{"id":1436,"date":"2012-04-14T13:42:39","date_gmt":"2012-04-14T13:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=1436"},"modified":"2024-01-06T11:56:11","modified_gmt":"2024-01-06T11:56:11","slug":"targets-tyranny-and-traps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=1436","title":{"rendered":"Targets, Tyrannies and Traps."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>If we are required to place a sensitive part of our anatomy into a device that is designed to apply significant and sustained pressure, then the person controlling the handle would have our complete attention!<\/p>\n

Our sole objective would be to avoid the crushing and relentless pain and this would most definitely bias our behaviour.<\/p>\n

We might say or do things that ordinarily we would not – just to escape from the pain.<\/p>\n

The requirement to meet well-intentioned but poorly-designed performance targets can create the organisational equivalent of a medieval thumbscrew; and the distorting effect on behaviour is the same.\u00a0 Some people even seem to derive pleasure from turning the screw!<\/p>\n

But what if we do not know how to achieve the performance target? We might then act to deflect the pain onto others – we might become tyrants too – and we might start to apply our own thumbscrews further along the chain of command.\u00a0 Those unfortunate enough to be at the end of the pecking order have nowhere to hide – and that is a deeply distressing place to be – helpless and hopeless.<\/p>\n

Fortunately there is a way out of the corporate torture chamber: It is to learn how to design systems to deliver the required performance specification – and learning how to do this is much easier than many believe.<\/p>\n

For example, most assume\u00a0without question that big queues and long waits are always caused by\u00a0inefficient use of\u00a0available capacity –\u00a0because that is what their monitoring systems report. So out come\u00a0thumbscrews heralded by the chanted mantra\u00a0“increase utilisation, increase utilisation”.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this belief is\u00a0only partially correct: low utilisation of available capacity can and does lead to big queues and long waits but there is a much more\u00a0prevalent and insidious cause of long waits that has nothing to do with capacity or utilisation. These little beasties are\u00a0are\u00a0called\u00a0time-traps<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The essential feature of a time trap is that it is independent of both flow and time – it adds the same amount of delay irrespective of whether\u00a0the flow is low or high\u00a0and irrespective of when the work arrives. In contrast waits caused by insufficient capacity are flow and time dependent<\/em> – the higher the flow the longer the wait\u00a0– and the effect is cumulative over time.<\/p>\n

Many confuse the time-trap<\/em> with\u00a0its close relative the batch<\/em>\u00a0– but they are not the same thing at all – and most confuse both of these with capacity-constraints<\/em> which are a completely different delay generating beast\u00a0altogether.<\/p>\n

The distinction\u00a0is critical\u00a0because\u00a0the treatments for time-traps<\/em>, batches<\/em>\u00a0and capacity-constraints<\/em>\u00a0are different –\u00a0and if\u00a0we get the diagnosis wrong\u00a0then we will make the wrong decision, choose the wrong action, and\u00a0our system will\u00a0get sicker, or at least no better. The corporate pain will continue and possibly get worse – leading to even more bad behaviour and more desperate a self-destructive strategies.<\/p>\n

So\u00a0when we want to reduce lead times by reducing waiting-in-queues then the first<\/strong>\u00a0thing\u00a0we need to\u00a0do is to search for the\u00a0time-traps,<\/em> and to do that we need to be able to recognise their characteristic footprint on our time-series charts; the vital signs of our system.<\/p>\n

We need to learn how to create and interpret the charts – and to do that quickly we need guidance from someone who can explain what to look for and how to interpret the picture.<\/p>\n

If we lack insight and humility and choose not to learn then we are choosing to stay in the target-tyranny-trap and our pain will continue.\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If we are required to place a sensitive part of our anatomy into a device that is designed to apply significant and sustained pressure, then the person controlling the handle would have our complete attention! Our sole objective would be to avoid the crushing and relentless pain and this would most definitely bias our behaviour. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Targets, Tyrannies and Traps.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,42,43,319,45,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-how","category-why","category-time-trap","category-what","category-teach"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6265,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions\/6265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}