n Dirk Dusharme’s First Word in the April 2006 issue of Quality Digest, he sneaks into the back of the “Church of the Six Sigma” and cannily reports the goings on. In this column, I will burst in through the doors dressed in motley and try to pry the scales off of your eyes, chanting, “DMAIC will set you free!”Do I do this for my own ego?

No.

Well, maybe.

No, no, no, not really. I do this because there really is something beneficial in what we refer to as Six Sigma, but in the absence of a clarifying, or at least dissenting, voice, someone’s momentary reaction becomes petrified into law. This iterative search for the truth could be called the scientific method, or as author and scientist David Brin calls it, CITOKATE (criticism is the only known antidote to error). We love to be right—it’s our favorite drug and we pursue being right in the face of great evidence to the contrary. Usually, the last person to notice that a hypothesis has failed is its originator. Only by testing our premises can we become more certain they are true. In the absence of this, unproven assumptions turn into rules, which turn easily into a faith that has less and less connection to reality.

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