I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of the term “doing more with less.” You may have noticed this platitude in vendor pitches and whitepaper titles since the economy began its tumble. At first it seemed like a plucky response to a bad situation. In the face of layoffs unprecedented in their scope, it sounds a little obnoxious.
It’s rare that we really can do more with less. I’ve been part of workforces that shrunk, and I’ve never seen fewer people actually do more work while maintaining product quality (not to mention personal sanity). “More with less” seems to have graduated from the school of marketing-speak that usually features an asterisk and a long list of possible side effects.
The lean version of “more with less” is “better with the same.” Managers who get lean right don’t look to sack workers once processes have been optimized — they look to get more value from those employees by applying their skills to other endeavors.
The temptation, under our present circumstances and even in more prosperous times, is to “trim the fat” after process reengineering produces greater efficiencies. It takes courage to keep workers on, as Toyota has done, for instance, at its San Antonio truck assembly plant.
Who’s to say at this point whether that courage will be rewarded or exposed as folly. Either way, it jibes with the philosophy of a well-run company, which holds that when demand returns, the company should be ready for a quick production ramp-up. Hiring back workers and training new ones is anything but a lean response.
What do you think – is “more with less” in line with lean teaching?
2 Comments
I’m a bit of an outsider to this discussion, I barely know how to spell lean. I think the whole discussion around “more with less” is dangerous. Organizations should be focusing on what they are stopping—things they no longer can do. While being barely conversant in lean (what do you expect of a sales type guy), I think this is more in the spirit of lean than doing more with less.
Hey, easy with the marketing dig but yes, that expression should be reserved for “sometimes, less is more,” such as with perfume, feedback, and Christmas-light decorations. I prefer to concentrate on: “Doing more to waste less,” and “doing well, more or less.”