06/13/11
Is Six Sigma Taking Over the GOP? Bradford Plumer
There’s a wry old episode of NBC’s “30 Rock” in which
Jack Donaghy and Liz Lemon attend a seemingly fictional “Six Sigma” business
conference (motto: “Retreat to Move Forward”) and immerse themselves in the
ever-intense world of consulting buzzwords and team-building exercises. “There
they are,” says Jack, reverently, pointing to a group of older men, “The six
sigmas themselves, each of them embodying a pillar of the Six Sigma business
philosophy: Teamwork. Insight. Brutality. Male Enhancement. Handshakefulness.
And Play Hard.”The gag, in part, was an inside joke: NBC’s corporate parent, GE, is a keen advocate of the real-life Six Sigma management strategy, which, at root, just involves using data to improve business practices, but which is often lampooned as a vaguely creepy cult. (It doesn’t help that the program calls for enlisting special experts known as “Master Black Belts,” “Green Belts,” and so forth.) GE bristles at the criticism on its website—“What is Six Sigma? First, what it is not. It is not a secret society, a slogan or a cliche.”—but that hasn’t stopped the snickerers. Tina Fey reportedly carried around Six Sigma for Dummies for a spell, thumbing through its pages for humor material.
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