Human Sigma

Six Sigma changed the face of manufacturing quality. Now, HumanSigma is poised to do the same for sales and service organizations. Human Sigma offers an innovative, research-based approach to one of the toughest challenges businesses face today: how to effectively manage the employee-customer encounter to drive business success. Based on research spanning 10 million employees and 10 million customers around the world, the Human Sigma approach combines a proven method for assessing the health of the employee-customer encounter with a disciplined process for improving it. Human Sigma is based on five rules to bring excellence to how employees engage and interact with customers: RULE #1: E Pluribus Unum. Employee and customer experiences must be managed together — not as separate entities. RULE #2: Feelings Are Facts. Emotions drive and shape the employee-customer encounter. RULE #3: Think Globally, Measure and Act Locally. The employee-customer encounter must be measured and managed at the local level. RULE #4: There Is One Number You Need to Know. Employee and customer engagement interact to drive enhanced financial performance. And this interaction can be quantified and summarized with a single performance metric. RULE #5: If You Pray for Potatoes, You Better Grab a Hoe. Good intentions alone do not constitute a plan of action. Sustainable improvement in the employee-customer encounter requires disciplined local action coupled with a companywide commitment to changing how employees are recruited, positioned in roles, rewarded and recognized, and importantly, how they are managed. Essential reading for global business leaders, Human Sigma shows how sales and service companies can flourish in the new global economy. It reveals a profoundly different method for managing human systems for growth. Blending strategic analysis with hands-on, practical steps and advice, Human Sigma will change how you view your work, your employees and your customers forever.

The groundbreaking methodology Six Sigma changed the face of manufacturing quality. Now, HumanSigma is poised to do the same for sales and service. In the face of widespread perceptions of abysmal customer service and disengaged employees ? and all-too-real declining profit margins ? the need for change is obvious. Human Sigma addresses this need with an exciting new method for managing customer-employee relations that increases both productivity and profitability. It incorporates cutting-edge research in the neurosciences and behavioral economics ? including brain imaging research into customer's emotional connections to the companies they love ? with proven techniques for improving workforce performance and revenues generated from existing customers. This practical handbook appeals to senior leaders and line managers alike who are looking for a way to dramatically increase productivity, retain high value customers, and enhance organizational performance.

Although world-class firms like GE and Motorola have relied on Six Sigma to build their performance cultures, these processes are all too often left out of human resources (HR) functions. This lack of Six Sigma principles is even more surprising because preventing errors and improving productivity are so critical to the people management processes

Now comes The Sigma Protocol, a new breakneck novel of intrigue, conspiracy, and terrifying deception. American investment banker Ben Hartman arrives in Zurich for a ski holiday, the first time he's been back to Switzerland since his twin brother died there in a tragic accident four years earlier. But his arrival in Zurich triggers something far more sinister than his brother's fate. When Ben chances upon Jimmy Cavanaugh, an old college friend, Cavanaugh promptly pulls out a gun and tries to kill him. In a matter of minutes, several innocent bystanders are dead - as well as Cavanaugh - and Ben has barely managed to survive. Plunged into an unspeakable nightmare, Hartman suddenly finds himself on the run. Department of Justice field agent Anna Navarro is being stalked around the world by a relentless killer, managing to survive the killer's attacks only by a combination of luck, skill and her own quick wits. These attacks are somehow related to her current assignment: investigating the sudden - and seemingly unrelated - deaths of a number of very old men throughout the world. The only thing that connects them is a file in the CIA archives, over a half-century old, marked with the same puzzling code word: SIGMA. But someone or something is always seemingly one step ahead of her, the survivors are rapidly dwindling, and her own life is in ever increasing danger. Brought together by accident, Ben and Anna soon realize that their only hope of survival lies with each other. Together they race to uncover the diabolical secrets long hidden behind the code word, Sigma. Secrets that threaten everything they think they know about themselves, everything they believed true about their friends and families, and everything they were ever taught about history itself. For behind Sigma lies a vast deception that is finally coming to fruition and the fate and future of the world is in their hands.

