4. REAL: The Big Win: How Slowing Down Sped Things Up!

“A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.” —John le Carré

Would you set sail on a rapid river without knowing where you were headed? Probably not, unless you’re aiming for the rocks. To navigate effectively, you need a clear destination, a course plotted with real knowledge of the river, and a sharp eye on the water ahead.

For example, take Pickled Peppers—a company that fell into a common trap. The managers, who should have been at the helm, were buried in their smartphones or holed up in offices, detached from the actual workflow. They compensated for inefficiencies by clocking long hours, mistaking self-imposed stress for dedication, expecting the same from everyone else, who was not an hourly worker.

The “outside-in” perspective, a concept I first encountered with the Evans Group—who helped Starbucks® develop their first Strategic Marketing Plan—emphasizes the importance of managing your company’s image at every touchpoint, from the consumer all the way back to the production plant. No arguing with the success of Starbucks® initial marketing plan.

Companies have to examine what they do and who they are from the outside in, rather than the inside out. This approach means seeing your company as people who might buy from you see it, through their eyes, from their viewpoint. Too often, companies get stuck looking inward, viewing the world through the narrow lens of cost accounting and resolving problems.

A Real Management System

As Tolstoy wrote, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” and the same applies to companies. Well-run ones tend to be more similar than different—and, ironically, less exciting than poorly run companies.

Making Learning Happen

By the end of the consultant’s second visit, the managers were challenged to practice what had been presented on Dr. Deming, TWI, and the Toyota Way. For the first event, they were to choose areas to apply what they had learned in practice. They selected the Gallon Line, Forklift usage, and the Office.

To introduce the team to Simply Looking, I let them decide where to start. I admit, it was a bit of showboating on my part because I was confident in how well this method works, and I wanted them to experience the same “Aha!” moment I had the first time I figured it out and applied it.

“Since pickle slices are our top sellers,” Gary, the production manager, suggested, “let’s begin there. It’s a no-brainer.” This was the heart of their operation.

Where the pickle packing action took place was called “the Gallon Line.” We stood there, the managers, the supervisor, and I, under the bewildered stares of employees wondering what the heck was going on. Anticipation buzzed in the air, and with the relentless hum of machinery, the rhythmic clinks of jars, and the pungent scent of acetic acid, I knew this was a sink-or-swim moment. We would put Simply Looking™ to the test.

Breaking the Bottleneck

We spent about 20 minutes simply looking and making little diagrams of what we saw. I reminded them to keep their minds quiet and not look for explanations—to be disciplined in marking down what they observed. The part of us that sees is not the same as the part of us that figures things out, and it’s easily influenced.

As their charts began to take shape, they struggled to resist finding explanations. Interestingly, Geraldo, the line supervisor, was the best at keeping a neutral mind.

After 10 minutes, we started comparing what we had drawn. We were moving from simply looking to digesting. I asked them where they saw the most movement and where the product in process seemed to be piling up. It was straightforward, just look for the blotches on their drawings.

Something unsettling caught Gary’s attention—places where the floor was littered with pickles. He exclaimed, “Darn it, I walk through here twenty times a day; how come I never saw it this clearly before?”

Geraldo, the line supervisor, began to explain that so much built up they had to stop the line, and two of their workers spent all their time shoveling the pickles into waste bins to try to keep the line moving. In hindsight, they were a little embarrassed that they had accepted this as business as usual for so long, without really questioning it.

I explained that this is the state of affairs in almost every business I have worked with. When we’re working, we become like those old-fashioned horse-drawn carriages, where the horses wear blinders to keep them focused on the road ahead. People rarely can or will take the time to stop and simply look, as if seeing it for the first time. The workers knew something wasn’t right but were doing what they were asked to do. The managers had other things on their minds when they passed through. The problem was hidden in plain sight.

