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Is It Fun Being Led by You?

Lead Change Blog

We got our black belts in six-sigma; words or acronyms like Kaizen, PDCA, TQM, QC and ISO became everyday parts of our work language. Strategy guru Gary Hamel wrote in the Harvard Business Review: “Corporations around the world are reaching the limits of incrementalism. The benefits were significant.

Six Sigma 150
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It's Time to Rethink Continuous Improvement

Harvard Business Review

Six Sigma , Kaizen , Lean , and other variations on continuous improvement can be hazardous to your organization's health. Looking beyond Japan, iconic six sigma companies in the United States, such as Motorola and GE, have struggled in recent years to be innovation leaders. the United States.

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Avoid the Improvement Hype Cycle

Harvard Business Review

To show how different it is, we have special words to describe them such as " Master Black Belt ," " DMAIC ," " Kaizen ," " A3 ," and " SIPOC.". By reviewing the history of its process initiatives, the company made its journey visible and discussable. For example, you could use "continuous improvement" instead of "kaizen."

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Uniting the Religions of Process Improvement

Harvard Business Review

When they set out to turn around processes that have become woefully inefficient or ineffective, most companies choose one of four process improvement "religions": Lean , Six Sigma , Business Reengineering or Business Process Management (BPM). Many companies adopted Six Sigma in the late 1990s. Consider this example.

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The Key to Change Is Middle Management

Harvard Business Review

I studied large-scale change and innovation efforts in 56 randomly selected companies in the high-tech, retail, pharmaceutical, banking, automotive, insurance, energy, non-profit, and health care industries. Many change efforts fail because people reduce themselves to checking boxes in safe, defensible systems such as Lean and Six Sigma.