Yellow belts. Green belts. Black belts. Many organizations and individuals expend significant effort to get Six Sigma belt certifications, be they yellow, green or black belts, or even master black belts.
But does all that effort help continuous improvement efforts or hurt them?
In this episode of Behind the Curtain: Adventures in Continuous Improvement, podcast hosts Dr. Mohamed Saleh and John Dyer continue their series exploring the difficult questions around lean, Six Sigma and continuous improvement, focusing their attention on the belt certification system and questioning whether belts build expertise or simply create hierarchies. Dyer emphasizes up front that the discussion is not meant to diminish the accomplishments of those who have achieved their belts but to dig into the effectiveness of belts.
Saleh, who holds a black belt, says he has never been a strong supporter of the belt system. The continuous improvement leader says the problem is that what was initially intended to create internal expertise within an organization and help build problem-solving skills “might have unintentionally created a status structure” or hierarchy.
What can happen as a result, he asserts, is “…now, improvements belong to a specialist, and not everyone is responsible for solving problems.”
Moreover, he adds, the goal of lean is to flatten organizations and promote humility, “and this has a tendency to violate that principle.”
Dyer agrees. “One of the concerns I have about the whole belt system… is does that prohibit people from sharing that knowledge to the people who need it the most?” he asks. “It's almost a bit like an elitist-type attitude.” (Read Dyer's Would Dr. Deming Have Been a Black Belt?)
The continuous improvement experts delve into additional aspects of belt certification they consider problematic. For example, Saleh suggests that belt certification builds a mindset that learning has an endpoint. He argues that lifelong learning is key to continuous improvement transformations.
Dyer says it would be interesting to survey certified black belts to find out how many have completed projects beyond what was required to get their certification. And how many, two or three years later, have retained the knowledge they gained via their training?
The duo digs deeper into the idea that organizations sometimes confuse certifications with capability, “and getting a certificate and not being able to use it afterwards is not a capability,” Saleh says.
Moreover, he adds, "I have seen hundreds of practitioners get denied certain jobs because they are not master black belts or black belts, and organizations that view it that way sometimes are missing out on some really rich individuals, because capability ... reveals itself through certain behaviors, not through a title.”
The podcast hosts agree that capability is demonstrated by the ability to coach and transfer knowledge to others.
Saleh concludes the podcast by revisiting the topic of recognition.
“I don’t want to dismiss recognition,” he says, but recognition “could be done without hierarchy. Recognition could be done without an end point and that could be celebrated in many ways …”
Dyer suggests the creation of a new belt that indicates how many people an individual has transferred his knowledge to.
“Improvement is too important to be owned by a few certified people in the organization,” Saleh concludes.
