Arnold Consultancy

Once upon a time there was a man who had a kitchen. Each one of the appliances in the man’s kitchen used energy in some form or another, and all of that energy cost money. The various outputs from the kitchen appliances made the man very happy, and his family never complained, at least, not since the eldest son had left home. However, the cost of running the appliances made the man very unhappy, though this didn’t seem to bother his family too much. He knew that the reason the appliances cost so much was because they were old, and not as efficient as modern appliances would be.

Especially the coal-fired toaster.

Now this was a huge machine. In one end the man shovelled coal. In the middle, in a little slot, he placed slices of bread, and at the other end, toast emerged. And noise. Maybe a little smoke. It took quite a long time, because the coal had to get hot enough to make toast, rather than just warm bread. So breakfast could not be delivered until half past eight in the morning. And sometimes the toaster needed quite a hard kick in just the right place before it would release the toast at all, rather than incinerate and ultimately consume it. In its day it was state-of-the-art. Now, it was just in a state.

The man decided that the time had come, and he went to the toaster shop. There were a lot of toasters in the shop, and the assistant helped him to understand the differences between them. Some had space for four slices of bread instead of two, and in some you could even fit six. They had various settings that allowed the toast to emerge anything from barely singed to blackened, which was a bit like the coal-fired toaster, except that in the case of the modern toasters it was intentional.

There were so many to choose from, but there was one that the man immediately fell in love with. The Weather Toaster. It had an internet connection through which it gathered information about the coming day’s weather, and then it heated into the toast a picture, of the sun, or of a cloud, or of rain – which was much harder, but it managed it. “Can it do snow?” the man asked. Snow would be nice. “It can do sleet,” the assistant told him. “It looks like rain.”

Well, the man was enchanted. This was just so much better than his coal-fired toaster, and it would definitely cost him less to run. Okay, it was a quite expensive one-off purchase, and he might not make that much of a saving overall, but the old coal-fired toaster was bound to go wrong soon anyway, so there were future costs that he would avoid. And he could now buy loafers rather than the sturdy shoes which he currently needed to administer the hard kick that was sometimes required.

He bought the toaster and he took it home. He got two workmen to come to his house and dismantle and remove the coal-fired toaster, and he got another man to come and clean the kitchen where the old toaster had been, and to paint the walls to cover up the sooty deposits from coal and incinerated bread. And then, the next morning, he plugged in the new Weather Toaster and he made toast for his family. And he delivered it at eight o’clock instead of half past.

But his family, eating the toast with a picture of a cloud in their sunlit dining room, were not as deliriously happy as the man was, and as he expected them to be. They smiled at him, as they always did, but there was no quantitative change in their level of happiness, nor in the amount of toast which they ate. He had thought that they would eat lots more than they had before, now that it was delivered so much quicker, and had weather related pictures on it, to boot. And he thought that only the action of chewing would interrupt the display of broad smiles which they pointed in his direction. But none of this happened.

Why not? he asked them.

Because we want waffles, they told him. Not toast.

Oh, said the man. The new toaster doesn’t do waffles. Bother.

And, they said, what really ticked them off about breakfast was the scrambled eggs. If the man had wanted to replace just one of his kitchen appliances – although it might not have been the one that used the most energy and therefore the most money – he should have replaced the egg scrambler, powered by Herman the Hamster and his little treadmill. Because Herman was getting really old now and the eggs weren’t really scrambled at all. More, sort of, somewhat rearranged.

Had they always felt this way? he asked them.

Well, for quite a long time, they said. Why did he think that the eldest son, who complained a lot, had left home?

Oh, said the man. That’s a pity.

And the morals of this everyday tale of ordinary folk?

All companies have the equivalent of toast-making processes. Many of them are supported by antiquated computer systems, not unlike large coal-fired toasters. They are an easy, obvious target when process redesign, or process reengineering, is being considered. But:

1. You have to understand what is important to your stakeholders before you embark on any process improvements.

• The family didn’t care that the toast was delivered at half past eight instead of at eight – that was an unconfirmed assumption made by the man.
• The family didn’t care whether or not the toast had pictures on it.
• The family didn’t really care much for the toast, full stop. They wanted waffles.

2. Don’t waste money on toasters – or computer systems, or manual systems – that do more than your stakeholders require them to do. The ‘nice to haves’ are always, without exception, a waste of money and create an unnecessary delay to the rest of the project. Nobody cares that the toast has a picture of a cloud on it – it’s still toast. They didn’t want toast in the first place, but if they had, then a simple, cheap, toaster would have done the job just as well.

3. It is not necessarily the most expensive process that should be targeted, unless cost-cutting is the sole aim, and certainly not to the exclusion of others that matter much more to the stakeholders. Although Herman the Hamster’s scrambled eggs represented a cheaper process, it would have had far more effect on the stakeholders – the family – if the man had targeted that instead.

4. If cost-cutting is the most important thing, then by all means consider the most expensive process, but without first identifying the stakeholders’ requirements, you may still embark on a hopelessly inefficient project. Yes, a simple toaster would have reduced the process cost, but a simple waffle-maker would have reduced costs as well, and it would also have increased stakeholder satisfaction. Which option is better?

5. If you take an internal view of your business processes, then your customers will leave. They won’t tell you why, they will just leave. The man probably assumed that his eldest son left because he was of an age to do so, and he may well have been. Although he complained – unusually for a customer, less so for a son! – his complaints were not acted upon. He was driven to leave sooner than he otherwise would because the scrambled eggs were lousy, and there weren’t any waffles. As it happens, he is now living in an apartment near to a café which serves scrambled egg on waffles. He is happy. His father is not.