Just got back from Philadelphia where I spoke at a conference on how to design a training strategy to support organization-wide Six Sigma learning. Entitled “Gearing Up for Success,” it focused on the linkage that must always be maintained between the training strategy/curriculum and business objectives. Without this, it’s easy for training to become disconnected from what the business is trying to achieve. Here are just a few highlights of the topics covered:

• Before launching a training initiative, long-term organization-wide learning objectives that support the deployment strategy must be defined or else you may find yourself training for the sake of training.
• The learning strategy should identify how many, how much and how fast.
• People need to understand how what they learn can be applied. In other words, they must be able to answer the question: “How did my learning Six Sigma skills make the business better?”
• Enabling skills, such as change management, team dynamics and project management, that can increase the effectiveness ofidentifying and implementing improvements should be included in the curriculum (either adhoc or as a separate offering).

In order for your organization to embrace the skills and behavioral changes necessary to sustain ongoing continuous improvement, the organization-wide learning strategy must complement the business strategy. If not, you may find yourself a victim of the “Amoeba Principle.” What’s that? Tune in next week and find out!