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No one likes spending money on maintenance. Take your car in for a service and you’re not only left with no transport, you have to pay for the privilege to boot. In fact, there’s only one thing worse than planned maintenance. An unplanned breakdown.
I recently had the chance to talk at one of the premier asset management conferences in Australia. It felt like being in a guild—in my case, of engineers and asset managers. People like us are charged with ensuring that billions of dollars of assets—whether aircraft, manufacturing plants or mines and refineries—can deliver safe, reliable, cost-effective outcomes.
[Listen to audio version, read by David Hodes]
Conferences such as these are excellent places to share knowledge. But there’s one drawback. Asset managers aim to get better and better at the theories, methods and tools of asset management. Likewise, project managers focus on improving their mastery of the theories, methods and tools of project management. But too often, in this laudable desire to learn and grow in a given domain, something goes missing: the systems view. The risk is that you get ever better at chopping down trees before ascertaining whether or not you’re in the right forest.
What’s the goal?
The first question any business needs to ask is what is its goal? In the industrial settings where I work, the ultimate goal is to consistently increase the return on shareholders’ funds. This is not to be confused with having a grander purpose, with which you will inspire greatness in the hearts and minds of your team. And, of course, you must also delight your customers and collaborate tirelessly across the value chain.
For a commercial enterprise, making more money now and in the future isn’t a crass goal—it’s oxygen. It’s the ticket to doing all the great works the leaders within the organisation can imagine. Good competitive returns encourage the shareholders to keep investing—in people, in ideas, and in systems. Bringing clarity to the goal brings alignment to the team; you all know what you are aiming for. Just as a sports team plays to win the league or the tournament, so too does the business play to win in its chosen markets.
My own contribution to helping my clients make more money is to systemically improve production. By finding the place of greatest leverage, we can increase the system’s effectiveness as a whole. Given this goal, we can then turn to the Theory of Constraints and, especially, what TOC’s inventor, Eli Goldratt, called the Five Focusing Steps. His original formulation called these steps ‘identify’, ‘exploit’, ‘subordinate’, ‘elevate’ and ‘repeat’. In my early consulting days, I found these words sent the wrong message. People don’t want to subordinate themselves, or be exploited. Language matters. I therefore developed a different, and more memorable, acrostic: the 5-Step FOCUS.
Find the constraint
This is not as simple as it sounds. It all depends on the horizon you’re looking at. With a strategic lens, it means properly understanding all elements of your value chain and choosing where you want to place the control point. It’s usually the most expensive piece of equipment, requiring the most investment to upgrade, such as a mill at a mine, or the aircraft of an airline.
In the case of a project, it will be the critical path—that is, the longest sequence of tasks from the beginning to the end of the project. A gain of 10% at the constraint is a gain of 10% for the system as a whole, whereas a gain of 10% anywhere else gets you nowhere closer to our goal. So it’s worth spending the time to properly find your constraint, or design it deliberately into your system.
Optimise the constraint
Once you’ve determined your constraint, you need to get the most out of it. This step usually involves some kind of schedule optimisation. Before you go off and invest more money in plant and equipment, you should make sure you’re getting the most out of what you already have. Any unplanned breakdowns not only incur unnecessary costs, they have the potential to create serious disruption to throughput. Thus, managing your assets in a disciplined systematic fashion is critical to optimising flow through the bottleneck.
Once you’ve squeezed all the capacity you have to the limit—for example, hot handovers at lunch or shift breaks, quick changeovers and an attitude of not having a moment to lose—there is still another step you can take. You can decide which products you will make, and which will be cut. It’s fairly simple to calculate the throughput delivered per minute or hour of the constraint’s capacity, called the product octane. Consider the consequence of dropping ‘viscous’ products in favour of those that flow through the constraint more readily.
In the project environment you would be looking for cases where work can be done in parallel rather than sequentially. You would look to see if the effort estimates and task durations are fair dinkum and whether or not you are prepared for action with the five rules of high-performance execution.
