Managing Success

As a member of the Balmert Consulting team, I am asked to provide a summary trip report following each teaching session.  I always have a general sense of how the training session went.  Pulling the report together typically involves taking a little quiet time to revisit the specific highlights of the class and thinking through exactly what went well and where some changes might be made for future classes.

In a recent trip report, I made a comment that the class was the best I had experienced teaching that specific material.  My comment prompted one of those Darn Good Questions from Paul Balmert: “What made it the best class you have taught?”  

My initial response focused on how I felt following many of the exercises.  However, as I played the session back in my head there were actually several specific events that took place during the training session that contributed to the execution of that successful class.  

Asking what went right set up a very constructive thought process that led to well defined success factors.  The process of dissecting the class, module by module, led me to appreciate several specific actions that set up the opportunity for success. 

It wasn’t difficult to identify what they were, but I did need to be asked.

Everyday Successes 

“What went right?” is such a simple question, but one that is seldom asked in the manufacturing process.  Our focus is dominated with the converse– “What went wrong?”  Looking back on my four decades in manufacturing there is never a shortage of problems to address, failures to investigate and resolve and opportunities to fine tune processes.  Recognizing that time is every leader’s biggest challenge, it’s understandable why taking time to dissect success is viewed as a luxury leaders seldom can enjoy.   

In practice, defining the root cause of failure and taking effective correction action is the basis for continuous improvement.  However, every manufacturing process experiences a significant degree of success every day.  Do we understand the critical factors that drive success? How often do leaders take the follow up action necessary to ensure those success factors are well defined and incorporated into our standard work protocols?  Do we dedicate the time and leadership discipline to understand and define the root cause of success?  

Rarely. Every company utilizes techniques to dissect and understand failure.  These root cause failure analysis (RCFA) techniques range from a straight-forward 5 Why process to more sophisticated techniques such as Apollo, TapRoot and Kepner Trego.  Dissecting failure when it occurs is critical to effective management of the continuous improvement process. Organizations that are best at RCFA are typically top quartile performers.   

Sustaining improvement is just as critical and the process follows the Deming best practice model of Plan/Do/Check/Act. (Or, Plan/Do/Check/Adjust). While RCFA is a core competency of top performing organizations and teams, sustaining improvement is an ongoing challenge for every organization.  

Every organization is pushing for step change improvement over time.  In many cases, solutions flowing from the RCFA involve multiple corrective measures.  A risk for every organization is the tendency to complete the RCFA, identify multiple opportunities for improvement, snap corrective actions in place, realize some degree of improvement and move on.  A well-executed RCFA will have data associated with each element of the performance gap; specifically, what is driving performance variability in the process.  

That baseline data provides several significant benefits.  It provides a roadmap for leaders in terms of prioritizing corrective actions in the face of limited resources.  The baseline data also allows leaders to quantify the impact of corrective action.  The brainstorming process places a number of actions in play.  Data defines the relevant and relative improvement impact. The data also sets the stage for the sustain process.  

Root Cause Success Analysis

How often do we take the time to revisit the process that produced success? More specifically, how often do we conduct a RCSA – Root Cause Success Analysis?  

In many cases for which improvement is delivered there were the critical few initiatives that drove the success, such as one or two corrective actions responsible for improvement.  Conducting a deep dive to clearly define those few factors that were critical to success allows leaders to ensure the process is in place to guarantee sustained improvement.  It also allows leaders to discard initiatives that do not contribute to improvement.  In Lean Manufacturing terms these incremental initiatives represent waste since they require time and resources to support. 

A practical application of the RCSA process is in play when organizations are challenged with delivering on one of those Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAG’s) that are often set in the annual budgeting process.  How often have you seen teams charged with delivering on a 10% improvement or 12% reduction as a key metric?  The drill can begin with a brainstorming session to provide an idea dump as the basis to organize a wide range of key improvement initiatives, action plans, initiative leaders and supporting teams.  Failure analysis is often a part of these improvement drills. 

As the process plays out and action plans are implemented, some degree of improvement typically shows up.  Inevitably some of the improvement is the result of the Hawthorne Effect: pay more attention to any defined area and change typically follows simply from that attention. There will also be improvement from some of the action plans implemented.  

In reality, improvement is realized incrementally over time, ideally trending toward that targeted 10% improvement or 12% reduction target.  But, by definition, trending falls short of achieving the goal. 

An alternative model pulls RCSA into the model.  Smart teams charged with a BHAG can set short term target objectives that define a target goal to be achieved and sustained in a very short timeframe. For example, a 10% improvement should be looked at as a series of 3% to 4% improvements delivered in a 45 to 60 day timeframe that are sustained and built on.  

Once RCFA and brainstorming efforts are completed and key initiatives defined, the stage is set to lock-in on those critical few initiatives most likely to deliver sustained results.   Following implementation each improvement initiative should be analyzed and quantified to define its respective level of impact.  That sensitivity analysis will allow leaders to discard initiatives that are not contributing to improvement and test opportunities for increased leverage with actions that are delivering results.  

This assessment also allows leaders to target and build airtight sustaining initiatives to ensure the improvement base is maintained and ground isn’t lost.  That rigor also ensures improvement was not simply a result of the Hawthorne Effect.  

The process is iterative: setting the next target condition/improvement and defining initiatives required to make the next step improvement.  Over time the target condition improvement process and associated RCSA will allow leaders to focus on incremental improvement in the 1% to 2% range.  The key to delivering on those BHAG’s is the ability to narrow and quantify success factors and process discipline required to sustain improved results.  

The advantage of managing a RCSA is that it doesn’t require a new process.  The same leadership discipline and skills involved in conducting an effective Root Cause Failure Analysis apply to developing the Root Cause Success Analysis. 

Managing Success

Continuous improvement requires attacking opportunities on two fronts: solving new problems and sustaining existing improvement.  The sustain process brings us back to the three factors that drive execution: people, process and technology.  Sustaining improvement also requires eliminating or minimizing process variation.  

The RCSA process will always include the people element and, by virtue of human nature, open the door to variability. That’s the opportunity to consider technology as part of the sustain evaluation. But as you know, technology has its limits and it’s not possible to completely engineer humans out of all processes.

Investing time in understanding what went right offers exactly the same benefits as does digging into failure but comes with none of the downsides. Making that happen falls to the leader: it’s one more thing for a busy leader to make happen.

Failing to understand and protect the key drivers of success will eventually lead to the time-consuming process of experiencing and fixing the same problem again.  

Sound familiar?

Bill Wilson
July 2025