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One Way to Out-distance the Competition during Tough Times
The Dark Side
Dwindling sales volumes, lower profits and thinner budgets - these issues make it harder to find money to launch new improvement efforts. Focusing on small projects is one way of coping - they don’t cost much - unfortunately, they don’t do much either. Larger initiatives on the other hand, may pay-off in a bigger way, but they do so at the expense of higher implementation costs and more uncertain financial outcomes. And while these negatives may have been easily absorbed during good times, what about now?
The Bright Side
Fortunately, tough times and tight budgets present a unique opportunity. Experts have agreed for years – you can dramatically lower the costs and strengthen the results of larger initiatives. You can accomplish these benefits using methods practiced by some of the world’s leading organizations. One such method, “development through actual use”, enables you to elegantly side-step a handful of costly issues - employee resistance, lack of adoption, poor sustainability, to name just a few. And, because the practice can be readily incorporated into Lean, Six Sigma and other advanced forms of improvement, it is something you can put to use quickly.
The Usual Approach vs. “Development through Actual Use”
Larger initiatives are typically cross-functional efforts impacting multiple groups, each with their own ideas and perspectives on what should be done. The more intricate nature of these projects makes it nearly impossible for leaders to get solid agreement for any plan to move forward. The standard approach for dealing with this difficulty is to plow ahead despite the lack of a consensus and hope things will get better along the way. They rarely do, instead resistance and other problems dog the effort, driving up costs and ultimately weakening the final results. Depending on project scope, and adding in the effect of years passing before everyone gets a “do-over”, these unnecessary issues inflict negative financial impacts totaling to hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars – all of which end up being subtracted from the final project benefits.
In contrast, the “development through actual use” approach effectively manages group agreement throughout larger efforts. Under this method, at the start of a larger initiative, the parties involved are only asked to agree to a basic design “test” deployed in a limited area. They are informed the “test” will be used to help understand how the proposed changes will impact each area. With much less at stake, generating consensus among the different groups for this type of launch is much easier.
After the initial “test” takes place, representatives of each group participate in a breakdown of the experience to pinpoint needed modifications. Alterations are then completed, followed by another “round”, similar to the first but over a wider area this time. The project continues through several more of these cycles, each following the same protocol. Using this approach, participants get plenty of opportunity to see how every implementation round performs “on the job”. They see how their interests are being well served as their input drives increasing precision into the developing solution. This high level of involvement calms fears, breaks down resistance, and ensures an accurate working solution will be in place by the time full deployment is reached.
Benefits of “development through actual use”:
- minimizes design/implementation waste
- breaks down resistance
- produces an accurate, complete, and practical result
- lowers costs
- leads to high adoption, better performance and sustainability
The “development through actual use” concept is truly powerful. Project leaders experienced in applying the method find large projects proceed much more easily than in the past. Additionally, if they make an estimate of the costs/benefits delivered by this more refined approach and compare them to previous efforts managed the old way, they see truly remarkable savings have been achieved. In today’s slow economy, with fewer dollars spent and higher expectations attached, this highly capable tool is one way you can keep moving forward quickly while others are slowing down.
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