Our Process Is Different

One of the most frequent quotes I encounter when helping people improve their processes is “Our process is different.”

People who have not been exposed to continuous improvement efforts frequently believe that their process is so unusual that Lean or Six Sigma or whatever methodology you are using does not apply.

Normally this quote is verbatim, and it will be followed with a reason why it is, in fact, different.

After hearing this for a while, I started writing down the reasons. I put them on 3×5 cards, and kept them in my pocket during kaizen events. Over time, I started to hear all of the reasons start to repeat themselves. When I would start a new project, there was a good chance that someone would push back on the changes and give me a reason. They would be convinced that they were unique in their situation. I would pull out my cards and tell them that they just gave me #3 or #7, or whatever one it was. I had 24 of the reasons on my original list. Many times, the reason they gave me would be almost word for word. (As you will see, the list has expanded a bit since then.)

This allowed me to peel back one layer of the onion of their resistance to change and let them see that they were not in this alone. Other people had felt the same way and had figured out how to make things better for them. People are more at ease with change when they know that others have done what they are about to do. It takes away the fear that the task is impossible. They get a little of the feeling that if someone else can do it, then so can they. They realize that they are not entering uncharted waters as they thought they were.

Some of the reasons on the card were:

1. Our process is different.
2. The boss won’t allow it.
3. Our customers don’t want it that way.
4. Joe is out of town this week and we’ve got to get his buy-in.
5. It costs too much.
6. We already spent $2.3 million on a new machine.
7. We tried that four years ago.
8. We don’t have time to do that.
9. Our demand is not predictable/too variable.
10. We don’t have enough tools to add people.
11. That machine is too expensive to sit idle.
12. The process is too complex.
13. We need flexibility to be able to serve our customers.
14. The other group will never take on that work.
15. We can’t modify the machine/tool/program.
16. I’ll get in trouble if it doesn’t work.
17. I haven’t been here long enough to know what to do.
18. Nobody’s complaining about the process.
19. We are in the busy season/new project going on.
20. Our suppliers won’t change that for us.
21. If we go faster, someone will get hurt.
22. We are already working on that with the (fill in the blank) project.
23. It’s already on the calendar.
24. It doesn’t matter if we fix it—we won’t be able to fix the upstream process.
25. Our job changes too rapidly.
26. There are too many variables to standardize this process.
27. This isn’t manufacturing. (used frequently in office settings)
28. Our team is too spread out.
29. Our process is too creative to standardize.
30. There are too many unknowns.
31. Things are going good/record profits/top company/etc. There’s no need to change.

Ironically, many of the items on this list are actually the reason that improvement is needed, not a reason that the change won’t be effective.

Words of Warning

• Don’t simply dismiss the reasons. People are not easily convinced when there is a strong emotion behind the logic in use. Instead, validate that someone else had the same concern and was able to overcome the issue. People are competitive at heart, and don’t like hearing that others were able to do something better.
• If you choose to use a card as I did, have real examples for the comments. If not, the card can backfire. It will seem like the list is just a gimmick with no substance.

Key Points

• People are unique, but their situations are probably not as unusual as they think they are.
• People respond well to knowing that they are not “in it alone”.
• People tend to be competitive, and don’t want to hear about others succeeding more than they did.

If you do a lot of facilitating within your organization, start your own card with real examples from within your company. Actually being able to show a team a situation within the company carries a lot of weight, especially if your team members can talk to their peers.

Of course, this means that you need to do a lot of improvement activity to be able to have relevant examples when a person tries to explain to you why their process is different than what you have seen before.