Sick Sigma?

A must read is Business Week from June 11, 2007. It's all about the adverse impact of Six Sigma on the renowned innovative culture at 3M. In a nutshell, when measurement and metrics are paramount, they begin to drive behavior focused not on innovation, but that which best optimizes what is being measured. It is an example of "the scientific effect" gone Frankenstein.

Find a copy and read it. Some gems:

"[4 1/2 years after GE & Six Sigma trained James McNerney departs] abruptly ... his successors face the challenging question: whether the relentless emphasis on efficiency had made 3M a less creative company."

"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 [his predecessor'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."

" ... Once bloated U.S. manufacturers have shaped up and become profitable global competitors ... [so now] the onus shifts to growth and innovation, especially in today's idea-based, design-obsessed economy. While process excellence demands precision, consistency, and repetition, innovation calls for variation, failure, and serendipity."

"Six Sigma is plainly a euphemism for cost cutting."

Of Bob Nardelli of Home Depot, "Facts are friendly was a favorite mantra of his ... The bottom line of Nardelli's tenure: Profitability soared, but worker morale drooped, as so did consumer sentiment. Home Depot dropped from first to worst."

"The term [Six Sigma] gives me an allergic reaction."

Art Fry -- developer of Post-It Notes: " Innovation is a numbers game . You have to go through 5,000-6,000 raw ideas to find one successful business." -- "Six Sigma would ask -- why not eliminate all that waste and just come up with the right idea the first time?" [I think some consultants like 'DH' might like this attitude -- or pander to this C-Level bias to sell his pricey ideation services, but I think this sucks.]

Okay, I'm finished. Please read the article and share it with your clients, colleagues and bosses. It's a must.

Doug Stevenson

The Innovise Guys

First Anniversary Celebration!

Hey! Welcome to The Innovise Guys Blog! In honor of our first anniversary, we are making a limited number of CDs of our first year of podcasts available, as quantities permit, on a first-come, first-serve basis. Just post your request here and include your snail mail address. We should have the CDs out before the end of the month. Thanks for your interest ... and Best Regards! The Innovise Guys
podcast: http://dainnoviseguys.libsyn.com/

The Innovise Guys First Blog Entry: Origins

"Life is too important to be taken seriously." Oscar Wilde

I first met Gregg Fraley in his role as head of the Chicago Chapter of the Creative Education Foundation (CEF). Gregg was leading a public session on a creativity-related topic in observance of "Creativity Week", scheduled annually in April around the birthday of creative juggernaut Leonardo da Vinci. (Shout out to Creativity Week founder Marci Segal.) For several years, we collaborated on local CEF events, volunteered for community outreach projects, interacted at the annual Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) and when our schedules permitted, engaged in creative goofing off.

In late 2005, Gregg called me and suggested that we join forces in creating a public workshop on creativity for which we would enlighten the unenlightened, inspire the uninspired, shock the complacent, mock ourselves and maybe make some cash money while we were at it. As we played with ideas for the seminar, we searched for ways to provide added value that would be relatively unique. As we were both former stand-up comedians and trained improvisational actors, we began to play with pedagogical schemes that would combine what we knew of applied creativity -- mostly CPS (Osborn-Parnes) and improvisation, largely inspired by Viola Spolin, her son Paul Sills, and other adherents as Keith Johnstone, Bernie Solins and Del Close. Our playful collaboration back and forth resulted in the concept of "Innovisation".

As it turned out, the workshop we envisioned did not materialize just then. Instead what followed was a leap into podcasting, actually first as "Da Creativity Guys" (Inspired by Click & Clack of NPR's "The Car Guys"), then as "Da Innovise Guys" and by our third podcast, "The Innovise Guys". It has been over a year now, and our podcast continues to be one of the leading podcasts on innovation and creativity on the Internet. In the process, The Innovise Guys have also become a business consulting partnership and a traveling global road show -- with workshop and/or keynote appearances at CPSI, The Applied Improvisation Network conference, Mind Camp (Not including Gregg Fraley's keynote side trips to Great Britain & South Africa) and others scheduled for ACA, E2E, NSA, CREA in Sestri Levante - Italy and The Innovation & Creativity conference at Dublin City College ... All of this just through May of 2007.

In our first year, we've been privileged to interview a cornucopia of creative professionals and enthusiasts, workshop with countless others and had a lot of fun along the way. While many diverse topics related to creativity or innovation have earned our focus, we have an emphasis on results-driven innovation in business and organizations. In our practice, while very diverse in our offerings, our focus on our emerging and evolving specialty dubbed "Innovisation" has also placed an emphasis on fun and humor, all the while witnessing the breakthrough synergies that result from fusing time-tested CPS tool and techniques with the playful, child-based games in improvisational theater. In our workshops, as in our podcasts, we have fun, but all the while with our higher purpose in mind.

So, welcome to our adventure. We hope to make this blog a place of amusement, insight and meaningful dialogue for everyone interested in creativity and bringing forth the novel and new things that will make a difference. In the spirit of improv, we invite you to join in and promise to support your initiations and, as best we can, make you look good, "Yes, and" your ideas ... and so much more. In so doing, while we are results-driven in our work, we will reassert the primacy of play in all that we do, especially, as Wilde's quote suggests, around the most serious of challenges.

As another pundit, quintessential American humorist Mark Twain once asserted, "If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right."

While we are most often on the same page, Gregg & I have our own voice, so as we express our opinions here, we will identify ourselves, so that you know which one of us to be pissed off at ... or in the unlikely event, know to whom specifically to send the plaque for that literary or humanitarian award.

Doug Stevenson for The Innovise Guys ... March 3, 2007
podcast: http://dainnoviseguys.libsyn.com/