track.

FIGURE 4

Organizational Review

Enablers Quality systems

Decide
Strategic plan

Key business processes: Product development. Production. Supply chain management. Order fulfillment. Support processes. Market/ customers (loyal customers) Results Drivers

The road begins with the decide phase. In this phase, the executive team decides something must be done or the organization will not meet its customer and shareholder expectations. It ends with a clear plan for change (see Figure 3). In the decide phase, the organization creates new or better information than it may have had about itself. This information can come from a number of reviews or assessments. In our experience, the more new information an organization has, the better its planning for change will be. A number of areas need to be reviewed in this phase: Conduct a customer loyalty assessment to determine what your customers like or dislike about your products and services. Identify the areas of strength and uncover possible problems in the organizations performance. Understand your employees attitudes toward the proposed changes. Understand the key business processes and how they will be impacted by the changes.

Influencers Culture

Determine the business case for change by conducting a cost analysis of poor performing processes to determine the financial impact of these costs on the bottom line. Conduct a comprehensive business quality system review of all the business units to understand the level of improvement needed in each. A comprehensive review of the organization prior to launch is essential for success. We recommend all organizations embarking on a Six Sigma transformation initiative perform the review in Figure 4. After performing these assessments and reviews,
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the executive team will have the qualitative and quantitative information needed to define the implementation plan for its organization. The plan must include: The infrastructure needed to steer the changes. The methodology and tools that will be used throughout the implementation. The goals and objectives of the effort. The detailed plan for achieving results.

Prepare, Launch, Expand

In the second phasepreparethe executive team gets ready for the upcoming changes. It develops a pilot effort to try out the change in a few business units before it carries them throughout the rest of the organization. This phase begins with the team deploying the plan created in phase one, and it ends after the pilot projects are successfully launched (see Figure 5). From here, the organization identifies the potential improvement projects that must be carried out to meet the goals established in the decide phase. In this phase, the organization launches the pilot projects, reviews their progress and enables success.

Upon completion of the pilot projects, the executives evaluate what worked and what did not. They then either abandon their efforts or, in most cases, make necessary changes to the plan and expand it throughout the organization (see Figure 6). Expansion can take months or years, depending on the size of the organization. A company with 500 employees will require less time to deploy all changes across the company than an organization with 50,000 employees. The expand phase could potentially take three to five years. It is important to note that positive financial results will occur long before cultural changes take place, and staying in the expand phase is not a bad thing. An organization must continue to implement business unit by business unit, company by company until all areas have had enough time to implement the changes (see Figure 7).

Sustain
The final phase is the sustain phase. This is the phase the organization is in when it has a fully integrated operation: All improvement and Six Sigma goals are aligned with the strategy of the organization.

FIGURE 5

Phase Two (Prepare)

FIGURE 6

Phase Three (Launch)

Sustain

Expand Launch

Prepare Decide

1. Establish infrastructure: Identify the change initiative leader. Form the executive council. Form other steering committee(s). 2. Establish the initiative goals: Ensure they are assigned to company goals. Finalize business case. 3. Conduct HR planning. 4. Address finance issues. 5. Develop and begin implementation of the communications plan: Internal. External. 6. Identify and select pilot projects for training and beyond. 7. Begin developing a balanced business scorecard. 8. Establish appropriate metrics and initiative tracking. 9. Finalize deployment plan.

Sustain

Expand Launch

Prepare Decide

Action items 1. Train onboard remainder of management team: Champions. Other managers. 2. Conduct pilot training and projects. 3. Support and monitor projects: Champions. Executives. 4. Measure and review progress. 5. Review lessons learned. 6. Make decisiongo or no go?

How partners can help 1. Executive and Champion training, mentoring and coaching. 2. Employee training, mentoring and coaching. 3. Project support. 4. Establishment of key metrics. 5. Analysis of progress. 6. Input into decision process.

