Does ‘doing better’ prevent you from ‘doing different?’
This article in Business Week focuses on 3M’s internal struggle between Lean Six Sigma (LSS) - a continuous improvement program which utilizes rigorous statistical analysis - and breakthrough innovation practices. Money quote:
Efficiency programs such as Six Sigma are designed to identify problems in work processes—and then use rigorous measurement to reduce variation and eliminate defects. When these types of initiatives become ingrained in a company’s culture, as they did at 3M, creativity can easily get squelched. After all, a breakthrough innovation is something that challenges existing procedures and norms. “Invention is by its very nature a disorderly process,” says current CEO George Buckley, who has dialed back many of McNerney’s initiatives. “You can’t put a Six Sigma process into that area and say, well, I’m getting behind on invention, so I’m going to schedule myself for three good ideas on Wednesday and two on Friday. That’s not how creativity works.”
The central issue seems to be: ‘we can either spend our time wringing every last bit of efficiency and effectiveness out of our current processes and product lines, or we can innovate new products. Pick one.’ Because the processes for breakthrough innovation are viewed by LSS analysis as wasteful, since it takes a lot of idea generation to come up with one successful revolutionary product.
Coincidentally, I have been offered the opportunity of becoming a LSS Black Belt. I have been on the fence because I don’t think LSS processes play to my creative style. There are many, though, who gravitate to the detailed statistical analysis required to implement LSS. Adaptors would eat up LSS. Innovators would not. And I think this article reflects that. The biggest weakness of LSS is that is that it doesn’t create, it improves. Give LSS a problem that requires novel creativity and you’ll be disappointed. Worse, aim LSS at the ideation process and render it totally ineffective.
I think 3M is allowing the adaptors to bog down the innovators with LSS. If, instead, they left the innovators alone to concentrate on breakthroughs and let the adaptors focus on making improvements, everyone would be a lot happier. Let’s divide a new product’s life cycle up into two parts - 1) novelty and 2) ubiquity. During the novelty phase, there are no competitors since the product is unique. As time goes on, others copy the product and improve upon it. LSS is better suited for the ubiquity phase, since to stay competitive the once-novel product, and the processes that manufacture and distribute it, must be improved. And there’s no reason why this couldn’t involve two totally different sets of people - innovators to come up with new products, and adaptors to perform LSS later in the process. Just keep them out of one another’s hair.
Comments
3 Responses to “Does ‘doing better’ prevent you from ‘doing different?’”
Leave a Reply
[...] wasn’t sure where I was headed - now my thinking has crystalized. It all started with the Business Week article regarding the effect of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) on 3M’s innovation processe… Something about the 3M situation bothered me. After I wrote about the Institute for Systems [...]
[...] But the real head-scratcher for me is No. 7 - 3M. How can BusinessWeek name them the No. 7 most innovative company in the world, when they just got through telling us in another article that 3M can’t innovate effectively anymore. [...]
Six sigma is not about constraining processes that should have flexibility, at least not if it is applied well. I think people often confuse bad management that uses the name six sigma with innate weaknesses in six sigma. More of my thoughts on six sigma and innovation.