Six Sigma 'killed' innovation in 3M
Summary: Firms must define innovation and how it fits into the company's objectives. They should then provide the right support and avoid rigid processes hindering the creative process, says former 3M exec behind the Post-It note.
Loading... Please wait.Post-It notes and facemasks are among some of the trademark products from 3M--a company which prides itself in innovation. In fact, it is ranked the world's third-most innovative company, after Google and Apple.
'15 percent time'
3M employees are allowed to use 15 percent of their time to pursue their own research outside their usual course of work.
That has been how many of its key products have come to light.
Youngbae Park, head of 3M's Singapore R&D center, said the program has evolved to becoming a culture at the company such that no one really "counts" the time spent on the program.
Innovation has become too much of a "buzzword", noted Geoff Nicholson, 3M ambassador, and former vice president for international technical operations. Nicholson is also widely regarded as the "father" of the Post-It note initiative.
Companies first need to define innovation and how it fits into their business plans, then provide the resources to support it, explained Nicholson, who was speaking at a recent media tour of 3M's research and development facility in Singapore.
"It is important to provide the leadership and then people know that they can practise innovation. That is part of the problem, people are afraid of failure. Maybe it's because of 'losing face' in an Asian society, but the fact of the matter is, failure is not failure. I would rather call it a learning experience," he said.
The 3M ambassador also outlined pitfalls companies should avoid in order not to stifle creativity:
- Asking for a 5-year plan
- Insisting people go through all levels with a new idea
- Being control-conscious
- Expressing criticism and withholding praise
- Being suspicious of every idea that originates below you
- Making a decision to reorganize in secret and maximize surprise
Rigid process a significant roadblock
The lack of freedom, or too strict a process, is also a significant roadblock, such as the Six Sigma process.
Six Sigma was popularized in the late 1990's and introduced into 3M by former CEO James McNerney, a former GE executive. It involves a set of process tools designed to eliminate production defects and wastage, and raise efficiency.
"The Six Sigma process killed innovation at 3M," said Nicholson. "Initially what would happen in 3M with Six Sigma people, they would say they need a five-year business plan for [a new idea]. Come on, we don't know yet because we don't know how it works, we don't know how many customers [will take it up], we haven't taken it out to the customer yet."
However, the 3M ambassador pointed out he had nothing against the Six Sigma, but felt it was not ideal for the creative process. "I met the guy who in fact put Six Sigma together and I said to him, 'What about innovation? Because at 3M right now we are having problems--we're being asked about Six Sigma and trying to utilize it in the creative stage'. He said it was never designed for that, it was designed for manufacturing when starting to scale up a product," said Nicholson.
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Talkback
Six-Sigma Killed 3M Innovation
The management staff that implemented six Sigma killed 3M Innovation by NOT UNDERSTANDING what six Sigma is and LACKING the INITIATIVE to study and understand the concept.
Most likely the management staff was too cowardly to be critical of the consultants plan when presented to the executive level since the managers didn't understand six Sigma in the first place.
Sadly, too many executives use consultants as genuine experts, which COST a LOT of money that the executive can not say was a waste, so they fumble through.
I have used six Sigma techniques in new product design for over 15 years with great success.
... and I can spin gold out of hay.
Agree - six sigma is a TOOL, and requires intelligence...
That's the GE way
Common Sense
The problem with common sense is
Process over innovation
It is necessary to have products go through a "process" so that no legal steps are missed and so that the thousands of employees around he world are in on the act so that mistakes are not made. Yes that does bump up against the free-wheeling system that was previously used to innovate our way into the "thousand pound gorilla" position in the US market, literally driving all of our competitors out of business.
The "P" word, planning does become very important when the VP of sales can't just walk down the hall and get word that a feature was added that he should tell his sales force about or the production supervisor doesn't react well to a change in his manufacturing procedure for a product. Today's scalability challenge is to let the innovation engine crank out the future with exceptional people without spoiling the launches for those who absolutely depend upon every t crossed and i dotted by a certain date.
If top management insists and won't give any funds without a protracted, politically-charged approval and budget process, you have two choices for success -- cheat, or update your resume when somebody more agile steals your customers and market.
But the six bullet points on actions to avoid are eerily familiar.
To be honest, I am disappointed with this flavor of the 3M culture -- I always held them up as the shining example of innovative processes with their "intraprenurial" flavor that among other things, yielded Post It Notes.
Yet another story of tool mis-use
Dangers of cargo cult process selection
The fact is, any process only solves a finite set of problems for any particular company. They also create a set of problems too. Simply taking something that worked for a set of problems in one area and expecting it to perform in another without examining why it worked, is the definition of a cargo-cult. What good managers need to do, is to understand what needs fixing, who the employees are who 'need' process and how these employees react to process. Then you must match that to known processes to find something that 'helps'.
Finally, managers need to 'understand' a process before they adopt it. Most often, processes have inter-related tradeoffs that aren't immediately obvious. The trade-off in scrum's standup meeting, is in return for meeting daily, the team of employees get to plan amongst themselves. The purpose isn't to deliver status, but to coordinate effort in tackling a known set of problems. The observation of this meeting, and it effects on the planning tracking mechanism (task board), indicates status as a side effect. This was designed into Scrum. Managers implementing Scrum without understanding this, will take over these meetings, turn them into status meetings, drag the time to half an hour or longer, and cause numerous blogs and articles to be written on how scrum sucks.
...And that is the reason why Six Sigma was originally...
You can't productionise Inovation
Introducing this was a moronic thing to do.
6S is squeezing your manufacturing and business processes to improve what they produce, and the quality of it. Innovation has already done the blue sky thinking, devised, propotyped and market researched the product, decided it is a goer- and into manufacturing - make it, make it work and make it efficiently, where 6S comes in.
Business School Management-speak. Fail.
It's
Amen
Then the founder of the corporation was pushed out by the Wall Street types--a glorified set of accountants. These clowns had no idea what our groups and our markets were about, but they knew how to write down numbers in a spreadsheet. They could quantify everything and they could qualify nothing. Six Sigma was one of those things they forced down our throats, having read about it in a book somewhere. Time to market stretched and stretched, products became less innovative and suited to task. Customers found other places to go, but the accountants continued to pat themselves on the back because they had brought order to chaos. The sales losses were hung on engineers, marketers, customers--every place but where they belonged.
Six Sigma may be good for something, but you're not going to get any praise from me. In the hands of idiots, it destroyed a company.