Collaborate around the constraint
The object of any component part of a system is not to maximise its own production, but rather to support the optimisation of the system as a whole. You cannot accomplish this feat if everyone is pulling in different directions. Priorities need to be coordinated and everyone must be willing to subordinate their own activity to do what’s best for the agreed-upon constraint. It matters little if a mine’s drilling and blasting is 100% efficient when the mill can only handle 70% of the ore presented to it. And it’s no use to the airline that an overnight check takes four hours instead of six if it all happens in a single shift whilst curfew is on.
All other things being equal, deploying resources onto a non-critical path activity will do nothing to get the project finished sooner. In fact, it is more likely to slow the whole project down as more work-in-process is introduced to the mix, creating clutter, confusion and unproductive multitasking.
In an orchestra, we don’t expect every musician will play as fast and loud as they can to offset the cost of their time and expensive instruments. Of far more consequence, if they are to get the audience to keep coming back for more, is that they play as an integrated unit, collaborating on creating a soundscape to delight and move the audience.
“At the heart of collaboration is effective leadership”
At the heart of collaboration is effective leadership. At the conference, one of the presenters told us the story of how they went about creating a set of competencies for every level of the business—from the shop floor to the boardroom. Included in those competencies were of course the technical skills each person had to have to effectively perform their role. But most impressive to me was how they made the competency include an understanding of the broader context of the business. Everyone would understand how what they were doing contributed to the overall purpose, including a means by which they could see how their specific contribution could be measured, recognised and rewarded.
The specific intent of the design of this competency system was that, as you made your way from the shop floor to the C-suite, you kept building and building on your knowledge of how all those functions adjacent to your own fit together. By his account, this deepening of knowledge created much greater empathy between the functional disciplines and a far more coherent and systemic approach to identifying and solving problems. It called to mind my own Just Work manifesto and I was reassured to recognise these universally applicable tenets playing out so positively in the account given by the presenter.
These first three steps from the 5-Step FOCUS usually produce a productivity improvement of 25% or more. There is no magic in this fact other than the fundamental proposition that constraints govern the rate at which value is created—and there is usually an awful lot of capacity wasted at the constraint. To get an idea of what high-performance optimisation feels like, picture the frenetic activity that goes on in during a pitstop in the Formula 1 grand prix. It is extraordinarily tightly choreographed, with someone stationed at every part of the car, each doing a specific job. They typically perform the whole routine in under seven seconds and know that a second saved in the pits is a second saved in the race. In a sport where races can be won or lost by seconds, this is a crucial consideration.
Uplift the constraint
When you have squeezed all the blood you can from the stone, it’s time to get more stones. But what kind of resource do you need? Of what type, for what time and in which place? And what is the business case that supports the investment?
Once you elevate your capacity, where will the constraint move? Will it be in the supply of critical materials or labour to your link in the value chain? Will it become your ability to produce what the market is calling for? Or, will it be the market itself? Of what use is it to release an additional hull to an airline through a productivity improvement in maintenance if they haven’t thought through what additional routes it will fly? What’s the point of investing in another mill if the mine cannot feed it with the ore it can now crush? And what use is it to invest in reducing the duration of the construction of the Olympic Stadium if its new completion date leaves it lying idle for a year?
Uplifting the constraint is a strategic decision and should be considered carefully. It is a deliberate act which demands careful consideration. Different scenarios may call for different selections and the merits of each should be considered before pressing ahead. After all, to reap the full benefit of a constraints-based approach, everyone within the organisation should be invested in the reasoning of the decision.
Start again
Once the investment has been made, the constraint will have moved. If you have done your homework and the market has not moved against you, it will end up where you have designed it to be. This will not be the same place as it was before and thus needs the application of the 5-Step FOCUS to take into account the new circumstance. By starting again, we have locked in a process of continuous improvement.
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What’s next?
The change from standard thinking to Theory of Constraints (TOC) is both profound and exhilarating. To make it both fun and memorable, we use a business simulation we call The Right Stuff Workshop.
We’d love to run it with you. To learn more:
- download the brochure (no email required)
- schedule a call
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[Background photo by Romain Vignes on Unsplash]“One way to boost our willpower and focus is to manage
our distractions rather than letting them manage us”
—Daniel Goleman____________________________
Understanding the Jobs Patients Need Doing
A patient may ask for a smaller device, a clearer display or an easier app. Those requests matter, but they leave a deeper question unanswered: what is the person trying to accomplish, and why does the current approach make it difficult?
