Recently a couple of our Affiliates and I visited a client's facility during a "Qualification Interview" (or "QI"). QIs are an intense part of our rapid assessment process that includes one full day touring the client's site while interviewing management and employees. During this QI, we committed to reduce operating expenses for a specific value stream by 25% within 9 months.
During our debriefing with the client, one of the vice presidents asked:
"Our staff is struggling to cut costs by 5%. And yet, after spending only one day with us, you're telling us that we can reduce operating expenses by 25%? That's incredible.
He stressed the word "incredible" with the tone of "implausible" rather than "wonderful", so we clarified our thoughts. Our team highlighted specific examples of waste we observed, intimated why their production scheduling and materials delivery process did not respond well to changes in customer demand, and then showed how this impacted their labor productivity, agility, inventory turns, and delivery performance.
That's the logical "left brain" response that we shared with the client. And it's a plausible explanation.
But it's not the complete explanation how we reached our conclusions.
It's difficult to explain, but usually after the first few minutes at the client's site, we just know. Maybe it's because between all of us, we've led hundreds of Lean initiatives and learned to see waste differently than many. Or maybe it's because we know what's possible for the future state, and we mentally compare that with what we're seeing. In any case, we usually spend the rest of the day observing, listening, and then reconfirming our initial impressions.
But how do you explain this to the client? Where are the data? What calculations did we use?
My answer came from an unexpected source- while reading Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink. Gladwell reviews the research and cites examples about how our unconscious finds patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow "slices" of experience. This is particularly true in situations we've encountered many times before, in other words, in situations we're expert about.
Gladwell calls this ability "thin slicing". Apparently, not only is thin slicing quick, but it's surprisingly accurate.
Thin slicing. Now I have a term for our rapid assessment process, and an explanation for why it's only one day yet reliably accurate.
Are you seeking a breakthrough? Wondering what's possible for your Lean initiative? Learn how our 1 day Qualification Interview creates an implementation roadmap tailored to your business with aggressive yet achievable milestones.
