A Scalable Process Doesn’t Depend on Heroes

What does it mean to say a process is scalable?

It’s simple.

It’s repeatable.

It doesn’t rely on Jim. Or Joe. Or Bob. Or any individual to be on shift that day.

A lot of operations look stable at smaller scale because experienced people are compensating for weak processes in real time. They know the shortcuts. They know the workarounds. They know where the problems usually happen.

But once volume increases, complexity increases, or new people enter the system, those gaps become much more visible.

That’s when organizations start confusing growth problems with operational maturity problems.

If performance depends heavily on individual heroics, the process probably isn’t scalable yet.

Small Frictions Become Big Operational Problems

One of my favorite CI projects was also one of the smallest.

A few extra seconds per transaction doesn’t sound meaningful…until it scales across an entire operation.

Lots of Continuous Improvement projects are ambitious. Some require massive investment in new tools, equipment, or warehouse reconfiguration. In fact, some leaders are convinced that all improvement needs to be on a grand scale. But my favorite CI project I’ve ever led centered around something incredibly small: one extra data entry.

At the time, I was leading a receiving operation with roughly 20 employees handling grocery inventory. Receivers would scan incoming product, stow it directly to shelf locations, and manually enter expiration dates into handheld scanners as part of the receiving transaction.

The process itself made sense. The system had expected shelf-life ranges configured by product type. If an employee entered a date outside the acceptable range, the system would prompt for a second entry as verification. That safeguard was designed to catch mistakes before inventory hit the floor.

The problem was that the product characteristic tables…the part of the code these entries would reference…was wrong. The data was bad. For most products, it was set to 1 day. A can of soup? One day. A gallon of milk? One day. So instead of prompting for re-entry only on exceptions, the system was requiring a second date entry for every single item received.

At first glance, it didn’t seem catastrophic. Nobody was stopping production. No alarms were going off. The operation continued moving.

But after spending time on the floor, it became obvious that the extra step was creating constant friction in some of the highest-frequency transactions in the building.

That observation led to a simple question:

“What is this actually costing us?”

Quantifying the Problem

The receiving team averaged roughly:

20 employees
7.5 working hours per shift
~120 units per hour per employee

That translated to approximately 18,000 units processed daily.

We estimated the unnecessary second date entry added about 2.5 seconds per item. Again, individually, almost nothing.

At scale:

18,000 units/day × 2.5 extra seconds
= 45,000 lost seconds daily
= ~12.5 labor hours per day

That equated to:

roughly 8% productivity loss
or nearly 2 full-time employees worth of capacity consumed by a software defect

Not because employees were underperforming. Not because the process design was poor. Simply because a small system issue had embedded itself into a high-volume workflow.

The Bigger Lesson

This experience reinforced something that applies far beyond warehouse operations:

Small inefficiencies become massive when attached to high-frequency work.

Most operations do not collapse because of dramatic failures. They erode through thousands of tiny interruptions:

extra clicks
duplicate entries
unnecessary approvals
avoidable motion
systems that force people to work around them

Individually, these seem trivial. Collectively, they quietly consume labor, attention, and throughput every day. They are waste.

Why Direct Observation Matters

What made this issue visible was not a dashboard or KPI report.

It started with direct observation on the floor. Watching the work happen in real time. Listening to operator frustration. Looking for moments where the process felt slower, heavier, or more repetitive than it should.

That is one of the most overlooked parts of continuous improvement.

You cannot improve work you do not truly understand.

The Outcome

Once the issue was quantified, it became much easier to prioritize and partner cross-functionally on a resolution. The discussion shifted from anecdotal frustration to measurable operational impact.

Fixing the defect effectively returned more than 12 labor hours of productive capacity back to the operation each day without adding headcount.

All from removing a few unnecessary seconds from a transaction repeated thousands of times daily.

At scale, small frictions stop being small.

What Hershey’s Teaches About Losing Your Core Identity

Yesterday, in what felt like an April Fool’s headline, Hershey’s signaled a renewed focus on… chocolate.

Some of their products had shifted to “chocolate compound coating” instead of real chocolate. It’s easier to work with, more temperature stable, and cheaper to scale. From an operations or investor standpoint, that sounds like smart innovation.

But it’s not chocolate.

Around the same time, Hershey’s updated its vision to become a “leading snacking powerhouse.” As of 2025, their strategic language doesn’t even include the word “chocolate.”

That makes sense on paper. They’ve expanded well beyond their legacy products.

But it raises a bigger question: at what point does diversification start to dilute your core identity?

Vision statements are supposed to be broad and aspirational. They create room to grow. But they’re also supposed to anchor what makes a company distinct.

Hershey’s isn’t just another snack company. It’s one of the most recognizable chocolate brands in the world.

I’m glad to see a renewed focus on chocolate.

