By Miller Chibomba
When people hear “Lean Six Sigma,” they often think about process maps, statistics, fishbone diagrams, root cause analysis, and workshops where somebody inevitably sticks colorful notes all over a wall.
They’re not wrong.
But if I had to summarize the biggest lesson Lean Six Sigma taught me, it would be much simpler:
It taught me how to ask better questions.
And over the years, I’ve discovered that asking the right question is often far more valuable than having the wrong answer.
Most Organizations Are Drowning in Answers
Walk into almost any meeting and you’ll find no shortage of solutions.
In fact, some people arrive with solutions before they’ve even heard the problem.
A challenge is mentioned.
Someone says:
“We need a new system.”
Another says:
“We need more staff.”
A third says:
“We need more meetings.”
I’ve never quite understood why meetings are often prescribed as treatment for every organizational illness.
It’s a bit like going to a doctor and being told:
“I know you came in with a headache, but have you considered attending another meeting?”
Yet we do it all the time.
The funny thing is that organizations are rarely short of answers.
They’re often short of curiosity.
The Question That Changed Everything
One of the first habits Lean Six Sigma gave me was the ability to pause and ask:
“What problem are we actually trying to solve?”
That sounds obvious.
It isn’t.
I’ve seen entire projects launched around symptoms rather than problems.
The report is always late.
The customer is unhappy.
The system keeps failing.
The team is overloaded.
The temptation is to jump straight into action.
But Lean Six Sigma taught me that action without understanding is just activity.
And organizations are exceptionally good at activity.
Some organizations can produce reports about reports that report on previous reports.
Very impressive.
Not always useful.
Why? Then Why Again?
One of the simplest and most dangerous questions I learned is:
Why?
And then:
Why again?
And then:
Why are you suddenly uncomfortable that I’m still asking why?
For example:
“We’re always behind schedule.”
Why?
“We have too much work.”
Why?
“We’re spending time fixing mistakes.”
Why?
“The information is incorrect.”
Why?
“People are using different versions of the same document.”
Suddenly the problem isn’t workload.
It isn’t staffing.
It isn’t commitment.
It’s document control.
A much cheaper problem to solve.
What I love about this approach is that it occasionally saves organizations from throwing money at problems that were actually created by confusion.
It Made Me Less Smart
Or at least less convinced that I was.
Before Lean Six Sigma, I was quicker to assume I understood the problem.
After Lean Six Sigma, I realized how often my first assumption was wrong.
And my second assumption.
And occasionally my third.
I’ve learned that confidence and correctness are not always the same thing.
Some people are incredibly confident.
They are also incredibly wrong.
Sometimes simultaneously.
That realization alone has probably saved me from many bad decisions.
Frontline Staff Are Secretly Running the Investigation
One of the biggest surprises in my improvement journey was discovering how often the people closest to the work already know the solution.
Managers see reports.
Leaders see dashboards.
Executives see KPIs.
Frontline teams see reality.
They know where the bottleneck is.
They know which process makes no sense.
They know which report nobody reads.
They know which approval takes forever.
And they know which system was allegedly designed to save time but somehow takes longer than the process it replaced.
Whenever I ask:
“What’s making your job harder than it needs to be?”
the answers come remarkably quickly.
Almost suspiciously quickly.
As if people have been waiting years for someone to ask.
The Curse of Continuous Improvement
There is one downside to all of this.
You become incapable of accepting certain things at face value.
Someone says:
“We’ve always done it this way.”
And immediately your brain goes into investigation mode.
A process has seventeen approval steps.
You start asking questions.
A report has been produced monthly since 2008.
You start asking questions.
A meeting has three hundred attendees and no agenda.
You start asking lots of questions.
Eventually people stop inviting you to discussions because every conversation accidentally becomes a root cause analysis session.
Family conversations aren’t safe either.
I’ve caught myself applying the “5 Whys” to household issues.
Apparently this is not as appreciated at home as it is in the workplace.
The Hidden Lesson
The more experience I gain, the more I realize that improvement doesn’t begin with expertise.
It begins with curiosity.
The willingness to ask:
- Why?
- What evidence do we have?
- What are we assuming?
- What are we missing?
- Is there a better way?
Those questions have helped me understand organizations better.
They’ve helped me become a better leader.
And surprisingly, they’ve helped me understand myself better too.
Final Reflection
Looking back, Lean Six Sigma didn’t just teach me how to improve processes.
It taught me how to think differently.
It taught me that the loudest person in the room doesn’t always have the best answer.
It taught me that assumptions are expensive.
And it taught me that many of the problems we struggle with are often hiding behind questions nobody has bothered to ask.
Because improvement rarely starts with a brilliant solution.
More often, it starts with one slightly annoying person asking:
“Just out of curiosity… why do we do it this way?”
I have become that person.
And honestly, I’m completely fine with it. 😄