Innovate: What step can you remove? | Lifestyle

We normally associate improvement with adding something.

Another employee. Another technology system. Another approval. Another form. Another meeting. Another policy.

But sometimes the smartest innovation is subtraction.

What if the fastest way to improve your process is simply to remove something that no longer adds value?

That question matters enormously in Guam.

Think about the last time you completed a complicated administrative process. Perhaps you submitted a permit, registered a business, processed an invoice or requested approval.

How many signatures were required?

How many offices touched it?

How many times was the same information entered?

And here is my favorite question: Why?

Lean thinking distinguishes between work that creates value for the customer and activity that consumes time and resources without creating that value.

Waiting, unnecessary movement, rework and excessive processing are classic forms of waste.

Now imagine a Guam government application traveling through six approvals.

Approval #4 exists because 15 years ago there was a problem.

A control was added.

Years pass. Technology changes. Personnel change. Other controls are introduced.

But nobody removes approval #4.

So, every application continues waiting there.

Ten minutes of unnecessary work does not sound catastrophic. But multiply ten minutes by 5,000 transactions annually. That is more than 800 hours, over 20 workweeks, consumed by one unnecessary step.

Now multiply that thinking across an organization.

That is why process improvement can create enormous capacity without adding people.

Consider a Guam small business importing products. Employees receive information from a supplier, type it into one spreadsheet, email it to another employee, who enters it into accounting software, prints a copy, obtains a signature and then scans the signed document back into another system.

Everybody is busy.

But busy is not the same as productive.

Could the data be entered once? Could approval occur electronically? Could routine transactions below a defined threshold skip an executive signature?

Those are innovation questions.

The Port Authority of Guam offers a useful larger-scale example of the direction modernization can take. Its modernization plans include upgrading its terminal operating system to support functions such as automated invoicing and cargo/container tracking.

Technology can reduce friction, but only if we first examine the process itself.

Otherwise, we risk doing something I warn organizations about constantly: automating waste.

If a process contains nine unnecessary steps, putting those nine steps online does not make it innovative.

It makes the waste digital.

Try this at your workplace.

Take one process everybody complains about.

Put every step on sticky notes.

Then ask of each one: Why does this exist? Who benefits? What risk does it control? Could we combine it? Could we automate it?

And, the question organizations too rarely ask: could we eliminate it?

Innovation does not always require adding the newest technology. Sometimes innovation is having the courage to stop doing something.

So, this week, don’t ask your team what you can add.

Ask something more powerful:

What step can you remove?