After Efficiency: Finding Savings When There’s Nothing Left to Cut

Tough times don’t necessarily have to mean tougher measures. Streamlining is the first step in a long-tested way forward.

Early in my career, I got a phone call from my CEO. “What are you doing differently?” he asked. As he explained, there was an outlier on the graph of the monthly savings he got every month, and it had my name attached.

I was shocked by the question, because I’d never been more scrutinized in my life, nor be so precisely been told what to do. “You’re asking me?” I thought, but luckily did not verbalize.

These were actual results that experts, both internal and external, also audited. Much might depend on whether the results I was achieving were reproducible and repeatable. Could other people get the same savings, and could I do it again?

One thing was for sure: we were all using data.

We were the first wave of Six Sigma Black Belts within the global organization. Six Sigma is a methodology designed to target perfection and settle for 99.9999 percent. It’s not perfect, but just slightly less.

As so-called Black Belts, we’d undergone four months of training in the use and rigour of statistics and process analysis. We continued to undergo monthly audits with various experts in the tools, the business, and the processes as part of our two-year commitment to the role.

Yet, everything about Six Sigma was reflected in the essence of his question. It was designed to eliminate variation, yet it was defined and executed differently everywhere I went.

Over the years, I’ve completed the Six Sigma training program five times because theirs is not ours, and we are not them. If it varied widely between organizations and between individual people, it was as unique as they were.

The irony is that Six Sigma methodology, which was designed to eliminate variation, was ultimately killed by it.

Unintended Bravery

The claim to fame of Six Sigma, is that a successful Six Sigma Black Belt can solve a complex performance problem without spending a dime. They do not throw technology at it and promise that the returns on the investment will be worth it – that’s what MBA’s do. Black Belts do not analyze the books and recommend different ways of paying wages, fees and taxes – that’s what accountants and lawyers do. They look at the way your process or system is performance and tell you what changes to apply to the existing knobs and levers. Or at least, that was the difference to me.

They are called after martial arts, because it is an art to identify the invisible yet obvious, and another skill to prevent everyone from wanting to kill the messenger. Be factual, be quick, and be precise, and then get out while the blaming, shaming, and fighting ensues.

For me, I remember defining this as fun, as I poked at my siblings and family members, and then ran out of harms ways. Sometimes, not successfully, and my face alone bears the reminders of both my sisters and my mom. Yet, keeping my mouth shut is not something I’ve mastered.

Today, I do it from the safety of retirement. When the freedom of speech always comes with a cost, not all of us can afford to say what we think, and more are speaking out about it than ever. If sticks and stones will break my bones but names and words don’t matter, then we should be able to let them fly, as everyone should.

Yet, we all know that the pen is mightier than the sword. Maybe the social media account is the biggest threat of all, every post an act of bravery for all time.

Challenged Assumptions

When an assumption is challenged, a status quo is often broken, producing cost savings.

Many status quos need to be broken, and many assumptions challenged. To that end, I’ve written a few guides for your free download. In my research and experience, it was shocking to me, the wide range of assumptions, misconceptions, and unarticulated concepts I’ve had to question.

In Six Sigma, as a multi-certified Black Belt, sometimes it seemed that the only things that were the same everywhere were the funny names and the process steps.

The Six Sigma steps, referred to by the acronym DMAIC, are Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. Following these steps prevents common pitfalls in human nature.

While these steps aim to redirect this problematic behaviour, it doesn’t always succeed. Human nature is a rigid, invisible force.

And so, enough about a methodology that has come and gone.

Less Wasteful Spending

For me, I care because I want lower prices as a consumer, and better stock performances as an investor. I want transparent democracy as a citizen, and tax dollars that are used wisely, even if they are not used in accordance to my values, at least, don’t waste or squander them.

For the everyday problem-solver who is not interested in statistics, you also don’t need them either. You need to know how to test information for its quality, including data, and the basics can take you far.

If you are a knowledge worker, it’s up to you to perform at your best. If you are a business leader or owner, whether you survive or thrive is up to you.

To streamline anything is to create a better functioning system, spending less to get an improved outcome. That system is your business, and you start with what the customer wants, or that system is your life, and you start with what you want. Either way, you are going to have to streamline some systems.

