Replying to LO24945 --
Larry Philbrook asked:
> One of my clients wants to pursue the path of Six Sigma. Any
> experiences
> or recommendations?
Larry, my current role is that of a Six Sigma Champion in a multi-national
company. Unless you've grounded the leaders in dialogue,
inquiry/advocacy, mental models, and other ways to understand the
variation in learning styles, leadership styles, values, and visions, it
can be problematic.
There will always be resistance to change, and in Six Sigma, it will be
from change agents themselves!! That is, the disciples of Deming and
Senge might see the financial emphasis of six sigma as another disaster in
the making in the realm of short-term thinking.
In our system, the principles of Value Based Management are deeply
embedded. It gives the new leaders a measuring sytem for the potential of
improvement projects as they relate to growth and economic value. All
projects are "gated", or prioritized for potential impact on the system by
champions and value center presidents before they are approved.
Head-count reductions and other short-term factors are immediately suspect
and usually disproved and disapproved.
To do it well, there is a large investment required in people. The Black
Belts and those who will guide them must learn not only the statistical
and graphical methods that will help them in understanding the system, but
they must also begin to truly understand the human impacts of their work.
Although the problem solving skill sets and the statistical and financial
analysis learned in most six sigma programs are valuable, without an
appreciation for systems and an understanding of leadership with a servant
mentality, the can go very much awry in the eyes of some of the
stakeholders in an organization. In our system, we have learned, and
taught, that the organization (which is funded mostly by stock holders,
remember) needs to optimize stock holder value by building better
organizations, not just smaller ones.
If I've made my point, I can stop here, but it is a very large issue. It
is, in fact, the larger issue of organizational learning and communities
of practice.....
John Zavacki
--"systhinc" <systhinc@email.msn.com>
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