Ain’t that the management strategy used by companies that move their manufacturing operations out of the USA and to Red China all the time?
No, it is not. Six Sigma is a method of improving business processes in an organization to reduce error rates, build quality, and reduce rework.
When added to things such as Lean Business, or Deming’s quality programs, it can be a powerful tool. However, it can’t be adapted unless there is pressure to improve. Tell some GS-13 in HUD that she will have to improve her processes and she’ll say “Huh?” and ignore you.
I have heard him mention Six Sigma once, and it made me think I could take a closer look at him.
Six Sigma is just a codified way of looking at processes and trying to improve them. It may seem technocratic, but what is government administration but a lot of processes of turning laws into actions?
It also requires a paper trail, statistical analyses of what happens when a change is made to a process, and how it affects the bottom line.
I can’t see any downside to having government act more like a business.
Good question. Companies that cannot implement some form of process management here in the states, have to move somewhere else, where some form of process management can be implemented, in order to become or remain competitive.
There are many, many people working here in the USA with a good understanding of management principles, process management, process improvement, management science, etc., etc., but very, very few of these knowledgable people are ever allowed an opportunity to excercise their knowledge. In fact, in most work environments in the USA, knowledgable people are deliberately sabotaged and destroyed so that much less qualified people can maintain their daisy chains of power in positions for which they were never minimally qualified in the first place.
The USA economy is in exactly the position today that someone predicted twenty or thirty years ago, if the competency pyramid remained unside down for the duration. It has, and we are.
In simpler words, idiots have been running the show in every corner of our society for the past few decades, and we are in our current condition because idiocy has been promoted and rewarded for that long.
If we want different results, we need to do things differently.