Performance Excellence is poised to become more and more important at your company—or it’s not. Investment in better processes is key to executing your company’s growth strategy, or it’s key to ensuring your company survives a downturn, or it’s key to…something else. Anyway, I’m sure it’s key.
What I’m saying is that the ability to drive growth and reduce cost by simply picking up the low-hanging (or ground) fruit is coming to an end. That’s because there’s just not much fruit left on the ground, anymore than there’s much oil or copper or silver left in the ground. Low hanging fruit as a cheap commodity is running out. So we have to start figuring out how to make our way up the tree to the other fruit that’s up there…somewhere.
Continue reading "It’s Time to Stop Messing Around" »
Creative Destruction – words most often associated with today’s world of newly intensified innovation. A term first coined by economist Joseph Schumpeter in the 1940s, it’s only in much more recent years that business leaders have come to understand its wisdom.
Nowhere is this understanding more clear than in the recent appointment of Robert Nardelli to the helm of Chrysler. Amid a great deal of criticism over his tenure at Home Depot, Nardelli appears to be a perfect choice for Chrysler.
Most experts agree that Chrysler will need to excel on many fronts: a razor-sharp discipline, a take-no-prisoner’s attitude toward cost cutting and a genuine willingness to destroy before recreating will be at the forefront. While many people have accused Nardelli of destroying the culture at Home Depot – much as they’ve accused James McNerney of destroying the innovation culture at 3M – I would argue that perhaps neither destroyed too much of anything in their first forays outside of GE. In fact, they may not have destroyed enough, or done their destroying creatively enough, and they were replaced before they could meet their boards’ high expectations. Then again, neither of them had a predecessor like Jack Welch, who’s own predecessor left him behind instructions to “blow it up.”
Continue reading "Creative Destruction" »
Just the other day I read a press release titled, “Consulting Firm Warns Companies Not to Overuse Lean and Six Sigma.” I laughed—for about five minutes. And then I had an image of this consultant’s next announcement: “Consulting Firm Warns People Not to Overeat.” In fact what I really wanted to do was throw the bullshit flag (if you don't know what it is, go to www.bsflag.com).
As I laughed, I supposed that if you want to make your mark by warning others not to overuse something, you can pitch yourself as an expert at just about anything. Because you don’t have to be an expert—at anything—to know that over use or under use means anything but proper use.
Let’s be serious though. Anyone reading this has at least a fleeting understanding of the principles of Lean and Six Sigma. Many of you could be considered experts in your own right. So you’re probably laughing, too.
But beyond a good laugh, we all have a responsibility to ourselves and our companies to push for proper use. In fact one of the words that underlies Six Sigma is “optimization” which is just a fancy word for “proper use” when it comes to a business process. In Six Sigma we look to optimize everything—even the use of Six Sigma. So a good implementation of Six Sigma would focus on just the right amount of effort going into six sigma—not too little and not too much.
Continue reading "Don't Waste Your Innovative Efforts" »
RSS 2.0 (XML)
