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Six Sigma Approach to Learning:
A Zipline Performance Group White Paper

Developed by Motorola in the late 1980s, the Six Sigma technique of improving manufacturing processes by dramatically reducing product defects was implemented to slash business costs, reduce waste and boost profits. Over the years, the term “Six Sigma” has expanded to include any process improvement program that uses the traditional troubleshooting method of “observe, measure, plan, repair and verify” on a continuous basis.

Since then, hundreds of businesses have used Six Sigma in streamlining their processes for products and services. Many large-scale companies, such as 3M, GE, Amazon.com and Dell, have implemented Six Sigma with outstanding results: manufacturing better products, enhancing customer service and improving the bottom line.

A Basic Description of Six Sigma
Most Six Sigma programs help companies find and fix the root causes of product defects or service errors, and eventually reduce them to the rate of 3.4 errors per million opportunities, or a 99.9997% efficiency. (An opportunity refers to any point in the process that can cause a defect.) This compares to a One Sigma efficiency rate of 31%, Two Sigma of 69.2%, Three Sigma of 93.32%, Four Sigma of 99.379% and Five Sigma of 99.997%. Companies often begin from a Three or Four Sigma efficiency level and gradually improve their processes over several years until a Six Sigma level is finally reached.

For existing business processes, the Six Sigma program is usually performed with these steps: define the outcomes, measure the process, analyze the data, improve the process and control it to correct any problems. A common Six Sigma implementation might go as follows:

1. After defining desired financial and operational outcomes for improvement, a company’s Six Sigma team measures the existing process and collects data, then
2. Performs a detailed statistical analysis of this data, then
3. Creates a plan to fix the problems, and applies the plan to the system, then
4. Verifies that the plan is effective, and improves it as needed, then
5. Continuously repeats the entire process until controlling or mastering the problems and achieving the desired outcomes.

Members of a company’s Six Sigma team must undergo intensive training to become certified as “Black Belts,” “Green Belts” or “Champions.” These Six Sigma leaders are responsible for guiding their teams to succeed in their intended results: products or services offered to customers in a much better, faster and cheaper way than before, and a dramatic reduction in defective processes; thus, reducing costs and improving profit margins.

Six Sigma has also been applied to learning techniques. In the business environment, the goals of this Six Sigma process are to reduce employees’ misinformation, doubt and lack of information, and to master the knowledge they need to learn. Known as Confidence-Based Learning™ or CBL, this approach follows many of the steps in a traditional Six Sigma program.

A Confidence-Based Learning™ program ensures expected learning outcomes, increases learning efficiency and leads to confident job performance. In addition, CBL verifies that employees have mastered the knowledge in a shorter time than with other approaches (especially instructor-led training). Mastery equals correct knowledge plus confidence, which increases a person’s ability to perform successfully. Confidence brings the additional effect of greatly increasing a learner’s retention of that knowledge.

Employing the best practices of Six Sigma programs to improve the learning process, Confidence-Based Learning™ assesses what a learner needs to know, then provides the information resources to achieve that knowledge. It begins by analyzing or auditing the knowledge quality of each learner. By identifying the knowledge and confidence gaps on an individual basis, CBL is able to produce a custom learning solution that specifically addresses the weaknesses in each learner’s knowledge domain.

After the assessment is complete, Confidence-Based Learning™ creates a customized learning program for each learner. Using this individual approach, the learning process achieves a high level of efficiency. Because the learning caters to an individual’s needs, it doesn’t require that each learner proceed through the entire body of content—as is normally required in instructor-led or online training.

With CBL, each time the learner goes through the process using the personalized learning plan, performance is measured in four different categories (misinformed, uninformed, doubt and mastery). At the same time, a new knowledge quality audit is developed; this becomes the basis of a new individualized learning plan that is designed to address the specific remaining knowledge and confidence gaps in that learner.

This process is repeated as many times as needed until all gaps are completely eliminated. This enables learners to: 1) develop and measure their level of confidence in the information learned, 2) dispel misinformation that can lead to mistakes and adverse outcomes, and 3) master all of the information being presented—not just a portion of it.