The more interesting question is how they drifted from it in the first place.

Most Warehouse Problems Start in Inbound

Spring is here. And for most of us, that means project season.

Painting is one of the simplest ways to transform a space. It’s inexpensive, fast, and high impact.

But anyone who has done it well understands the reality: the quality of the outcome has very little to do with the painting itself. It’s driven by the preparation.

Cleaning. Taping. Surface correction. Protection.

The majority of the result is determined before the first stroke.

Operations are no different.

In warehouse environments, outbound tends to get the focus. It’s visible, it’s measurable, and it’s directly tied to revenue. It’s where performance is judged.

But outbound performance is not created in outbound. It is enabled, or constrained, by inbound.

Organizations that struggle with productivity, flow, and consistency often look to optimize picking, packing, and shipping. In many cases, they’re solving the wrong problem.

The real issue is upstream.

Poor inbound discipline introduces friction that compounds across every downstream process. Excess touches, inefficient storage, unnecessary replenishment, and inconsistent decision-making all originate at the point of receipt.

Strong operators understand this and build their systems accordingly.

With my teams, I’ve used a simple framework to reinforce that discipline: PROST.

Prime
Product should be received directly into a prime, pickable location whenever possible.
Every delay or intermediate step between receipt and availability introduces waste.

Replen
Replenishment is a cost center, not a value-add activity.
While it can’t be eliminated entirely due to vendor constraints and order profiles, it should be aggressively minimized through better inbound decisions.

Overages
Overages are a control problem.
Without clear standards, they create variability, slow decision-making, and erode inventory integrity. Frontline teams need defined, consistent rules to handle them.

Space
Space utilization is not just a capacity issue. It is an operational capability.
High-performing teams treat space as a dynamic resource, balancing density with accessibility to support flow.

Touches
Every touch adds cost, time, and risk.
Well-designed inbound processes are built around minimizing handling from dock to pick location.

None of these concepts are new. But the consistency with which they are applied is what separates average operations from high-performing ones.

In one operation, reducing reliance on replenishment didn’t change pick rates. It reduced indirect labor and drove a measurable increase in overall site TPH.

Inbound is not the most visible part of the operation. It is not where most leaders instinctively focus.

But it is the foundation.

And when the foundation is right, everything built on top of it performs better.

What’s the one inbound problem you’re tolerating right now that’s costing you the most?

Bad Decisions Rarely Survive in a Room Full of Honest People

What the McDonald’s Big Arch Video Reveals About Leadership and Dissent

A McDonald’s CEO eating a burger shouldn’t be a leadership lesson.

But the Big Arch video is. Because that video didn’t happen by accident. It was filmed. Reviewed. Approved. And then posted to Instagram for the world to see.

Which means it passed through multiple people inside the organization. Creative. Messaging review. Brand standards. Legal. Executive leadership. Social media.

At any point along the way someone could have said:

“Maybe we shouldn’t post this.”

Bad decisions rarely survive in a room full of honest people.

Yet the video still made it out the door.

Moments like this are rarely about the content itself. They’re about culture.

Leaders surround themselves with talented people.

The best ones make it safe for those people to push back.

In the Air Force we called this Crew Resource Management. The principle is simple. Rank and position don’t determine whose voice matters. Anyone who sees a risk has the responsibility to speak up. CRM exists because organizations fail when people stay quiet.

The failure here isn’t about burgers or personal taste.

It’s structural.

A burger video is low stakes.

But the leadership lesson behind it isn’t.

When was the last time someone on your team told you that you were wrong?

Why Good Systems Don’t Rely on Reminders

I’ve owned the same food processor for decades. It has moved all over the world with me.

The main blade is sharp. Extremely sharp. Combined with the speed and power of the motor, it could easily be dangerous.

But the engineers assumed people would make mistakes. The blade won’t spin unless the bowl is locked into place and the lid is fully attached. Even the ingredient chute has a tall, narrow insert so you can add liquid while the machine is running but still can’t reach the blade.

It’s a layered safety system.

The earliest food processors didn’t have these features. Over time, through redesign and continuous improvement, the safeguards were engineered into the product.

Managers facing gaps in their processes often respond with “We’ll brief the team,” or “We’ll add more signage.”

These are short-term fixes.

Band-aids.

The manufacturer of my food processor could have added more warning labels. They could have put a larger warning in bolder font in the owner’s manual.

Instead, they redesigned the machine.

Real operational improvements work the same way.

The best processes aren’t protected by reminders.

The best processes are protected by layered systems.

Where in your operation are you relying on reminders instead of redesign?

What does it look like when you’re done?

I was recently approached by a small organization working on a stalled WWII bomber restoration. They’d been working on the project for decades and were looking for help moving forward. They had the plane sitting in a barn and were struggling to generate enough interest to continue their work. They had a website. They had a small group of volunteers. But they weren’t able to raise money.

