Six Sigma: end of life cycle, or here to stay?
Sam Clarke
Published at
What will the coming years look like in regards to Six Sigma (and Lean for that matter)? I am a business consultant at a consultancy specialising in operational excellence. It will not be a surprise to anybody that I’m not a critic of Six Sigma, Lean or any other methodology you would associate with business improvement. However I do think there is a missing link. That is a focus on the human aspect of change.
Business excellence organisations like R&G are investing heavily in improving the knowledge and skills of their consultants. Rightly so – we have nothing but our knowledge and experience. Our customers deserve the most up-to date thinking and approaches to maximise benefits when they engage with us. My colleague Keith Bestwick recently wrote an interesting article on the subject; containing all the technical knowhow. It is well worth a read.
Six Sigma and accountability
To compliment the extensive technical knowledge of our team, over the last few years at R&G we have focussed on the human side of change. This has been a huge success. Our customers were telling us that their critique of change programmes was too much of a focus on the technical aspects of business improvement projects. They did at least until we threw accountability into the mix. Since then the change has been dramatic. For everyone who would like their team, business unit, plant or company to change as well: the first step of accountability is to recognise this missing link of the human aspect of change.
Incremental improvements
I’ve seen business excellence projects work extremely successfully, and I’ve seen them fail. However, I don’t put the failure down to the methodology used. I rather put the failure down to a lesser than required focus on the people. So rather than seeing any new, ground breaking methodologies in the coming years, I would expect small incremental improvements to the existing approaches. With accountability being the most important one!
More than anything I want to start a discussion on the topic. So what is your feeling? Are we to expect a revolution or do you expect baby steps?
Sam Clarke is Business Process Consultant at R&G Global Consultants in the United Kingdom.
