As a child that line never made much sense to me until my father explained that the second part of the line referred to the new King who was replacing the dead one and then the “penny dropped“.
The King Is Dead
Well maybe not quite dead but definitely in decline. For a long time now Six Sigma has ruled in Corporate America with organizations striving to improve their processes, increase productivity, reduce waste and increase profits. However we are now hearing noises from reputable sources that Six Sigma has had its day. Back in June 2007 Business Week published an article titled “Six Sigma: So Yesterday”
This article spells out what myself and many others have thought for a long time, that Six Sigma is too internally focused and lacks the customer focus. It is complicated, user unfriendly and pays little attention to people.
Everyone knows that organizations need to be market or customer driven. If you are going to consistently outperform your competitors you have to satisfy the customers better than they do. When a customer buys a product the real value to the supplier lies in the repeat business that the customer will give them. This means satisfying customers in such a way that when they reach the point of repurchase they keep coming back to you.
The Business Week article illustrates how Home Depot went from first to last in customer satisfaction when they drove hard on Six Sigma. The drive for profitability took little notice of employee dissatisfaction and cost the company face to face time with their customers.
Six Sigma takes too much work to get it going and offers little or no development of leadership or team building skills other than bolted on afterthoughts.
Long Live The King!
Organizations are looking for an approach that can change their culture and the attitudes of their people. A customer focused approach that is capable of engaging the workforce and tapping into the vast reserves of crude expertise. An approach that is simple to understand and can be swiftly and easily implemented. The time is right for Measurable Management™ to ascend to the throne.
Like Six Sigma, Measurable Management™ successfully delivers improvements to processes, productivity, waste reduction and profitability, but there the similarity ends. Measurable Management™ is everything that Six Sigma is not. It’s simple and easy to implement, it engages the customer as well as engaging the workforce. It develops a listening and involving style of leadership and more importantly it recognizes the need to change the culture and attitudes within organizations. You can give the workforce all the tools in the world but what will they do with them without enthusiasm?
In May 2007 I was a speaker at the Southwestern Lean Summit in Tulsa OK. One of my fellow speakers was Dr. Jeffrey Liker the author of the best selling business book “The Toyota Way”. After we had listened to each other’s presentations we had dinner together that evening. Dr. Liker commented that “Toyota had successfully changed its culture but couldn’t really tell you how they had done it. It took them over 10 years and eventually one day they were able to say that they had succeeded in changing their culture”. Do we really have ten years to force a culture change into place? The Jewel in The Crown of Measurable Management™ is that it provides a vehicle for bringing about that necessary change in culture, that customer focused approach to continual improvement so that it becomes the normal way of thinking and working. Something that you don’t have to consciously make an effort to do.
If you want to know more about Measurable Management™ look at the links above and check out the companies that have seen the light.
The King Is Dead. Long Live the King!
The King Is Dead
Well maybe not quite dead but definitely in decline. For a long time now Six Sigma has ruled in Corporate America with organizations striving to improve their processes, increase productivity, reduce waste and increase profits. However we are now hearing noises from reputable sources that Six Sigma has had its day. Back in June 2007 Business Week published an article titled “Six Sigma: So Yesterday”
This article spells out what myself and many others have thought for a long time, that Six Sigma is too internally focused and lacks the customer focus. It is complicated, user unfriendly and pays little attention to people.
Everyone knows that organizations need to be market or customer driven. If you are going to consistently outperform your competitors you have to satisfy the customers better than they do. When a customer buys a product the real value to the supplier lies in the repeat business that the customer will give them. This means satisfying customers in such a way that when they reach the point of repurchase they keep coming back to you.
The Business Week article illustrates how Home Depot went from first to last in customer satisfaction when they drove hard on Six Sigma. The drive for profitability took little notice of employee dissatisfaction and cost the company face to face time with their customers.
Six Sigma takes too much work to get it going and offers little or no development of leadership or team building skills other than bolted on afterthoughts.
Long Live The King!
Organizations are looking for an approach that can change their culture and the attitudes of their people. A customer focused approach that is capable of engaging the workforce and tapping into the vast reserves of crude expertise. An approach that is simple to understand and can be swiftly and easily implemented. The time is right for Measurable Management™ to ascend to the throne.
Like Six Sigma, Measurable Management™ successfully delivers improvements to processes, productivity, waste reduction and profitability, but there the similarity ends. Measurable Management™ is everything that Six Sigma is not. It’s simple and easy to implement, it engages the customer as well as engaging the workforce. It develops a listening and involving style of leadership and more importantly it recognizes the need to change the culture and attitudes within organizations. You can give the workforce all the tools in the world but what will they do with them without enthusiasm?
In May 2007 I was a speaker at the Southwestern Lean Summit in Tulsa OK. One of my fellow speakers was Dr. Jeffrey Liker the author of the best selling business book “The Toyota Way”. After we had listened to each other’s presentations we had dinner together that evening. Dr. Liker commented that “Toyota had successfully changed its culture but couldn’t really tell you how they had done it. It took them over 10 years and eventually one day they were able to say that they had succeeded in changing their culture”. Do we really have ten years to force a culture change into place? The Jewel in The Crown of Measurable Management™ is that it provides a vehicle for bringing about that necessary change in culture, that customer focused approach to continual improvement so that it becomes the normal way of thinking and working. Something that you don’t have to consciously make an effort to do.
If you want to know more about Measurable Management™ look at the links above and check out the companies that have seen the light.
The King Is Dead. Long Live the King!
The "key" that everyone is looking for is the culture change. The tools of lean thinking or six sigma are fine but they will not be effective in a culture that is non-responsive. The companies that succeed are the ones that have the "long view" and approach the culture as the most important component
ReplyDeleteMany Companies have been run on the belief that "if you can't change the people,you change the people"..pretty ruthless eh?..Why not recognise that by providing a process for personal change within the Organisation, its culture, "the way we do things around here" must by definition change/improve/be more effective?
ReplyDelete