A health care department had been on a Lean Six Sigma improvement journey for several years. They'd become quite effective at avoiding wastes in their medical processes. Unfortunately, they became so aggressive at hunting for waste that they inadvertently created another form of waste that they had real trouble seeing.
One example was a discussion about whether to get a water cooler and make bottled water available to staff on one small unit. Some of the staff had requested one, as they wanted purified cold and hot water to drink, and the topic was discussed at a meeting. The debate focused on whether a water cooler was a waste of money, whether it would waste time if people congregated at it (waiting waste?), or if it would add to walking time (transportation waste?), whether you really needed to filter water or whether the tap water was good enough (overprocessing waste?).Looking around the room at the people attending the meeting, the overheaded cost of the meeting was about $2,200 per hour, and the portion of the meeting that dealt with the water cooler lasted about an hour and a half! So, while diligently trying to avoid waste, the organization burned up enough cash to pay for the water cooler and water for about four years. This pattern repeated on numerous small decisions, as everyone up the chain of command tried to make sure that nobody "below" them was wasting precious dollars.
Decisions need to be made close to the point-of-use. If we involve every layer of management in every little decision, we waste time and money, and send a frustrating message to people whom we are supposed to be empowering. Give people guidelines, define some practical limits, then get out of the way and let them make good decisions. And don't assume that meetings are free just because you don't see the immediate cost.
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