DeFeo Presents “Beyond Six Sigma” Strategies for Sustainable Change
at AMA Current Issues Breakfast Briefing

Why do so many organizations launch ambitious performance improvement initiatives only to find that after an initial period of success, the results prove unsustainable? Joseph A. DeFeo, president and CEO of the Juran Institute, posed that question—and provided some practical answers—to a group of senior executives from a wide range of industries at an AMA Current Issues Breakfast Briefing at AMA’s New York Executive Conference Center on May 20, 2004.

DeFeo outlined six chief impediments to sustainable positive results:

• De-emphasis on winning
• Change in leadership
• Breakdown in infrastructure
• Boredom with an initiative
• Mergers/acquisitions
• Macroeconomic events

To sustain performance improvements, DeFeo explained, an organization must tie all of its strategies to the needs of its customers. As the co-author of the Juran Institute’s book Six Sigma: Breakthrough and Beyond, DeFeo recommended a Six Sigma approach, where performance improvements are achieved by managing the quality of a business’s products, services and processes.

However, today’s organizations must go beyond the principles of Six Sigma to succeed. They must continually acknowledge and adapt to the changing needs of society, customers, shareholders and regulators and find ways to reduce costs while simultaneously increasing quality and customer satisfaction. Moreover, they must acknowledge that many of the tools and techniques they used to improve performance in the past may not be relevant today.

What is needed for effective execution of change strategy?

• Commitment and involvement of senior executives
• Good strategic and tactical plans
• Use of the right methodologies and tools
• Full-time “black belt” change agents
• Understanding that improvement happens “project by project”
• Focus on the customer, with an eye towards the bottom line
• Measurement and reward systems to compensate for changes

DeFeo left his AMA audience with these final words of advice: “The survival of your organization depends upon its ability to quickly detect and react to threats and opportunities that present themselves from within and from outside. That’s called adaptability. Every company needs to create breakthroughs in adaptability if it wants to successfully sustain meaningful, positive change.”

If you’d like to learn more about improving organizational performance, consider these AMA seminars:

• A Six Sigma Approach to Achieving Project Management Quality
• Performance Measures for Your Business: How to Determine and Measure What Really Counts