Do Certifications Suck?

• The Society of Manufacturing Engineers has a three-tiered Lean certification program, with Bronze, Silver and Gold levels of recognition. The American Society for Quality and the Association for Manufacturing Excellence have also contributed to this program.
• The Kaizen Institute has a two-tiered Lean and Lean Six Sigma Green Belt and Black Belt certification program.
• The International Independent Board for Lean Certification offers independent Lean certification in more than ten countries.
• The list goes on and on - Lean Certification Online has, as it's name implies, an online Lean Certification program. Automated Learning has an International Lean Certification Standard. Beyond Lean offers Lean Six Sigma Certification.

From one point of view, this is great, and I mean that. There are literally hundreds of companies and organizations offering some form of Lean certification, trying to teach people standard skills and philosophies to improve their organizations. There is great debate about what standard is, about what Lean is, but the intent (beyond making money through training and certification exams) is noble - let's teach people about Lean.

Now I've known many skilled professionals who've pursued and maintained various certifications, and who are very effective in their roles, so this is not a criticism of the valuable learning inherent in the various certification programs. Yet, there's a significant problem with certifications that emerges in most of the companies I've known.

Almost without fail, organizations seem to end up with a Quality guy, or a Lean department, or some Six Sigma gurus who end up doing the improvement work. There ends up being a quasi-elite group, generally of certified this-that-or-the-others, that are the people who "do that sort of thing." Certifications often suck the initiative out of the rest of the group, and often suck the confidence out of the other workers. You'll hear variations on "I don't make the changes - I just do the work" or "that's something the Lean team does" or "I've given up making suggestions" - the workers themselves are not involved in continually making their own work better and better.

So, while Lean Certifications are well-intentioned, it creates a very different workplace than that advocated by Deming in his 14th point for management, "Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job."

So, pursue certifications and get some Lean training as you see fit, but remember that the goal is to get everybody involved in the transformation, not just an elite certified few. Are certifications sucking the initiative and confidence out of everybody else in your organization?