The practice of lean six sigma has been popular in manufacturing and business for several decades now. During this time, the process has expanded into a variety of fields and has been modified for different industries. This flexibility has only strengthened lean six sigma and made it a viable option for even more businesses.

Today, innovators and leaders are starting to add design thinking to their lean six sigma model. The practice of design thinking can improve the lean processes to make employees more effective and products better for customers. Consider how design thinking can improve your lean practices, and how both these elements can work together.

Understand the Basics of Lean Six Sigma

The best place to start when looking to improve your internal processes is with a fresh look at lean six sigma. This concept is basically the process of reducing waste and constantly improving how your company operates. You can learn more about it through our past guides.

Adam Henshall at business workflow software provider Process Street summarizes the concepts of lean six sigma in one statement: “If we haven’t got a clear idea of exactly what the current process is, then we have no hope of improving it.” With this guideline, project managers and other stakeholders focus on mapping out processes and eliminating waste. These improved systems allow teams to create better products through fewer mistakes and reduced costs.

The Lucidchart team writes that the lean six sigma management approach requires a lot of change. Employees and managers need to be in a mindset to question their beliefs and how they do things. Just because a process was done a certain way at one point doesn’t mean it should be done that way again.

Fortunately, an organization that is already open to change may be more open to the concept of design thinking — especially because it adds a creative element to a highly-analytical process.

Understanding the Basics of Design Thinking

Design thinking uses a similar process to that of lean six sigma, but it is known for being more creative. The main core of design thinking is empathy, or being considerate of the customer’s needs and pain points.

“Design Thinking is extremely user-centric,” writes Emily Stevens, managing editor at CareerFoundry. “It focuses on humans first and foremost, seeking to understand people’s needs and come up with effective solutions to meet those needs. It is what we call a solution-based approach to problem-solving.”

Stevens says that while this process came from the design world, it can actually be used in almost any field — from architecture to business to engineering. The principles are solid and can be applied universally.

If you need a refresher on the basics of design thinking, visual designer Teo Siang and Rikke Dam, cofounder of the Interaction Design Foundation, created a guide to turn to. They describe the five steps involved in the design thinking process as follows:

Empathy. Gain a better understanding of the problem and the people involved.
Define the problem. Go through that information to create a clear pain point.
Ideation. Generate ideas and potential solutions to the problem.
Prototype development. Turn the best ideas into solutions.
Test. See how the solution performs and what improvements need to be made.

Many of these steps can be implemented into the lean six sigma process, or overlap with them entirely.

Combining Design Thinking and Lean Six Sigma

With a strong foundation of both lean six sigma and design thinking, you can start to consider how these two practices might work together in your organization.

It makes sense that companies are combining design thinking with lean six sigma, as more teams adopt these processes and then adapt them to their unique needs. A team will often take the core elements of a framework and then tweak it to fit their company or industry.

“Six Sigma was oriented towards ensuring process consistency and reducing waste, whereas Design Thinking started as a product innovation method,” writes Pavan Soni, Ph.D., founder of Inflexion Point Consulting. “However, over time, these processes have morphed into general practices of improvement, beyond processes and product, respectively.”

Because the two practices continue to evolve and are adopted and improved by new industries, they have become flexible to the point where they can work together as one — not just alongside each other or even against each other, as some might have once believed.

Additionally, some innovators take the next step and consider where these two processes lie within the agile framework. For a clear example, consultant Jonny Schneider describes the relationships between design thinking, lean and agile in a simple process:

Design thinking is exploring the problem.
Lean is building the right thing.
Agile is building the thing right.

“Design Thinking is how we explore and solve problems; Lean is our framework for testing our beliefs and learning our way to the right outcomes; and Agile is how we adapt to changing conditions with software,” he explains.

When you think about these three elements as a whole process, combining them doesn’t seem as intimidating. In fact, it can be hard to picture the development process without one of these elements involved.

Independent analyst Joe McKendrick read Schneider’s piece and offered his insights on it. He emphasizes that these three practices are not siloed, nor should they be. A company can’t complete a design thinking part of the development process and then move on to lean practices. All three of these elements work together, with the customer serving as the main thread that holds everything together.

It is also easier to implement design thinking if you already use lean six sigma within your organization. Innovation and strategy consultant Irene Cajas explains that lean six sigma has become commonplace in many companies over the past several years. Design thinking is an addition to this process, not necessarily a replacement.

