Profile

Professional summary

David Patrishkoff is a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt and expert problem solver, management consultant, risk expert, speaker and writer. He is President of E3 - Extreme Enterprise Efficiency® LLC, a management consulting and training company that he founded in 2001. In 2013, he also founded The Institute for Cascade Effect Research™ (ICER), an organization dedicated to the study of complex organizational Cascade Effects that holds companies back from achieving Greatness. He has a recent patent pending for a gamified business improvement process based on unique decks of cards, learning games and unique pictorial tools, which identify and mitigate organizational cascade effect risks.

Prior to his full-time consulting career, which started

Engagement overview

Engagements can range from 1 week for Rapid Improvement Event facilitation to several weeks for serious business issue resolutions. All engagements end with a full list of realistic recommended actions and a final consulting engagement report.

Clients

A partial list of worldwide clients from over 60 different industries. Specific list of clients from an industry is available upon request.

• Nestle food - candy - water products
• Anheuser-Busch
• Corning
• Florida Hospital
• Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Hawaii and New Jersey
• Walters Homes
• U.S. Pipe
• Walter Energy coal mining & gas extraction
• ITC – India
• Freeport McMoran Mining & Smelting
• US Military
• NicePak
• Jabil Electronics
• FAMU University
• Delaware State University
• Penn State University
• University of Central Florida
• Nielsen ratings company
• Foxhollow Medical Technologies
• Arrow International (medical devices)
• CNL Financial group
• General Motors
• Ford
• Chrysler

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Areas of expertise
Key clients
  • General Motors
Insights

Question: Separating signal from noise in strategy discussions

Let me test your appetite for a game-changing new way to solicit employee involvement that you desire for your management strategy discussions. Why not take the employee input process as serious as the management strategy sessions?

Over the past 10 years, my research and consulting discovered that there are well defined chain reactions & cascade effects linked and active in any organization. I id... Read more

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Question: How much of our strategy should be driven by current capabilities?

From the story you told us, it sounds like you have opportunities to be more innovative and nimble. Strategically, I would brainstorm with your leaders what else you could do with the specialized and deepened capabilities you now have to expand your business. Maybe you have done this. If not, ask yourself:
1. What other new markets and specializations could you serve with your current talent base... Read more

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Question: How can we create a talent dashboard?

You mentioned that you are seeking simplicity as well as good visibility for the information on this dashboard. I see at least 2 good options that meet those stated criteria:

1. Create an excel spreadsheet arranged by company name, project name, person's name, skills & competency level (conditional format color coded). It seems you are particularly interested in the whereabouts of certain talent ... Read more

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Question: Communicating a bad merger decision to senior management

Deal fever is a difficult ailment to cure. It is also very easy to mess up a good deal with bad integration decisions after the deal is done. Everything looks so rosy before it happens.

There are a few different ways to communicate unpleasant news to management in such a case. Your communication options depends on the preferred style of your organization's management presentations and the type... Read more

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Question: Is it important to have cultural integration with an acquisition?

It is very important to culturally integrate with the new entity. It just has to be done right. Be careful because seemingly logical answers can backfire in this situation. Bigger companies (you) have naturally different cultures than smaller ones (your acquired company). Forcing one to act like the other is not always a good thing and it can have very unintended consequences.

Different generatio... Read more

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Question: Resolving conflict between key metrics

I have worked with call centers that have pursued conflicting business and customer priorities, which can confuse employees. It seems you face at least a little of that dilemma. I suggest the following.

1. It is important that you and other managers establish and then communicate balanced call center metrics and priorities that do not conflict with each other. This is often called a "balanced s... Read more

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Question: How can we become a learning organization?

Your first priority should be to have the head(s) of your organization to empower you more to create ad-hoc teams to do structured problem solving, which can quickly solve your issues. If that has not already happened, your management needs to communicate the message that flawed customer processes are not acceptable anymore and need t be addressed ASAP.

Secondly, you should determine if you are s... Read more

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Question: How can IT leaders influence spend on innovation?

I see no harm in the challenges you face with the fact that product people scrutinize the value of IT projects. It offers another check and balance for expensive and risky IT purchasing decisions. My personal experiences lead me to believe that IT managers can become much more effective leaders of innovation if they meet the following 7 criteria. There are many more than this but these are good st... Read more

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Question: What is a professional way to defend against smear campaigns?

You are unfortunately not in a position to fight negative "Smear" with negativity. It will not help your cause of finding another meaningful job. here are a few tips for your consideration:

1. Do not talk about this smear campaign to others who do not know about it or to companies you talk to. It will just spread the bad news that is not helpful for you at the moment.

2. Start an "Anti-Deadwood... Read more

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Question: Getting consensus on risk, and driving compliance to company policies

I start my response with a few questions in my mind about your situation.

1. How big your definition of Risk that you want to avoid?

2. Are you just interested in avoiding accounting error risks or are you also interested in addressing other possible areas of organizational risks that can impact customer expectations and financial performance?

