Creating a culture of sustainability - the DNA of any company

By Debra Shumar

Today’s corporate leaders tend to talk a great deal about what skills, knowledge base, and tools are necessary to improve performance within their organizations, but do we just go through the motions? Finally, do we really take the time to listen, to evaluate, and to implement the strategies that are necessary for sustainable improvement?

“As the food industry strives to improve costs while maintaining compliance to regulation, it is important to provide constant vision and engage employees at all levels of the organisation about how these tools impact on the workplace.”
-Debra Shumar, 3P Partners

Every year corporate officers outline what they believe to be the priorities of the upcoming year as means to understand the level of investment required to receive a level of profit in return for this investment. Over the last several years, initiatives/strategies such as Lean and Six Sigma have become the tools that most companies around the world have embraced as part of their improvement plans. The literature in the field suggests there have been both successes and failures implementing these transformational philosophies. Using a combination of the two approaches of Lean and Six Sigma does provide organizations with an array of process management tools to assist the organisation to improve operating efficiency and quality improvement, while maintaining compliance with a myriad of regulations including the FDA and safety. The key element that separates a world class organization from a mediocre one is the culture it builds around these process tools. Building a culture of engaging people and creating the right processes to create great products and services is critical for doing business in the future.

GE’s Jack Welch built a culture of 'zero-variation' by using the Six Sigma methodologies of Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC) which revolutionised how GE did business day to day and in the future. Moreover, Toyota Motor exemplifies as the 'Best in Class Company' with the Toyota Production System, that uses Lean thinking to cut waste, improve quality, cycle times, costs, resource allocation and so much more. Each company, as with many others, has changed how they do business in the future by using these tools while changing their culture.

As the food industry strives to improve costs while maintaining compliance to regulation, it is important to provide constant vision and engage employees at all levels of the organisation about how these tools impact on the workplace. The culture in which Lean and Six-Sigma tools are used is a vital component of any company. Companies are always striving for an edge, and culture remains a key factor to get organisations to the next level of performance.
Many organisations think that providing the skills, training, and sponsorship is all that is necessary to get the organisation to the next level. However the behaviors associated with the interaction of the people who have this knowledge is critical to ongoing success and continuous sustainable improvement. Executives, managers, supervisors, and employees all need to understand why the change is important, and how this type of change will impact their work. Executive leadership inevitably sets the tone necessary to transform the organization into a proactive and prevention-oriented culture. The process tools of Lean and Six Sigma are only as good as the environment in which these tools are implemented.

The power of a Lean Six Sigma Culture in many organizations can be a difficult challenge to understand and change. Often this initiative is left to the quality or engineering organisation because they are involved with correcting problems; or to the human resource organization because they often deal with human performance inside a company. But embracing a Lean Six Sigma mentality will take more than just a department to roll out this improvement strategy. The degree of effort and the speed at which the organization evolves is critical. It will take the leadership of the company and the engagement of all employees to embrace, interpret, and commit to this new culture within the company.

There are several key factors that can help any organization achieve success with the implementation of a Lean Six Sigma program to create a culture of sustainable improvement. Some factors to consider are the commitment of leadership to assure the vision aligns with the organization; a communication plan, skills and education that will be necessary to drive improvement; profitability and return on investment (ROI); evaluation of the organisational structure to support the realignment of resources and functions. Nonetheless, for all these reasons, the new culture for the organisation and the new internal structure does not emerge at the moment of thought or creation. Instead they all need to be deliberately and carefully orchestrated to assure alignment of resources, which will allow for human development to take place as a learning enterprise evolves, while trying to incur minimal risk to the organization.

The formal elements of strategy, structure, systems and infrastructure coupled with the informal elements of people, competencies, behaviors, relationships, and culture must move in harmony over the long haul if companies are to create a new culture of sustainability through the use of Lean Six Sigma tools. The primary reason for doing this is so that the architecture behind the Lean Six Sigma initiative supports the new culture for the organisation of ongoing continuous improvement.

So what does this all mean? Why is creating a culture of sustainability important? Culture is what creates the momentum necessary to move forward and, over time, builds sustainability longer than anything else within an organisation. Building a culture of engaging people and creating the right processes to create great products and services is essential for doing business in the future. Building the right culture does not happen in a day or a week. It is a journey that takes place over time with many valleys and peaks to climb. It is the road less travelled but travelled by many with experience and knowledge. Can you imagine your company a few years from now after you’ve taken on the challenge to improve what people do, how they do it and what growth has occurred? Many companies are recognizing the importance of creating a culture of sustainability; will you see yours on the most admired list?