Integrating Lean Six Sigma and High-Performance Organizations: Leading the Charge Toward Dramatic, Rapid, and Sustainable Improvement

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Summary: Good leadership advice for both manufacturing and service
Review: I was pleased to find a leadership book for Lean Six Sigma that addresses both manufacturing and transactional improvement so I didn't have to buy two different leadership books as is necessary with detailed improvement tools for each. With shop floor and office examples from widely diverse industries like electronics assembly, pharmaceutical, retailing, environmental services, government, and financial services, this book presents ideas on how to lead the improvement of all kinds of processes. I was a bit surprised to see that many of the cases from other industries had direct applicability to my industry. I found the detailed advice on setting up an executive committee that meets regularly to evaluate the progress of all improvement projects to be especially useful. And by providing sample questions that executives can ask, the book helps executives ensure that improvement teams are proceeding in the right direction without having executives engaged in micro-managing.

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Summary: At last! A book for both hard and soft aspects of Six Sigma
Review: Many books present the hard tools of Six Sigma. Many books present how to do change manageemnt, or the "soft side" of continuous improvement projects. This is the first book I've seen that provides leaders with a clear set of principles and a general approach for integrating hard and soft aspects of Six Sigma to achieve dramatic, sustainable results. The first third of the book presents concepts on Lean, Six Sigma, and High Performance Organizations. The final two-thirds of the book is organized according to the implementation stages of an enterprise-wide Six Sigma project. For each stage the book provides pragmatic tips on topics such as stage outputs, common traps, key large goup meetings, leader "To Do" checklists, counterintuitive elements, and leadership tools. In addition to the book's comprehensive coverage of leadership issues for large-scale process improvement, there's also an extensive reference section in the back that points leaders to other books and web-sites containing valuable leadership tips.

Readers should be aware that this book does not delve into detailed statistical tools that improvement teams use. Rather, the book focuses on leadership aspects so I would recommend another book like one of Breyfogle's for people interested in "hard tools" of Six Sigma.

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Summary: Refreshing. A book that doesn¿t just exhort "one right way"
Review: Most books I've seen on the topics of Lean, Six Sigma, and culture change suggest a one-size-fits all approach that is detailed by the author(s) in their specific book. Usually they are plugging one methodology that supposedly has universal application across all industries and all sized companies. Not so with this book.

This book, written for leaders, provides a succinct array of principles, general approach templates, and common traps for each stage of an improvement process. Rather than advocating detailed, sequential steps to take, the book offers up proven best practices and a general flow that leaders may, or may not apply based on their specific organizational circumstances. Another book I highly recommend that offers alternative approaches to improvement is Peter Pande's book What Is Six Sigma? A fixed, rigid improvement approach that is not customized to accommodate an organization's unique characteristics is doomed to expensive failure, and these two books get that concept.