Don't waste my Time

How often do we hear this, often from a C level person? Now, the fact is that C level people are really busy, they do have a lot of things to think about, and they do need every minute to be spent constructively. So, when you go to them and say, ‘we need at least three days of your time to help us map out where we adding value to our Customers’, you better have a good answer ready when you get told not to waste their time.

One of our favourite quotes is attributed to Abraham Lincoln, who when told that a large crowd was outside and was asked could he speak to them for 5 minutes is supposed to have replied ‘No, because I am not prepared. If you want me to speak for 5 minutes, I need a month to prepare, if you want me to speak for an hour, I need a week, but if you want me to talk all day, boys – I’m ready now’.

So, if you are preparing to run a Value Stream Mapping (VSM) exercise, and you know that you need significant input from the C suite person, you better be prepared when you get your 5 minutes to make your case.

The chances are that the C suite person, or one of their colleagues at that level, are the ones who asked for the VSM to be completed, but they probably considered their role complete when they delegated the task to someone else. To achieve full value from this exercise though, we’re afraid to say that delegation is not enough. The reason is simple. Politics.

Many VSM exercises do in fact waste time. This happens because the facilitator allows politics, and by this we obviously mean company politics, to intervene. Discussions inevitably get dragged into whose area of responsibility a particular set of processes falls, and very often discussions end on a statement that ‘We’ve always done it this way’.

What gets missed out is the Customer, and a VSM should always, and we mean always, be done from the perspective of the Customer. Where are we adding value to the Customer?

Value Stream Mapping, because it involves looking at Why processes are in place, rather than how a process works, inevitably crosses internal boundaries, and the people with the Authority to rearrange those boundaries are C suite people.

If they are not involved in the VSM itself, you can be guaranteed that they are going to get dragged in to long running discussions that will run for days, weeks, and even years as FUD kicks in among the other participants. For this of you who don’t know what FUD is – it’s Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, and FUD is inevitable when a new way of delivering value is being considered.

So maybe the way the C suite people need to hear about the upcoming VSM and maybe the way to get them to want to be actively involved is to point out that it is a way to save them time, while also adding value to their Customers.

Value Stream Mapping is not a trivial exercise, and to treat it as such is a waste of time.