I recently wrote the lead article for the QHSE ... Read more

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Question: How can our organization either sustain change initiatives, or avoid wasteful spending?

I have dealt with this issue many times in my professional and consulting career. I facilitated a 2 day session for a large company with the most recent re-surfacing of a similar problem. That company had a gated approval process that had several go / no-go points that an executive committee would use to manage the pipeline of "pet projects" that were mostly initiated by other executives. Their pr... Read more

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Question: Designing a better knowledge management system

I was the worldwide VP of Engineering for a large international automotive safety restraints design and manufacturing company. We designed, engineered and tested advanced seat belts, air bags and crash sensors for almost every car company in the world. It's not the kind of stuff every engineer learns in college. It is very specialized knowledge. One day I was struck with the realization that, like... Read more

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Question: Changing my team's perception of my behavior

Employees will not give you credit for just "good progress". However, they will give you credit for a "radical transformation". You and your coach should work on grand and sincere transformations in the way that you view people in general, employees and how you manage them.

Challenge yourself to reinvent the way you look at things around you. Don't just meet your personal goals, over-shoot them.... Read more

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Question: How does one develop an ability to "see the big-picture"?

Seeing the big picture in business is an important skill that is often only attained with a lot of career experiences.

I recently wrote the lead article for the QHSE magazine titled "Identifying Cascade Effect Risks in Organizations". My 12 page article uses gamification and a unique deck of cards I created to teach professionals about the big picture cascade effect risks potentially present in o... Read more

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Question: Coaching my team to think more broadly, practically

It sounds like you have a lot of career lessons to teach your people in a short time. Here are 2 suggestions for your consideration.

1. As far as teaching others to see the big picture, I recently wrote the lead article for the QHSE magazine titled "Identifying Cascade Effect Risks in Organizations". My 12 page article uses gamification and a unique deck of cards I created to teach professionals... Read more

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Question: How can I provide career paths to my staff?

I was recently asked to hold an all-day class for young "high-potential" employees who were all hired within the last year. The purpose of the class was to coach them in how to better deal with multi-generational challenges at work so they could successfully pursue their career path. They were having difficulties in bonding with and picking the brains of the older employees they would replace one ... Read more

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Testimonials

We would like to take this opportunity to thank and congratulate your team for a successful project here at Henry Ford Hospital, Transfusion Medicine Division…The project "The Apheresis Plasma Exchange Procedure" was to investigate and identify gaps in billable charges to Transfusion Medicine Division in both Inpatient and Outpatient population…To date we have implemented generation of written orders filled by Pharmacy for Albumin, Calcium gluconate and blood products for the Blood Bank.

Raun Varney, Director of Six Sigma Internship Program Henry Ford Hospital

With the help of John and the whole team at Winter Sausage / Norwegian Jakes, we have seen a dramatic improvement in our oxygen levels, throughout and use of modified atmosphere packaging gas. The lower oxygen levels across all products have helped in increasing our shelf life of products…The throughput of the line is increasing to point that we are at levels not experienced in the past…The use of modified atmosphere gas has also decreased substantially with the process put in place and has improved our costs dramatically.

Greg Vanhazenbroouck, General Manager Winter Sausage / Norwegian Jakes

We have received the final report on the project and concur with the findings. We have, based on one of the findings, co-located a member of our Inside Sales Group with our Parts and Services quoting team. We have greatly reduced errors and the need for redo loops in the quote process…Your effort and insight has shown us a valuable perspective on how to maintain and improve the processes behind our work.

Greg Wehling, NA Service Operations Manager AVL Instrumentation and Test Systems Inc.

I would like to thank the team…for their efforts in deep diving our process of change over at our hemming cell and providing excellent process feedback which led to 80% reduction in setup time in one of our highest capacity resources. Observations by the team also contributed to QMC lead projects which yielded a throughput increase of 75%.

Eugene Long, Director of Program Management Quality Metalcraft

I would like to take this opportunity to thank and congratulate your team for a successful project here at US Manufacturing. The team of engineers here at USM enjoyed working with the Black Belt Team…To date, we have seen dramatic improvement in scrap reduction, elimination of repairs and raising our OEE on our 5E differential case line. What used to be our number one scrap line and lowest OEE line is no longer appearing on our top 5.

Floyd H. Grytzelius, Director of Engineering US Manufacturing Corp.

We at AVL would like to thank you for the teamwork and dedication in completing the Hotline Lean Sigma Project. It resulted in a 50% improvement for call resolution by the Hotline while decreasing the average time for issue resolution by 60%. This activity exceeded our expectations.

Andreas Fredrich, Manager AVL Instrumentation and Test Systems Inc.

Dave Patrishkoff and his consulting group have performed flawlessly for us in implementing a large scale 6 Sigma program from scratch in record time in a company that serves many diverse industries. I have installed 6 Sigma at four major corporations and this has been the most successful due largely to the creative approach and outstanding mentoring skills of Dave and his group

Don DeFosset, Chairman, CEO and President (Retired) Walter Industries Inc.