Jamie Flinchbaugh is the founder of JFlinch and author of People Solve Problems: The Power of Every Person, Every Day, Every Problem.
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For years, many operations and engineering jobs came with a requirement for a Six Sigma Green Belt (or Black Belt). It was an easy “check the box” requirement that allowed the human resources team to cull the herd of applicants. That particular requirement has faded in popularity, but it is not uncommon to see job requirements that list certifications in certain tools or methodologies. That is a misguided approach, and here is why.
Your certification does not equal my certification.
Having worked with hundreds of companies on their improvement and problem-solving methods, I can say that the methods of the five best companies are not very different from those of the five worst companies I’ve observed. This means that certifying that you know a particular method such as Six Sigma or A3 Problem-Solving may actually tell me very little about how effective you are
Wrapped around those tools and methods are certain management systems and support structures. You may be very effective at one organization, but for reasons that have nothing to do with the certification, you might become quite ineffective in your new environment.
When I started at Lehigh University as a freshman engineering student, I had some seniors in my Intro to Physics class. They had transferred to the university, and apparently, regardless of where you transferred from, Lehigh didn’t accept other universities’ physics credits. The point is, even something as irrefutable as physics doesn’t always transfer from one environment to another because of how it is taught, interpreted and used.
Certification with a tool is far less important than problem-solving.
I believe that tools ultimately don’t make much of a difference. At best, they are a job aid, like a written recipe. The same recipe in the hands of an experienced chef with access to quality ingredients leads to a massively different outcome than it would for someone who doesn’t know their way around the kitchen.
Tools and templates, which are often the core of certifications, are useful in organizations because they provide a common approach that makes it easy to collaborate. However, move from one organization to another and those benefits no longer exist. All that remains to make problem-solving effective is the quality of thinking and the usefulness of behaviors.
Problem-solving is a very human activity. It is based on learning: If we already knew what we needed to know, then we would simply look up the answer. Problem-solving is about learning both why a gap exists and how we might effectively close it. To do that, we need behaviors such as curiosity and skills such as experimentation. These behaviors and skills are quite transferable, but unfortunately, their existence is much more difficult to certify. That is why most organizations certify problem-solving based on following a template. They might use skills to do so, but it is the compliance to a standard that is ultimately certified, and this part is the least transferable to a new organization.
Assess capabilities instead.
Checking off a box with a certification is an easy out. However, we aren’t actually looking for an easy out; we are looking for an easy but legitimate way to separate candidates within a hiring pool. As I’ve already pointed out, checking the box over a certification is a false signal. You should much prefer to assess capability.
Perhaps the best effort I’ve observed in assessing capabilities was made by an organization that developed a simulation to be used during the interview process. Teams were put together and put into the simulation. The goal wasn’t to get the best performance, but the team-oriented environment was useful for observing how individual candidates approached problem-solving and improvement. The company was able to determine who had the core skills they were looking for, regardless of how much training each candidate had received.
I don’t expect many organizations to follow this practice, so some more balanced options might be useful. Focus some of your interview questions on problem-solving mentality and process, trying to get into both assessing behaviors and capabilities. Some have used puzzle-like or case study questions. This method is less about whether candidates come up with the right answer and more about how they approach the problem. Getting the answer is contextual, but the right capabilities and behaviors are transferable to just about any problem.
Onboarding is important.
Especially when someone is coming into the organization with existing problem-solving tool certification, assimilating the tools and methods of the organization can be a daunting task. You were once a competent problem-solver, and now you’re suddenly wandering around like a klutz because you don’t know the systems, templates or language.
It is important to help people who already have skills map what they know into their new environment. This assimilation must include systems, templates, language and anything else that might feel uncomfortable. The best way to do this is with a coach or guide who will help with the assimilation process. A guide can help navigate all the variation among inbound employees, more than job aids and training guides can.
Conclusion
Problem-solving skills and behaviors may be some of the most useful to recruit and hire into your organization. We need better ways to assess them and need to do a better job integrating them into the particular ways of our organization. Once we do that, we can move beyond the check-the-box mentality of hiring certifications.
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