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In the tenth chapter of their book Six Sigma:  The Breakthrough Management Strategy Revolutionizing the World’s Top Corporations, by Mikel Harry, Ph.D., and Richard Schroeder, the authors get around to discussing in detail who the various players are in the implementation of the Breakthrough Strategy.

These were summarized in the last section of the previous chapter, but in this chapter the authors go into more detail, starting with the top:   the Champions.

1.  The Senior Champion

This is an executive leader who ends up selecting the Deployment Champions and Project Champions, the people who will champion the Six Sigma Breakthrough Strategy within specific business units across the organization.

2.  The Deployment Champions

Champion may be anyone from an executive vice president to a vice president in charge of a functional group  at an operating site.  In any case, the Deployment Champion works to implement Six Sigma throughout their respective businesses.   They need to:

• have solid business experience at the strategic and tactical level
• experience at leading a cross-functional team
• be able to develop businesswide financial targets for Six Sigma results

3.  Project Champions

These champions function at the business unit level as they oversee Black Belts and focus on Six Sigma on the project level.   The Project Champions do the following:

• perform assessments of the organization’s capabilities
• make sure financial resources are available for the Six Sigma projects
• benchmark the organization’s products and services, and conduct detailed gap analyses
• develop a cross-functional Six Sigma deployment plan
• provide managerial and technical leadership to Master Black Belts and Black Belts

These champions are the grounding force in making the strategy work and supporting the initiative to move forward.

In the next post, we discuss the role of the Master Black Belts.

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