Just a curious question, is Six Sigma practiced at all in any of the places you’ve worked in government? While it’s not perfect and is primarily used for manufacturing, it can be utilized to eliminate inefficiency in any process.
Interesting you bring that up. LSS training? Yes. LSS put into practice? No.
Lots of examples, but one particular experience involved getting the requirement (and the needed documentation) in place for service contracts. Nothing is ever streamlined - just the opposite. The government responds to inefficiency by requiring more oversight (in the form of more documentation). This one document in particular my team had to do had to be signed/approved by a dozen people - only a few of whom are in our building. Most of these unknown people are flung in various places all over the country. Don't know who they are or why they are gatekeepers on our service requirements. It would take at least six months to get this one document fully approved.
Why so long? Various reasons. Mainly because the people who receive this document want nothing to do with it. (The people who run a particular fiefdom want to touch these requirements because it justifies the existence of the fiefdom. The schmuck who actually has to do the work is annoyed by having to do something that has nothing to do with his job.) "I'm in Arizona. Why do I have oversight on something going on in Arlington, VA? I'm busy with my stuff. I'm putting this document on the bottom of my to-do list." And since one guy has to sign before the next guy even sees the document, you can see why it takes so long before Guy #12 gets to it. Another reason is that Guy #4 has switched jobs. And the automated system is not set up to send it to New Guy #4 (or even realize that the original guy is no longer around). Plenty of opportunities to have a broken link with this particular Rube Goldberg Machine.
So I (and my team) bring up the obvious to our top leadership: this process is ridiculous. The solution from on high: send my team to LSS training. This was silly because one fiefdom cannot make another fiefdom do anything. Giving my team efficiency training to something we already know is inefficient (and to which we already know how to largely fix) is not going to do anything to the other various fiefdoms. But, whatever. So, we stopped what we were doing to periodically go to one of our conference rooms for training. Funny thing: the in-house guy that was to train us – Mr. Efficiency – never showed up on time, if at all. (He is a total oddball - worked with him on other various projects - and has the attention span of a toddler.) At the end of all this we were tasked to come up with a solution. The solution was known to us – and everyone else because we told them – a long time ago. So, we formally documented the problem/solution again: (1) the inefficiency is with the unwieldy system of unnecessary approvals; (2) the solution would be to get rid of most of this unnecessary documentation and oversight, not add more; (3) require the necessary oversight and approval to be timely; (4) and so on …. Obvious stuff.
The result …. My team and I got certificates (almost everyone has LSS training – or at least the certificates - in the office), and were able to note that come annual review time. My supervisor got to put on her accomplishments for her annual review that she sent my team to training. (Supervisors love to say they identified a problem and sent their underlings to training. Problem solved!) She also got our report, which she presented as her own to her supervisors. (Lots of layers in the government.) And I’m sure her bosses got to take excessive credit for this entire event.
What substantively happened to fix this particular problem? Nothing (just like my team and I knew would happen from the very beginning because we see stuff like this play out all the time).