Are You Working On The Right Problem?

Have you ever had that feeling that the change you are trying to make in your business is the wrong one?

There sometimes comes a point, when your improvement just isn't making progress, that this thought crosses your mind.

If you are feeling this way about something that you are working on currently then it might be time to review where you started your change.

Commonly referred to as 'problem definition', it still surprises me how often business will start to make a change in their business without stopping to fully understand what their problem is.

Asking some good questions, to truly define your problem, is key to making sure that you are solving the right puzzle for your business.

One of my favourite examples of this, from my days in Operations Management, is the realisation that I had on a Friday afternoon when the rest of the factory had gone home for the weekend.

We had been desperately trying to work out how we could improve the on time delivery performance of the business. The age old wisdom was to reduce the cycle times through the overall manufacturing process. This is what we had been working on and it wasn't making a tangible difference to our delivery performance.

Anyway, this particular Friday afternoon I chose to re-state the problem and see if I gained any insights. By re-stating the issues we faced it became clear (yes, I got a shot of the blinding obvious) that our capacity planning was seriously lacking. We didn't have a throughput problem, we had an overloading problem.

The short end to that story is that the on time delivery performance of that business rose from about 20% OTIF (On Time In Full) to an average of 98% within 6 months.*

And, if you are wondering what is a good way to re-state the problems in your business it might be worth using the 5W1H structure:

What
When
Where
Why
Who
How

(Or, you could search the Internet for Rudyard Kipling's Six Honest Serving Men!).

Ask and answer each one of the above questions about your current problems. See what you come up with and see if you can get a different perspective on your current challenges.

Stating the situation that your business has, without judgement and without trying to guess the answer at the same time is a skill that can be developed. Many times if you can properly state / recognise the problem your business really has, then the solution will appear.

Giles Johnston
Author of Business Process Re-Engineering

* There were a few other things we did too of course. For a fuller account please visit this link.

The Kaizen Checklist is here!

Do you want to get better results from your Kaizen programme? Improve your business results quickly with my downloadable kit (including guidebook, workbook and templates) for only $39. Are you looking for a sustainable way to identify and implement improvements across your business? Practical improvement strategies The Kaizen Checklist is a downloadable kit that you can use with your management team to develop a system that suits your business and allow you to quickly implement Kaizen effectively at your place of work. This works great if you use it as the centre piece of your own internal workshop. The kit includes a 40 page guidebook, a workbook, four appendices and three templates. All parts of this kit are designed to get you up and running as fast as possible. If you are unfamiliar with Kaizen, let me stress that this is a simple improvement philosophy that is so much more than just ‘a Japanese word for continuous improvement’. I’ll cover what it rea

Take the pressure off! Using the Y-curve with your Kaizen improvements

Do you feel under pressure when you have to make changes happen in your business? It can be scary when we try something that we have never done before. I remember thinking to myself 'how on Earth am I going to figure this out?' on many occasions. I think the last time was a few weeks ago! Years on from becoming reasonable at the art of change I am still faced with the same dilemma. It is scary and it is clear to me why so many people shy away from making change happen. It is natural to get stuck in this oscillation. On one hand you need to make change happen; the business needs the improvement benefits. On the other hand you don't want to screw up... Last week I was talking to a young engineer that I am mentoring. He was paralysed. Changes were not happening at all. There was always some early promise with his projects and then, as completion (and judgement day) loomed, progress would evaporate. The engineer asked me for my views on this during a recent conversati

Do you need a burst of improvement ideas for your business?

If you haven’t created your improvement action plan for 2020 yet then I have something for you. I have just completed my latest project – The CI Focus Tool . This Android App is now available on Google Play and provides a simple method for generating as many effective improvement ideas as you need. This is the same basic method that I describe in my book Effective Continuous Improvement and is now available as a simple to use app. In essence it is a brainstorming focus tool. Press the focus button and you will be presented with a random continuous improvement focus. Brainstorm ideas around this focus with your team (whilst the timer is running) and there you go – a number of great ideas for you to prioritise and implement. The reason that this works so well is because of the focus. When your business runs out of its immediate problems to fix you need a different strategy. Very focused brainstorming helps you break past this problem and configuring the app to meet t

Search This Blog