It’s become leadership mantra “What matters, gets measured,” and in today’s world demanding innovation at hyper speeds, is it any wonder that the focus of most senior operations and general management leaders is how to integrate the Holy Grail of Six Sigma into every crevice of profitable operations. But isn’t the question of which comes first: the productive operation or the cultural change really at the heart of predicting success?

The members of this community face this question every day. Is driving vision and values the most important thing you do every day?  We’d love to hear examples from the group about how you’ve tackled this very real dilemma – is it cultural change first or is it the power of Six Sigma/LEAN operations that propels your business forward in innovation?

Great tools are available to measure cultures of innovation. For a look at how Google’s analytical approach benefits the vision read A dark art no more on Economist.com.

One of my fellow ExecuNet members pointed out in a lively discussion the other day that she hadn’t yet experienced an organization where the leadership stayed the course aligning culture and performance.  “In my opinion,” this insurance executive said, “only leading-edge and financially-fit organizations are not so focused on the short-term financial gains of abandoning Six Sigma commitments, but on how Six Sigma better positions them for the future.”

It takes solid financial performance BEFORE you can have the culture and the operations in sync? Do you agree?

Is your glass half-full?

I’ve been curious about the role optimism plays in leadership, and I am always on the lookout for research that examines whether successful leaders see the glass as half-full. Many of the related surveys I see query optimism about external conditions, particularly the economy. ExecuNet even conducts a monthly Recruiter Confidence Poll that measures something relevant. (By the way, 66 percent of search consultants are confident/very confident that the executive market will improve in the next six months — up from 61 percent in April and 52 percent in March.)

It’s not news that companies are offshoring jobs to save money and India has become the biggest beneficiary; but research from CareerBuilder.com and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania reveals a lot more detail about why and what jobs are at risk and where they are likely to go.

Based on a survey of more than 3,000 hiring managers/HR professionals and 6,700+ workers across the U.S., the research identifies the high-wage, high-skill jobs being offshored that were previously thought to be impervious to risk, and 69 percent of employers believe high-skill service positions are at equal or more risk of being offshored than low-skill jobs. Examples of jobs companies plan to offshore: