Like Riding A Bike
Department
Management and Entrepreneurship
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-2010
Abstract
Executives have a propensity to spend inordinate amounts of time, money and energy going from one process improvement program to another while still showing dismal improvement in performance. Old ideas are sold in new bottles, and executives often buy those ideas thinking they are different, taking their companies through a roller coaster ride of process improvement programs. The chances are that in the last two decades your company has gone through a round of total quality management, just-in-time, or re-engineering and is now, perhaps, going through (or just completed) Six Sigma implementation. A stunning number of process improvement programs fail because executives do not apply their childhood experiences of learning to ride a bike.