A war is coming, a battle that will stretch from the prehistoric forests of the ancient past to the cutting-edge research labs of today, all to reveal a true mystery buried deep within our DNA, a mystery that will leave readers changed forever . . . In this groundbreaking masterpiece of ingenuity and intrigue that spans 50,000 years in human history, New York Times bestselling author James Rollins takes us to mankind’s next great leap. But will it mark a new chapter in our development . . . or our extinction? In the remote mountains of Croatia, an archaeologist makes a strange discovery: a subterranean Catholic chapel, hidden for centuries, holds the bones of a Neanderthal woman. In the same cavern system, elaborate primitive paintings tell the story of an immense battle between tribes of Neanderthals and monstrous shadowy figures. Who is this mysterious enemy depicted in these ancient drawings and what do the paintings mean? Before any answers could be made, the investigative team is attacked, while at the same time, a bloody assault is made upon a primate research center outside of Atlanta. How are these events connected? Who is behind these attacks? The search for the truth will take Commander Gray Pierce of Sigma Force 50,000 years into the past. As he and Sigma trace the evolution of human intelligence to its true source, they will be plunged into a cataclysmic battle for the future of humanity that stretches across the globe . . . and beyond. With the fate of our future at stake, Sigma embarks on its most harrowing odyssey ever—a breathtaking quest that will take them from ancient tunnels in Ecuador that span the breadth of South America to a millennia-old necropolis holding the bones of our ancestors. Along the way, revelations involving the lost continent of Atlantis will reveal true mysteries tied to mankind’s first steps on the moon. In the end, Gray Pierce and his team will face to their greatest threat: an ancient evil, resurrected by modern genetic science, strong enough to bring about the end of man’s dominance on this planet. Only this time, Sigma will falter—and the world we know will change forever.

As a technical organization, charged with performing groundbreaking and pathfinding challenges on a daily basis, NASA has long valued the role of its Chief Engineers and Lead Systems Engineers. Although it takes a team to accomplish our missions and no members are unimportant, the Chief Engineers and Lead Systems Engineers who we look to lead our technical teams are critical to the success of our endeavors. It is this corps of dedicated, experienced, and passionate problem solvers and leaders who battle the technical headwinds that face every project, finding often hidden solutions and overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles to create paths to success. Furthermore, it is that indomitable spirit of ingenuity and perseverance that defines the Agency. Developing our Chief Engineers and Lead Systems Engineers is a commitment of the NASA engineering community, and one of our tenets for excellence. This development ensures our corps of engineers obtain the depth of technical acumen that they require, first as discipline engineers and then as Chief Engineers and Lead Systems Engineers, but also the associated management skills and experience to ensure they can interact with the rest of the project team and with program, Center, and Agency leadership. What's more, this development also ensures that NASA Chief Engineers and Lead Systems Engineers proficiently serve as leaders of their own technical teams, and that's what this book is all about. These technical leaders are critical to successfully implementing the three safety tenets we inherited from the Apollo program. These include the following: Strong in-line checks and balances. This means that engineers check their fellow engineers, and that no one checks their own homework. 1. Healthy tension between responsible organizations. In NASA today that is the programs and the three Technical Authorities (Engineering, Safety, and Health and Medical). Each organization has to be on equal footing with separate but equal chains of command to allow issues to be raised independently and provide the healthy tension to create organizational checks and balances. 2. "Value-added" independent assessment. "Value-added" means you bring in outside technical experts to peer review critical issues. Having a fresh set of eyes on a problem can provide a different perspective, leverage different experiences and result in more robust solutions. 3. NASA arrived at these three tenets through considerable blood, sweat, and loss, and our commitment to them is now inscribed in our Agency governance. As Chief Engineers and Lead Systems Engineers, your role in this is paramount, and achieving excellence in this is an expectation of your job. Serving in this role is not an easy task, but it is a tremendously reward¬ing one. You are the leaders of your technical teams, owners of the technical baseline, standard bearers of engineering best practices, decision makers, risk mitigators and problem solvers. You are Chief Engineers and Lead Systems Engineers, the title of which should say it all.

Strength-based Lean Six Sigma is a new way of approaching process improvement that combines the best practices of two established methodologies to generate a new approach in order to help you develop and deliver increased high performance in any organization. It is the first book to use approaches in business improvement as well as organizational change for optimum organizational performance and improved agility. Combining the energy and motivation released through a strengths-based approach with the focus on quality and efficiency generated by lean six sigma, it offers practitioners from all disciplines the opportunity to understand each other and work successfully together to drive effective and powerful change programmes.

Human resource departments have been a crucial part of business practices for decades and particularly in modern times as professionals deal with multigenerational workers, diversity initiatives, and global health and economic crises. There is a necessity for human resource departments to change as well to adapt to new societal perspectives, technology, and business practices. It is important for human resource managers to keep up to date with all emerging human resource practices in order to support successful and productive organizations. The Research Anthology on Human Resource Practices for the Modern Workforce presents a dynamic and diverse collection of global practices for human resource departments. This anthology discusses the emerging practices as well as modern technologies and initiatives that affect the way human resources must be conducted. Covering topics such as machine learning, organizational culture, and social entrepreneurship, this book is an excellent resource for human resource employees, managers, CEOs, employees, business students and professors, researchers, and academicians.