What is Goal Alignment Waste?

 

What is Goal Alignment Waste?

Definition: -- Goal alignment waste is the energy expended by people working at cross –purposes and the effort required to correct the problem and produce a satisfactory outcome.

Example:

An edict is issued to reduce travel expenses because sales have dropped off. The travel department implements policies that require all personnel to use tickets issued by the travel department at the lowest available ticket price.

This forces sales people to take extra flight legs, leave home earlier, get home later, and schedule fewer appointments in a week and so on.

Complaints quickly follow, along with some resignations from highly skilled sales personnel who can easily find another job and be “treated better”

Typical Solution/ Result:

 Sales, Human Resources, and Travel are told to “work together” and come up with an answer. After several months and many meetings, a thick volume of procedures is produced. Several sales people have already quit (along with a number of travelling technical personnel). Chances are, by the time of recommendations arrive, manage improved and the rules were changed (or sales simply began to ignore the rules and do their own travel arrangements, thereby teaching everyone that polices are only recommendations).

No customers would tolerate the builtin costs of such turnover, training of new hires and wasted meetings.

Real Quality ( Office Kaizen )Solutions:

In an office kaizen improvement, the executive steering committee ( ESC) charters a cross-functional change team to work out a solution the is cost effective across the entire value stream over the long term. The team ha deadline for specific deliverables and the ESC reviews progress each week.