Someone using a monitoring device may want to understand whether their condition is changing, decide when to seek help or manage daily activities with greater confidence. The device is one means of achieving that outcome.
A powerful question asks how well your organization understands the jobs patients are trying to get done. A strong answer connects patient research with clearly defined outcome statements that become the formal user needs your teams use to build the design history file. Outcome-based user needs are easier to validate, flow more easily into design requirements, and result in faster time to market.
“A feature request describes a possible answer. Understanding the patient’s job to be done sets your design team up to deliver a better solution faster.”
Define the job from the patient perspective
A useful job statement describes an activity the patient needs to accomplish in a relevant context. It should remain understandable without naming your product or preferred technology.
“Use our app every day” describes behavior your organization wants. “Provide a way to recognize when a change in my condition requires professional advice” describes the outcome a patient actually desires.
The distinction affects research. If the team starts with the app, it will ask how to improve screens and interactions. Starting with the job opens questions about information, confidence, timing and support. The best solution may involve changes beyond the app.
Define a scope the team can investigate. “Live a healthier life” expresses an aspiration but is too broad to guide detailed engineering decisions on its own. “Minimize the time it takes to find a solution to my health concern without needing to talk to a doctor or call someone” gives a team a direction, a measure, an object of control and contextual clarifier(s).
Distinguish the job from the journey
Journey mapping shows how people move through a particular care pathway. Job mapping examines what they must accomplish to achieve their purpose, including the work surrounding the interaction with your solution.
The two perspectives complement each other. A journey may show that a patient waits for follow-up. The job perspective asks what they are trying to understand or decide while waiting.
This matters because current processes can become embedded in the team’s assumptions. Patients may need a reliable way to recognize an important change; they do not necessarily need the exact sequence of activities currently provided.
Use the journey to understand context and dependencies. Use the job to examine whether a different approach could help the patient achieve the desired outcome more effectively.
Study daily life where it happens
Patient research begins with observation and empathy interviews at the Gemba, the place where the activity actually occurs.
For patients, that place includes the home and the settings in which they manage health alongside ordinary responsibilities. Ask people to demonstrate routines, explain decisions and describe recent experiences.
Observe what they do. Immerse yourself in the circumstances surrounding the activity. Engage through questions that let them explain their purpose in their own language.
A person may say that managing treatment is straightforward while observation reveals multiple reminders, improvised storage or reliance on a partner. Those arrangements can reveal effort and uncertainty that have become familiar enough to go unreported.
The aim is to understand the why your solution will win before making any decisions about what your solution will do. Customers will want your solution because of the outcomes it gives them, not because of what you made.
Recruit for differences that affect the job
Patients with the same diagnosis may struggle with different parts of an activity. Differences in confidence, experience, resources and support can change how they define success.
Recruit participants whose circumstances reflect the population you intend to serve. Include relevant variations in health literacy, technology familiarity, physical ability and access to care. Are you targeting the tech savvy millennial, a busy parent trying to run a family with four kids or a retiree living in a managed healthcare facility?
Research should also examine emotional and social needs. A patient may want reassurance about managing a task alone or worry about drawing attention to a condition. Keep these needs visible alongside functional outcomes without assuming one design choice resolves them all.
Examine the complete job
The job mapping framework divides a job into eight recurring steps. These steps prompt investigation beyond the most visible interaction.
- Define. Establish what the patient needs to achieve and the circumstances that matter.
- Locate. Establish how the patient will find the information, materials or support required, including your solution.
- Prepare. Uncover how the patient will arrange the environment and resources for the job to be done.
- Confirm. Understand how the patient will make the decision to go forward with your solution and determine whether everything is ready for the intended next action steps.
- Execute. What outcomes matter to the patient as they get your solution and start using it. Often this is the ONLY job step the team looks at.
- Monitor. How will the patient assess and know for sure your solution is progressing successfully.
- Modify. Rarely do things work perfectly on the first try. Identify outcomes that are important to the patient when adjustments to the approach are needed when conditions or results require it.
- Conclude. Complete the set of outcomes by understanding how the patient completes the activity or prepares to repeat it.
Apply these prompts to actual patient work. Some steps may recur or overlap. The map should help the team discover needs, rather than force experience into an artificial sequence.
