I kid you not -- my first boss would be the first to send in a negative letter to the editor, were he to read this article (so you don't die out of curiosity, the second one would be from my second boss, and so on …).
My corporate life has been peppered with bosses ecclesiastically striving for perfection, drowning me in their one-minded objective to follow philosophies such as zero defects, Kaizen, lean manufacturing, agile management, scrum, total quality management, design thinking, Kanban, theory of constraints, holacracy (yeah, search it), Six Sigma and more.
From my first day, I was shoved hard to fanatically follow the philosophy of giving better than my best, ensuring that all processes followed Six Sigma standards, without fail. It took me the better part of the first week to understand what in heavens was Six Sigma.
For the simplistically inclined, Six Sigma (first introduced by Motorola in the 1980s) is a quality management methodology that aims to improve the quality of products or services produced by a corporation by reducing variability and eliminating defects or errors. The goal is to achieve a level of quality where the number of defects is less than 3.4 per million opportunities.
How does this translate into performance measures? As an example, if a delivery company follows Six Sigma, they could be possibly guaranteeing that they would make less than 3.4 defective deliveries in 1,000,000 such deliveries. In an ATM machine, it could mean less than 3.4 mistakes in 1,000,000 note disbursals. In employee productivity (say a call centre), it could mean less than 3.4 dissatisfied customers in one million calls received.
Well, if you're doing a double-take, let me share that the corporate world is rife with Fortune 500 companies assertively following this domineering axiom. GE, Ford, Caterpillar, 3M, Boeing, Amazon, Johnson & Johnson, Honeywell … you name it and they have it.
Even across the border, the Mumbai Dabbawalas are a screaming example. This cooperative-driven enterprise delivers lunch boxes to various corporate personnel across Mumbai during lunch hours -- working classes travel to office in jam-packed public transport, where the less hand baggage they have, the better; so this service comes as a boon.
In 2010, Harvard Business School published a case confirming the Mumbai Dabbawalas as having a “6 Sigma equivalent or better” service delivery standard.
But know what? Two PhDs and three jobs later, I have realized that the best sounding board to test out all these theories is not the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, but the supercritical food provider at home [This is the last time I am allowed to take my mom's example. She called me after my last article with a dire threat; I don't want to talk about it; but you can read her letter to the editor next week to get the drift].
Cutting to the chase, try implementing any of the abovementioned philosophies at home -- and see the love and affection you get from one and all in your household …
You see, if striving for absolute excellence doesn't work at home, why do you think it will work at the workplace? Before you start protesting, what then was all that guru-speak about treating our employees and our office like our family?
What the science says today
To be clear, contemporary and empirical research has started rejecting such management philosophies that tend to overwork corporations and people beyond their average capacity. Burn out, anxiety, work-life balance issues, complaints about low pay, low retention and high turnover rates of workers … these are possibly becoming hallmarks of corporations whiplashing generations into building our new-age pyramids.
A study by Schroeder and Linderman (2010) found that there were no significant long-term benefits on implementing Six Sigma -- this was because the high cost of implementation outweighed the cost savings achieved by eliminating defects.
Atuahene-Gima and Li (2010) showed that Six Sigma implementation was not associated with significant improvements in market value or financial performance of corporations. They suggested that other factors, such as innovation and brand equity, may be more important in determining a company's success.
Chow-Chua, Goh, and Boon (2013) found that Six Sigma implementation was associated with a decrease in employee satisfaction, as it often led to increased workloads and job stress.
Kucukusta and Alpkan (2011) showed that Six Sigma implementation was not effective in improving overall customer satisfaction. This was because the focus on reducing defects did not necessarily address the broader needs and expectations of customers.
Ayhan, Eryigit, and Sumer (2015) have even argued that Six Sigma is not compatible with sustainability principles, as it often led to a focus on short-term cost savings rather than long-term environmental and social impact.
Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, Scotland, Spain… are countries that are ranked amongst the topmost in the World Happiness Report 2021. Why?
Swedish cities have pushed for and implemented widely six-hour workdays instead of the standard eight hours, with no reduction in pay. In 2019, Iceland tested a four-day workweek with a group of public sector workers, and the trial was found to be successful in improving work-life balance and productivity.
In 2020, the Finnish government launched a four-day work week drive instead of five, with no reduction in pay. In 2021, Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, announced plans to launch a trial of a four-day workweek in the public sector. In 2021, Spain introduced a pilot program in which companies could opt to reduce their workweek to 32 hours with no reduction in pay.
In conclusion, it's perchance time for us leaders to believe less in the search for excellence, or going from good to great, and more in the power of average performance and even Wu Wei (read this up too please; I am out of word count).
And if you think you want better food at home, keep your mouth shut, finish the food, smile and watch TV. That's it!
Dr Sandeep Ananthanarayanan, alumnus of IIM Calcutta and University of Buckingham, is the Group Strategy Director of Best Holdings, teaches Strategic Management at North South University and takes M&A sessions at IBA. He is also the QMSC Board member at Bureau of Indian Standards, Government of India.