Streamliners, be they managers at work, solopreneurs managing everything, or human beings living their lives, need courage. To find a better way is to venture into unknown territory.

You’ve faced the choice of serenity, accepting what is, or the courage to change it. To streamline it is to refuse to accept the status quo without putting in some effort first.

How much effort? It’s a question of limits, priorities, and optimization.

When I was growing up, I wanted it to be a world of meritocracy. The best rises to the top. I was stubbornly resistant to people who told me that it’s a world of who you know, not what you know.

Over the years, I saw they were far more often right than I was, but I was sure, that when you need the expert, you will do whatever it takes to track that person down and introduce yourself. When it matters, expertise matters.

To that end, you may care to know that my wisdom came from my background as an engineer, and my voracious appetite to learn more. I was trained to target perfection, quantify and analyze to achieve the dynamic balance called optimization. I was inherently motivated to pursue better solutions than to continue to push ideas that I didn’t feel were worth the effort.

Sometime streamlining is solving a problem and other times it is maintaining the gains, yet they both are almost the same thing. As I worked with the task at hand, I discovered that the person asking about maintaining gains didn’t solve the problem; all the tricky things happened instead. If you never actually made gains, there is nothing to maintain.

Uncommon Leadership

Today, it’s about uncommon courage. The insight to go against the grain. The ability to win over the experts and the leaders. The knowledge of control plans to empower the right people to make the appropriate changes as time passes, and what not to touch.

Trusting other people as much as trusting yourself starts with a solid understanding of a deliberate process and, perhaps, the shucking of the old one. It’s merely continual improvement: always getting better.

You know the old process; it’s like living in a salt shaker and not knowing when the environment will change. You get shaken around without warning, have no control over circumstances and no way to diminish the effects without a handle to grab. With every flip, something is lost for good, permanently beyond retrieval. The frustration and stress of it all! No wonder it is often said that no one likes change!

What about the people who buy lottery tickets, hoping for that change? No one has to be told to run out of a burning building or to abandon a sinking ship. Outfits are changed willingly every day. Channels are changed more frequently. Everyone groans for leftovers when it comes to dinner. Eventually, a new year comes around, inspiring resolutions of change. How can it be said so often that no one likes change?

Exasperating Efforts

We know that the weather changes every day. Most of us try to find out what to expect and then curse weather forecasters for getting it wrong. Like the salt shaker, change we have no control over is disturbing.

The weather forecast tells us it will rain; we pack an umbrella and look at the sky to see if we need it. When change happens to us, even if we are lucky enough to be told about it in advance, even when we are consulted and sold on the vision, we wait to see what will happen.

When change is inflicted on you, it’s not fun for anyone. Consultants are called in because something isn’t working. As someone who was called in, I have heard stories of change that looked like an improvement at the start but failed to deliver.

Quickly, difficult change is abandoned, with the baggage of false beliefs about what worked and what didn’t. It’s the loss of confidence, what it might mean about who you are, and why the outsider’s fresh perspective is required.

Change can be difficult, requiring mental and physical effort. Focus is a challenge when there are many other ways to spend those resources. Doubt enters if you aren’t confident that you’ve chosen to invest your time and attention wisely.

Change can merely be for the sake of change. As one problem fixed creates another to confront, as you trade up the luxury of having the problem.

Choreographed Change

What is it really about change? Change can result in loss, which is not good (unless it is waste). It can be a total waste of effort if, before too long, everything is the same as the starting point (unless recovery is the point).

Change is not universally disliked; it’s the inability to control it.

You only need to step back and see things from a different perspective. Everyone everywhere is following a process, and the process is universal.

Some methods are far more streamlined than others. Discover how to master and define what works for you with the download Simple Streamlining.

The three keys to successful improvement are accessing ideas, tapping those ideas, and allowing the transformation to occur. Often, you have to get rid of the clutter and start with some streamlining. Then, the problems become apparent, and you must solve them. Finally, sometimes proper solutions require innovation.

You know more about what’s going on than anyone external could, whether you are the leader, the champion, the worker, the manager, the supervisor or the new hire. You are the best person positioned to demonstrate uncommon courage while making it look like your day job. Way to go, you are rare and remarkable.