We’ve all heard the stories.

A customer service representative keeps a private spreadsheet because the official system lacks the needed information. A technician always carries an essential tool with him because it’s never where it’s supposed to be. A manager adds another approval step to compensate for an unpredictable process.

Each workaround may get the job done, but they never get to the underlying problem. Over time, those one-off fixes multiply. Employees perform the same job in different ways. Critical knowledge stays stuck in someone’s head or private files. Work gets harder, errors increase, and the organization grows dependent on the people who know how to rig the system.

Even a workaround that takes just five minutes a day costs more than 20 hours each year. Add that across 25 employees, it’s over 500 hours spent compensating for a process that should have been corrected a long time ago.

The employees closest to the work usually know where those detours exist. Processes for Systematic Continuous Improvement (SCI) give them a routine way to bring those problems into the open. During team improvement huddles held on a regular basis, employees can identify recurring workarounds, get at the root cause and develop lasting solutions.

Want to see how much workarounds are costing your organization – and how to get rid of them?

Begin your improvement journey today!

Getting better at getting better.