The CEO of The MPI Group shares practical advice for putting the focus on process.

MPI Insight: When companies are looking at making big improvements, innovation tends to take the focus at the expense of process. Why do you think that is? And what’s lost by ignoring process?

John: Innovation’s fun! Who doesn’t want to create something new and exciting and be lauded around the world as the genius who came up with this for the first time ever? (Which is quite rare, by the way.) You’re collaborating typically with very smart people, you’re thinking about chewy problems — it’s exciting.
Process can feel like you’re going back to the same old stuff — like, haven’t we fixed this 10 times or a hundred times before? It’s just not as exciting, I think in some ways, for people. And that’s unfortunate because a lot of times taking a hard look at a process is what leads to innovation.
When you’re connecting with your customer, what’s the process there? Are you creating value or irritation for that person? And if you’re creating irritation, that’s a place you should focus on. A lot of times people who don’t focus on process thoroughly will speed up something with technology. And what you don’t want to be is the person who says, “You know what? We make mistakes faster than anybody in the business. We have the fastest mistake-creating process ever!”

MPI Insight: Let’s talk about the customer. What role do customers play in process improvement?

John: Especially in larger companies, but even in small companies, we often have employees who don’t talk to customers. Customers are these rumored beings who seem very cranky because they want things to work and to be on time and to be affordable. I mean, you’ll often hear people make jokes about it, “It’s a great business except for the customers.” I can understand those feelings. But you end up with employees who — for whatever reason — live in what we call “customer-free zones.”

One of the things that has struck us over the years at MPI is that we’ve found that top-performing companies tend to have a specific best practice: they make sure that everyone in the company — at every level — meets with at least one or two customers a year.

I remember a manufacturing company where they made sure that somebody from their company, not necessarily at a high level, maybe the factory, the warehouse, was talking to a counterpart every week and asking “How did we do this week?” Because what happens is that you start generating process improvements when the customer says: “It’s great. But if you could pack the parts in reverse order in the box, it would make it easier for us. Or if you could have the truck show up NOT at lunch hour.” I mean, any number of things where it seems small, but if you improve that customer’s process, and they also know that you’ve listened to them, both firms become a little more productive—and you’ve also built a stronger relationship.

So when you look at leading firms, they make sure employees know that there are customers out there. There’s nothing quite like knowing what a customer wants and to actually hear a customer say, “This is great.” Or: “Really, your processes are awful!”

MPI Insight: This is also applies to people who are not normally customer-facing, right? For people who are working behind the scenes?

John: Correct. Somebody who’s working on a manufacturing line, somebody who is in accounts payable, somebody who’s on a maintenance staff — they should all go meet customers. It’s refreshing for them and the customers, and demonstrates a commitment and a respect to your employees. That they are valued, not just for the tasks they complete — operating a machine, processing this invoice, fixing this piece of equipment — but because they are part of your team. And that you trust them to go talk to your customers.

MPI Insight: That kind of engagement benefits customers, and it also makes employees feel connected.

John: Absolutely. We’re all going to spend something like 90,000 hours — or more — at our jobs over our lifetimes. Aside from sleep, it’s going to be one of the biggest investments of time that we make. Shouldn’t those hours feel like they meant something? I mean, everybody needs to make a living. And people want to be successful, feel accomplished, respected. But most of us want those 90,000 hours to count for something more than just: “I showed up. I punched a clock. I got a check.” I mean, lots of people do that, lots of people have to do that. But isn’t it better if you can go to work and afterwards say, “I made this little part of my community better. I made this group of customers happier. I fixed this problem that was in the world.”

MPI Insight: MPI has found through its research over time that there’s no one improvement methodology that outperforms others. That surprised me. I think many people have this sense that if we could just find the right methodology, the right magic, that’s the key to success. Why do you think that is, that it doesn’t seem to matter which methodology you choose? And — if it’s not the particular methodology — what does matter?

John: Our research on improvement methodologies did find one difference. In fact, there’s one methodology that works worse than all the rest. And that methodology is: no methodology. When people don’t have a methodology for improvement, they underperform everybody.

But for all the other actual improvement methodologies, we found that what matters most is:

1) How long has the organization been using any improvement methodology (longer is better), and,
2) How broadly has that improvement methodology been adopted across the organization (is it just a practice used here or there, or has it become the culture of the organization — as in, this is the way we do things).

So what we tell people now is that we can’t find a statistical difference between the performances of the methodologies. BUT — if you want to get better, you must pick a methodology. And then you need to work over a long period of time at that same methodology and making sure it becomes part of your culture. Meaning that you’re training people on it, you’re using it in your processes all the time.

MPI Insight: I can imagine someone hearing that advice and thinking, “Oh, wow, I’m not going to see returns on this for a long time.” And it can be hard to get motivated, to wait for the payoff. Are there things that people can look for in the short-term to know that they’re on the right track?

John: Generally, you’re going to start with a department, a machine, a process. Try the new methodology there, fix problems, demonstrate success, then replicate it in a different department, on a different machine, within a different process. Then again, and again…it’s iterative. We see this with all improvement methodologies, and we see this with Industry 4.0, too, with digitization.

If you complete the improvement process on one machine, one line at a time, generally what we see is that you are either saving enough money or making enough additional profit that you can pay for the next improvement project, which pays for the next, and so on. In doing that, you also build engagement with employees because they can see progress: “Oh, it worked over there. How are you doing that?” And as you create engagement, people get trained and steeped in the culture of your chosen improvement methodology. But you have to take that first step.