Through impressive results, Six Sigma has proven to hundreds of organizations
around the globe that settling for “good enough” won't work. Now Peter S. Pande,
foremost expert on change leadership and coauthor of the bestselling The Six Sigma Way,
challenges leaders to seek a new standard of leadership excllence and apply principles
inspired by Six Sigma to take their companies to a new level.
The Six Sigma Leader defines successful leadership in the 21st Century.
With illustrative examples and proven strategies such as “The 10 Second
Rule” (taking that extra time to make sure you're asking the right questions to get the
information you need), the book offers techniques that link leadership improvement to real
business results, and explores
- Six Sigma Leadership: the core principles of Six Sigma leadership and the
21st-century challenges of balance and flexibility
- Change and Constancy: the role of change in leadership and how to achieve
greater return on your change portfolio
- Certainty and Doubt: the myth of leader infallibility and ways to confidently
combine facts and intuition
- Speed and Deliberateness: the benefits and perils of “speed at all costs”
and a set of key disciplines that enable greater speed
- Teamwork and Independence: the sources of organizational barriers and the
leadership practices that can eliminate them
- Now, Tomorrow and Next Year: the management of business change by different time
horizons: short-, mid-, and long-term
- Customer First…and Last: why customers are so critical, yet can also be a
detriment to long-term business health
- Bringing Six Sigma Leadership to Life: the factors likely to favor and inhibit
successful adoption of Six Sigma Leadership
Driven by a vision of great leadership, The Six Sigma Leader is an
essential resource for managers at all levels and a call to action for any leader seeking
to create a legacy of achievement.
Peter S. Pande
is president of Pivotal Resources, a global change leadership
consulting firm. He has worked with many leading companies including Cisco, GE, Starwood
Hotels, BP and adidas. He is coauthor of the bestselling The Six Sigma Way, The Six Sigma
Way Team Fieldbook, and What Is Six Sigma?, all available from McGraw-Hill.
Table of Contents
Foreword W. James McNerney, Jr. vii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: A New Standard for 21st-Century Leaders 1
Six Sigma: From Counting to Improving to Leading 3
Leaders and Six Sigma: What Now and What's Next? 6
Encouraging Words: The "10-Second Rule" 9
Roadmap for the Book 10
What Is Six Sigma Leadership? 13
Defining Six Sigma Leadership 13
Leadership Tug-of-War 15
Striking a Balance: Smart Leadership 18
And versus Or 21
Competence and Consciousness 24
A Vision for Better Leadership 28
Change and Constancy 33
Portfolio Management 34
Busy People 39
How Much Change? 41
Bigger-or Smaller-Is Not Better 44
Planning Your Portfolio 46
Executing Change 51
The Beauty of Constancy 52
Certainty and Doubt 55
The Infallible Leader 55
Leading with Facts and Data 58
Challenging Assumptions 72
Ask Doctor Science! 76
Planning forFire 82
Speed and Deliberateness 87
The Illusion of Speed 88
Speed as a Discipline 90
Defining and Interpreting Speed 98
Failing to Success 103
Everyday Speed (Lean Leadership) 108
Teamwork and Independence 115
What Is Leadership Success? 115
A Vision of Leadership Teamwork 118
Building Leadership Teamwork 126
Points of Initiation 129
Looking Up and Out 135
Bring Me Solutions! 138
Now, Tomorrow, and Next Year 141
Balancing Your Time Horizon 141
The Usual Suspects 144
Short-Term Efforts 146
Selecting the Right Change Strategy 150
Mid-Term Projects 154
Compressing or Extending the Time Window 166
Long-Term Vision and Initiatives 166
Customer First...and Last 175
The Lost Customer 177
The Law of the Ignorant Customer 184
The Customer's Customer's Customer 189
Asking, Interpreting, Testing 193
Finding the Middle Ground 197
Pay (No) Attention to the Customer 199
Selling People, Telling People 207
What Do Followers Want? 208
Pulling and Pushing the Oars 211
Shared Responsibility 212
Results = Quality x Acceptance 213
Consensus and Enforcement 224
Bringing Six Sigma Leadership to Life 233
Positive and Limiting Forces for Six Sigma Leadership 234
Whose Medicine Is This? 236
Adopting Six Sigma Leadership Yourself 238
Building Six Sigma Leadership in Your Organization 242
Striving for a New Standard 246
Afterword: Life under Six Sigma Leadership 249
Setting the Scene 249
All Systems Go? 250
Unraveling in the Door-Lock Division 253
Testing Some Assumptions 257
Sam Takes Some First Steps 259
Smart Leadership Pays Off at Global Lock 264
Index 267
224 pages, Hardcover
