If it ain't broke, don't fix it?

Seeing Waste & Inefficiencies everywhere!

I was playing golf at my local course recently (playing is a strong word for what I do!) and whilst looking amongst the trees for my golf ball, an all too common occurrence, I noticed activity on the green. There were 4 (that's four!) council workers  involved in relocating the hole / flag on the green. Efficiency? Overkill? Waste?



Unfortunately I find myself afflicted with the Lean disease, meaning everywhere I look I see the potential for improvements and savings. If I'm in the car with my colleague Bob we become like the 2 old men from the Muppet's, grumbling and moaning about waste and inefficiencies everywhere we look!

Unfortunately many organisations don't bother implementing changes or improvements until something goes wrong or they are forced to do so due to financial or resource constraints. There seems to be an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality in the work place which keeps people focused on the day to day tasks. This reactive approach (i.e. wait until something goes wrong before doing something about it) is all too common and ironically many companies actually reward these fire fighting behaviours. Think about it, have you noticed that when the brown stuff hits the fan, people rally round and pull out all the stops to fix the issue. This is often recognised and rewarded as people have put the effort in to fix a problem. What about the guy who goes all year without any issues or problems by taking a proactive approach and spotting issues or risks before they become a problem. Do they get the same reward and recognition?

Another potential problem with the reactive approach is that often due to the pressures involved the 'fix' is often only temporary or does not address the root cause of the problem. Thus at some point in the future the problem is likely to reappear again as the real cause of the issue was never properly addressed.

The 'Sticking Plaster' approach

As someone who has been involved in many change projects I would suggest that it is much easier to implement changes / improvements on a stable base rather than on a changing or variable background. From our point of view if you want change to be successfully implemented and stand a better chance of being sustained then look to do it before the problems become critical. Without the added pressures of trying to find immediate fixes you have time to properly root cause the issue and ensure the 'fix' is a permanent one and not just a sticking plaster.

So if your organisation is working reasonably well then perhaps now is the time to take a look at potential improvement opportunities rather than wait for problems to arise or budgets to be cut.