Collins Serious About Six Sigma

I posted about this here :

Shaun commented on my post like this:

Firstly I love the quote about the belief that government should not be run like a business. A classic. The good news for this person is that it rarely is, so no need to worry.

Secondly from our “certified green belt who knows a thing or two about six sigma”. This person embarks on a diatribe that describes the inappropriateness of the approach, comparing it to manufacturing, and simultaneously identifying that it is an inappropriate comparison. Time consuming it may be, but the time and money spent on managing risk should always be in proportion to the risk itself. There is an inference here that there are no government processes that are worth a lot of QA time on the basis that the impact of a problem does not warrant the effort in trying to prevent it. Hmmm. This actually strikes at the heart of a lot of what is wrong with the mind set of many organisations, not just Government. And those organisations that launch headlong into heavy handed and disproportionate risk reduction strategies (some involving six sigma) only add fuel to these arguments

We can get caught up in skewed discussions about various statistical and non-statistical approaches, however if the fundamentals of cause and effect, cost of failure and cost versus benefit evaluation are not understood we are always going to have problems. Unfortunately I have found many organisations diving headlong into six sigma before achieving a fundamental grasp of these principles.