Seduce Them With Success [the broken link was removed – sadly ASQ continues to increase their impeding of the access to material on quality management, in direct conflict with their professed mission] by Jay Arthur:
Oddly enough, the people on those improvement teams seem to know how to continue solving problems. And they tell their co-workers. And the operational manager’s success makes his or her colleagues curious. Then the Six Sigma change agent gets a call to help another manager solve a problem. And so it goes until the Six Sigma system is operating well in the mission-critical elements of the business.
This is the way to get management improvement to take hold. Use successes to create a desire to improve. It is always nice if the leaders are on board, it helps in many ways. But whether they are or not, those seeking to promote management improvement need to pay close attention to how much desire exists to improve (using six sigma or lean or process improvement or quality management tools).
If most people think the efforts are just the latest fad it is very difficult to have any lasting success.
More six sigma articles.
