cut efficiency

As a change agent, you are trained and would consider yourself an expert in the LEAN space, and have surely developed “EYES for Waste“.  You are always looking for that efficiency gain and how you can squeeze the most juice from your endeavours.  For some Lean practitioners, if you are not focused on reducing waste, then you at not Lean-ing at all (another discussion some other time 🙂 ).

But do you stop and pause?  or are we fascinated by the efficiency cult  that we forget to look beyond ?

Do you lose yourself in Efficiency Optimizations ?

Are you always striving for getting that 1% efficiency gain –  following the principle of  “aggregation of marginal gains” 

How about looking at the Broader picture ?

Do you look if you can actually eliminate the STEP , that you were planning on improving the efficiency ?

 Can you make the STEP Redundant?

Can you COMBINE multiple STEPs?

Can you review the overall system and reorganize (without the STEP) ?

… and then suddenly you realize that there is no OPTIMIZATION to be done, if the STEP itself vanishes.

So, think about it the next time you are itching to maximizing that efficiency gain, and instead take a P-A-U-S-E.

Ask yourself – Should I focus on increasing the efficiency OR… there are other options?

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