Chapter 2: The Role of the Project Team Member

Reality Check

One Black Belt we worked with was given the task of reducing mortgage approval process time from over a month to 24 hours. She knew the task was possible because several competitors were already approving loans within 24 hours, and other divisions of her own bank were close to meeting that goal. Before the first meeting she assembled and organized all the best practices she could find.

The team she had been assigned was made up of representatives from loan processing and underwriting, so at the first meeting, she assigned implementation of each of the best practices to an appropriate team member. The team members seemed cooperative and nobody objected to their assignment, so the Black Belt was surprised that little or no progress had been made by the time the team met again, and that the pattern continued over the next few meetings.

She decided to suspend the project for one meeting and discuss why things weren’t going so well. The team members were quiet at first, but soon issues began to surface. There had been no written charter for the team, so the team members weren’t sure if they were supposed to help design the new process or just do what the Black Belt told them. Some of them had never even met her, and they weren’t really sure what kind of power she had in the organization. All of the team members knew that the biggest delays in the approval process came because the sales force didn’t always get all the documentation up front, yet there was nobody from Sales on the team. Finally, a few members admitted that they were afraid they would be eliminating their own jobs if they improved the process.

The Black Belt asked the project sponsor to step into the meeting, and together they drafted a team charter that outlined the benefits for all in improving approval time. The sponsor was able to reassure the team that there was plenty of sales volume and that, while some jobs might change, everyone would still be needed. Representatives from Sales, Customer Service, and MIS were added to the team. The team eventually reached its goal, but more than a month was lost because the team leader didn’t take the time up front to use the Team Leader Checklist: What to Do Before the First Six Sigma Project Team Meeting and the Sample Agenda: First Six Sigma Project Team Meeting.