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FIGURE 7

Phase Four (Expand)

Success Factors

Organizations that have led a change process and initially failed Action items How partners can help have learned some important 1. Modify original deployment plan 1. Executive and Champion training, lessons. Their failures can be based upon lessons learned and mentoring and coaching. current thinking. 2. Employee training, mentoring and avoided if planned for. It is impor2. Expand (per revised deployment coaching. tant to remember: plan): 3. Transition planning and Internal experts (Six Sigma Other organizational units. implementation. Black Belts) should become Other geographic units. 4. Train the trainers. More experts. 5. Licensed materials. the drivers who propel the More projects. company to best in class. Sustain Additional training (design for Extensive training in tools and Six Sigma, Master Black Belt). techniques for all employees Other. Expand 3. Communicate success of pilots ensures learning has taken and ongoing projects. place and the tools can be used. Launch 4. Maintain robust project and Systematic application and selection process. deployment through proven 5. Establish objectives for executives Prepare methodologies such as Six and employees. 6. Measure, review and inspect. Sigma define, measure, anaDecide 7. Transition training from consulting lyze, improve, control and partner to client Master Black Belt. design for Six Sigma are necessary to create a common language. Focusing improvements on the customer first will reduce Key business processes are defined and well costs and delight customers, which will enable managed, and a process owner is assigned to breakthrough bottom-line results. manage them. Significant increase in customer satisfaction Employee performance reviews and compensation are in line with the changes required. Those that comply with the change are rewarded. The executives and business unit heads reguFour Dimensions for Successful FIGURE 8 larly review and audit the change process. This Integration may result in a discussion or even a change in the organizations strategy (see Figure 8). Throughout the change process, the organization will likely have learned more about its capabilities and customers. This may lead to a change in strateReviews Goals and audits gy. Like the expand phase, the sustain phase lasts as long as the organization is meeting its strategy and financial results. Deviations from results expected, possibly due to macroeconomic events occurring Key business outside the organization, require a review of the People processes scorecard to determine what has changed. Once this is determined, the organization makes the changes, continues and sustains itself at the current level (see Figure 9, p. 30).

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FIGURE 9

Phase Five (Sustain)

Sustain

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Expand Launch

Prepare Decide

Conduct audits and take action as appropriate. Continue to assess culture and act on gaps. Measure, review and inspect. Stay focused on the customer and the bottom line. The most critical cross functional processes are managed best by permanent cross functional business process management teams led by a formal process owner. 6. Strategic goals for the organization must include measurable, stretch goals related to areas such as customer loyalty, product performance, competitive perfomance, costs of poor quality and internal quality culture. 7. Upper managers must personally review and audit progress toward quality goals. 8. All employees must be trained to know what is expected of them, know how they are doing with respect to those expectations and have the skill, tools and authority to regulate their work to meet the expectations.

happens only when you improve on the processes and services that influence them. No company has ever achieved a successful implementation without leadership and commitment from the executive teamthey control the resources and the culture. With this roadmap and the lessons learned in hand, all organizations should be able to achieve sustainable results well into the future. If more organizations get on board with positive, customer focused change initiatives, we (as a nation or many nations) will be able to compete with any of the low cost producing nations and competitors. Instead of China and Korea becoming global leaders and negatively impacting our societies, the United States and Europe can maintain their competitiveness and survive the future. A new revolution in quality is needed. It can begin with your organization, or it can begin with your competitor. Its your choice. Many years ago, Juran ended a very famous videotape learning series on quality improvement with the words long live the revolution. He was of course referring to the revolution that was taking place in the Western world to win back our industries so beaten up by the Japanese quality movement. We did it then, and we will do it again against China, Korea
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and any other tough competitor. In a slight revision of Jurans quote: Long live the next revolution.
JOSEPH A. DE FEO is president and executive coach of the Juran Institute in Wilton, CT. He earned an MBA from Western Connecticut State in Danbury and is a member of ASQ.

WILLIAM W. BARNARD, who served the Juran Institute for more than 18 years in advising and assisting management in a variety of industries, education and government on how to implement quality processes, died last year of complications due to surgery. Dr. Barnard held a doctorate in higher education from the University of Michigan, coauthored Juran Institutes Six Sigma Breakthrough and Beyond and was a member of ASQ.

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