The first Master Black Belt I worked with said something that stuck with me:
“I can tell you in 30 seconds whether a leader will fail when they try to implement change.”
Want to know how?
It’s easy.
If they start by saying “Don’t forget to…”
Or “Remember to…”
They’ve already failed.
Sometimes people go one step further and create a sign. A visual “don’t forget.”
Yesterday I saw a perfect example.
I was walking a warehouse with one of their senior leaders. We stopped at a sortation area where associates were building outbound pallets.
A system coding change was coming that would eliminate a problem. Until then, they had designed a temporary workaround.
Each pallet had a three sided cone with a barcode on each side. Bolted on top was a handheld tally counter. The sorter would physically move the box to the right pallet, scan the cone, then tap the counter. At the end of sortation, the quantity on the counter should match the quantity the system said. It was simple. It was brilliant. And…it wasn’t working. The first pallet I looked at had 9 boxes on it…and the counter said 0000.
Nobody was using it.
The problem was not that people forgot. The problem was that the process depended on people remembering.
When your improvement relies on memory, reminders, or signs, you’ve created a system that requires perfect human behavior.
Perfect human behavior doesn’t exist.
The best operational improvements don’t ask people to remember.
They make the right action the easiest action, or the only action.
That’s the difference between training people…and designing systems.
Leaders often assume compliance problems are people problems. More often, they’re design problems. If a process depends on memory, reminders, or discipline, it will eventually fail. Great operational leaders don’t build systems that require people to remember. They build systems where the right action happens naturally.