Hal – As someone who feels I have been pushed by the way my organization has chosen to implement 6 Sigma into being more cynical, more political, and yes, much more negative than I am happy or comfortable in being, I agree. There are some people in the forum who seem able and willing to share tips on what has worked for them / their organization, but there seem to be many more who say “X didn’t work for me either”. I’ve done a lot more of the latter than the former here myself.
At this point I clearly blame the culture of my organization, not the techniques of 6 Sigma, though I think too many people have hyped 6 Sigma too much. OTOH, within a healthy organizational culture that REALLY tries to continually improve, you don’t need all the baggage of belts, champions, or mandatory (re)education sessions. You might want experts at applying statistics or problem solving to your kind of business, the same way you might want experts in computational fluid dynamics if you work with fluid systems. But you won’t need an entire “shadow organization” of high potential statistical gurus. And you sure won’t have entire departments or seperate accounts to track the monetary effects of the activities of this elite cadre of statistically trained problem assassins.
What do others think?
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