The Six Sigma Method And Design Of ExperimentsWritten by Peter Peterka
Six Sigma is becoming a proven approach for businesses and organizations to improve their performance. The spectrum of companies actively engaging in Six Sigma today is wide from industrials like Celanese, Caterpillar, GE, Honeywell, and 3M to service/retail organizations like Starwood Hotels, Sears, and Home Depot. Six Sigma has even started in financial industry with Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase initiating major deployments in past two years. Probably most exciting area is in public and healthcare sectors with success stories emerging from city government and John Hopkins Medical. So what is all this excitement about? Haven’t these quality tools been around for years? Is it just fact that people have strange names like Champion, Green Belt, Black Belt and for chosen few, Master Black Belt? Okay, if it is not names then what? Six Sigma’s success revolves around fundamental elements needed for any successful organization. Six Sigma starts with a vision of delivering products and services to customers with no defects from eyes of customers. For companies it is vital to deliver these products and services at a profit. Once organization has created their own vision of Six Sigma, business leaders need to define their organization’s objectives in numerical terms. These “high-level metrics,” often called big Y’s in Six Sigma, are foundation for identifying project y’s that Six Sigma Belts will execute projects on. With big Y’s in hand, business leaders called Six Sigma “Champions” breakdown these organizational level Y’s into smaller y’s a project leader called a Green Belt or Black Belt can work from. So what’s next, do business leaders take a hands-off management by objectives (MBO) approach of, “I don’t care how you do it as long as you get results!”? For Six Sigma organizations answer is a loud “NO.” Champions do care how projects are executed and have appointed highly trained Master Black Belts to assist and mentor project leaders in applying Six Sigma method to manage their projects. I believe this is key to Six Sigma’s success. In a past life I participated in a high-level meeting with executives from world leader in production of a product we all know. The purpose of meeting and visit was to evaluate a critical new product design. All of high-tech executives were dressed in dark Italian business suits complemented with gold and diamonds. I listened closely to each question these executives asked. I never once heard “how much?”, “when?” or even “why?” – every question was “by what method?.” Methodology is what Six Sigma is about.
| | Do You Want to Make More Money as a Life CoachWritten by Neil Millar
There’s a lot of coaches out there not making any money, looking for opportunities, trying to model what others are doing, networking like crazy, researching, visualizing, affirming and hoping… yes, hoping that clients show up before bailiffs. I’ve been involved in Marketing and PR and worked with and met good, bad and ugly of coaching world and can honestly say if you are not making any money there is probably a reason why that I can help you with. There is usually a very fundamental point missed. You’ve probably pitched into your business cards, letter heads, brochures and all online stuff and you’ve probably even read a few good books on marketing… And it still ain’t happening. Maybe you get a client or three, but before you can build your coaching practice to client number four, “client pack of cards” falls down and you pace office exclaiming “why oh why? Well, answer is easy. All networking, all marketing, researching, modeling and hoping, visualizing and affirming isn’t going to make a blind bit of difference unless you back up a couple of steps. What most coaches have failed to do is define themselves. They do this because they fear if they say, ‘I’m a relationship coach’ that they’ll miss out on all health and fitness, money and career business. What career business? What health and fitness, what money… It’s not exactly been pouring in has it?
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