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Management Services Winter 2012
“Embrace your inefficiencies and your wastes. Without them, you are not being honest about your organisation.”
Leadership waste
than to fall into the trap of moving other people away from the problem into a meeting room, just to review a problem that actually is occurring somewhere else in the organisation. Consequences of motion/ movement waste include simple waste of valuable time, further waiting waste, time spent searching for essential information, and potentially a lack of management control.
Waiting waste
People rely on other people completing tasks, in order to get things done. For example, actions that others are too busy to deal with, or actions that are completed later than planned will result in further delays down the line, in the form of unproductive waiting time. Knowingly having people wait for responses is leadership waste. If business leaders are unable to help, or are too busy, or there are conflicting priorities, the organisation needs to revisit the reasons for these delays and then deal with the waste and its root causes. Organisations frequently inadvertently tolerate waste in the form of waiting, due to failing to empower employees to make their own decisions. If leaders believe that their
teams don’t have enough knowledge, skill or training to make such decisions, then those leaders should focus on training, personal development and upskilling, in order to eliminate such waiting waste. Some further consequences of waiting time waste including people cost of them doing nothing (adding no value), additional delays that lead to overtime to conclude what was intended, higher costs due to inefficiency and loss of motivation or low morale.
Over processing waste Micromanagement appears in many forms in organisations. Continually checking-up on individuals’ work, following- up unnecessarily to see how they are progressing, and chasing people before work is due – these are all a waste of leadership time and effort. Frequently, this results in leaders being seemingly unable to devote sufficient time to proactively leading their team, or spending time on future strategy development. When leaders stop adding value, and are reduced to expediting or chasing for updates, then over processing waste appears. Leaders add value to their teams when they
train them, support them, remove obstacles, unblock stagnation and provide the platform for success, without having to check and verify multiple times along the way. Consequences of processing waste include wasted costs, and a potential lack of control, if employees and leaders drift from an agreed pathway.
Overproduction waste Leaders need to be practical, pragmatic and effective communicators. Sometimes, a comprehensive piece of work is required that goes into a great depth and detail. Sometimes a brief summary is sufficient. Communicating what is required of individuals and teams, and communicating it effectively and clearly is crucial. If an individual does not need to produce the highly detailed report, make it clear to them, and avoid overproduction. This is essential to avoiding overburdening somebody. If a detailed report is not required, then why waste that person’s time doing work that is too detailed and doesn’t meet the need? Leaders have to take care that they spot the signs of overproduction and offer someone more time at the communication stage of a piece of work, or help
them with further training. Leaders need to focus on helping their teams to add more value by avoiding creating unnecessary work. Some of the consequences of overproduction include loss of control, increased mix-ups, mistakes and confusion, and therefore valuable time and resources consumed (wasted) building products that are not a priority.
Defect wastes
Sending a formal leadership communication out to teams, and then revising it, thus blurring the key elements of the message provides scope for confusion, misunderstanding and misapprehension. This then has the consequential effect of needing to unravel the confusion and reiterate, repeat and revisit the correct message. Such an example of leadership defect and rework provides opportunity for improvement. Leaders can sometimes ‘rush’ messages to the organisation, for fear of wanting to be seen to take action. Sometimes, going more slowly and meticulously at the beginning will mean less inefficiency and waste further down the line. Consequences of defect waste can include wasted costs (for example,
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