Tom’s boss called him to his office. “You’re going to have to cut costs by 20 times your annual salary.” He blurted. “If you don’t make target every year, your head is on the chopping block.”
“What the f***!” Tom reeled.
As if reading Tom’s mind, he continued: “Everyone is in the same boat, Tom. Me, the engineers, accounting, everyone. It comes from the top. Jack Welch himself.”
“Pigs will fly.” Tom muttered under his breath.
The mentalist went on: “Don’t worry. You’ll all be going to do a course that will tell you how to make your cost savings targets.”
“A course!? What, Oprah, Deepak Chopra?” Tom couldn’t help himself.
“No, a man called Mikel Harry”.
“Never heard of him. Has anyone checked the clown out?”
“Hopefully someone has. Jack isn’t a man to think with his gut.” He said ironically.
“So what’s this magical course?” Tom quizzed.
“Yes Harry says it is mystical and mysterious. It teaches you how to have 3.4 defects”.
“3.4 holes in the head more likely.” I must learn to control myself thought Tom. “Let me investigate”.
“There’s no point. Jack said Harry was a madman and no one understood what he was talking about but Jack handed over an initial $1,000,000,000 to him anyway. Jack now wants his pound of flesh.” Said Tom’s boss, ending the meeting.
“$1,400,000pa cost cutting, times 3 hundred thousand employees. That’s a lot more than saving on paper clips. It means lots of cutting corners. I could get our department sacked to save a few dollars but I’m sure they’d all be thinking the same thing about me. Maybe I should chat with my mates in accounting about faking it ...” Tom mused.
“Where’s my old resume anyway?” Tom wondered.
Unsurprisingly, Jack never did get his promised $400B per annum worth of cost cutting from Harry’s Scam. He didn’t even come close, with less than 1% of that claimed over 3 years. His costs were astronomical, with an estimated overall LOSS from his Six Sigma disaster, of $23B. Jack did get the predictable massive internal data fraud, a company in tatters, and 110,000 families without an income. He was richly rewarded with a $417M golden parachute.
If Jack had thought with his head instead of “straight from the gut”, he might have seen through Harry’s Scam. Simply asking Harry why he faked his bio or why the pillar of his Six Sigma was based on the height of a stack of discs, would have been enough for him to unravel.
Jack was replaced by Immelt in 2001. Immelt said of his new strategy, “it makes a shitload more sense than Six Sigma did”. What wouldn’t?
Would you fake cost savings from a farce, to save your job? A survey showed that almost half belted bunnies claimed they would not fake it.
Six Sigma’s creator said: “Six Sigma champions are con men. All you have is smoke and mirrors.” He called his Six Sigma “a snow job”. Hundreds of dim witted managers still follow in Jack’s footsteps and drink the snake oil from con men.
by Dr Tony Burns BE (Hon 1) PhD (Chem Eng)