Responding to Genna's Question: Are attacks at Six Sigma (being ineffective) justified?

There are two ways to respond to Genna's question. (Genna is Senior Editor of www.sixsigmaiq.com.)

The YES part: The culprit in this scenario is the elitist Six Sigma practitioner who wants to add mystique to the process and subliminally wants to alienate the masses. This is the individual that things that the statistics part of Six Sigma is the distinctive feature to the methodology. And, to those folks, please be aware, Stat 101 can be learned in a few classes. In fact, they offer those classes in high school sometimes.

When the Six Sigma methodology is practiced in this manner, without the essence of the methodology, it becomes bureaucratic. It loses touch with the value it provides for business. It becomes a mumbo-jumbo of numbers that most people think applies only to the academicians. Hence, the attacks.

The NO part, my answer: When Six Sigma is not practiced with the right intent, that is, in keeping with the original premise (that the intention of the statistics is to provide a vehicle to identify a tangible that illustrates a problem), then it fails. When this is the case, it is not Six Sigma that failed, but the arrogance of the practitioner who thinks that they are above everyone else.

First, some people have responded that Motorola and GE would have failed bigger if not for Six Sigma. I suspect that even if that were true, that it was the preponderance of the elitist set that Six Sigma unfairly gets a bad rap.

Six Sigma and your Customer

Why the customer is important is because they are the consumer for the project deliverable, Six Sigma or not. What Six Sigma brings to the table is a toolkit for achieving customer focus.

Step 1 for achieving this is identifying who the customer is for your project. They are the entity that is going to provide you with your project success criteria. It is an important part of this step to make sure you have identified all the customers that have a stake in your project.

This customer base you have identified is going to be the source of your requirement. As simple as this seems, this is not as straight-forward as it sounds. Soliciting requirements from the customer means understanding the customer enough to recognize what they are saying, even if they are not articulating it correctly.

Then, once captured, call it back out to your customer in terms they can understand. Be redundant. Say it how ever many times it takes to have your point clearly communicated.

After having done this, you would have achieved the first goal of your project -- achieving an alliance with your customer. You're on your way!