Plus, it is easier for a company to add one new idea instead of introducing two (or even three if you are adding agile) process changes.

How Design Thinking and Lean Six Sigma Support Each Other

There are many factors that contribute to the success of design thinking combining with lean six sigma practices. Many of their core elements overlap, or are assisted by teams that change their processes to accommodate both ideas.

These two concepts work together because the creative nature of design thinking supports the data-centric and logical mindedness of lean six sigma.

For example, Chris Hare, a lean six sigma black belt IT auditor, says design thinking is used when companies are aware that there is a problem, but they just can’t “put their finger on it.” However, once a problem is defined, teams can use a combination of creative problem-solving through design thinking and analytical strategy in lean six sigma to move forward and eliminate the issue.

“Nobody wants to spend months or years delivering something that doesn’t create impact or deliver value,” writes Steve Glaveski, cofounder of Collective Campus. This is why there is value in bringing design thinking into the development process. There is a constant feedback loop for teams to make sure the work they are doing is relevant, so employees continue to stay motivated to do meaningful work and improve the product for the customer, he explains.

There are additional reasons why design thinking can be added to lean six sigma practices to benefit your workflow.

Immediate Feedback

Judd Borakove, a partner at Red Monkey Consulting, says that when a company implements an iterative methodology (like lean six sigma or agile) there needs to be an environment of learning. Many employees can handle change, but they must be eager to analyze, learn and implement.

This is why the feedback loop in lean six sigma is so important. Employees, contractors and stakeholders can all review various processes and take steps to improve them and the end product.

Employees who are eager for change will be more willing to practice design thinking and add the new ideas that come with it.

Customer-Focused Development

Design thinking adds a human element that can sometimes get lost in other operations frameworks. It’s not uncommon for companies to get so focused on the data that they forget to look at the customer as a whole.

“Since design thinking is a non-linear process, its elements could be practically integrated with the Lean Six Sigma methodology. Both Lean Six Sigma and Design Thinking have a laser-like focus on the Voice of the Customer,” writes Alvin Villegas, founder of Core Enabler Business Process Solutions.

By combining these two practices, brands can tap into the empathetic nature of design thinking to keep the waste-removal practices of lean six sigma in check.

Empowered Employees

When done well, design thinking, lean six sigma and the agile framework should all work to empower your team members to make decisions that improve the product and help your customers. These practices are meant to empower teams as a whole.

“[Design thinking] entails giving employees the skills to better understand opportunities, to apply different methods of getting information from potential customers, and to achieve better brainstorming,” says Tucker Marion, associate professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at Northeastern University. He points to companies like IBM and Apple that already use this concept within their development teams.

This makes your employees better informed while they develop solutions and allows the company to solve problems faster because each team member is invested in the customer experience.

Developing a Combined Process Within Your Organization

As you start to implement design thinking into your organization, consider your specific needs as a company. It is highly unlikely that you will create a new process and your employees will follow it perfectly.

For example, many of the experts who identify ways to combine design thinking with lean six sigma end up creating highly-detailed (and sometimes confusing) charts that readers can apply to their own processes. Innovation coach Geert Claes admits that while these drawings are well-meaning, they miss the mark.

“The place where one methodology flows into the next is very debatable, because there are too many similar techniques and there is just too much overlap,” he writes.

Instead, he encourages managers to think about design thinking, lean six sigma, agile and other best practices as tools within your process toolbox. You can pull different tactics out when you need them, regardless of where you are in the development process.

Additionally, you will need to develop specific rules and definitions within your team. Taking steps to identify what you consider a minimally viable product or what you consider completed over a period of time will help you create targets for the lean development process. A great example of this is learning when your research and creative solutions process is finished so you can move into the development side.

“The challenge...lies in deciding when to move from Design Thinking (problem space) to Lean Startup (solution space),” explains agile and innovation coach Lucas Tamboryn. “As a general rule, you want to have a certain amount of validation about the problem you are solving, the solution you are providing, and the business model you plan to use before commencing with Lean Startup.”

The exact moment when you can consider your project “validated” is highly subjective and dependent on each company, team and project at hand.

Design thinking can improve your lean six sigma efforts, but only if you are flexible to changing how you implement lean ideas and merge the two processes. Companies that focus too much on one way of doing things will miss the point. You need to create a process that works for you, and that might not look like any of the diagrams you find online.

How Design Thinking Enhances Lean Six Sigma Practices