Great talk! Snowden does have a few hobby horses which he likes to ride, but just overlook it. His insight into complex/unpredictable systems has helped me connect lean product development and agile methods, as well as waterfall and EPC projects.
Well reading some of the comments here only confirms T S Eliot's thinking ' Nothing pleases people more than to go on thinking what they have always thought'. Agree with Snowden totally on his thoughts regarding Six Sigma. Six Sigma came out of manufacturing which is an 'Ordered System', repeatable, transactional etc. If definitely cannot be applied to complexity eg. complex systems, complex environments although the Six Sigma Business Machine has ignored this and is reaping the monetary benefits.
9:02 This needs to be reiterated again and again - the lazy trial-and-error approach to learning is not a reliable source of knowledge in unfamiliar and rapidly changing circumstances.
"stealing how to make cheap paper from the chinese". why is technology transfer TO the west considered some kind of unsung appropriation? academics are obsessed with this trope
His point on terrorist and engineers and the lesson to be learned is a wrong conclusion on causality. Yes it makes sense that a high percentage of terrorist are engineers, not because engineers are above average bad people, but because the knowledge of an engineer is very handy if you want to be a terrorist a blow stuff up for example. Also he dislikes the engineering approach, but there are a lot of area's where it works really good. Problem is that companies apply methodologies as a one size fits all solution for all their problems. His point on the ideal future state and never achieving I would also call invalid. The point of the ideal future state is that it gives direction and inspiration. More sustainable and more resilient is also an ideal future state and if we would deep dive into the definition of sustainable and resilient it will mean different things to different people and it can also be called an ideal.
Non-sense point of view about Lean-Sixma. Not very scientific. What about his other points of views. Just popular-science of own opinons. Six sigma works and comes from japanese manufactoring
What he is saying is that Six Sigma is not useful if you are operating in the complex domain. There is also the point that just because it works in manufacturing does not mean it works in service environments. And SS does not come from Japanese manufacturing, it is a quality improvement approach developed by Motorola in the mid 80's. Lean however, is the American bastardisation of Taichi Ohno's work in Toyota. It became commoditised by Womack and Jones in their book The Machine that Changed the World.
MrNorvall Six Sigma is a set of tools for rational decision making. It takes the basic building blocks of what all science is built on which is evidence based statistical analysis to determine conclusions. I dare you to take medications that haven't been through that process? Or fly in a plane that wasn't rigidly tested using this approach. Im not a great fan on the belt system, it can be made into a way to "consultantfy" the system and label. No matter what domain your operating on you should apply vigorous analysis and criticism of the system you are measuring, complex adaptive or a pie factory the same approach should be used. In my view there is no reason why the equations that are now coming up for complex systems could not be used in six sigma projects . Obviously they guy has issues with "SS" but his issue are highly NON scientific.
sixbells99 I am well aware of what Six Sigma is having been a CSSBB for a long time now, so I know its value and its limitations well, it is all about the context in which it is applied. Rational decision making is exactly what Dave suggests and it is reasonable to adapt the approach to suite the type of environment you find yourself in. I certainly would not like to fly in a plane that was not rigidly tested, but that's exactly the point. A plane is a complicated system in which cause and effect CAN be known in advance and hence an approach that can identify and address root causes is desirable. In a complex system cause and effect are only understood after the event so an analytical approach is of little value. I think you are correct with the belt system, it is limiting and often creates an us and them division. Also worth considering that mathematical complexity is different from social complexity, which is why so many complex models of for example economics fail to predict human behaviour as humans don't always "follow" the rules that the models prescribe.
I didn't really like this guy, when a person starts by bad mouthing others,it shows they have a lack of true understanding in their own subject. I'm an engineer I don't like the label that some how the mind set of an engineer will more likely make you a terrorist. That is trivialising a very serious topic and seems this guy doesn't even know the basic concept of statistics and what is correlation and causation! Also this bad mouthing of six sigma and the high priest bla bla. Six Sigma is one method to try and institutionalize rationalize proof driven thinking. I've never heard any books claim it has the answer to complex adaptive systems and chaos theory, which by the way is a science only about 30 years old. Poor lecture, there are people much better than him on the subject. They also don't need to bad mouth other people or call groups terrorists to get their points across. Also this guy calls himself Welsh, he's no Welshman in my books.
Snowden's reasoning leaves something to be desired. He seems to be rather winded and pompous. I am glad we don't have to suffer though his drivel on a daily basis.
Great talk! Snowden does have a few hobby horses which he likes to ride, but just overlook it. His insight into complex/unpredictable systems has helped me connect lean product development and agile methods, as well as waterfall and EPC projects.
