How Can Lean Six Sigma Foster Organizational Entrepreneurship in a Military Bureaucracy?

Abstract

How can Lean Six Sigma foster the creation of heterotopias? This article will examine the use of Lean Six Sigma principles to magnify cracks within a traditional bureaucracy in order to create heterotopias that dramatically alter organizational practices. The empirical setting of this paper is a classic bureaucracy — the United States Army — but with an interesting twist, due to an overtness in implementing Lean Six Sigma. Lean Six Sigma protocols may be used to foster long-term change through alternative narratives akin to organizational entrepreneurship. Therefore, this paper sees Lean Six Sigma as a storytelling methodology, in lieu of a directive set of tools and techniques. In this autoethnography, I tell my story of how I tried to execute a human resources logistics process, a Relief-in-Place, but failed on the first attempt. While facing difficult bureaucratic obstacles, I relied upon my training as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt to use stories as a way to circumvent these obstacles, create a heterotopia, and ultimately achieve mission success.

Keywords

• narrative
• lean six sigma
• autoethnography