Process Improvement Landmine: Your Process or Service Cost Savings May Be One of More Stakeholders Monetary or Livelihood Loss

We must improve our manufacturing and service processes.  The Darwinian globally competitive world we live and work in demands it.  But if you involve appropriate stakeholders one or more might be on the losing end and, directly or indirectly, impede the efforts.

One example may be a contracted service provider whose arrangement with you might be a specified cost structure.  And internally to their organization, they undoubtedly have revenue targets they must achieve.  While some improvement efforts might be ‘win/win’ where you save money and the provider does not lose out, that is not always possible.  If not your cost savings are their lost revenue.

Another area is your employees and this one is nothing new to anyone.  Dependent upon the project, labor savings may be a focus of the effort.  Of course any stakeholder who sees his or her job (or their co-workers also) will probably, indirectly, undermine the effort.  If one or more of the areas of focus are unionized, there’s a whole different set issues at play.

So as you lead a process improvement project of any type, remember members will be tuned into their favorite radio station WII-FM, which is what’s in it for me.  There have been (well deserved) criticisms that project leaders focus too much on the technical and financial aspects of a project.  Of course they are critically important.  But so is the WII-FM dimension which can undermine things if they are not identified and addressed. (January 12, 2014)