7.2 Introduction

Have you ever found yourself doing something cool and automatically reaching for your phone to take a picture to post on social media? We live in a time where digital social connectedness and interaction are part of our daily routine. Have you by any chance ever felt a rush of excitement or joy when receiving “likes” from friends and connections upon uploading a photo or posting to a social media platform?

Receiving compliments is always lovely. The trick here is making sure not to base our emotions on them. For instance, letting the number of likes affect you may not be a good thing because it can diminish your confidence when you receive fewer likes. Psychologists have uncovered a relationship between positive social media feedback and how we feel. Now, here is something else quite interesting. Having a sense of purpose shields us from having the number of likes swaying our confidence one way or the other. Having a sense of purpose is that powerful!

In many other life situations, constancy of purpose keeps us moving forward despite challenges; for example, feeling motivated to complete our academic degrees despite so many exams and commitments or training for athletic competitions despite pain and tiredness. You certainly have some personal examples.

What does any of this have to do with Lean Six Sigma? The point is that purpose drives success. In the context of Lean Six Sigma, determining a project’s purpose is one of the crucial deliverables of the DMAIC Define phase. It becomes part of the all-important project improvement charter. Let’s discuss it here.

The purpose of this topic is to take you through the key activities of the Define phase of the Lean Six Sigma DMAIC framework so that you can eventually apply them to projects at your organization. We also discuss crucial tools that you need to add to your Lean Six Sigma toolset and that are crucial in this phase of the DMAIC process.