Improvement Insights Blog

Jack Welch made Six Sigma big. Now it’s fading. How can we bring the sparkle back to Six Sigma?

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].

“When I got started in my business back in the late 90s, Jack Welch was the CEO to copy. When he got dipped in Six Sigma, guess what? Every other CEO wanted to get dipped in Six Sigma too. This is what I call the Jack Welch Effect.

“Since then, Jack retired and [CEO] went over to [Jeff] Immelt and some other people, and now GE has fallen into some disarray, (not necessarily because of Six Sigma, I think because they let go of some of that), but other forces in the world were pushing them. What happened was that Jack Welch effect that was boosting Six Sigma faded away, so now what we need to do is start creating results. If we start to create results, guess what? Leadership will notice and guess what? We’ll get more money, we’ll get more people trained, we’ll get more and more success.

“So this is what I think we have to do now, is we have to create our own improvement success. You know, create the energy that people understand: that this stuff can save time, save money, save lives. It’s a very powerful tool set to solve most of the problems facing any company or industry today.

“So that’s my Improvement Insight for this week: Start creating results. Let’s create a hassle-free America; hassle free healthcare. Let’s go out and improve something this week.”