Lean Six Sigma as a Risky Dog-Whistle for Gingrich
Newt Gingrich has repeatedly called for applying “Lean Six Sigma” to improve the functioning of the federal government. This is not entirely a daft idea. In fact, it’s not even a new one, as Lean Six Sigma is already being applied everywhere from the Department of Defense to the EPA. But it’s hard to believe that Gingrich is foolish enough to think it will really transform our government.
Six Sigma is just the latest iteration of what is more-or-less the same, basically sensible, method for business operational improvement — carefully observe and measure current work practices, think of them holistically and in light of the goals of the business, and then redesign work practices — that keeps getting reinvented. Taylorism, “Goals and Methods”, factory statistical process control (SPC), Total Quality Management (TQM), business process reengineering (BPR), and now Six Sigma, are all just manifestations of this approach. Each is typically pioneered by innovators who have a fairly supple understanding of the often unarticulated complexity of the task. It drives clear profit gains, and many other people want to apply it. A group of experts are trained by the pioneers, who are also quite effective. There is an inevitable desire to scale up the activity and apply it as widely as possible. It becomes codified into some kind of a cookbook process that can be replicated. This process becomes a caricature of the original work, and the method is discredited by failure and ridicule. (Seeing this phase of reengineering at several companies in the 1990s, a close friend of mine once described it as “like the Planet of the Apes, after the monkeys have taken over from the humans.”) Within some number of years, new pioneers develop a new version of the approach, and the cycle begins again.
If implemented intelligently, a structured approach to operational process improvement could be a useful exercise for the federal government. As one of many examples, Al Gore’s Reinventing Government initiative was an attempt at the same basic concept, and appears to have created at least some temporary efficiency gains. Even the idea of using a single framework (whether Six Sigma, or some other useful tool) that creates a uniform method and vocabulary across the whole government is probably worth some reduction in flexibility across departments and agencies. But to imagine that this will resolve the fundamental disagreements about the size and role of government, the influence of various interest groups, voter acceptance of structural deficits and so on that are the root issues in the dysfunction in Washington is silly.
I assume that Gingrich’s real purpose in calling for this is to connect with the huge swath of Republican primary voters who work in or around Fortune 1000 companies. They can hear him saying things that they hear at work every day, but that they never hear politicians mention. This makes Gingrich seem more practical and connected to their world, and less a creature of what they take to be out-of-touch Washington. I’ve informally observed that Gingrich has used something like this technique for many years, probably effectively in terms of the politics.
My guess is that it will be less effective, or at least much riskier, against Romney, who can pretty much respond at will with a “You’re no Jack Kennedy” comment about how something like Six Sigma really works inside of a real business.
(Cross-posted to The Corner)
Oh boy!Thousands of Power Point Presentations! Thousand page expensively bound policy manuals that will never be used! Newt is embracing his inner bureaucrat.
— Carl M. · Nov 23, 04:56 PM · #
Newt is my favored candidate these days, but the other day he visited my wife’s home town in Iowa saying that (in reference to the work of the deservedly-dead debt committee) that sufficient cuts in federal spending could be accomplished by the elimination of fraud and waste.
Sigh.
— The Reticulator · Nov 23, 08:23 PM · #
I have to question your understanding of what people in Fortune 1000 companies talk about “every day”.
Having suffered through a variety of these types of techniques, the only conversations that takes place at them relating to six-sigma/TQM/whatever are bouts of derisive eye-rolling. THe only exceptions are the few folks in each company who are charged with rolling out the programs and then proselytizing about them, since they are by definition true believers.
My guess about Gingrich’s use of the term is that (a) he wants to counteract the (accurate) impression of him as a professional politician who has no true understanding of business, having never spent a day in the real world of business; and (b) in keeping with his obsession to sound smart, in true autodidact tradition he picks up a buzzword to make himself feel like he knows what he is talking about.
— Gerald · Nov 24, 06:41 AM · #
Gerald,
I’ve spent about 25 years in and around Fortune 1000 companies.
Compare your final paragraph:
To this from the post:
— Jim Manzi · Nov 24, 12:50 PM · #
Jim, clearly you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve worked under Total Quality Management, and unlike Lean Six Sigma, it doesn’t have “green-belts” and “black-belts” administering it, which of course proves that it’s a bunch of crap and Lean Six Sigma was the totally awesome way for the far-seeing minds at DoD to go.
— Kieselguhr Kid · Nov 24, 04:16 PM · #
As someone working with the Lean-Six Sigma method currently in my job, I think the problem with Newt’s claims are the magnitude of deficit he plans to eliminate.