Hiding in Plain Sight

As we discussed why it is so important to stop and simply look every day, and how that should be one of the primary tasks of management—their eyes began to open. Miguel asked, as if to himself, “Why are there so many pickle slices on the floor?” Theories began to fly. I put a stop to it. “You cannot really know unless you are the ones doing the work, so let’s ask them!”

Miguel, Gary, and Geraldo looked at me with questioning expressions, unsure how to take it. So, I grabbed Geraldo and had him go right up to the workers and talk to them. No theory was necessary—they knew exactly what the issue was.

“When the filler machine is running, it spits out pickles faster than we can move jars into place. The pickles fall onto the belt and are carried along until they gather in piles that then fall on the floor. At least three or four times a day, we have to stop the line and clean the belts,” one worker explained. “The faster we speed up the machines, as we’re told to do, the more often this happens, and we have to stop,” another added.

Miguel, the GM, was emphatic, “That’s why I say we need to speed up the machines and fill faster, so they don’t have to wait.”

And the real shock came when we zeroed in on the automatic filling machine. It was the epicenter of waste, with sliced pickles scattered like rice at a wedding.

A tension settled over us. We were here to solve problems, not just observe them. But before jumping to conclusions, we needed to be certain—really sure—of what was happening and why. It’s bad enough to spend time doing what appears to be nothing, looking, only to end up without any resolution.

Gary and Miguel teamed up with Geraldo, the line supervisor. With determined focus, they began Simply Looking™, observing the work where the pickles were grounded with fresh eyes and a quiet mind. As they watched, they noticed something —Rosa, a dedicated worker, was caught in a frantic battle against the machine, trying to keep up with the flood of pickles spilling over. Around her were three other workers, desperately trying to keep the pickles out of the belts to maintain the flow, or cleaning up the floor to prevent slips.

“Why is this happening?” Gary asked, a mix of frustration and curiosity in his voice. “Everyone is working as fast as they can, only to make things worse.”

Rosa, sweat beading on her forehead, explained, “I’m doing everything I can, but the machine is too fast. I can’t catch all the spillovers, and they just keep coming.”

At that moment, it hit us—this wasn’t a minor issue; it was a full-blown bottleneck.

Breaking the Bottleneck

But, instead of rushing to explain it to them and get them to fix it, I let them figure it out for themselves. Observation was crucial, but it was only part of the equation. We needed hard data to confirm what we were seeing before jumping to any conclusions. The combination of observation verified by calculation—and calculation verified by observation—can save companies a great deal of wasted time, money, goodwill, and resources.

Gary and Geraldo spent time with Rosa, writing down the capacity and speed of each machine in the production line. The idea in the past had been to keep the machines working at capacity and the people striving to keep up. It made sense, right? Speed up the line, get more product flowing, make sure the packing crew has their jars to pack. Nobody standing around, no wasted potential in the considerable investments made in machinery. An ideal cost accounting solution, figured out with a spreadsheet, in the main office, far from the work. But on the work floor, in the moment of production, things looked different.

Screwing up her courage, Rosa spoke out, “We are trying to do what you ask us to, Miguel and Gary, but we simply cannot keep up. The pickles come at us so fast that, even when we put our hands under the machinery to scoop pickles into the jars, there are just too many jars coming too fast. They pile up until we have no more table space, so we have to stop regularly and adjust before moving the jars into the brine machine. That’s why the flow of jars stops at the end of the line, and the packers have too much idle time on their hands.”

I stepped in before it got ugly. Timing is everything. I introduced the idea of Takt time—the rhythm that ensures the entire system works harmoniously, rather than optimizing just one part at the expense of others. The idea of harmonizing the flow to the slowest step in the process. It’s the opposite of what common-sense dictates you do. Common sense says to speed up the slowest step in the process… but what if it can’t be sped up? And what is the slowest step?

How Slowing Down Sped Things Up

So, to know if slowing down the machine would actually help, we needed to gather data and analyze it first. Theory first, then testing.

