Saturday Ramble: Busy Isn’t the Same as Healthy

There’s a strange thing that happens in operations.

The busier a team looks, the easier it is to assume things are going well.

People moving everywhere. Phones ringing. Parts being expedited. Trucks coming and going. Purchasing chasing vendors. Managers answering questions. Somebody solving the latest problem before the next one arrives.

Everybody is working.

But is the operation actually working?

I’ve walked into plenty of operations where the people were incredibly busy. What I eventually discovered was that a lot of that activity existed because the process wasn’t doing its job.

Someone had to remember which supplier actually had the part.

Someone knew where the inventory really was.

Someone knew which number in the system you could trust.

Someone knew the workaround.

And usually, there was one person everyone went to when something didn’t make sense.

That person often looks like your strongest employee.

They probably are.

But they may also be hiding some of your weakest processes.

The Rescue Economy

Every operation has exceptions.

A supplier misses a delivery. A customer changes something. A truck breaks down. Demand jumps unexpectedly.

That’s operations.

The problem starts when exceptions become the normal way work gets done.

If purchasing spends every morning expediting yesterday’s orders, that isn’t responsiveness anymore.

If warehouse employees constantly stop receiving or picking to answer questions, that isn’t flexibility.

If someone has to physically hunt for material because nobody trusts the inventory, that isn’t teamwork.

And if a manager has to approve, explain or fix every unusual situation, that isn’t control.

That’s a rescue economy.

The operation survives because good people keep catching things before they hit the floor.

Which works.

Until it doesn’t.

Your Best People Can Hide Your Worst Processes

This is the uncomfortable part.

Experienced employees become incredibly good at compensating for bad systems.

They remember things the system doesn’t.

They develop shortcuts.

They know which supplier to call.

They know which shelf something ended up on.

They know that when the system says 12, there are probably 8.

They know which process to ignore because “that’s not really how we do it.”

Eventually, the business starts depending on that knowledge.

And because the work keeps getting done, nobody feels much urgency to fix the underlying process.

Until that person takes vacation.

Or retires.

Or gets sick.

Or simply gets tired of being the answer to every question.

Then suddenly everyone discovers how much of the operating system was actually stored inside somebody’s head.

Healthy Operations Can Look Boring

I think this is where we sometimes get operations backward.

We celebrate the save.

Someone finds the missing material.

Purchasing gets the emergency delivery.

The warehouse stays late.

A manager makes three phone calls and keeps the customer happy.

Those things deserve recognition.

But the better question is:

Why did we need the save?

A healthy operation doesn’t eliminate problems.

It makes routine work routine.

Inventory is where the system says it is.

People know who owns the decision.

Purchasing knows what needs to be ordered before it becomes an emergency.

Receiving follows the same basic process every time.

Exceptions have somewhere to go.

And managers spend more time improving the operation than rescuing it.

That can look surprisingly uneventful.

Good.

Uneventful is underrated.

Measure the Rescue Work

If I wanted to understand the health of an operation, I wouldn’t start by asking how busy everyone is.

I’d start looking for the rescue work.

How many expedites did we have this week?

How many emergency parts runs?

How many inventory adjustments?

How many times did someone stop what they were doing because material couldn’t be found?

How many decisions had to climb the organization because nobody was sure who owned them?

How many problems were solved by somebody saying:

“Ask Dave. He knows.”

Whatever name fills that sentence in your business, pay attention to it.

That person is valuable.

But they may also be showing you exactly where your next process improvement belongs.

People First. Process Second.

The answer isn’t to remove experienced people from the equation.

It’s the opposite.

Use what they know.

Ask why they do things the way they do.

Understand the exceptions they’ve learned to manage.

Then turn that knowledge into a process the rest of the organization can use.

The goal isn’t to make people less important.

It’s to stop requiring good people to compensate for preventable problems.

That frees them to solve the problems that actually require their experience and judgment.

And that’s a much better use of good people.

A healthy operation isn’t the one that’s busiest.

It’s the one that runs without constant rescue.

So maybe the question for Monday morning isn’t:

How busy is the team?

Maybe it’s:

What would stop working if your best operator took next week off?