Well reading some of the comments here only confirms T S Eliot's thinking ' Nothing pleases people more than to go on thinking what they have always thought'. Agree with Snowden totally on his thoughts regarding Six Sigma. Six Sigma came out of manufacturing which is an 'Ordered System', repeatable, transactional etc. If definitely cannot be applied to complexity eg. complex systems, complex environments although the Six Sigma Business Machine has ignored this and is reaping the monetary benefits.
9:02 This needs to be reiterated again and again - the lazy trial-and-error approach to learning is not a reliable source of knowledge in unfamiliar and rapidly changing circumstances.
Would be nice if CX and culture people listened to this.
Extremely Interesting !
The way he says : the forces of darkness. :///
well this guy is rather well speaking populist
Genius
"stealing how to make cheap paper from the chinese". why is technology transfer TO the west considered some kind of unsung appropriation? academics are obsessed with this trope
When the Chinese start stealing jokes then I'll be concerned
His point on terrorist and engineers and the lesson to be learned is a wrong conclusion on causality. Yes it makes sense that a high percentage of terrorist are engineers, not because engineers are above average bad people, but because the knowledge of an engineer is very handy if you want to be a terrorist a blow stuff up for example. Also he dislikes the engineering approach, but there are a lot of area's where it works really good. Problem is that companies apply methodologies as a one size fits all solution for all their problems.
His point on the ideal future state and never achieving I would also call invalid. The point of the ideal future state is that it gives direction and inspiration. More sustainable and more resilient is also an ideal future state and if we would deep dive into the definition of sustainable and resilient it will mean different things to different people and it can also be called an ideal.
Cynefin includes engineering approaches as relevant - in context
Non-sense point of view about Lean-Sixma. Not very scientific. What about his other points of views. Just popular-science of own opinons. Six sigma works and comes from japanese manufactoring
What he is saying is that Six Sigma is not useful if you are operating in the complex domain. There is also the point that just because it works in manufacturing does not mean it works in service environments. And SS does not come from Japanese manufacturing, it is a quality improvement approach developed by Motorola in the mid 80's. Lean however, is the American bastardisation of Taichi Ohno's work in Toyota. It became commoditised by Womack and Jones in their book The Machine that Changed the World.
MrNorvall Six Sigma is a set of tools for rational decision making. It takes the basic building blocks of what all science is built on which is evidence based statistical analysis to determine conclusions. I dare you to take medications that haven't been through that process? Or fly in a plane that wasn't rigidly tested using this approach.
Im not a great fan on the belt system, it can be made into a way to "consultantfy" the system and label. No matter what domain your operating on you should apply vigorous analysis and criticism of the system you are measuring, complex adaptive or a pie factory the same approach should be used.
In my view there is no reason why the equations that are now coming up for complex systems could not be used in six sigma projects . Obviously they guy has issues with "SS" but his issue are highly NON scientific.
sixbells99
I am well aware of what Six Sigma is having been a CSSBB for a long time now, so I know its value and its limitations well, it is all about the context in which it is applied. Rational decision making is exactly what Dave suggests and it is reasonable to adapt the approach to suite the type of environment you find yourself in. I certainly would not like to fly in a plane that was not rigidly tested, but that's exactly the point. A plane is a complicated system in which cause and effect CAN be known in advance and hence an approach that can identify and address root causes is desirable. In a complex system cause and effect are only understood after the event so an analytical approach is of little value. I think you are correct with the belt system, it is limiting and often creates an us and them division. Also worth considering that mathematical complexity is different from social complexity, which is why so many complex models of for example economics fail to predict human behaviour as humans don't always "follow" the rules that the models prescribe.
I didn't really like this guy, when a person starts by bad mouthing others,it shows they have a lack of true understanding in their own subject. I'm an engineer I don't like the label that some how the mind set of an engineer will more likely make you a terrorist. That is trivialising a very serious topic and seems this guy doesn't even know the basic concept of statistics and what is correlation and causation!
Also this bad mouthing of six sigma and the high priest bla bla. Six Sigma is one method to try and institutionalize rationalize proof driven thinking. I've never heard any books claim it has the answer to complex adaptive systems and chaos theory, which by the way is a science only about 30 years old.
Poor lecture, there are people much better than him on the subject. They also don't need to bad mouth other people or call groups terrorists to get their points across. Also this guy calls himself Welsh, he's no Welshman in my books.
Grumble. A bit too bombastic for my liking. Cognitive psychology is not the world or a complete model of the brain.
Snowden's reasoning leaves something to be desired. He seems to be rather winded and pompous. I am glad we don't have to suffer though his drivel on a daily basis.