People involved in improvement initiatives often complain about the lack of management ("leadership") attention. Also many more improvement project opportunities exist inside an organization than strategic projects, so there is a tendency to deploy improvement resources on too many things other than strategic endeavors. From a leadership perspective this is a killer. Leadership ultimately loses interest in the improvement activities, because their attention is appropriately placed elsewhere. The “Rule of 3” should be used to determine critical strategic priorities and, if the improvement methodologies are appropriate, it should be used to focus attention and resources on these initiatives.

The more strategic impact an improvement has - the more attention it gets from leadership. If the people involved in leading an improvement initiative do not exactly have the leadership team’s attention, perhaps the wrong things are being worked. When that happens they get engaged – it's pull vs. push. Here is a typical example:

A Wisconsin-based global manufacturing company had launched both Six Sigma and Lean Enterprise improvement initiatives. They had 50 projects underway. The leadership team attended a one-day champion’s training on project sponsorship where the question was asked, “How much time did they spend discussing ‘lean’ or ‘six sigma’ at their recent strategic planning retreat?” The answer was “zero!” They had spent their time talking about three issues critical to the future of the business: a start up in China, new environmental regulations coming out of Europe and a planned new product. When asked how many of the 50 projects underway related to these three key issues the answer was of course, “zero!” All of a sudden they realized the major investment they had made in improvement methodologies was being under-utilized. They ended up redeploying their resources as a result of that conversation.

This shift had several major benefits. They had the new China venture up and running 50% faster than their original plan. They leadership team also learned more about the improvement methodologies the company was using as a result of managing the “strategic” project in China. This learning carried over to the leadership team’s interactions with the other improvement projects underway in the organization. It upgraded their “improvement process.”