Everyone has a voice. The question is whether you built anything to receive it.
The places an operation leaks profits are patterned, not bespoke, which is what makes them findable before anyone tells us anything.
Man at level 2, Machine at level 3, Material at level 2, Method at level 3, Measurement at level 1, Mother Nature at level 2, Maintenance at level 3, Management at level 2. The weakest link is Measurement at level 1.
Measurement is the weakest link and it limits the rest.
When management and staff have different views of how the business is doing, that gap has a price.
Your people carry an accurate read on the business, and when the picture you take to the market does not match the picture they see from the floor, the difference shows up in your numbers before it shows up in your reporting.
Firms with a wide gap between the two views show:
16%
Lower return on assets
10%
Lower market value against asset value
48%
Higher chance of CEO turnover
The pattern
Profit leaks the same way, everywhere.
The evidence is the practice
40+
years of business analytics and profit improvement work
2,000+
hospital and health system clients on the benchmarking platforms I built
50,000+
professionals trained
01
Demand
No formal sales process.
02
Quality
Inconsistent quality, and rework nobody adds up.
03
Standard work
No standard operating procedures.
04
Schedule
Scheduling problems.
05
Inventory
Poor inventory management.
06
Price
Estimating and bidding errors.
07
Cash
Tight cash flow.
08
Execution
Lack of project management.
09
Communication
Communication challenges.
10
Renewal
Lack of innovation.
That is what makes them diagnosable before anyone tells us anything.
The eight
Eight categories identify root causes.
Man
Qualification and competence
Is everyone qualified, current, competent within scope, and carrying a workload that permits the standard?
Machine
Equipment and the systems driving it
Are the equipment and the systems driving it capable, available, and configured to the current standard?
Material
Inputs and inbound information
Are inputs in specification, in date, traceable, and complete at the point of decision?
Method
Procedure and standard work
Does the documented procedure match the work actually performed, and does it prevent the error rather than catch it downstream?
Measurement
Data, definition, and abstraction
Can the measurement system separate real variation from its own noise?
Mother Nature
The physical environment of the work
Are the physical conditions inside the window the work requires?
Maintenance
Asset upkeep and recall
Is preventive maintenance completed on interval rather than deferred, with alerts and recalls actioned?
Management
Resourcing, targets, and governance
Do the resourcing, the targets, and the documented standard coexist, and what happens to the person who stops the line?
How we ask
Everyone gets asked. In their own words.
Not a focus group. Not a sample of ten. Everyone in the scope gets a prompt and a box, and they type or dictate, which is the same thing they do all day in a text message. There is nothing to learn and no scale to interpret.
What makes it work is what the open ended prompts ask for. Not whether you agree that we live our values. What happened. What did you do. Who decided. How often does that happen. Occasions, not opinions.
Then the software structures it. Thousands of accounts classified into the eight categories, each carrying the evidence behind it, clustered by what can be shown rather than by who argued hardest.
Everyone
Every person in the scope, not a sample.
Their words
Free text in. No scales, no forced choice.
Structured
Classified, evidenced, and clustered by the software.
How it runs
Empowered chartered teams drive measurable results. We provide the coaching and accountability to ensure delivery.
01
Charter
The sponsor signs the scope, what the finding is worth, and the check that will prove the failure mode stopped. Members are released in writing and the process owner agrees to receive the fix.
02
Go and look
The team watches the work as it is actually done, on more than one shift, by more than one person. Documented step beside observed step.
03
Find the cause
Every candidate has to explain why here, why now, and why not elsewhere. The ones that fail are logged as ruled out.
04
Change the process
The team has the authority to change. This is the step that drives results.
05
Prove it worked
The effectiveness check set at charter is run on the date set at charter. Not completion. Evidence.
06
Results Achieved
The fix is handed to its owner, the record is signed, and the team goes back to work. Teams achieve results and disband. That is what keeps the next one credible.
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