Green Belts (GBs) – trained to lead projects on a part-time basis in parallel with their day-to-day jobs – are ever-present with Lean Six Sigma (LSS) deployments, but how many organizations are truly satisfied with the results they deliver? While I can point to many successful LSS deployments, I honestly have not come across an example of a truly successful GB deployment!

Instead, here’s what I see:

• Excessive GB project cycle times, with averages of >100 days to complete the Define phase and projects taking three to four times longer to complete than originally anticipated. In some cases, only a minority portion of GB projects are ever completed.
• Certification rates of less than 20 percent of those trained appears to be the norm rather than the exception.
• In the last year, I have seen multiple organizations with mature LSS deployments (3-5 years down the path) conduct DMAIC projects to improve GB process performance. Unfortunately, none of the projects resulted in much improvement.

These observations have led me to the conclusion that the standard GB model is fundamentally flawed; but interestingly, since it is a relatively ‘standard model,’ organizations are oftentimes reluctant to make radical changes to it. In the meantime, many consultancies, and increasingly colleges and universities, are more than happy to keep training and pumping GBs out of their belt factories.

The next series of blog entries will explore the root causes for poor Green Belt performance and provide recommended alternative approaches to help organizations get the most from their LSS resources.