“The most useful innovation may help a patient prepare, recognize an exception or recover confidence before it changes the device itself.”
Turn patient language into outcome statements
Interviews generate verbatims: patients’ own descriptions of experiences, difficulties and expectations. Preserve that evidence, then interpret what each statement reveals about the job.
An illustrative verbatim might be, “I keep checking because I don’t know whether the reading matters.” The desired outcome may concern recognizing a meaningful change or understanding what action is appropriate.
A structured outcome statement identifies the direction of improvement, a measure, the object being controlled and relevant context. For example: “Minimize the time required to determine whether a change in a reading requires contacting my care team.”
Ask the team if there are uncovered outcomes that can set your solution apart related to how it is purchased, installed, received, set up, learned with training support, transported, maintained, upgraded, replaced or disposed.
This formulation gives research and design a clearer target. It does not establish a clinical threshold or promise that a device can safely make the decision independently, but often the features that will make your solution “easy to use” or set you apart will come from these outcome statements.
Preserve meaning as you organize the evidence
Several comments may describe the same need. One comment may contain multiple needs. Review the evidence carefully before combining it into a set of outcomes.
Remove duplication, separate distinct outcomes and retain links to the original accounts. Use plain language that patients can understand. Avoid embedding a particular feature in the statement.
Check the interpretation with participants or other appropriate reviewers. “I want fewer notifications” might mean reducing irrelevant interruptions while preserving important information. Treating it as a demand to suppress all alerts would misrepresent the need.
The output should be a coherent set of outcomes organized by job step. Completeness and clarity matter but typically it is ideal to have at least 100 and no more than 200 outcome statements for the team.
Measure importance and satisfaction separately
Qualitative research discovers needs and explains them. Quantitative research helps determine how widely they matter and how well existing approaches satisfy them.
Ask patients to rate the importance of each outcome and their satisfaction with their current ability to achieve it. Make the reference situation clear so respondents evaluate comparable experiences.
A high scoring importance outcome with low satisfaction deserves investigation. High satisfaction may indicate that the need is already well served so the team can use what already exists and put more time in creating innovative solutions to high importance low satisfaction outcomes. Low importance can reduce its priority, although clinical safety requirements cannot be dismissed through a popularity score.
Use a research design appropriate to the intended population. The outcome statements are easy to rate on a five point Likert scale. Choose population quantitative research in alignment with your target persona groups.
Identify opportunities within patient segments
The Outcome Driven Innovation approach uses importance and satisfaction to identify underserved outcomes. Its opportunity calculation adds importance to the positive gap between importance and satisfaction.
Use compatible scales and a clearly defined calculation. Interpret the result alongside the underlying responses, research quality and the clinical context.
Examine differences between groups. An outcome that appears adequately served overall may remain difficult for patients with less support or a different level of experience.
These differences can reveal meaningful segments based on unmet needs. They help the organization avoid treating demographic similarity as evidence that patients need the same solution. Prioritization should retain enough detail to explain whose outcome the proposed improvement will change.
Connect outcomes with development decisions
A target product profile brings the priority outcomes together with business goals, available technology and other relevant requirements. It helps the team agree what success should look like before committing to a concept.
Translate patient outcomes into design inputs and measurable requirements while preserving traceability to the evidence. Define which questions remain uncertain and what research or testing will resolve them.
Evaluate concepts against the outcomes they are intended to improve. Ask whether the proposed approach reduces effort, uncertainty or difficulty for the relevant patients and results in higher satisfaction scores than the baseline solution. A favorable reaction to an attractive prototype provides limited evidence unless the team can connect it with better execution of the job.
Keep patient progress connected to system performance
A priority patient need may involve work performed by a clinician, caregiver or service provider. Investigate those dependencies before deciding that a product change will solve the problem.
The Theory of Constraints helps identify where improvement can change the performance of the wider pathway. A better patient interaction can have limited effect if access to essential support remains constrained.
A Value Management Office can coordinate the initiatives needed to address these connected issues and keep investment aligned with patient outcomes.
“Patient insight becomes useful design evidence when the team can show which outcome matters, who struggles with it and how the solution improves it.”
