{"id":11713,"date":"2015-12-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.argonandco.com\/news-insights\/articles\/supply-chain-efficiency-sandy-springs-atlanta-ga\/"},"modified":"2020-12-17T19:31:00","modified_gmt":"2020-12-17T19:31:00","slug":"supply-chain-efficiency-sandy-springs-atlanta-ga","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.argonandco.com\/us\/news-insights\/articles\/supply-chain-efficiency-sandy-springs-atlanta-ga\/","title":{"rendered":"The myth of efficiency"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the years, I have asked many executives the question: \u201chow can your business become more efficient in the short term?\u201d and I typically get one or more of the following three answers:<\/p>\n

1) Work faster
\n2) Work to look busy
\n3) Work with less people<\/p>\n

While these can have some short term impact on productivity, it may not be positive and any gains rarely last long. In this first part of my two part BLOG on efficiency and how to improve it, we\u2019ll evaluate each of these traditional ideas on improving operations to see why they don\u2019t work as well as managers might think.<\/p>\n

1. Work Faster<\/p>\n

Maybe this should be called the \u201cRun! Don\u2019t walk!\u201d strategy. This is popular among demanding leaders who want their staff to do what they always do but just do it quicker. This promotes two side effects. First, people stop \u201cthinking\u201d and concentrate on \u201cdoing.\u201d The atmosphere is one of a person acting as a \u201cchicken with their head cutoff\u201d or a robot. The second effect I commonly witness in such companies is that associates start working as individuals and less and less in teams. This ends up undercutting any of the gains achieved by working individually quicker. Third, the tradeoff between speed and quality gets seriously challenged; some employees decide that \u201cspeed\u201d can be achieved if this constraint is loosened.<\/p>\n

The results from \u201cwork faster\u201d are not sustainable. By end of the day your workers are exhausted and have a feeling they invested a huge amount of extra effort with little or no accomplishment. They do not look forward to coming to work and repeating the same process again. The business begins to experience more employee turnover, lower quality, and lower still morale.<\/p>\n

2. Work to look busy<\/p>\n

This sounds similar to the \u201cwork faster\u201d approach; however this really focuses on solving another productivity issue that many managers rightly sense about their organization, i.e. that the team is not staying busy all the time , i.e. this idea gains traction after managers witness employees standing around talking, coming back from break late, waiting for work, Etc. It is assumed by the manager that all these \u201cbreaks in the action\u201d are under the control of the associate. But without some investigation, sending the raw message to \u201cStay busy!\u201d can lead to a less than desirable outcome. This can send a message to employees that they have to show effort to their boss \u2013not results. Frustrated associates will interpret this more to mean to \u201clook busy and find busy work; don\u2019t stand around\u201d. Don\u2019t worry about, quality or profitability or why they didn\u2019t have enough work to keep them busy in the first place..<\/p>\n

3. Work with less people<\/p>\n

This is the typical cost cutting \/ downsizing approach that outwardly tries to force efficiency upon an operation by making them figure out a way to do the same amount of work with less people. This ignores sustainable results, quality and employee morale. The side effects here can be just as damaging as the other two common approaches. First of all, the adage \u201cdo more with less\u201d has a negative message that profitability will be achieved despite employees and not because of employees; this drives up employee turnover. Second, this is commonly done in operations that are not performing well to begin with. This is because often do not have good measures of everyone\u2019s productivity. Therefore, instead of letting go the poor performers, they do it based on some arbitrary measure like an employee\u2019s number of years of service, supervisor reviews, high-level, inaccurate productivity metrics, etc. Consequently, we have seen where productivity has actually gone DOWN after these sorts of initiatives rather than up. There are places where this does work, but rest assured there are probably just as many where it does not.<\/p>\n

In my next BLOG piece, we will talk about what does work, i.e. a \u201cfourth path\u201d. This one doesn\u2019t generate the negative side effects of the more traditional methods. It also has a lot of advantages.<\/p>\n

—-<\/p>\n

This piece was first published by Ask Research and Development<\/a>\u00a0in October 2015.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

As of September 8, 2020, Crimson & Co (formerly The Progress Group\/TPG) has rebranded as Argon & Co following the successful merger with Argon Consulting in April 2018.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11714,"template":"","categories":[145],"class_list":["post-11713","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-supply-chain-planning"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe myth of efficiency - Argon & Co<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.argonandco.com\/us\/news-insights\/articles\/supply-chain-efficiency-sandy-springs-atlanta-ga\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The myth of efficiency - Argon & Co\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Over the years, I have asked many executives the question: \u201chow can your business become more efficient in the short term?\u201d and I typically get one or more of the following three answers: 1) Work faster 2) Work to look busy 3) Work with less people While these can have some short term impact on […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.argonandco.com\/us\/news-insights\/articles\/supply-chain-efficiency-sandy-springs-atlanta-ga\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Argon & Co\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-12-17T19:31:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.argonandco.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/shutterstock_194308508-2.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.argonandco.com\\\/us\\\/news-insights\\\/articles\\\/supply-chain-efficiency-sandy-springs-atlanta-ga\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.argonandco.com\\\/us\\\/news-insights\\\/articles\\\/supply-chain-efficiency-sandy-springs-atlanta-ga\\\/\",\"name\":\"The myth of efficiency - 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