Reasons Why You Need Lean Six Sigma Training

Lean Six Sigma training helps you earn more money

ASQ annual salary surveys consistently show that holding a Lean Six Sigma certification results in a bigger paycheck. And the results hold across different job titles. For example, an analyst with a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt earns, on average, $12,284 more than an analyst who is not certified. A certified manager earns $16,147 more with a Black Belt than with no certifications. This payoff exceeds the median $9,137 payoff you get by getting a Bachelor’s degree versus a high school diploma. Plus, you can get a Lean Six Sigma certification for a lot less effort and expense than a 4-year college degree. The Pyzdek Institute’s Lean Six Sigma Black Belt training takes 180 hours to complete and as of this writing costs less than $3,000. Only 60% of Bachelor’s degree students finish their degrees within six years and they leave school with an average $30,100 in student debt. If you want paychecks that are much fatter, and you want it fast, consider Lean Six Sigma certification.

You want to get a new job or a job with a different employer

As I write this I ran a search on the term ‘Six Sigma Black Belt’ on indeed.com. It shows 3,010 open jobs listed. Every one of these jobs has an estimated salary of $75,000+ and over 1,738 of them (57.7%) pay $100,000+. Employers include health insurers, genetics firms, credit card companies, cement companies, defense contractors and virtually any other kind of work you might want to do. If you’re looking for greener pastures, Lean Six Sigma training will help you find them.

You want to do more interesting work

There are two kinds of work: work that occurs in the system, and work that is on the system. Work done in the system tends to be routine and repetitive. Of course, it is very valuable work! It creates what the company sells to customers, and it is vital to the organization’s success. However, working on the system is much more interesting. This kind of work involves finding creative ways to work better and smarter, not harder. This is the domain of improvement methods like Lean Six Sigma. People working to improve the way work is done must know how to do it, and the best known way is Lean Six Sigma. If improving the system is the work that you want to do, you’ll need to get Lean Six Sigma training. You’ll be glad you did.

You are overlooked for promotions

You’re one of the hardest working and smartest people in your department. But that won’t guarantee you a promotion. In fact, the best workers are often not even considered for management or leadership positions. To get those jobs you need to stand out. Lean Six Sigma offers you the chance to do just that. Certified Lean Six Sigma belts work on problems that have the attention of top management. People working on these projects, or even leading them, get many opportunities to shine. This is how leaders are found, and promoted.

You have a non-STEM degree

Employers clamor for graduates with science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) degrees. For those with other degrees, the demand is far lower. And the jobs that do exist pay far less. For example, a company called Payscale found the average graduate with a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering will earn $96,700 a year in the first five years of their career. By comparison, the average graduate with a bachelor’s degree in history will earn $42,200. One solution for non-STEM majors, other than returning to school and starting over (which takes years and thousands of dollars,) is Lean Six Sigma training. Lean Six Sigma is inter-disciplinary. It doesn’t aim to give you the depth that a STEM degree does, but it gives you far greater breadth. People with Lean Six Sigma Green Belt training or Lean Six Sigma Black Belt training have the skills they need to deliver results for their employers. Plus, your degree becomes a valuable asset. Liberal arts grads, as a rule, excel in areas where STEM grads don’t, such as out-of-the-box thinking and superior communications skills. Employers know this and value it highly. With Lean Six Sigma training, the wide variety of skills and talents you acquired getting your non-STEM degree is leveraged, not ignored.

You want to understand customers better

Customers are the people who pay all of the bills. But in most jobs, you never come into contact with actual customers. Or, if you do, it’s only to deal with their problems and complaints. If you want to really know what makes customers tick, you need to know how to develop a deep understanding of what they want. And what they don’t even know what they want yet. Lean Six Sigma training gives you a variety of tools for learning about customers in depth. This knowledge will make you a very valuable asset to your organization. It’s something that can pave the road to long-term success.

You are interested in how value is created for customers

Understanding customers is only half of the equation. The other half is creating and delivering products and services that customers need and want. When you get Lean Six Sigma training, you learn how to do exactly that. There are many tools and techniques designed specifically to help the organization understand ways to link the activities of the people doing work to the demands of customers. You will also learn how to do this while simultaneously balancing the wants and needs of other stakeholders, such as employees, leaders and investors.

You want to stop wasting precious resources

We live on a planet with limited resources. Wasting these resources is a major problem. Using the fewest resources possible to create customer and shareholder value is what Lean Six Sigma is all about. Using more than you need to accomplish your goal of creating what customers want and are willing to pay for is, by definition, waste. Students of Lean Six Sigma learn a wide variety of ways to minimize waste.

You want to learn more about the work done by other parts of the organization

Companies are organized by functional areas, such as accounting, sales, and other departments. However, customer value is created across functions. When you receive Lean Six Sigma training you will learn about how the cross-functional processes in your organization create and deliver value for your customers. This knowledge of how every part of the organization works with every other part will give you a deep understanding that will get the attention of your leadership.

Errors and variation drive you crazy!

Why is it that sometimes everything works, but sometimes things go completely wrong? And it seems that things go wrong at the worst possible times. This always results in turmoil and confusion. It often results in unhappy customers and lost business. In extreme cases it can result in injury or death. Want to stop it? Lean Six Sigma training will give the knowledge you need to do just that. In fact, the term “Six Sigma” has a statistical meaning: fewer than 3.4 errors per million opportunities. If this appeals to you, you know what you need to do!