What comes next
Use patient jobs to be done to review one priority patient job. Can your team state it clearly, map its steps and demonstrate which outcomes are highly important and poorly satisfied?
Start with observation and patient conversations. Build and validate the outcome statements, measure priorities and test concepts against them. That discipline gives Patient Centered Design a practical foundation for better products and more lives changed for good.
The healthcare professional: a hidden constraint in patient flow
A healthcare professional can recognize the value of a medical device and still struggle to incorporate it into care. The referral may be incomplete. Diagnostic evidence may arrive late. Preparation may require extra staff. Follow-up may introduce work that nobody has agreed to own. Managing the patients before and after may require additional staff which adds risk to the business side of the practice.
Those difficulties affect the clinician’s ability to help patients reach and benefit from your solution. They deserve attention during development and throughout deployment.
The purpose is to understand how professionals encounter, assess, recommend and use a solution, and what constraints they encounter in using your solution.
A useful map connects the professional’s experience with patient flow. It helps the organization identify where support, coordination or design changes can improve the delivery of care.
“Clinical enthusiasm cannot create the time, information or supporting capacity needed to deliver a therapy.”
Identify the professionals who shape the pathway
Healthcare professionals perform different jobs at different stages. A referring practitioner, diagnostic specialist, interventional physician, nurse and educator may all influence whether the same patient receives successful care.
Define which groups participate in your pathway and what each contributes. Who recognizes the need? Who establishes eligibility? Who performs the procedure? Who trains the patient? Who monitors outcomes and manages exceptions? Who manages insurance?
Include people whose work makes these actions possible. Coordinators, technicians and administrative staff may arrange appointments, prepare equipment or assemble records. Their contribution can govern whether clinical time is used effectively.
The map should make dependencies visible across roles. It should also clarify which actions fall within your organization’s influence and which require collaboration with care providers or other affected parties.
Distinguish roles from personas
A professional title tells you part of the story. Experience, setting, case volume, access to support, business acumen and familiarity with the therapy can change the work considerably.
An experienced specialist in a well-supported center may encounter different difficulties from a clinician who sees the condition infrequently or works in a rural area. A nurse coordinating a dedicated service may have options unavailable to someone balancing that responsibility with other duties.
Develop personas around these differences. Examine confidence in interpreting evidence, decision authority, available time, training needs and exposure to clinical or organizational risk.
Use research to test the distinctions. Personas should explain variations in behavior and requirements. They should help the team understand why an approach that works in one setting may fail to support another.
Map the journey from first awareness to continuing care
The professional’s journey may begin with awareness of an unmet clinical need or information about a potential solution. It continues through evaluating evidence, discussing alternatives and deciding whether the therapy belongs in their practice.
Adoption can involve local approvals, purchasing, training, changes to referral patterns and coordination with other teams. Clinical use then includes preparation, treatment, documentation, handover and follow-up.
Map these activities without assuming a single linear sequence. Professionals may return to evidence review after a difficult case or revise their approach when colleagues raise concerns.
Distinguish the journey of adopting the therapy from the recurring journey of delivering it to each patient. Both matter, but the barriers and improvement measures can differ.
Capture decisions and dependencies
At each stage, ask what the professional is trying to accomplish and what must be available before the work can proceed.
A decision may depend on diagnostic results, a complete patient history, clear eligibility criteria or advice from another specialty. A procedure may depend on staff, equipment and an appropriate location. Follow-up may depend on information that must be captured earlier.
Show the handovers between roles, including who supplies information and who receives it. Record where uncertainty is resolved and where work is repeated.
This reveals how a product can add burden beyond its immediate interaction. A useful output may still consume scarce clinical time if the professional must retrieve, interpret, reformat and document it through separate systems.
Measure the work and the waiting
The time required for a clinical activity can differ greatly from the time a patient waits to receive it. Both belong on the map.
Measure preparation, clinical work, documentation and recovery from problems where relevant. Record queues, appointment delays and time lost waiting for missing information.
Distinguish professional effort from elapsed time. Some delays consume little active attention but prevent patients progressing. Others require repeated chasing, rescheduling or explanation, drawing capacity away from care.
Define a common unit of work so comparisons remain meaningful. Cases with different complexity may require different analysis. Averages alone can hide the patients or professionals who face the greatest difficulty.
