SOURCE: Kay Sever: February 27, 2025
In 2025 we will focus on sustaining gains achieved via the optimization process. Why spend a year talking about sustainability? Your optimization gains are at risk of being lost in the future unless certain preventive actions are taken. This risk of loss is worth some investigation and contemplation.
Last month I introduced a weight loss example as an analogy for sustaining optimization gains. This example fits well with optimization work because success in weight loss and optimization both depend on an awareness of the power attached to choices made after the decision to change/improve. These choices have the power to remove barriers and propel you forward OR create barriers that hinder progress or stop you in your tracks. Let’s pull the curtain back on this dynamic.
Some Choices Are Not Optional in Weight Loss
There are things you must SIMULTANEOUSLY START and STOP DOING before you can achieve a weight loss goal. Understanding the power attached to these choices is key to your success:
- These choices mean that you cannot go back to your old way of living if you want to sustain your new weight.
- You MUST STOP doing some things you have been doing (examples: eating too much, eating a lot of fast food or snacks, eating late in the day, sitting too much after work).
- You MUST START doing things you have not done for years or maybe never done (examples: eating more protein or whole foods, eating less, eating earlier, doing weight-bearing exercises).
- It is easier to START (and STOP) new behaviors than it is to STOP old behaviors, which means it is easier to backslide and gain weight back than it is to keep it off over the long term.
- If you decide to STOP some behaviors but not others (example: eat less at a meal but still have desserts in the evening), you will forfeit a portion of the pounds that were possible to lose. There is no gray area here. You can’t have it both ways.
Some Choices Are Not Optional in Optimization
Your optimization scope probably focuses on production processes. To maximize your ROI, your production people will have to STOP doing some things and START doing others to achieve and sustain your best performance. Because of management’s impact on performance, your management team will also have to STOP doing some old tasks and START doing a few new ones to sustain your gains. Understanding the power attached to these choices is key to your success:
- Your production people and your management team cannot go back to their old ways of working (or managing) and expect to sustain your optimization gains long-term.
- Your production people and management team will shift from managing to meet budget to managing to optimize performance. Simply put, you will change what you “fix, measure and talk about” to achieve optimization. This work will assist in meeting/exceeding your budget.
- You MUST STOP doing some things you may have been doing. Here are a few examples:
- Using only the budget to measure your success.
- Accepting department silos as something you cannot change.
- Excluding the management system from optimization work.
- Assuming the organization does NOT create losses since it does not produce a product.
- You MUST START doing things you may have never done before. Here are a few examples:
- Quantifying the dollars you are losing.
- Measuring/eradicating unreported losses within and between departments.
- Managing “horizontally” across the value stream.
- Optimizing support departments that touch the value stream.
- Initiating conversations about “best possible” in every department.
- Integrating “best” values into budget analyses.
- Assessing the value created by centralization.
- Acknowledge that it is easier to START (and STOP) new behaviors than it is to STOP old behaviors, which means it is easier to backslide and lose the financial gains you have achieved than it is to stay committed to new behaviors and the value they deliver.
- Do not allow managers to “opt out” of your process for sustaining optimization gains or you will risk losing everything you worked for. We could spend a year talking about this one topic.
- Create a united team with one overarching goal… to achieve “best” every day in all activities. Achieving ‘best” does not minimize the importance of budget goals… it helps you consistently achieve and exceed budget.
- If you decide to STOP some behaviors but not others, you will forfeit a portion of what was possible to achieve. There is no gray area here. You can’t have it both ways.
Next month we will cover an action plan linked to raising awareness about the power of choices that impact your success with optimization.
Thought for the year: Connecting intentional strategies to the sustainability of optimization gains is a winning combination. Your team can maximize the chance to sustain today’s gains (and gains yet to be discovered) with tactics designed for that purpose. Taking intentional actions to sustain gains is an overlooked strategy for “being the best” in your industry and maximizing shareholder value long-term.
Kay Sever is an Expert on Achieving “Best Possible” Results. Kay helps executive and management teams tap their hidden profit potential and reach their optimization goals. Kay has developed a LIVESTREAM management training/coaching system for Optimization Management called MiningOpportunity – NO TRAVEL REQUIRED. See MiningOpportunity.com for her contact information and training information.
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Kay has worked side by side with corporate and production sites in a management/leadership/consulting role for 35+ years. She helps management teams improve performance, profit, culture and change, but does it in a way that connects people and the corporate culture to their hidden potential. Kay helps companies move “beyond improvement” to a state of “sustained optimization”. With her guidance and the MiningOpportunity system, management teams can measure the losses caused by weaknesses in their current culture, shift to a Loss Reduction Culture to reduce the losses, and “manage” the gains from the new culture as a second income stream.
