Heroes Don’t Scale

One of the most interesting consulting engagements I’ve worked on involved a company preparing to move into a much larger warehouse.

They wanted to document their existing processes so they could replicate them in a new facility four times the size.

There was just one problem.

Most of their processes hadn’t been designed.

They had evolved.

Over the years, people solved problems, created workarounds, and made small adjustments until the operation functioned. It worked…but only because everyone knew the unwritten rules. The tribal knowledge.

That’s not a scalable process.

Scalable processes have three characteristics:

They’re simple.
They’re repeatable.
Most importantly, they don’t depend on a single person.

Too many organizations rely on heroes.

The person who knows every shortcut.

The one everyone calls when something breaks.

The one who can fix almost anything.

Most leaders celebrate that person.

I don’t.

Not because high performers are bad.

But what happens if they’re not here tomorrow?

If your operation can’t survive the absence of one person, you don’t have a high performer.

You have a dependency.

The goal isn’t to eliminate great people.

The goal is to build great systems that allow ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results.

That’s what makes an organization truly scalable.

Have you ever worked somewhere that depended on a hero?

Don’t Forget

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.

Cruel Summer

The forecast calls for 39°C (102°F) in Paris today.

And it’s still June.

In 2018, I was responsible for Amazon Prime Now refrigeration systems across Europe. Paris. Rome. Berlin. Munich. Barcelona. Madrid.

At the time, I kept hearing the same solution:

“We just need more inspections.”

“We need more preventive maintenance.”

“We need to pay closer attention.”

The problem was that attention wasn’t the issue.

The refrigeration units were designed for a maximum operating temperature of 35°C (95°F).

Climate conditions had changed. The equipment was being asked to operate outside its design parameters.

My argument, which I failed to convince enough people of at the time, was simple:

This wasn’t a maintenance problem.

It was a design problem.

No amount of inspections, checklists, or vigilance could reliably compensate for equipment operating beyond the conditions it was built for.

In August 2018, the heat arrived.

Multiple sites experienced major refrigeration failures, resulting in significant product loss and operational disruption.

I’ve carried that lesson with me ever since:

When a system is operating outside its design limits, asking people to work harder is not a strategy.

Sometimes the process isn’t broken.

Sometimes the assumptions the process was built on are no longer true.

Where Should the Pack Table Go?

Years ago, I heard a facility manager dismiss Six Sigma and Continuous Improvement as a sham.

His example:

At his warehouse, the pack stations had been rearranged over and over again across the years. The pack table moved from one side of the work area to another…9 o’clock, 12, 3, 6…and eventually right back where it started.

His conclusion:
“All that Lean effort just ended up exactly where we began.”

But my first question was:
Did it?

The layout may have looked the same. The operation probably wasn’t.

The workforce changes.
The product mix changes.
Volumes change.
Customer expectations change.

A healthy operation adapts constantly, even if some solutions eventually cycle back around.

That’s the part people miss about continuous improvement:
it isn’t a one-time event or a quarterly initiative. It’s a culture.

At its core, it really comes down to three things:

Teams that feel empowered to identify problems and suggest changes
A disciplined process to evaluate and implement improvements
Reliable measurement to determine whether the changes actually worked

Simple in theory.

Very difficult in practice.