The purpose is to understand usable capacity and patient progress in the actual working environment.
Find the capacity that governs patient flow
A pathway may depend on a small amount of specialist attention surrounded by many competing demands. Headcount alone will not show how much of that attention is available.
Examine what professionals spend their time on, including avoidable administration, repeated assessments and interruptions. Determine whether the relevant constraint is clinical expertise, supporting staff, diagnostic access, equipment or a policy governing work.
The Theory of Constraints helps focus improvement on the factor limiting the whole pathway. Increasing referrals to a service already unable to process them can lengthen waiting without increasing treatment.
Investigate the apparent bottleneck before choosing a response. Better preparation or coordination may release capacity. In other cases, additional resources or changes to the operating model will be necessary.
“The measure of a design improvement is its effect on clinical work and patient progress, including the work it creates elsewhere.”
Observe clinical work at the Gemba
The Gemba is where the work actually happens. Direct observation helps teams understand how professionals use information, equipment and judgment under real conditions.
Observe preparation, interruptions, handovers and the work following the visible procedure. Ask what the professional expected to receive and what they had to obtain independently. Capture workarounds and job “cheat sheets” that are homemade to make working with your solution easier.
Workarounds deserve particular attention. A clinician may keep a private checklist because the formal process omits an important step. A coordinator may repeatedly contact another service because information arrives inconsistently.
These practices reveal requirements that interviews alone may miss. Discuss observations with the people involved so the team does not mistake an isolated event for a routine pattern. Include different settings and experience levels in the research.
Build the baseline from several sources
Gather organizational knowledge and assess technology and business perspectives before moving toward a solution. Apply that discipline to the professional journey.
Use existing clinical insight, training questions, support records and prior implementation experience to draft the map. Identify assumptions and gaps.
Assess the technologies already supporting the work. Consider compatibility with the environment, availability, maintenance, reliability and the practical resources needed for use.
Clarify the business conditions surrounding adoption. Purchasing arrangements, competing initiatives, staffing decisions and local policies may determine whether a clinically attractive solution can be implemented.
This baseline makes research more focused. It also prevents the development team from proposing changes that depend on unavailable capability or unacknowledged commitments from others.
Involve the people who can enable change
Voice of Business research asks leaders about desired outcomes, frustrations, risks and obstacles. It also identifies decision makers and influencers who should participate early.
For a healthcare professional pathway, this means understanding who can authorize changes to responsibilities, processes, resources and technology.
Ask which other initiatives could affect implementation. Identify the independent reviewers who can challenge the team’s assumptions. Agree what success will look like from the perspective of clinical work and patient outcomes.
Make the findings visible to the team members and relevant leaders. A professional may welcome a new approach while lacking the authority to secure the resources it requires. The project needs a realistic route from individual support to organizational adoption.
Use FOCUS to improve the journey
Apply the five-step FOCUS process to the evidence gathered through mapping.
Find the constraint. Identify the activity or resource currently governing the flow of suitable patients through care.
Optimize for it. Protect scarce capacity from incomplete information, unnecessary preparation, avoidable interruptions and repeat work.
Collaborate around it. Coordinate upstream and downstream roles so patients, information and resources arrive when needed.
Uplift it. Add capability or change responsibilities, processes and technology when existing capacity cannot meet the need.
Start Again. Review the pathway after improvement and identify its new limiting factor.
Automation can help when the task is understood and the proposed change supports clinical work. Evaluate its consequences, including review effort, exception handling and any burden transferred to another professional.
Turn the map into a shared improvement plan
The map should lead to a manageable set of changes with clear owners and measures. Test those changes in relevant settings and examine their effect on both professional effort and patient progress.
A Value Management Office can connect the initiatives with priorities, resources and project decisions. Clinical teams and other participants must remain involved in judging whether the changes improve work in practice.
“An effective professional journey supports a clinician through the complete job, from readiness to follow-up.”
What comes next
Use the healthcare professional journey to examine one priority pathway. Can your team explain who performs the work, where capacity is lost and what currently limits patient progress?
Build the map with the professionals involved. Establish the baseline, test an improvement at the constraint and review the result. Patient Centered Design advances when the solution and the surrounding system make beneficial care easier to deliver reliably.
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