How many of the important things that you are expected to do regularly are painful? It is natural to avoid pain. We all know this, and yet we insist on making regular duties labor intensive, complicated, and difficult. Why?
Even the basic premise of every popular process improvement methodology teaches us to simplify those things that must be often repeated. It reduces waste and unnecessary work, it eliminates opportunities for errors or defects, and it reduces variation in the outcome. We all know this too. Still we make important things difficult. Again, why?
I have a theory. We sometimes don’t perceive the important activities as processes to be improved. We just think of them as tasks to be performed. Ironically, the more important we deem them, the more complicated we tend to make them.
We tend to add checks and balances, extra signatures, more guidelines or rules, checklists, instructions, inputs, and customers to those things we decide are most critical. After all, the more critical it is, the more we must ensure that it is done correctly, right? Yes, except we discourage attention to detail and devotion to the spirit of the exercise when we wrap it in an excess of red tape.
To put the theory in context, let’s look at a few common examples. One common example is risk assessment. It doesn’t suffice to operate a business without some method of identifying and assessing risk and making plans to prevent potential problems.
At one extreme we have a tool and corresponding method of risk assessment and management called the Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). It is a method that has been around for a long time and that has received much criticism because of it’s complexity.
It can be a very valuable tool in the context for which it was evolved, specifically, assessing risks of complex engineered systems. It considers several aspects of design, at least three different relative risk scores that resolve into a matrix, typically ten different relative levels of risk or consequence for each of those scores, and a detailed list of potential resolutions and action items to manage risks identified.
The FMEA methodology is very thorough, therefore, it is rather complex and time consuming. We can tolerate such complexity and attention to detail when we are assessing a system design once during that design’s development with some follow-up review and editing as the design progresses.
We cannot tolerate that level of thorough discussion, argument, assessment, record keeping, and action-item follow-through on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis as a means of managing every-day business decisions.
We might not necessarily use a formal FMEA method for our every-day risk analyses, but often our risk methods are overly complex for the expectation of being an every-day tool. If it takes too many people, or too much time to accomplish the tool or method, it simply doesn’t get done, or it doesn’t get done properly.
It gets done in a manner that simply satisfies appearances so that the powers that enforce the method don’t make things even more painful. It’s simple pain avoidance behavior, not real risk management behavior.
Another engineering related example is the Engineering Change Order (ECO). A change to the fundamental design or manufacture of a product can make or break profitability, liability, or customer perception and, therefore, sales.
A simple change can be a critical turning point for the product and its business. Thus, we tend to put a great many checks and balances on the change process.
We institute multiple authorizations, detailed reviews, checklists, notifications, and documentation and explanations to ensure that no change goes through without due review to guarantee that foolish or dangerous or sloppy changes are not authorized.
Unfortunately, most of that extra “ensurance” doesn’t guarantee anything. Instead, what might have taken an engineer only a few minutes to change takes the process days or weeks to authorize, and because it is so painful, the people involved tend not to put a great deal of due diligence into the effort. It’s painful to participate and most try to minimize their involvement as a result.
If the engineering examples don’t fit your particular environment or context, there are numerous examples in accounting practices of providing excessive explanations and justification for cost increases, examples in supply chain contexts whereby multiple quotes are processed just to satisfy a process without any real intent to shop for best prices, and in virtually every form of review process that requires approval.
I expect the reader can list a handful of dreaded tasks wherein the dictated method makes the activity unnecessarily painful without inspiring any genuine improvement in the outcome.
So, for such a common problem, what is the cure? According to my theory, the cure is to address those things we perceive to be painful tasks as if they are processes to be improved.
I don’t suggest that each activity needs to be broken down with a myriad of process improvement tools and that hours or days should be spent mapping and analyzing the various steps or measuring the unnecessary work or variation. That would be just more excess red tape to address the same.
Simply look at the painful tasks with a critical eye and mindset for comparing each pain with the true vision or intent of the activity. In the example of risk management, take a look at whatever system is in place to rate or score the risk level and determine if a mitigation or prevention plan is warranted. Is a scale and a score really important? How about a simple trigger instead?
Somewhere on the scale of probability and/or consequence is a rule or guideline that states that when the risk is [so high] an action plan must be instituted. Simplify upon that limit.
Simplify the risk assessment activity to a single guideline that states, “if the risk to the business has the potential to [whatever] or greater, a plan must be made to prevent that eventuality; if the risk exceeds [some limit] look for other alternatives.”
Such a simple guideline might not be adequate for eliminating problems in a complex engineered system, but it is a reasonable mantra for every-day decisions. It is something that anyone can do, on the spot, when necessary, and it isn’t so painful that everyone will look for ways not to engage in it.
Do the same for that painful weekly report that must be constructed. A common pain is translating the data or analysis that we use into a format or chart that our managers demand. Ask what it is that their demanded format shows that our format does not.
See if the same information or concept can be indicated with the analysis already in hand. Eliminate the translation activity.
Sometimes our managers want what they want, but many times they ask for what they do because it is habit to set an expectation or give an instruction. Another solution that provides the same information is just as acceptable.
When they ask why you changed the format just admit that the one you chose takes one minute while the other takes twenty minutes of your time and the one you offer is raw and unfiltered.
There is one more point to make. Sometimes, when we simplify our guidelines and demands, we must learn how to do the process well without them. This can lead to escapes or mistakes, but it is still better to learn how to do it well than it is to figure out how to avoid it because it is painful.
When we avoid it, we still don’t do it well. Let it be more painful to make a mistake than to do the simple process. That is how we encourage due diligence.
This week, as you run into those painful activities with an excess of red tape, challenge the overload with a critical process-improvement view. Challenge whether the dictated steps and record-keeping really facilitates better due diligence or if it simply creates pain that people try to avoid.
If it is an important activity that must be done with pure intent, simplify it as much as reasonable. Let there be no excuse for not doing the task with the full seriousness intended, but don’t make it so painful that no one really does it anyway.
When we make activities painful, we encourage people to avoid them. When we make them simple, and enforce an expectation that people do them well, we encourage people to do them regularly. Therefore, if the activity is important, it must be simple.
Stay wise, friends.
If you like what you just read, find more of Alan’s thoughts at www.bizwizwithin.com
