Comments on: If Six Sigma Drains Employees’ Creativity, This Business Practice Has it Beat

By: nivra etrebac

nivra etrebac — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 03:11:08 +0000

Thanks for the clarification. Taylorism did provided context on how to meet the demands of our times. But it did not think far enough that it would be counter-productive too soon. There is no management approach that fits all business conditions but what is robust enough to meet all challenges in business is to continue to celebrate , harness and unleash human creativity in a respectful manner. This is even true to all human activity including surviving in a violent environments ( war ). So whatever we could come-up with to improve our business…”lets think that the end does not justify the means”..we are human beings not widgets.

By: Donna

Donna — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 13:56:18 +0000

Interesting last paragraph. We recently hired a person who has dubbed himself “the change agent” who is trying to use 6 sigma/Lean ideas to enforce Taylorism [measuring everything every step, second, this and that. This is the business practice that reduces humans to operators that only push widgets] …. Of course the organization is resisting which only causes hiim to fight even harder for his ideas. I knew he was disregarding people’s experience and intelligence, but didn’t make the connection to Taylorism until your article. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

By: Adam Ramshaw

Adam Ramshaw — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 23:02:38 +0000

Pete,

Thanks for great and in-depth post. You’ve saved me an hour of writing this morning.

I’m not sure if Andrew Smart was just doing “a controversial post” to gather some inbound links or really believed some of this stuff but either way you’ve added some sense to the process! (There’s that word “process” again.)

Adam Ramshaw