Improvement Insights Blog
Middle Out, not Top Down
Should you implement Six Sigma top down or middle out? HBR says:
“I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“If you know anything about Six Sigma, everybody’s always talking about “top-down” and… you know… blah blah blah blah blah… But there was a very interesting article in a recent issue of Harvard Business Review and it found some interesting things: “Only 12% of major change efforts produce lasting results…” … produce lasting results. I’ve seen a lot of data here and there, but most Six Sigma programs do not survive more than about three years. They just don’t deliver lasting results. That’s… what?!? So if we have less than a one Sigma success rate in implementing Six Sigma, that’s pretty bad.
“He goes on to suggest that we need to drive change from the middle out, not top-down… from the middle out. I’ve often said there are these centers of influence in the middle: the people that are always there whether leadership changes or not. These are the people who know everybody and know how everything works. These people can lead the change, whatever the change is. (Six Sigma was one of those changes, by the way.) But these people can lead it and they’re connected through spokes to all the other change agents in the organization, and so they have a lot more influence on whether things stick or not. They recommend a middle-out approach.
“Top-down solutions tend to be superficial or at least short-lived.”
“Most transformation programs promise breakthrough results, but most never realize them.”
“Successful ones adopt an approach that fundamentally differs from the approach at other companies.”
“This is a thought, right? We want to approach this differently, right? Let’s start making improvements. Use the Agile Process Improvement Guide to get results in a day or two. Start doing it now. You know, if Harvard Business Review tells you that top-down doesn’t work most of the time and middle-out does, maybe we ought to listen to the people who study this all the dang time.
“So that’s my Improvement Insight. Let’s go out and improve something this week, especially how we implement Six Sigma, and start from that middle out so we get transformation that sticks. Leadership will figure it out, right? They’ll come on board, but if you try and do it top-down you may fail.
“That’s my Improvement Insight. Let’s change how we Implement Six Sigma to ensure that it succeeds.”
