Many organizations focus on the amount of activity that’s going on rather than the value or quality of what’s accomplished. Keeping people busy becomes the standard. This can create the illusion of busyness, but also has a lot of negative impacts.
The first is people’s time is divided among a variety of assignments and progress seems to be very slow. The more initiatives you have, the harder it is for people to know which are the right ones to concentrate on.
The second is management overload. The typical result is that managers simply lose track of all the things going on. You can imagine the confusion it creates with employees wondering what the boss wants now!
One of the first actions you want to consider in deploying lean or Six Sigma is to review and very likely reduce the number of active change efforts. This should not be seen as backing down, but is simply adopting a more realistic and focused set of priorities.
I recently learned a life-changing lesson. Each morning I make a list of the things I have to do that day. Just as important, I also make a list of the things I’m not going to do that day. By doing this, I prioritize and focus my activities for the day and I’m more likely to accomplish the things I need to do.