In a recent debate Newt Gingrich made reference to the use of Six Sigma as part of his governing philosophy. It brought back a lot of memories. Six Sigma was developed by Motorola in the 1986 and according to supporters it saved billions of dollars. I observed the results when Six Sigma was implemented at some major insurance carriers. The process includes “Champions” “MasterBlackBelts” “BlackBelts” and “Greenbelts”. These are people specially trained in Six Sigma who create kind of a separate infrastructure within the company. I have sat through several briefings where the Six Sigma process was explained in detail. The closest thing I have seen to this is “Money Ball” where Billy Beane used data and statistics to build the Oakland A team that competed successfully with very little money. In theory, the Six Sigma approach uses data and analysis to make everything better.
But that is not the whole story. In every case were I saw Six Sigma implemented a clear pattern evolved. At first people were mostly bewildered. They were cautiously optimistic that Six Sigma will help their company grow and prosper. Then lucky people were chosen for “Six Sigma” training. Most of them appear to be younger people more willing to fully embrace the concept. These people then come out of their training on a mission to change the world. They descended dramatically on the remaining workforce with a mandate to change things. As you can imagine, this is not necessarily welcome. In one particular case the company was actually doing really well, before Six Sigma. But after Six Sigma, that changed. Suddenly the people I counted on were unable to get their jobs done because they were constantly providing reports and data to be discussed at Six Sigma meetings. One person told me he was so exhausted by the Six Sigma process that he had trouble doing his normal job. I asked him if thought Six Sigma was worth the effort. He gave me a very interesting response. He said if you don’t believe in Six Sigma, you don’t have much of a future at this company. He thought the process sounded good in theory, but in reality they sometimes wasted a lot of time and energy trying to find the perfect solution to something that could be resolved in about five minutes by a competent manager blessed with ordinary common sense. He also said at least some of the Six Sigma “Champions” were brilliantly stupid, too blinded by data and statistics to see what was obvious to people with many years of experience.
I also remember meeting having lunch with the new CEO of a major insurance company. That company had fully embraced Six Sigma about 18 months earlier, before he was CEO. He had been on the job about 3 months when I met him. I asked him what he thought about Six Sigma. Now CEO’s of major companies tend to be very reserved people, but he lit up like a Christmas Tree. He said” “I am proud to consider myself the Darth Vader that killed Six Sigma.” Obviously, he wasn’t impressed.
The point is that if Newt Gingrich really wants to use Six Sigma to find efficiencies in Government that is a major concern for me. I would prefer a less brilliant candidate who cuts costs by restricting government agencies to doing what really matters and stop trying to micro-manage the universe.
The following article by George Will shows that he has noticed the same thing:
Newt Gingrich believes he is the smartest guy in the room, which may be true. But the one of the most intelligent people ever elected Presidnet was Jimmy Carter. He was, after all, an officer on a nuclear submarine. He was chosen as the officer in charge of the U.S. Team assisting in the shutdown of the Chalk River Nuclear Reactor. The point is that Jimmy Carter was very intelligent and he was a skilled manager. But when he tried to micro-manage the government he was a miserable failure. I guarantee you Jimmy Carter was the kind of guy who would embrace Six Sigma. Jimmy Carter was also the classic example of someone who was brilliantly stupid.
TDM
Agreed! Now, you are making good sense, Terry. Bravo!
I sit in my operations management class thinking to myself, they say that “we,” the institution, teaches real world applications “contextually” and the only thing that creeps to the forefront of my mind when we discuss the holy grail of all business operations processes today, Six-Sigma, is that we do not fortunately live in a “perfect” world.
And since time is of the essence, when commonsense proves to be your largest asset during moments where time is a valued commodity, why would anyone absorb themselves in a process that is combative for the most part with the natural laws of [nature] imperfection…and commonsense.
Yes, information technology has significantly enhanced and improved standard operations for various businesses, to some degree, yet, one fact still escapes the savviest and most intelligent of them all and that is realizing that the superfluous marvels of technology cannot go unchecked without human intervention: intuition and commonsense. Now, there is some real world experiences for you. Again, bravo!