PROCESS IMPROVEMENT

The impact of melding The Six Boxes Approach with process improvement is more effective root cause analysis and process design that takes human performance requirements into account, and more rapid implementation or change management for new or revised processes.  The potential is to achieve better results more quickly.

Organizations worldwide have embraced Six Sigma and other process and quality improvement methodologies, driving "belts" and other certifications deep into the ranks of management and organizational excellence groups. When applied to processes strategically and cross-functionally rather than in isolated silos, they can achieve significant improvements in business results.  Most process methodologies, however, do not have explicit models or frameworks for addressing the human elements of process, but rather focus on the flows and efficiencies of the process designs themselves. Moreover, improved process designs cannot achieve their intended results if not fully implemented through the people who must execute in new ways.

The Six Boxes Approach provides powerful enhancements to process improvement and implementation methodologies. Following the logic of the Performance Chain can bring human performance and process improvement into alignment, since the milestones of processes are "work outputs" in the language of the Six Boxes Approach. Moreover, the Six Boxes Model offers a convenient yet comprehensive categorization of potential obstacles to process effectiveness resulting from human error or gaps in the performance required to manage the processes, especially useful in root cause analysis. Finally, when enabling people to behave in new ways required by new processes, the Six Boxes Model provides a practical framework for planning and optimizing conditions to support and accelerate the new behavior.  When process and human performance professionals can come together with the vocabulary and models of The Six Boxes Approach, they can collaborate to produce greater results than either working separately.

The Six Boxes Practitioner Program is a context for applying The Six Boxes Approach to process improvement and implementation projects, and participants in Six Boxes Management Development learn to think about the performance of their people in the context of process milestones and outputs.  The Champions Program allows time for process improvement and human performance professionals to develop shared tools, guidelines, and ways of working together over time, to strengthen the organization's ability to merge process with performance management.