Six Sigma is about asking tougher and tougher questions until we receive quantifiable answers that change behavior. Through Six Sigma, companies relentlessly question every process, every number, every step along the way to creating a final product. Managers, employees, and customers ask different kinds of questions of each other than they've asked before. As Six Sigma takes hold across an organization, it creates an internal infrastructure that includes executives, managers, engineers, and operations and service personnel. When 50 percent or more of an organization staff embrace Six Sigma, those individuals are able to mobilize massive changes in the way business is done, dramatically increasing profitability.
Questions, of course, are not meant to exist in a vacuum. The methodology behind Six Sigma is designed to pave the way to find the right answers for your company. In the classic children's story The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy's persistent questions about what she sees and where she is going lead her down the Yellow Brick Road and into the Land of Oz. Similarly, when an organization starts to question what it does and why it does it, it too can begin to lay a Yellow Brick Road that will lead to its own long-term goals.
