SOURCE: Kay Sever | May 30, 2025
In 2025 we will focus on sustaining the gains achieved via the optimization process. Why spend a year talking about sustainability? Your optimization gains are at risk of being lost in future months/years unless certain preventive actions are taken. This risk is worth some investigation and contemplation.
The secret to sustaining optimization gains for the long term is making management choices that 1) preserve the gains already captured AND 2) maintain access to potential gains not yet discovered. So far this year we have explored:
- Links between mindsets and choices driven by mindsets… and why these links determine success with optimizing performance.
- When to focus on sustaining optimization gains… at the beginning, not the end of an initiative.
- Things management teams MUST STOP doing that they may have been doing for a long time.
- Things management teams MUST START doing that they may have never done before.
Start off as a united team to insure long-term success.
At the start of every optimization initiative, there must be a unanimous agreement within all levels of management (from the executive team to the front line supervisors) that the team’s or company’s long-term success with optimization depends on aligning current metrics and decision-making tools and processes with metrics, tools and processes linked to “best possible” results. Adopting this alignment must be unanimous… just like a sports team where every team member really wants to win.
Here is the list of action items that require unanimous management agreement and participation before beginning an optimization initiative. These six items “align” your management system and team with optimization goals and principles.
- Incorporate a few new data-points into numbers-based decision-making.
- Communicate in a slightly different way about performance.
- Build a team with an “expanded goal” of achieving “best” performance, which makes budget easier to achieve.
- Adopt new standards for communicating about problems and involve the right people in solutions.
- Support each other so all team members remain aligned to a goal of “best possible” results. If one team member reverts back to old ways of working, all your optimization gains are at risk.
- Design/implement a training plan for new employees and management personnel to keep your “optimization culture” going as new employees join your organization.
SPORTS AND OPTIMIZATION HAVE SOME THINGS IN COMMON!
In SPORTS, teams learn new plays to win more often.
These six changes in management responsibility are like plays for winning in business…
Same team, same work location, same business…
Just some NEW STRATEGIES that can make the difference between winning and losing!
In SPORTS, teams practice their new plays together.
Similarly, management teams gain alignment faster by practicing their NEW PLAYS together…
It’s the fastest way to build a strong management team and a new corporate culture…
Both focused on BEST results!
From June to November we will cover these six action items in detail… why they add value and why these management choices are not optional. In June we are reviewing Item #1… let’s get started!
#1 – Incorporate a few new data-points into numbers-based decision-making.
To succeed with any optimization initiative, you must be able to measure what you are leaving on the table… dollars you could have captured but didn’t AND dollars you spent that could have been saved. Without a dataset linked to these lost dollars, you have NO CHANCE of achieving your “best possible” performance.
If you have been following my articles over the years, you know that actual and budget, the current datasets used by management for decision-making, either exclude these losses or hide these losses within financial reports and chart-of-account structures designed 800 years ago to track “buy and sell” activities/transactions. (See my 2024 articles on the history of accounting for more information on this topic). This data void means that you cannot quantify additional dollars of profit that you could have captured if you could measure them. Often these dollars total into the millions.
If your executives and management teams are serious about achieving optimized performance across your company (or at a minimum across your production value stream), YOU MUST ADD this third dataset to your toolset and YOU MUST INCORPORATE this third dataset with actual and budget as you analyze results and make quantitative decisions about equipment, delays, costs and support function performance.
Here are a few reasons why this third dataset is NOT OPTIONAL if optimization is your goal:
- You can buy new equipment for the purpose of optimizing performance, but will not be able to measure existing losses that offset the expected ROI from your investment.
- You may place expansion capital in the wrong place in your value stream because you were unable to measure the true upside potential of your production equipment.
- You may overlook existing excess capacity in your current equipment and order new equipment that was not really needed at this time.
- You may believe that your organization does not cause financial losses because those losses are not reported. I am not talking about department budget overruns here. I am talking about departments that cause unmeasured losses elsewhere in the company.
- If your vision or mission statement says you want to perform at “best possible” levels, you and your people can never achieve that goal because you can’t measure that goal without this third dataset.
- You cannot assess unachievable budget targets without this third dataset. This is important for equipment, the workforce (morale) and your management team (trust and credibility).
See you in July when we discuss Item #2 – Communicate in a slightly different way about performance.
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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- About Us
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.