We prepared a process behavior chart, a powerful tool that lets you hear the “voice of the process,” just what the process can predictably do, when it isn't out of control. This chart didn’t just tell us what we wanted to hear; it told us the truth—whether the process line was predictable and whether its output, as it varied over time, stayed within acceptable limits.(Acceptable means: can you sell and make money at it without losing customers)?

The tension mounted as we analyzed the chart. Our worst fears were confirmed: while the system was “predictable” but, its highs and lows varied more than the weather, and “results” were way out of what was acceptable. In fact, on average, the jars were 20 to 24% heavier than necessary. The owner, Ron, gasped, “Jesus Christ, that’s our best-selling product, and we’re losing 20% of our potential profit every day. That’s thousands of dollars a year.”

The process was designed in such a way that even when everything was running smoothly, it still wasn’t meeting the companies needs. The customers loved getting 20% more. The data didn’t lie—tweaking things here and there wouldn’t address the issue. We had to go deeper.

I asked them what was the most important step in the process. They all agreed it was the weighing of the jars. Too much weight and the company lost money. Too little and they would lose customers. We went back to the line and spoke with the workers. They all agreed that no one could work fast enough to keep up with the flow of jars of pickles—not the people, nor the other machines. In fact, in my calculations with Rosa, we found out that the machine that filled the jars with brine could only work at 65% of the speed of the machine that filled the jars. I asked why they chose this filler machine, and the stock answer was, “It’s what everyone else uses.” I paused and asked, “Is everyone else right, or are they all wrong? Let’s find out.”

With this in mind, we conducted a test, slowing down the machinery to match Rosa’s pace. She was the one responsible for cleaning up the jars and moving them into the brine filler. This was the moment of truth. We watched with bated breath as the line moved more slowly, methodically. I watched the beads of sweat fall from the owners' forehead at what must have seemed to him to be a snails pace. Rosa’s pace slowed, her movements became more deliberate, and—almost miraculously—the waste began to diminish. And the packing team. They had a nice even flow of work with no waiting.

The atmosphere shifted from tension to cautious optimism. Could it really be this simple? The answer, backed by the data, was a resounding yes. Not only did slowing the process down lead to more accurate fills with less waste, but it also eliminated the need to stop the line every few hours to un-jam pickle-clogged equipment. The result was unexpected and counterintuitive—by slowing things down, we actually increased the rate of output and improved the accuracy of the fill.

Ron, the owner, stood by, watching the scene unfold. His initial skepticism melted away, replaced by a sense of awe. The company saved $130,000 a year by reducing overfill, freeing up 240 staff-hours per week for other critical tasks—all achieved in less than an hour of focused management time spent looking, drawing, and chatting. (Savage Knowledge Makes Money)

But the real victory went beyond the numbers. At all levels of the company, people began to understand a fundamental principle: to improve a process, you need input from everyone affected by it, and you need to balance observation with calculation to arrive at the best solutions. Barriers that had long existed between management, supervisors, and workers started to crumble. Ron realized that investing in improvement wasn’t about spending money—it was about gaining real knowledge. And with that knowledge came the power to transform the company’s future. The big win had happened coming out of the blocks. I could finally breathe.

The change was palpable. Employees, once fearful that efficiency would cost them their jobs, now saw that it made their work more rewarding and secure. The tension of the morning had given way to a shared sense of accomplishment. We weren’t just resolving a problem; we were building a new way forward, one that was grounded in reality, supported by data, and fueled by collaboration.

Addendum:

Simply Looking, the most important tool in my REAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM™, challenges management to solve problems by going to where the work is actually done and “simply looking” to understand the issues at the source. It’s the missing element in many management systems—the elephant in the room. While there are Japanese words used for something similar, I think it makes them a bit too fancy. People have been looking, asking questions, and discussing since time immemorial.

We also incorporated other tools from the Japanese management toolbox. These included identifying and reducing the things that impede the flow, tidying up, using visual cues to induce action, and mistake-proofing.