The Wall Street Journal: Over 60% of Improvement Projects Fail!
- January 25th, 2010
- Posted in Latest Posts . Systems Thinking Concepts
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In the Wall Street Journal this morning in an article written by Dr. Satya S. Chakravorty titled “Where Process Improvement Projects Go Wrong,” the author states that 60% of all process-improvement projects fail. I have found this to be true but with a larger percentage of failures. In this article Dr. Chakravorty doesn’t cite a source for his statistics. Too bad, I am sure there are plenty to support this claim (this will be a future mission for me).
Dr. Chakravorty outlines the problems in these failures by using a comparison of a stress-strain curve – stretching, yielding and failing (interesting comparison). In the “stretching phase” there is a willingness to tackle the new project and the tasks associated with it. In the “yielding phase,” the expert moves on to another project and focus is lost. Finally, in the “failing stage” with focus and expert gone, team members stop caring about the improvement project.
Dr. Chakravorty continues to outline what he learned from his observation of an aerospace company (paraphrased):
- A need for extended involvement of the expert.
- Performance appraisals need to be tied to the implementation of improvement projects.
- Improvement teams should have no more than 6-9 members and last no more than 6-8 weeks.
- Executives need to directly participate in improvement projects and not just support them.
Similarly, we have found that claimed gains in lean six sigma projects rarely materialize to the bottom line. One company told us that with all the improvement projects they should have millions of dollars to the bottom line, but at final account none were seen. This is a huge problem.
For the most part, I don’t care for the lessons learned by Dr. Chakravorty, I believe he misses the point. The problem is NOT the expert, team size, length of project and certainly not performance appraisals and incentives. He seems to have something with executive participation until the reason being for this involvement is to assess the viability of the project. I believe he hasn’t learned anything.
No improvement effort stands a chance until we understand that the thinking is the problem. More specifically, the thinking about the design and management of work. A project is a coward’s approach to improvement, this does nothing to change the thinking.
If we are to be successful, management thinking has to change too. The same thinking that has led us down our current path will not suffice. The new leadership strategy for improvement must be to change thinking.
So what needs to change? Many of the things I have written in management articles and blog posts. The movement away from things like scientific management theory (functional separation of work), separation of decision-making from the work, targets, incentives, tools, and many other items found in my posts.
To continue down the path of wrong thinking is to spell disaster for any organization.
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Tripp Babbitt,
Your comments WRT “The Wall Sreet Journal: Over 60% of Improvement Projects Fail” is right on the money. Again, you are right when you say; “The problem is NOT the expert, team size, length of project and certainly not performance appraisals and incentives.” The problem is the lack of transformation of those in positions of power, system(s) owners (if you will). Profound knowledge is required in order to conduct any form of system improvement. What comes to mind for me with this article and the current economical situation, is just continuing to do the wrong things righter. Right, making changes for the sake of change without an appreciation for the SoPK.
Thanks,
Keith
Once again we are in strong agreement. Over at The Methodology Blog, we reported on process improvement failure as well. Chakravorty completely misses the point. The issue here is *who* is doing the improvement. If it’s not the stakeholders, than the improvement won’t stick. And if they aren’t thinking about the system, than the “improvement” is just cheerleading.
Keep up the great work!
Just remember the very old joke, “Don’t just stand there, do something!”. Taylorism at its worst. Thinking is not valued because it’s not percieved to be dymanic. The basic misunderstnading of the importance of systems encourages tinkering and hands on (as in the multi-colored belts scurrying) and results in very few profound changes.