The ‘WIIFM’ Factor with Lean Six Sigma
One of the most frequent conversations that comes along from Lean Six Sigma and other Continuous Improvement practitioners is around their frustration with senior leaders and sponsors who “don’t get it” regarding Lean and Six Sigma or business process improvement. Most of the time the conversation is about a gap in sponsorship, buy in, leadership, etc. and the people I am speaking with are venting their frustrations.
My immediate question to these highly capable, technical practitioners is “Have you taken care of WIIFM for the sponsor?” WIIFM – or What’s In It For Me – is one of the biggest gaps for most Lean Six Sigma practitioners. Despite their training in being objective and understanding the definition of value-add for customers – they rarely apply the same training and rigor to their internal sponsors.
After nearly two decades of doing business process improvement, applying everything from Total Quality Leadership (the Navy’s version of TQM) to Lean Six Sigma I have found that rarely is a business manager or project sponsor an obstacle when projects are selected which align to their goals and objectives, business needs or provide opportunities across functional silos.
My suggestion in each of these conversations is two fold:
- Apply the same understanding you apply to defining value for the customer to defining value to the sponsor or business owner.
- Read a great book (that I discovered a few years ago) called “Let’s Get Real” by Mahan Khalsa about dysfunctional selling. The book has some great nuggets on how to better understand the WIIFM factor from the sponsor’s perspective.
The relationship with the sponsor is critical to success so make sure you take the time to get aligned with their needs and understand how they would define value relative to any Lean Six Sigma project.
WIIFM
I agree with your comments about "Let's Get Real"... the ORDER process suggested in the book is a great way to structure a dialogue about why a project is important to the sponsor and how the sponsor will know it has been successful. Too often, practioners see this as the soft stuff and want to jump into solving the problem and that is a mistake.