Humankind has successfully split the atom and put people on the moon, but explaining Six Sigma to busy business leaders is a different matter.

I've been in dozens of meetings where a leader - sometimes a department VP, other times a division president or CEO - has asked for a description of "this Six Sigma thing." Each time, someone responded with talk of continuous improvement, customer voices and data-driven decisions. The leaders were usually very quiet during these explanations - too quiet. And, after almost every meeting, I would hear the person who gave the explanation grumble that the leader "just didn't get it." Sometimes the person grumbling was me!

In the spirit of continuous improvement, I began to ask, why? Why don't leaders "get it" as quickly and easily as we'd like? Possibly the root cause is in the way Six Sigma is typically explained. In other words, the problem may not be distracted or dumb leaders. My hypothesis is that leaders new to Six Sigma don't need to know about Six Sigma to become engaged, they need to know what Six Sigma looks and feels like in their world.

You Need Leaders to Lead Quality
Leadership support is a prerequisite for quality. Leaders set the agenda, make the rules, and sign the checks. Without leadership's genuine commitment, your company's Six Sigma effort will end with the same results as quality guru Dr. Deming's quality campaigns of the 1940's. He didn't require leadership involvement and ended up with "nothing" he said, "not even smoke." Leadership buy-in is necessary, but not sufficient. Leaders must literally lead the way.

Certainly, no one can effectively lead what he or she doesn't understand. That's why crafting a compelling and accurate explanation of Six Sigma is so valuable.

Explanation Traps and How to Avoid Them
Below, I've listed three approaches to explaining Six Sigma that I've seen backfire, along with an alternative. I don't want to put words in your mouth. You know your company and your audience best. My goal is to help you avoid the verbal potholes I and others have already hit.

• Trap #1: Mistaking Defining for Explaining
• Trap #2: It's Good for You
• Trap #3: It Only Works If Everyone Does It

Explanation Traps and How to Avoid Them
Below, I've listed three approaches to explaining Six Sigma that I've seen backfire, along with an alternative. I don't want to put words in your mouth. You know your company and your audience best. My goal is to help you avoid the verbal potholes I and others have already hit.

Trap #1: Mistaking Defining for Explaining
"Sigma" is part of the problem. This Greek letter (s) has been used to describe variability for generations - but not by managers. Sigma is a nonsense word to most of them. So, whether you're describing 6, 7 or 67 sigma, you could just as easily be talking about widgets. This makes it tempting to use a definition of the Six Sigma metric as the starting point of an explanation. This is a trap, though. It's mistaking the means for the end.

Alternative Approach: Position the term 'Six Sigma' as a goal and relate it to other goals that already exist at your company. Briefly describe why Six Sigma quality goals are focused on defects, but spend more time on something closer to the leader's world: like how he or she might contribute to the process of defining what are considered defects at your company.

Trap #2: It's Good for You
Another clunker is explaining Six Sigma as if it is a cure for what ails the company. Statements like, 'We need Six Sigma to force R&D to involve other functions in their planning,' aren't persuasive to seasoned managers. They've already been disappointed by other big ideas with promises of similar healing powers. People make the day-to-day choices that move a company forward (or not), and leaders know from experience that getting people to change is hard work. Ideas may give you a reason to change, but they won't do the changing for you.

Alternative Approach: Echoing the advice of President Kennedy's Inaugural Address ('Ask not what your country can do for you...'), don't limit your explanation of Six Sigma to what it will do for the company. Instead, challenge the leader to describe what the company will do for Six Sigma. What is the company capable of contributing to achieve higher quality for customers and less waste? The benefits of Six Sigma come at a price and true leaders appreciate an open accounting of what that cost might be. In addition, understanding those investments makes the potential benefits seem much more realistic (i.e., it's not something for nothing).

Explanation Traps and How to Avoid Them
Below is the third of three approaches to explaining Six Sigma that I've seen backfire, along with an alternative. I don't want to put words in your mouth. You know your company and your audience best. My goal is to help you avoid the verbal potholes I and others have already hit.

Trap #3: It Only Works If Everyone Does It
Another futile approach is to introduce Six Sigma as a kind of system that will breakdown unless everyone is committed to making it work. This way of presenting Six Sigma usually corresponds with a request from the HR or quality department to have the CEO compel employees to a strict Six Sigma training regimen. "We've got to get everyone on the same page," they say. Whether this is true or not, it must sound like fantasy to a leader. Most of his or her day is spent dealing with the fact that things are not going as planned. It's unlikely that leaders will get into a boat that's certain to sink if one of the oars gets out of sync.

Alternative Approach: Experts in change and quality have long advocated the discipline of gaining "small, quick wins" when striving to transform a company culture. Use the same approach in your approach to transforming leaders. Think about small ways you can incorporate Six Sigma thinking or tools in a leader's day-to-life (i.e., make it tangible, rather than a project or an initiative "out there").

One potential stepping-stone to a broader appreciation of Six Sigma might be a leader's participation in Voice of the Customer interviews. Later, she could be briefed on the progress of a need she identified in her interviews - watching as it flows through a Six Sigma product development process. If problems arise with this "pet need," the leader will begin to ask "why?" That should be music to the quality team's ears.