Past

The seeds of SHERPA Institute were sown in our founder’s childhood, growing up on cattle ranches, that operated with sustainable practices. Before organic farming was even in our vernacular, Andrea Hoffmeier witnessed decisions made by her very conservative father, that reflected a respect for nature and good animal husbandry. These decisions, such as eschewing pesticides, herbicides, other chemicals and animal growth hormones, made an impression and piqued her curiosity. When she asked her father why they were not taking on these emerging practices, like neighboring ranchers, he pulled a green book from his bookshelf and simply said “Read this.” Andrea read Silent Spring, published by Rachel Carson in 1962; at age 11, she never saw the world the same again. Silent Spring is not just a book about the environment. It is about poor governance and destructive practices, in a combined effort of corporations, government agencies, and many other stakeholders. Silent Spring is the story of how chemical use, without concern for unintended consequences, would impact communities across the nation.

In the late 1980’s, our founder began making her first overseas factory visits. The purpose of those trips was to select suppliers and then to oversee production and ensure quality, but the evidence of social problems were everywhere, from unsafe working conditions to child labor. Eventually, she became involved in factory social compliance audits in the 1990’s, having to make decisions about shutting down production in companies that were using loopholes to have underage workers, or other poor conditions.

In the early 2000’s, she became immersed in the Quality Methodology, becoming a Six Sigma Black Belt. As she practiced this methodology, in combination with Lean for efficiency, she saw the opportunity to apply these tools to improve social issues. In 2010, at a Lean Six Sigma Conference, Andrea presented a Quality tool (QFD) that she had adapted to drive sustainability efforts. It was there that she met Holly Duckworth, her eventual co-author of “A Six Sigma Approach to Sustainability: Continual Improvement for Social Responsibility”. Holly had just published her book, co-authored with Roz Moore, detailing the adaptation of the Military Standard FMEA – Failure Modes Effects and Analysis, to drive social responsibility performance improvement. The resulting SR-FMEA entailed some changes to the original tool, and a focus on identifying the most critical potential failures, using the Principles and Subjects, in the International Standard for Social Responsibility – ISO 26000, published later that year. Duckworth and Moore also adapted the Six Sigma tool SIPOC to SIPOS, replacing the Customer with Stakeholders. This small change created a much more powerful tool to understand a problem.

When Hoffmeier and Duckworth began collaborating, they assumed their efforts would merely entail the ongoing adaptation of tools, plugging them into the standard Six Sigma DMAIC Method, or potentially into DFSS – Design for Six Sigma. But as they collaborated with other seasoned Lean Six Sigma colleagues, in a range of industries across the globe, there was a shortcoming that was eluding the collaborators. What was it? What emerged was that DMAIC – Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control – was not sufficient to drive socially responsible performance improvements. More attention was needed to stakeholders, innovation needed to be interjected, and the process needed to end with a return to the next project in the pipeline, rather than ending with a control plan. This caused the book to take five years of writing case studies and developing the new CISR Methodology. Continual Improvement for Social Responsibility is driven through the identification of Focused Initiatives, which are comprised of multiple SOFAIR Projects. The phases are: Stakeholders and Subjects (of ISO 26000), Objectives (alignment with organizational mission and goals), Function and Focus, Analysis, Improve and Innovate, and finally Report and Repeat.

Hoffmeier and Duckworth first established the organization, then named SHERPA Sustainability Institute (Sustainability was dropped in 2020) as a Colorado Benefit Company in 2015 and began beta training. The first cohort consisted of Lean Six Sigma Black Belts, and the feedback was that the 8-week training was far too much material to consume, as well as too rapid for a first project. The Practitioner Course (on par with Six Sigma Black Belt) was expanded by several weeks, and eventually additional courses were added, to align with Six Sigma Green Belt (Facilitator), and Master Black Belt (Expert). In the early 2000’s, Innovation Specialist was also launched.

Hoffmeier and Duckworth presented at countless conferences, including their “Rebels & Renegades” Workshop at the 2017 ASQ Lean Conference. Momentum was growing, and organizations around the globe were beginning to see tangible results from the CISR Methodology. One of the surprising results, from a repeated cycle of ongoing SOFAIR Projects, was measurable Culture Change. Duckworth began pursuing a newfound career as a psychotherapist, and Hoffmeier remained as the organization’s founder. SHERPA Sustainability Institute also saw the emergence of Regeneration as a distinct need, a higher level goal than Sustainability. This provoked the dropping of “Sustainability” from the Institute’s name, which is now simply SHERPA Institute. Working with organizations around the world, the Institute found itself becoming less bold. Different corporate cultures provoked various levels of polite circling of difficult topics. We realized that this was draining our full potential to be provocative truth-tellers, to be the guides that were willing to bring the unvarnished reality to the surface.