“What can we do about it…today?”
My partner Chris always had a knack for asking great questions. This one was common, even routine, right up until the end when he put all the emphasis on the last word, “today”. That’s what changed it entirely.
We were working with a very talented group of managers, but they were facing a challenging quality problem in manufacturing with a vendor supplied component. The rate of failure of these components had suddenly spiked and shipments were being directly impacted. It was a very important and profitable product line for the company and customer service was critical to sales. They had been meeting for some time and had just come up with a plan to fix the root problem at the vendor. They were pleased. But it wouldn’t solve the problem quickly—and was costing them $60,000 per day in lost shipments.
I have seen this many times since and the effects can be devastating—weeks or even months lost, problems magnify, client relationships sour, and opportunities are missed. It’s a kind of subtle inertia that can creep in without notice. A difficult problem, or challenge in growing your business surfaces and the problem quickly gets treated as a ‘big’ problem.
In people’s minds ‘big’ problems don’t get solved today, they require thought, analysis, maybe even assembling a cross-functional team to work on it. Even the solutions themselves typically take time to roll-out and take effect. What often happens (like it did with our client that day) is that we declare the problem addressed and set it aside. As Eli Goldratt would often say when people became happy with their own answers, ‘they stop to think’.
The action our client had settled on to work with the vendor was a good one, it just wasn’t sufficient. Rather than allowing them to be satisfied with it, the question kept the matter open and on the table. The question got repeated several more times getting only more ‘future fixes’ before one engineer suggested that they might be able to find a way to test the compressors before they were assembled onto the units. This would help weed out the bad ones before they were assembled onto the units, but immediately there were protests: “It wasn’t part of their process”, “it would circumvent quality controls” and the like. There were a host of reasons why it could NOT be done. It’s amazing how we can build our own obstacles out of thin air when we feel someone is challenging our work!
After a lengthy debate they finally resolved that it could be done and agreed to make the changes needed to their processes. The Engineer informed the group he would order the gauge and that it would probably arrive next week. Pleased with themselves, the group was ready to adjourn when the question from Chris came again: “So, what can we do about it…today?”
We were immediately barraged with protests and reasons why nothing more could be done right now. We reminded them that it was costing them $66,000 per day until we have a solution—by next week they would have burned more than $300k in lost shipments. When we finally got back to looking for a solution the discussion eventually got around to asking if there was anyone in the company who might have a suitable gauge squirreled away somewhere in a drawer. Right away you could see people lighting up and someone said they knew who probably had what was needed. A phone call was made and sure enough there was a gauge they could get today.
How many times have you found your company in a similar position where we don’t feel we can do anything immediately about a problem? This way of thinking effects our whole approach and the kind of solutions we look for, or better said, the kind of solutions we don’t look for. One leader told me, that the solution to most such problems in his organization was usually—“IT needs to fix it”. As soon as this conclusion was reached, he said, efforts to look any further stopped.
To break this mentality, leaders need to drive for more and more penetrating thinking. If we allow the path of least resistance we will never get to the higher levels of performance we seek.
- What important problems or issues are you planning to solve in the future and what is really blocking you from getting results today?
- What opportunities for growing your business are getting put off until you ‘have more time’?
- Where are you waiting for a solution (the new ERP system, new hire, release of a new product, etc.) to take effect?
Getting to the next level of business performance doesn’t happen by the plans you make or things you will do in the future. It happens by what you do right now. Eleven weeks after the meeting, when the compressor problem was finally solved at the vendor, one manager calculated that they had saved almost $5 million dollars in missed shipments because they persisted that day to find a solution.
So before you accept the first answer of your team, try Chris’s question. If there is truly nothing that can be done about it, today, all you will lose is a few minutes of time. But I suspect you will find there’s more that can be done.
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I’m pleased to announce that I am releasing my first book, Teamwork for Profit: Producing Extraordinary Results with Everyday Actions, later this month.