Bridging the Gap (Industrial Age > Customer Age) - CX Obsession

During my encounters with global business leaders, I am frequently asked the question of what is the difference between Lean Six Sigma (LSS) and Outside-In thinking and practice?

Often the question is prompted as a consequence of the huge investment many large corporations have made into up-skilling their people and processes to LSS. Many times those same executives are querying the return on those investments and hence now looking at more progressive alternative approaches to evolve their business performance.

For those familiar with Outside-In thinking and practice the difference is fundamental however if you haven’t been exposed to such training or working in one of the worlds leading Outside-In companies it would be good to have a short comparison of the key thematic differences.

In the interests of full disclosure, I was an Industrial Engineer qualified as a Lean Master and Six Sigma Master black belt and I see and witness the significant differences every day. Does the implication of the difference mean we should abandon LSS? No, far from it. In fact, integrating the Outside-In perspectives into existing programs is a proven tried and tested way of advancing LSS to the centre stage of winning performance.

Case in point is a North American plastics extrusion company. They had previously been a powerhouse of Six Sigma, grown into and become a Lean ‘Toyota way’ dynamo only to run into the problem of diminishing returns.

Investing just as much in getting better the decreasing returns and eroding margins made it an issue at the top table. In true pragmatic Texan style (their CEO is from Dallas) they embraced Outside-In big time. Over 6-9 months people were upskilled for the Customer Age and then let loose to transform the organization. Not only did they save their bacon they are now a world-leading company. And what do they call their program? OIL – Outside-In Lean. Nice eh?

So be pragmatic. Look for the bridges from here to there and you can have the best of both worlds.

Table 1: Comparison of some differences between Lean Six Sigma and the CEMMethod™.

Element	Lean Six Sigma	Customer Experience Management/Outside-In
Mindset	Industrial Age	Customer Digital Age
Focus	Improve current work	Align to achieve SCO’s
Intent	Process will exist at the end of a review	Processes may be removed
Results	Focused on improving outputs	Focused on delivering Outcomes
	Cost reduction	Triple Crown achievement (Cost/Service/Revenue)
Structure	Accepts the functional hierarchy	Proposes the appropriate structure to deliver SCO’s
Techniques	Effect based activity (value/ non-value added – waste identification – SPC etc.)	Causal based activity (what creates the work in the org. then let’s fix the causes)
Intelligent Processes	No mechanism exists to ensure processes are intelligent	Specifically designed to implement and mature intelligent processes
Customer	End to End working e.g. SIPOC	Centric working – the customer is at the heart of everything that happens
	Are at the end and the beginning of processes	Are enlightened, Promiscuous, Rebellious, Prosumer, Multi-channel, high expectations
Enterprise objectives	Operational and tactical. Aims to fix process.	Strategic and Operational. Aims to implement a sustainable architecture.
Scope	Process based improvements	Enterprise-wide transformation