SOURCE: Kay Sever | October 30, 2025
In 2025 we are focusing 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 future months/years unless certain preventive actions are taken. This risk is worth some investigation and contemplation.
The secret to sustaining optimization gains over decades is making strategic management choices that 1) preserve the gains already captured AND 2) maintain access to potential gains not yet discovered. The entire management team must unanimously agree to each choice and remain aligned each day to sustain their gains long-term… just as a sports team would all work to win during each season of play.
Through my work in this area, I have identified six action items that require unanimous management agreement and participation. 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 with a goal of “best possible” results.
- Design/implement a training plan for new employees and management personnel to keep your “optimization culture” going as people retire and new employees join your organization.
From June to November we are focusing on these action items in detail… why they are important and why these management choices are not optional. This month we are reviewing the importance of Action Item #6… let’s get started!
ACTION ITEM #6 – Design/implement a training plan for new employees and management personnel.
Initiating change is easy… sustaining it over the long-term is hard… why is that? I believe it’s because steps are not taken to understand and remove the barriers that interfere with doing things differently.
The reason it’s important to think about barriers when it comes to optimization (i.e., best possible performance) is this: with new ways to work together comes a new flow of income that did not exist before. Sustaining that flow depends on maintaining a new ”steady state” of practices and choices that deliver the value for years, not months.
Many changes can occur over the long-term in corporations, including promotions, new hires, retirements, expansions and mergers. All of these things can affect the longevity of a change initiative as people bring their own ideas and beliefs into an organization. Some of those ideas and beliefs will be aligned with ideas you’ve adopted and changes you’ve made to increase gains; others will be in conflict with beliefs and practices that support “best possible” results.
It is possible to build long-term sustainability of optimization practices into your organization. You do it by creating an optimization management training class that explains how value is trapped by existing assets, departments, even management system components. Make it mandatory for all employees… a simpler version for the workforce and a more intensive version for anyone with management responsibilities. Let’s review some highlights of materials to include in your “optimization management” training for sustainability:
- Problems cost money (a known fact)… but most people do not know how to calculate or report these losses. Incoming decision-makers have probably never seen numbers for hidden losses and untapped income potential before. Examples prove that additional value exists and can be tapped from existing assets, the organization and the management system. Case studies with calculations proving how gains were/are generated must be introduced as part of the new-hire training process at every level.
- New trend charts that provide a glimpse into “trapped earnings potential” and maximums that will help managers avoid setting unachievable budget targets. Include how to use this charts to communicate with employees and evaluate mine/plant performance.
- Numbers for hidden losses and trapped value are used in conjunction with budget and actual data for decision-making at every management level. Include “show-me” case studies that illustrate how this third set of data changes the traditional decision process for spending money, allocating resources, solving problems, and expanding production capacity… and generates a higher ROI.
- The thinking around problems changes! Problems are now viewed as a source of new income because hidden losses linked to problems are known. Urgency for problem resolution increases and it’s easier to get the right people involved to maximum the income gains from a solution.
- Silos that were hard to break down now come toppling down, something that many people in management have never seen before. Some will even believe that this is not possible. The concepts of “co-owning problems” and “inter-departmental touchpoints” must be covered, again using case studies that prove the increase in income captured with this organizational management approach.
- Using traditional management methods, some problems may be acknowledged but are never solved; other problems are never talked about, mostly for reasons that exist within the management sub-culture. KNOWING WHAT PROBLEMS COST makes it easier to
- stop accepting them as “just the way it is here” or “part of the way you work”,
- take the politics out of problems because the forfeited value is now known,
- get the right people involved in solutions, and
- build trust and management credibility across the entire company.
Next month we will summarize what we covered in 2025. Watch for that summary – it will contain information that you won’t find anywhere else about sustaining optimization gains.
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.
