Telwork and Sigtek Case Study

Approaches to Change:

1. Analyze the organization and the need for change

The approach to change at Telwork and Sigtek was very poor. Firstly, Telwork had the idea to aggregate all of its underlying businesses under one Six Sigma umbrella regardless of what line of business they were in. This displayed a failure to analyze the organization and understand the full scale of the buyout before such a large integration was to be undertaken. Furthermore, if a more in depth analysis was done of Sigtek then Telwork would have uncovered the polarization between the engineering and manufacturing departments. This surely would have saved time because a different approach may have been reached.

2. Support a strong leader role

One of the greatest pitfalls with Sigtek’s Six Sigma rollout was the failure to create an official strong leader role. Sigtek had an ambitious and fully capable ambassador in John Smithers but what became apparent throughout the project was that his ability to initiate change was limited due to his role only as a coach. This gave Smithers plenty of responsibility but without any real authority. Additionally, resources may have been allocated more appropriately. Not only was Smithers expected to adhere to Telwork’s tight deadline for the Six Sigma rollout but he was also accountable for managing his official position as engineering services manager. So in effect, Sigtek had violated Jick’s principle in which “an organization should not undertake something as challenging as a large-scale change without a leader to guide, drive, and inspire it.” Sigtek failed to make its best equipped leader of Six Sigma (Smithers) the official face of the project. Instead it turned to Patricof whose general hands-off and outdated approach to management was sure to doom the project.

3. Line up political sponsorship

In addition to the failure to appoint a strong leader role, Sigtek/Telwork didn’t ensure political sponsorship at all levels of the organization. This was exampled by Smithers’ breakthrough with one of the female line workers in addressing the issue with her metal plug receptacle. He encouraged her to bring the issue up at the weekly quality meetings only to find out later that her input was discouraged by her supervisor and the meetings would no longer be held at all for feedback. This breakdown in political sponsorship began with the nearsighted decision to only expose middle and senior managers to the Six Sigma initiative. By omitting the supervisors of the line workers to the process, all of their subordinate input was essentially useless..

4. Craft an Implementation Plan

Another major failure on Sigtek/Telwork’s part was their inability to craft an implementation plan. The idea to roll out the Six Sigma