Break your goals into achievable parts

Break your goals into achievable parts

Six Sigma helps us to break down big goals into manageable parts, so that we can target a stream of realistic improvements.

By making gains at each step along the way toward those big goals, we create a multiplier effect – ensuring that the total is greater than the sum of the parts.

Here’s how it works:

Identify each of the high-level goals that you want to impact from a Marketing standpoint – such as Increase Profit.  

Draw a straight horizontal line with “Increase Profit” at the far right.

Along the line, add short designators to represent sub-goals that would contribute to the big goal of “Increase Profit.” These may include “reduce cost,” “recruit new customers,” “increase ticket average,” “broaden product mix,” “retain existing customers,” etc.

Voila, you have created an Ishikawa, or fishbone diagram, one of the key tools in Six Sigma.

You may get as detailed as you like in this process, based on where Marketing can make meaningful contributions. For example, there may be many ways to recruit new customers, depending in part on demographics, market penetration, product line, etc.

Because each big goal is termed a “Big Y” in Six Sigma, the process of breaking down a goal into its component parts is called “Y Discernment.”

Through rigorous Y Discernment, Marketing can uncover many avenues of contribution that may have gone unaddressed in the past. Some of these can be affected by tweaking current Marketing programs – or simply beginning to gather appropriate data.

Others may become the subject of future Marketing initiatives, with data collection built into the front end.

By following this methodology, and communicating the process and especially the results to key management, Marketing can change perceptions, while gaining clout and potentially budget to carry out ever more impactful campaigns.