On a few different occasions, I’ve recently been reminded about my early experiences in Six Sigma. Two of them, in particular, have caused considerable reflection. Most notably for me is hearing the term “back to breakthrough” and I only wish I could take credit for the term. That goes to Mike Cyger of iSixSigma who is putting together a conference by that name that has a good chance of 1) creating similar reflection for some old-timers in the Six Sigma community, 2) causing relative newcomers (the masses who have taken the plunge into Six Sigma trying to duplicate the results of GE outside of a strong performance driven culture nurtured) to rethink their approach, regroup and reinvigorate and even a chance of 3) compressing some of the skepticism among naysayers who have avoided Six Sigma (or at least the label because the tools are embedded in most continuous improvement methods!) Allow me to expand on each.
I still recall the announcement of Six Sigma at AlliedSignal back in 1994 as a means to achieve Operational Excellence®, a necessary but not necessarily sufficient step in the pursuit of the vision to be “a premier company, distinctive and successful in everything we do.” Hats off to Larry Bossidy and AlliedSignal leadership marching to the beat of his drum for capitalizing on every opportunity to communicate the vision, link it to strategy and explain that Six Sigma was the tactical plan. At the time, I wasn’t familiar with the concept of Strategy Deployment but now recognize it as such. One of the things that made it work, and gets me “back to breakthrough” is that improvement objectives were BHAGs (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals) results were expected and leadership was absolutely engaged.
All Six Sigma projects were expected to deliver a 50% improvement in the primary metric with no degradation in the secondary (cheater) metric. In the beginning, there was also an aggressive financial target that had to be acknowledged by the controller as hitting the bottom line. The reported financial savings tended to be conservative as I personally recall not being able to declare cost avoidance as savings. For example, if you increased capacity but there wasn’t new product filling the void, i.e. building more w/ the same resources, then it didn’t count. Some would argue the wisdom of this approach but it kept the savings clean and more importantly, built rigor and discipline into project selection that seems to missing in some efforts today.
Saludos, Aimée
While enjoying a glass a wine with a colleague a few weeks ago, we were debating the issue “to blog or not to blog.” Being the newly appointed CEO of her company, she admitted that the sales and marketing group were encouraging her to put up a blog on their website. She relented that she’d have posted anything worth saying within 6 months and wondered who would read it anyway? Having been working on the design and intent of this blog for some months, I admit at first it took the wind out of my sail. Then, I adjusted the rudder (mindset) and decided to regain momentum.
I am so fortunate to have the experience of the last 18 years in industry. It would be impossible for me to share the collective knowledge of all the brilliant people with whom I have worked in a single lifetime, much less in 6 months. Besides that, every new experience brings new knowledge and more to share, which is the best part of my work! As for who will read it, who cares? I just want to write about it and I hope someone out there finds it useful. Of course, the knowledge-sharing will be enhanced by those who choose to contribute content.
The intent of this blog is simply to share knowledge as it relates to effecting change, or as a wise executive recently labeled it - seeking the art of the possible. I look forward to sharing my thoughts on books I have read and hope that others will comment and critique in the Book Babble category. I will also present insights gained through recent experiences in the area of leadership and strategy (Leadership Lingo and Strategy Speak categories.) And the engineer in me can’t help but offer technical guidance, starting with the basic tools taught as part of a Six Sigma curriculum that are too often misunderstood, abused, or omitted (Techie Talk.) Of course, I might offer completely irrelevant but hopefully interesting tidbits in the Miscellaneous Musings.
By the way, if you’re reading, I do care and welcome your feedback.
Saludos,
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