Stuck!

Professor Rebecca Henderson & Professor Nelson Repenning

MIT Sloan School of Management Rhenderson@mit.edu & Nelsonr@mit.edu

Or

Why it can seem to be so hard to get anything done

&

What can be done about it

Or

Why you’re sometimes tempted to think the people who work for you are lazy

&

Why they don’t think so much of you, either

Outline Why we get stuck:

An introduction to the dynamics of overload & the dangers of firefighting

Why we stay stuck: The obvious solutions often make things

worse What can be done:

Knowing one’s capacity Killing project #26 Facing worse before better

Is This Your Project Pipeline?

Are these your delivery dates?Scheduleddelivery

date

Actual delivery date

Does this look familiar?

.

Elapsed Time

Progress100%

0%

Plan

Actual

• 79% apparently complete by original deadline• 2 major unplanned iterations requiring redesign

• Actual duration: 208% of schedule

Construction ProjectProject A

• Cumulative Labor Hours: 403% of plan

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Proje

ct A

Act

ual -

Plan

Lab

or

Month

Labo

r Hou

rs

Plan

Actual

What’s going on?

Overload at PreQuipActive Projects

12345...

2627282930

(formal developmentprojects by number)

5412386

28624

35275

21515329

ResourcesRequired forCompletion(months)

82412204

369

30183

Months toCompletion(desired)

Implied Development ResourceAllocation (months)

This year Next year Year after that

4038509224

4862406029

146236

1720

1501380930

0230

220

1200

9500

(customer support, troubleshooting)All Other Support Activity –– –– 430 430 430

Total Development Requirements –– –– 2783 2956 2178

Available Resources (months) –– –– 960 960 960

Rate of Utilization (percent) –– –– 289.9 307.9 226.9

Overcommitment destroys productivity

Average

Value-Added

Time on

Engineering

Tasks

Number of Projects per Engineer

100%

80%

60%

40%

0%

20%

65431 2

And shifts attention away from early stage work

Phases

Index of Attention and

Influence

High

Low

ACTUAL

ACTIVITYMANAGEMENT

PROFILE

KnowledgeAcquisition

ConceptInvestigation

BasicDesign

Prototype Building

PilotProduction

Manufacturing Ramp-Up

ABILITYTO INFLUENCEOUTCOME

And from:

Building long term capabilityDoing strategyMaking decisions

We call this

“The Capability Trap”

DesiredPerformance

ActualPerformance

PerformanceGap

-

+

Capability

+Time Spent

Working+

Pressure toDo Work +

+

Investments inCapability

Pressure toImprove

Capability

+

Time Spent onImplementation and

Improvement+

+

B1

Work Harder

Work Smarter

B2

CapabilityErosion

DELAY

DesiredPerformance

ActualPerformance

PerformanceGap

-

+

Capability

+Time Spent

Working+

Pressure toDo Work +

+

Investments inCapability

Pressure toImprove

Capability

+

Time Spent onImplementation and

Improvement+

+

-

B1

Work Harder

Work Smarter

B2

R1

Reinvestment

CapabilityErosion

DELAY

Confidential, please do not cite or quote without author’s permission.

The Capability Trap in Manufacturing

“In the minds of the [operations team leaders] they had to hit their pack counts. This meant if you were having a bad day and your yield had fallen ... you had to run like crazy to hit your target. You could say “you are making 20% garbage, stop the line and fix the problem”, and they would say, “I can’t hit my pack count without running like crazy.” They could never get ahead of the game.” -- improvement consultant

Desired NetProcess

Throughput

Net ProcessThroughtput

ManufacturingThroughput Gap

-

+

Machine Yield

+Time SpentRunning the

Line+

Pressure to MeetThroughputObjectives +

+

Investments inYield

Improvement

Pressure toImprove Yield

+

Time Spent onImprovement and

PreventiveMaintenance

+

+

-

-

B1

Work Harder

Work Smarter

B2

Shortcuts

B3

R1

Virtuous orVicious?

Confidential, please do not cite or quote without author’s permission.

The Capability Trap in Product Development

An engineer might not take the time to document her steps or put the results of a simulation on the bookshelf and because of that she saved engineering time and did her project more efficiently. But in the long run it prevented us from being able to deploy the reusability concepts that we were looking for.

--chief engineer DesiredDevelopment

Process Throughput

DevelopmentProcess

Throughput

DevelopmentProcess

Throughtput Gap

-

+

Designs onthe Bookshelf

+Time Spent on

Design Activities+

Pressure to MeetDeliver New

Products +

+

Designs Added tothe Bookshelf

Pressure toDocument Design

Work

+

Time Spent onDocumenting

Designs

+

+

-

-

B1

Work Harder

Work Smarter

B2

Shortcuts

B3

R1

Virtuous orVicious?

In general… “I knew I was in trouble when I had to

give hourly updates….”

Overload

Declining Performanc

e

No time for up front

work

The stuff we bring to

market is…

We have to spend a ton

of time fixing it…

Overload

Declining Performanc

e

The people who work for us are

lazy

We need more

controls

Overload

Declining Performanc

e

There’s no time to do strategy

We can’t make

decisions

Overload

Declining Performanc

e

No time for up front

work

The stuff we bring to

market is…

We have to spend a ton

of time fixing it…

What can be done?

Recognize you have a problem There are two theories. One says,

"there’s a problem let’s fix it." The other says "we have a problem, someone is screwing up, let’s go beat them up." To make improvement we could no longer embrace the second theory, we had to use the first.

Kill project 26!

Why is killing project #26 so hard? (Part 1) It’s a “good” project! Good managers can meet stretch goals

(and I’m a good manager) Making difficult decisions takes

time & energy

It’s very hard to kill projects without a strategy

Why is killing project #26 so hard? (Part 2) Killing project 26 will give us very

serious problems right now…

“Worse before better”

Time

Performance

Time

Time Spent Working

Time Spent Improving

Effort

Time

Capability

Actual Performance

Time

* =

Time Spent Working

Effort

Time

Time Spent Improving

Capability

Time

* =

Actual Performance

Time

So, all you need to do is: Measure capacity & track resources

Balance long and short term effort Avoid tipping into firefighting

Develop a strategy & the ability to act Learn to kill project 26 Face worse before better Develop the ability to have “high conflict,

high respect” decisions

What happens on Monday morning?

Two case studies Medtronics Kirkham Instruments

Some Models of Change The Vision Model (aka, the Field of

Dreams model) Change happens by giving people new ideas

The Document Model Change happens by writing those new ideas

down The “My Way or the Highway” Model

Change happens by telling people to use the new ideas, watching them closely, and penalizing those that don’t

All of these are probably necessary, but none are sufficient Organizational change efforts don’t produce

change unless somebody in the organization actually does something differently

Doing things differently is tough and does not come naturally

Successful change requires: Understanding how the current situation emerged Identifying how your behavior (inadvertently)

contributed to the current challenges Taking a disciplined approach to changing (your

own) bad habits

“I Will”- new things you will do

- old things you will stop doing

“We Should”-things that others need to do to allow your new

behaviors

Good luck!