Six Sigma stands at a crossroads. It’s the same crossroads that many other industries have navigated. Do you remember when computers entered the mainstream of business?

Only twenty-or-so years ago, all business computing capability resided in the hands of programming and IT specialists. If you needed any computational or data power to perform your business function, you were referred to the computer department. They queued your request and later dispensed the results—a report, an analysis, a data query. The methods and tools of their craft remained mysterious to most. Yet their expertise in the arcane enabled the critical functions of business.

But inevitably the computing industry, and its clientele, matured: the monolithic hardware-software providers started to have to compete with system integrators who offered tailored, commodity-based solutions; the personal computer began to distribute some computing power—formerly contained only in mainframes—to individuals; graphical user interfaces replaced the command prompt and blinking cursor; and application software began to bridge the gulf between the non-expert user and the mysterious computer infrastructure.

This was a tumultuous—and exciting—time. The computing old guard dug in, touting their established architectures and approaches as the only viable way to continue. They’d been successful, hadn’t they? But the business world had moved on. The potential of every professional accessing the computing power and information they needed was liberating and enabling. It unlocked level upon level of effectiveness and efficiency improvement. And in short order, the DECs and Wangs and IBMs faded or adapted under the maturing requirements of business. The classic “1984″ Super Bowl ad from Apple Computer became an icon of this wonderful transformation.

Today, Six Sigma is poised for similar evolution and improvement. The original providers of Six Sigma and the early corporate adopters developed an approach that was successful for them. They pulled employees out of their regular assignments and trained them to be “black belt” technical experts. These then became an exclusive force of full-time specialists, roaming their companies, being the ones responsible for finding and fixing problems. In all but the largest companies, however, this approach was and is… unapproachable. Pulling valuable employees out of these leanly staffed organizations disrupts and devastates core business operations. Also, Six Sigma expert training is prohibitively expensive because its technical content is bloated compared to the 95% of problems encountered. (More on content creep some other time!) As the demand and need for Six Sigma expand into more industries and into the center-of-mass of small-medium businesses, the original model just becomes increasingly untenable.

Looking back at how the computer industry matured gives a glimpse of the path ahead for six sigma. Rather than continuing to keep all computing expertise within an expert “caste”, businesses began to train their key employees to utilize these emerging computing options. Later, entire staffs gained basic computer capabilities. Throughout all this, the adoption of the personal computer and the development of application software allowed non-experts to do more and more of what before only the experts could do. Interestingly, the specialized experts never disappeared. Instead they were freed to advance projects that tapped their technical potential.Six Sigma is now heading into similar transformations.

As always happens, the old guard seems largely unable to escape their scripted role: we’re warned that variation from the original Six Sigma format or content will dilute its effect; the same old wine is poured into new bottles, called, “next generation”, “total performance”, and “ultimate integration”; existing awareness courses are pawned off as meeting the demand for basic skills training. And, just like with the computer industry, these fits of turbulence will give way to the enduring future of Six Sigma—a future that lies in making Six Sigma common, in enabling as many people as possible to extemporaneously improve their work through its tools and methods. Basic Six Sigma skills training will be accomplished with little or no disruption. Six Sigma capabilities and functionality will be integrated directly into traditional business software and applications. And escalation paths to projects and experts will be established to match the right approach and technical skillset with the problem at hand.

Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, recognizes and eloquently endorses the pending transformation: “Six Sigma has become a key enabling skill of the new Knowledge Workers of the next generation… Six Sigma empowers you to effect remarkable change, no matter your position in your organization. The maturing world has transformed the previously exclusive, academic knowledge of Six Sigma into must-have best practices for everyone wishing to advance and contribute. In a knowledge economy where 70 to 80 percent of the value added to goods and services comes from knowledge work, can you imagine the results flowing from having the entire workforce Six Sigma literate?” (Six Sigma For Dummies, Wiley, 2005)

I, too, see a bright future for Six Sigma—a future transformed by growth and maturation.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 11:43 am and is filed under Future of Six Sigma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.