Right now my boss and I are heading a couple of Lean-Six Sigma projects a piece. If we save the company 2% of our 2012 budget we will be well worth our salaries, and if we save 4% of the budget we will be heroes within the company. I am confident that there exists enough waste and that we have the skills to find those savings.
Compare this to Federal Government which for 2011 ran a deficit 40% of total expenditures. To expect that there is waste within the Federal Government which we can improve upon is reasonable. To expect that we can eliminate 40% of spending on waste is a fantasy.
— Dan · Nov 24, 04:25 PM · #
KK:
LOL…see the Dilbert cartoon at the link for the word “ridicule”
Actually Juran (who invented and applied a lot of the statistics behind this) made the same point that they just the word “facilitators” instead of of whatever belts.
I still remember the business meting when, as we went around the table introducing ourselves by name and title (“Mary Smith, VP of Marketing”, etc.) and some dude said “John Smith, Six Sigma, Black Belt,” and all of us who had never met had to suppress guffaws and “WTF?” as a reaction.
Dan:
SS is a worthwhile method for operational improvement if applied well, as I tried to emphasize in my post.
You identify one huge problem with it applied “materially reduce our fiscal deficit.”. The other is that the big drivers of this deficit are political disagreements not amenable to technical resolution – what some call “waste” other call “lunch and dinner.”
— Jim Manzi · Nov 24, 04:43 PM · #
Jim,
I’m well aware of your management background at Lotus and elsewhere. I myself have worked for nothing but very large companies. I would suggest that if you think that this is what people “hear at work every day”, then you are considerably more disconnected from the day of everyone below-corner-office than you think. Simply saying that you have been in management at a Fortune 1000 company does not entitle one to say that they are clued in to what people talk about. Management disconnect is so commonly understood as to be trite. A cartoon like Dilbert (which you cited, to be fair) traditionally finds its targets from among universally understood managerial buffoonery (emphasis on the phrase “universally understood”). Once something like Six Sigma makes it to Dilbert, it will have been a meme for a long time.
Six Sigma, and TQM, and all the rest are almost always instituted by management who share that disconnect with those they manage. The very fact that it has caught on ANYWHERE is evidence of the disconnect, as is the fact that companies will abandon it in practice (albeit still paying lip service) more often than not. The only worthwhile circumstances in which it is used are those companies which have key processes which rely on perfect (or perfectable) repetitive activities, such as precision manufacturing, and those are but a small percentage of implementations. Elsewhere, Six Sigma et al are little more than attempts by business leaders to try to sound smart – like Mr. Gingrich.
And yes, with the greatest respect I do see a difference between what I wrote and what you wrote. My points try to focus on how Mr. Gingrich perceives himself, as opposed to how people see him (although I do include that as a lesser element).
PS: Don’t take this criticism as a lack of appreciation. While I may not agree with everything you say, your thoughtful approach is appreciated greatly.
— Gerald · Nov 24, 07:40 PM · #
Lean Six Sigma, per se, tends to be much more effective at cleaning up manufacturing operations than cleaning up service operations. The former tend to be highly standardized or at least condusive to standardization, while the latter are inherently more variable.
The problem oif course is that most government work is service work. Policing, firefighting, healthcare, administration – all are service work.
Its not that Lean Six Sigman can;t yield any fruit in apllication to service work. But the step-change transformation in performation you get from applying these disciplines to a manufacturing operation are typically not achievable for service work.
In general, you get better results in improving the performance of service work by moving in the opposite direction – by empowering front line service providers to be solve root problems. But of the problem here is that while doing this properly typically makes service operations much more effective, doing it in a half-a$$ manner typically makes service operations even more inefficient.
Its a hard problem to solve. Gingrich, as a giuy who has read a lot of book but never actually, you know, RUN anything, likely misses this muance.
— sd · Nov 24, 10:19 PM · #
Gerald,
fair enough, and sorry if my reply came across the wrong way. I’m not, btw, the guy who worked at Lotus, although many people have thought that.
Sd:
Exactly my experience.
— Jim Manzi · Nov 25, 12:29 AM · #
WHich rasies an actual question — are you related to “the” Jim Manzi? It’s been obvious you ain’t the same guy, but…
— Kieselguhr Kid · Nov 26, 01:14 AM · #
“I’m well aware of your management background at Lotus and elsewhere.”
My first email to Jim lamented how Microsoft Excel had defeated his awesome Lotus 1-2-3 3.0.
— Steve Sailer · Nov 26, 09:58 AM · #