Being a Black Belt

A Black belt role might look very glamorous for outsiders and something that boosts your esteem for insiders, but in fact it is not all that what it looks to be. I remember one of the statements made by Kartikeyan, head of SIT, (Special Investigation Team) setup to investigate Rajeev Gandhi's assassination case. "Investigation job in reality is actually not even remotely similar to what you see in the movies, it is actually quite boring job." In the similar lines, introducing yourself as someone in a black belt role could actually make others raise their eyebrows, but the work that you do may not be all that interesting as portrayed, especially when you have a bunch of unyielding guys for greenbelts.

If it were not for my tough stance, I would have ended up collecting data, filling up project charters, doing statistical analysis apart from many other things for my Greenbelts. However I will narrate couple of interesting incidents that happened to me while mentoring 11 greenbelt projects. I know this might sound esoteric to some readers, nevertheless please keep reading.

One of the GB had a discrete metric for Y, I asked him to collect data and start analyzing the same. In a bid to know what analysis he would do, I asked him what is the first thing you would do after collecting data. Pat came the reply, "Normality Test". The external trainer seems to be quite successful in impressing his students about normality test, my GB wants to put it to use irrespective of the kind of data.

While reviewing one of the GB projects, I have observed that the candidate hasn't used any statistical analysis, neither in determining the problem nor in arriving at the solution, while he claimed that he has finished the project. I asked him about the same and advised him to use Hypothesis testing. He simply asked me why I wanted to reinvent the wheel when his project is already complete.

One of the Green belts suffers from a delusion of mastering the subject knowledge while completing his project, when in fact his project doesn't even have remote chances to get certified for the simple reason; it is not a six sigma project at all. If you talk to him, you would feel that this guy thinks he would be awarded a doctorate in six sigma very soon or Lockheed or Motorola has hired him as a quality consultant.

Stupid projects (in fact you don’t have to use any DMAIC methodology on them), Insipid discussions, dumb candidates, lack of management drive can make a black belts life miserable.

It is quite funny that you actually pay a consultant to learn your business and then teach you in return. That is what most of the companies which don't have that quality DNA in their setup do.

Finally, do you know that there is a forum that opposes six sigma. Go through this link.
http://www.isixsigma.com/offsite.asp?A=Fr&Url=http://www.thessq.com/