As with a traditional Six Sigma process improvement program, Confidence-Based Learning™ can be applied to a wide variety of businesses, from manufacturing to healthcare services to sales to retailing. Also, just like the statistical-based Six Sigma, a CBL program offers real-time access to reports to help managers understand more effectively what their employees know. These reports provide individual and/or group performance information, historical data and mastery level by question or topic—whatever is needed to improve employee performance and reduce costly mistakes. These reports can:

• Identify where misinformation, knowledge gaps and confidence gaps exist within groups of employees, allowing a business to fix these deficits before they become problems;
• Identify areas of remediation for specific individuals or groups to improve their performance; and
• Identify where current training is failing to produce the desired results, so the training process can be improved.

Traditional Learning vs. Confidence-Based Learning™
Traditional approaches to learning do not always produce intended performance results. For example, Joe, a purchasing manager at a national healthcare products distributor, must learn how to use enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for a new platform that his company has just spent several million dollars to implement. Joe completes three hours of instructor-led training during one afternoon and then is given a user manual and some quick-reference materials. As he returns to his office, Joe thinks he has learned enough to apply his training.

After a few days, he forgets some of the basic procedures of logging into the system and navigating the application screens—then forgets a lot more in the following weeks. It’s clear that Joe has not sufficiently learned the required content from the classroom training to do the job. Not particularly concerned about it and often disregarding the printed materials, Joe slowly works through the procedures but makes several costly errors (such as by mistaking one screen for another) that aren’t caught immediately but cannot always be fixed later. Still, he is confident, but wrong, in his performance. Invoices get sent to the wrong customer, orders don’t get delivered to the appropriate departments in a timely manner, back-order shipments are delayed by several weeks, and so on. Based on these problems, the company decides to postpone the official ERP launch and return to earlier, inefficient procedures. As a result, the business loses thousands of dollars each day. Management also decides on another costly and time-intensive round of ILT for Joe and others in his situation.

Now, let’s see what happens at a similar company when Jane enrolls in a Confidence-Based Learning™ course of the ERP system. First, she receives a 12-question online assessment to determine how much she already knows. After submitting her responses, she is taken to her individual Learning Center screen that highlights her knowledge in the four different areas (misinformed, uninformed, doubt, mastery) and shows what still needs to be learned to fill her knowledge and confidence gaps. For each question in the original assessment, she can read the correct answer, her selected answer, an explanation for the answers, and document downloads or Web links with additional resources to study before proceeding to the next series of questions. Jane then continues through multiple iterations of questions—sometimes meeting questions she has answered before—until reaching 100% mastery of the content. After completing the course, Jane has the confidence to perform successfully. The result: Her company is now saving money, improving customer service, delivering products efficiently, and enjoying other benefits of the new ERP platform.

Comparing Goals
The goals of a Six Sigma program include: dramatically reducing product defects and/or service errors, cutting costs, ending waste, reducing time to market, improving performance and increasing profit. The goals of Confidence-Based Learning™ are surprisingly similar: CBL saves training time (as much as 50% less time to teach the same content) and achieves a high return on investment (typically justified on labor savings during training). CBL also ensures mastery and confidence in all the knowledge that must be learned, with retention increased seven to 10 times over other types of training. This leads to employees who are more confident and correct…and perform correctly.

About Zipline Performance Group, LLC
Zipline Performance Group helps companies exceed their business objectives by increasing the productivity of their most important asset: their people. Zipline offers an extensive platform of consulting services, custom program development and a catalog of customized learning solutions. The company is also a pioneer in Confidence-Based Learning™ (CBL) and one of the leading CBL developers in the world. Zipline’s programs and services enable employees to accomplish more in less time; make fewer costly mistakes; increase customer satisfaction and retention; and increase revenue by growing sales, launching new products or expanding into new markets. Founded by Tom Brooksher, an expert in corporate education, distance learning and online programs, Zipline is based in Littleton, Colo.

Note: The Confidence-Based Learning™ (CBL) System is a patent of Knowledge Factor, Inc.