6Sigma Tools: Future State Vision

6Sigma Tools: Future State Vision

6Sigma has gotten a sometimes well deserved rap for being overly-complicated, but this is a tool that is the antithesis of that reputation. It does involve metrics but the bulk of the focus is on strategic planning. Strategic planning means many things to organizations, but within the lens of a 6Sigma strategy it should mean a road map to the best version of your organization.

What is a Future State Vision?

A Future State Vision is basically what it says; it is a concrete plan for the most desired state of your business. Think of it as a more specific path to your company’s vision board. This is where you create the details that will get you to the goals on that vision board.

What does it look like?

How do you use it?

The tricky thing about a Future State strategy is that you have to come up with the end before you can address how you will get there. So to begin with you will actually start at the end and the how whole point of the strategy is to figure out the most practical (in terms of manpower, expense and resources) path to get there.

What does it do?

The Future Strategy does not provide you with a roadmap for your current problems. The metrics you use for this strategic should resemble your operational metrics, but they should not be exactly the same because your outcome for this strategy will be different. This is a big picture operational strategy so your metrics should be performing at a macro level when you turn your attention to this strategy. What it does do is help your staff to create meaningful big picture metrics, so low hanging fruit will not work here. This tool will be a great asset to upper level management responsible for creating organization wide strategy.

As with all my 6Sigma tools, this is just a template. Your specifics will lie in the knowledge your belt will bring in drafting this tool specifically for your organization at an executive level. So what are you waiting for? Start dreaming.