All entries for Wednesday 14 November 2012
November 14, 2012
Excellence through Positive Mental Attitude (PMA)
While writing my PMA I was thinking why each model, concept or theory states the importance of continuous improvement, but none of them (even genious Deming) mention the positive attitude, which is the main driver to any improvement.
If we look closer on the nature of improvement, we can find that its motive apears when we have the right mental attitude, other words, when we hope and believe into positive outcomes of our actions (improvement), so after having strong belief we usualy take initiatives to make this our dreams/belief happen. So, why neither Deming's SoPK nor Organizational Learning mention the Positive Mental Attitude, because as I understud this is the starting point of any journey.
If I were CEO of some big company, I would definitely started with the Positive Mental Attitude deployment which later could enable my employees to implement their ideas and folllow continuous improvement.
Attitude means a lot
Six Sigma is realy good in translating all brought changes and improvements in cash$$$. However, it has a gap in phsycology. This can be the reason why 6Sigma sometimes faces the resistance from employees. To deploy something, managers have to change their employees attitude first. But is it the only way how it goes?
To answer this question I will use ASK approach, which involves attitude, skills and knowledge. The main idea of this approach is that to bring any change into the process, you have to first change people's attitude, then new attitude will help to develop skils though practice and while developping skills the knowlege will apear. If we consider Six Sigma, it starts from oposite direction. When the head of the company decides to implemement six sigma, he ask external companies to train company's employees (provide them knowledge), than those employees go straight to implement six sigma (by taking actions they develo skills). But, than, where is the change in attitude??? Because if we don't change attitude we can apply six sigma, but we won't believe that it will actually work.
So, change your attitude first and you will see that other changes come straight after.