It has happened to all of us. We are inspired by a compelling idea that will drive gains in quality, only to have our bubble burst by peers that don’t share our enthusiasm. “It’ll never work,” suggests one colleague. “Now is not a good time,” says your supervisor. If now is not a good time for quality gains, when is such a time going to present itself? Improving quality is hard because anything new is hard, but you need not resign yourself to the status quo—it’s all in the approach.
I’ve been involved in building quality improvement programs for more than 30 years. A study we conducted of 150 projects over a 10-year period in 10 different organizations demonstrated an ROI of 7-to-1. Most of these projects leveraged lean or Six Sigma principles. Gaining traction for something as intimidating as Six Sigma taught me a lot about people and how they react to change.