Why Do Operational Excellence Implementations Fail in 2024?

We always start with a Situation

I bet you’ve heard it before…  On average, 80% of Lean Implementations fail.  You may have heard a similar or even worse statistic for Six Sigma.  Regardless of which methodologies are used, (which is our first mistake to try to label everything under a methodology), a huge number of Operational Excellence efforts fail.  And I bet you’ve also heard the most frequent root causes, which almost always contain a short statement such as “Lack of Leadership Support”. 

Yes, we could keep blaming it on Leadership, but it’s against our OpEx beliefs to use blame for any reason.  As OpEx enthusiasts we prefer to do a root cause analysis.   

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We first understand the Problem and Root Causes

In practice, a fishbone diagram or a 5-Why analysis wouldn’t be easy to do.  There are just too many moving parts.  However, if you look at repetitive potential root causes, you can get directionally correct.  And the main one that jumps out is lack of capability building.

That top leader who failed at creating the right culture that embraces change and empowerment, he didn’t have the right capability building.  That OpEx Manager who tried to use a hammer when what he needed was a drill, he lacked the capability.  Those front-line leaders who weren’t involved in making the changes because they lacked the leadership and basic problem-solving skills… well, they also lacked capability.

Notice I use the word capability, and not the word training.  Capability is the ability and confidence to use knowledge and skills (acquired by training and experience) to be able to accomplish something.  And building, meaning it’s something that happens over time. 

On top of this, I would add the word “comprehensive” to complete the root cause to “Lack of Comprehensive Capability Building”.  Why comprehensive?  Because OpEx is about involving and engaging everyone in Continuous Improvement.  It’s about educating, developing and empowering people to continuously improve processes.  

Isn’t that what we preach, anyways?  If so, why don’t we practice what we preach? 

A hypothesis… our education and empowering efforts don’t involve enough people, and not the right people.  (more on this later).

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Oh, so we’re going to blame it on OpEx professionals and trainers!

And I know how you might be feeling reading this. 

You’re telling me I’m not doing enough to train enough people?  I’ve spent 300 hours last year training and re-training.  I’ve had to re-train people on the same things because they forgot what I taught them the first time.  And you want me to spend more time training people?  OK, when…  in between the kaizen events I’m leading? 

My manager wants to see savings from my projects, I can’t spend more time training people. 

And I have to train everyone?  I’m not an expert at everything, but yet I have to train everyone, and train up including leaders who should be the ones driving it.  I can’t do it all! 

Yes, I feel like we’re going too slow.  Yet, I’m still doing all I can and traveling all the time between sites.  And you have the courage to tell me that I’m not doing enough?

Believe me, I’ve been there.  I almost (hang my boots) gave up on my OpEx career and the corporate world.  Maybe I needed to do something different.

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Light at the end of the tunnel

In my quest for a change, I landed on a different job.  Not quite so different because my role was similar, just now at the corporate level and with more responsibility.  The point is, I found in this company a refreshing culture that gave me hope.  And what I learned is you don’t have to do it all yourself.    

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The Existing Solutions – Consultants

Yes, you can get help from consultants, particularly if they have been there before.  If their approach is practical instead of an ineffective method of training you using 75,000 slides (they attend a class on how to build decks), they can help you. 

But we all know the problems with consultants.  

First, their hefty price tag, $8000 for a 2-day visit?  Why don’t you take my soul instead?   

That company took the hit and paid the fees.  Besides a very slow roll-out, the investment was worth it in that one division.  Huge improvements in safety, quality, productivity, and culture.  However, when it was time to roll-out to the rest of the Enterprise, that’s where huge resistance came from the business leaders. 

So, we had to go back to trying to do it all ourselves.  At the same time, we also had to go back to plants that weren’t sustaining the improvements because the Consultants had left.  Back to square one.

What other options are out there?  Our Corporate OpEx training was not that great, and the other trainers were facing the same problem.  That’s when we thought about looking outside… oh yes, there’s such a thing as training providers.  Well, and if you think about it, one of the key benefits of the Consultant approach is the extra resources to help train people in those first few months of “Transformation”, when doubling down on training is a key enabler.  So yes, outside training… 

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The Existing Solutions – Outside Training

Well, there’s multiple training provider options out there.  However, the quality of the training varies incredibly, and the extent of curriculums is usually very limited. 

Yes, there’s $15 courses on course marketplaces such as Udemy, but those courses’ quality is low, and they don’t really teach you how to go through a transformation.

Yes, there’s $2000 Six Sigma Black Belt courses out there, but they’re still stuck in 2003 and solely focus on DMAIC. 

Yes, there’s a couple reputable Lean courses out there, but again, they don’t build capabilities to enable a transformation.  They’ve never done one.  Their lessons are not actionable.  They just throw 1000 modules with no structure of when and how and who will implement what along the journey.    

And nobody integrates the best of the best, Lean, Six Sigma, TPM, TOC, Leadership, Culture, etc into one.   Nobody can be the expert at everything.   That’s why they package it to their convenience.  And they dilute the training to make it industry-generic to try to sell it to everyone. 

They’re all theory, no practice.  Most of them just a bunch of slide decks.  Proven to be one of the least effective for retention on adults. 

Some of them have engaging videos.  But you can’t teach the roles’ interactions and nuances between different stakeholders via videos, it’s impossible.     

Simulations can accomplish this, and more.  There are a few simulations out there, but again nothing that meets all needs.  Some of us have found some success with simulations like a lean Lego simulation, but a typical one just covers 5S, Line Balancing, SMED, and honestly too much focus on Kanban.  Did those help you engage 100% of your employees?  I bet not.   None of them show the entire OpEx journey and players.   

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The Existing Solutions – Learn by Failing

Well, why not let team figure out who and what and when?  But who’s gonna lead the way, oh yeah you OpEx Professional.  And yeah, why don’t let them learn by failing?  Isn’t that how adults learn, by making mistakes.  Well, yeah but ….    They’ll make mistakes along the way and have re-starts.  Yeah, you’ll have failures where plants will give up because it doesn’t work.  The risk is too damn high.  OK, so add to that guiding the teams to not make mistakes along the way (kinda what the Consultants were doing).

Yes, it’s all about capability building. That were our CI Managers need to be, coaching. 

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The Need for Different Solutions

Just like a Shark Tank, transition, there should be a better way.

We are in the era of information.  Information is all out there; it’s been democratized after year of OpEx professionals succeeding and failing. 

But maybe too much information out there.  Just like when Covid hit hard, too much information leads to misinformation, not knowing which information to trust, and useless debates rooted at this. 

And the truth is OpEx best practices are constantly changing, or they should be changing.  Just like standard work, it can’t be frozen in time.  We can’t be stuck with the same tools from 1970.

Yes, there’s timeless tools, but technology presents change and opportunities.  We live in a world driven by Digital Transformation, where is that in our OpEx arsenal?

Our ways to train have to change.  

We need more experts.  We need to develop the experts in the areas that they’re responsible for.  We need to democratize the information within our teams. 

We need systems that help train the right people on the right things at the right in the right way.   And leading to the right results, in this case results being those folks being able to transform their organizations.

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Path Forward

The first challenge is, how do we to capture the experts in multiple areas and bring them together to help transform industry. 

The second challenge is, how do we provide a roadmap to follow which provided the right training to all, as mentioned above.

We believe it’s possible.

And we believe it will make the OpEx professionals’ job a whole more rewarding, where their job will be to coach and not to drive.

And we believe we can change turn that 70% failure figure down to 10%.