It was clear to me 10 minutes into our conversation: they had no vision. Why were they doing this? What did they want to achieve? I asked a fairly basic question: what does it look like when you’re done? Is the plane sitting on a pad for people to walk around and admire? Or is it in a museum when you can climb inside and sit in the cockpit? Or is it actually flying again so people can admire it at airshows throughout the US? Even within this small group there was no consensus on the most basic question: what they were actually trying to build. Without that, even basic questions of cost, funding, and success were impossible to answer.

They thought their problem was visibility, so they initiated a letter writing campaign. They had designed merchandise. They were even in talks with a local chain of movie theaters to run a small ad during the previews.

They had no mission statement. And they had no organizational goals.

Even the letter writing campaign itself was lacking, as the letters themselves didn’t communicate the vision (since they had none) and had no call to action for the recipients.

You may hear people scoff about vision statements as “corporate speak,” or even worse “consultant speak,” but the fact is truly successful organizations, from businesses to non-profits, use them to articulate their “why.” Why they exist. What they want to achieve.

Without a clear answer to that question, everything else becomes guesswork.

How much money should they be trying to raise? Who should they be asking for support?

Even the restoration work depends on the answer. A static display aircraft, a museum exhibit, and a flying warbird are three completely different missions, with different costs, timelines, and needs.

But until the group decides what the airplane is supposed to become, none of those decisions can be made with confidence.

They believed their biggest obstacle was visibility. That if more people knew about the project, the support would follow. But awareness alone can’t solve a lack of direction.

People don’t rally around activity. They rally around a destination.

Before an organization worries about marketing, fundraising, or publicity, it needs to answer a much simpler question:

What does it look like when you’re done?

Until that question has a clear answer, everything else is just motion.

Who is your Successor?

Leaders should be training the people who will replace them.

Leadership development is not a side initiative. It is not something you squeeze in if the calendar opens up. It is the job.

Organizations that treat developing leaders as a core business advantage outperform those that treat it as a “nice to have.” This is especially true when that development intentionally builds a diverse bench of leaders with different backgrounds, perspectives, and operating styles. Homogeneous leadership teams miss risks. Diverse ones surface them earlier.

I’m a big fan of the TV show Succession, but Logan Roy is a perfect example of what not to do. Over four seasons, he dangled succession in front of at least three of his children. What he never did was invest the sustained time and structure required to actually prepare any of them to take over.

For all his brilliance as a self-made billionaire who rose from poverty in Scotland to run a global media empire, he failed at people development. He never built a real successor.

No one gets to the top on their own. And no organization sustains success without leaders who take development seriously.

Too many leaders treat development like filler. “I have a gap on my calendar, who can I mentor today?” That mindset misses the point entirely.

From your first role as a frontline supervisor to CEO of a global enterprise, the responsibility is the same: identify your replacement, invest in them, and grow them until they are ready.

If you are not doing that, you are not fully doing the job.

Look Out for Irving

This story comes from an old This American Life episode.

In 1970, the Vienna Sausage Company of Chicago moved production from its 19th-century factory into a brand-new, state-of-the-art modern plant. They used the same ingredients. The same recipe. And yet the hot dogs did not taste right.

The color was off.
The texture lacked their signature snap.

Maybe the water on the south side of Chicago was different from the north side. Maybe the temperature in the new smokehouse was wrong. The company searched for over a year and a half without finding the cause.

Finally, during a casual conversation over a few beers at a local bar, someone remembered an old employee named Irving.

At the original factory, Irving’s job was to push a wooden cart around the plant, collecting sausages from different workstations. On his way to the smokehouse, he passed through warmer parts of the building, effectively giving the sausages a long pre-heat before smoking.

In the new modern plant, there was no Irving.

The layout was different. That warming step disappeared. The sausages went straight to the smokehouse cold. The result was different flavor and different color.

To fix the problem, the company eventually built an extra room to replicate Irving’s walk. Once the sausages warmed the same way, the product tasted right again.

The original factory and Irving’s walk were the product of evolution.

Many companies, from startups to long-established organizations, develop processes the same way. Incrementally, through feedback and learning over time. The challenge comes when we try to document, improve, or scale those processes.

When mapping out a value stream, the core question is simple. Where is value created, and where is time wasted?

On the surface, Irving’s walk looks like waste. And that is exactly what happened. It was eliminated.

But Irving’s walk was not waste.
It was essential value.

As companies grow and move workflows to new locations, the real challenge is not eliminating steps. It is knowing which steps matter.

So the question for any Lean effort is this:
What other Irvings are lurking out there?

This American Life. “20 Acts in 60 Minutes.” Episode 241, Act Fourteen. Produced by Chicago Public Media. Originally aired January 17, 2003.