Are you doing the rite thing?

Zig Ziglar used to tell a story that I’ve adopted for my workshops. It seems a family was all together for Thanksgiving. Mother and daughter were in the kitchen preparing to cook the ham and the first thing mom did was slice an inch off the end and throw it away.

“Why’d you do that, mom?” asked the daughter.

“It’s how gran taught me. I have no idea why”

“Gran is out in the living room, let’s ask her.” said the daughter.

So gran comes in and tells them, “That’s the way my mother taught me as a little girl. I never knew why either.”

So they bring great-grandma in and she knows exactly why she did it. “It was the only way I could get the ham to fit in the roasting pan.”

I hope that made you smile. Some of you are be thinking, “That would never happen to me.” Don’t get smug, it is happening today in. I’ve been in a lot of plants over the past 35 years and it’s universal. I’ll bet I’d find it in yours, too.

Heres how it works: A few years ago someone started doing something in a certain way. It made perfect sense at the time but things have changed and it is no longer necessary. It continues out fo habit or inertia. Sometimes informally via local tribal knowledge, sometimes baked into the documented process.

When something is done repeatedly out of habit, we can call it a “rite” or “ritual”. It needs to stop.

One issue is that we may be too close to it and since we see it every day, we no longer see it. We need to go out on the line every day with a fresh set of eyes. We need to be constantly asking my favorite question: “Why?” As in, why is this being done? Absent a good answer, the next question must be “What would happen if it stopped?” If the answer is “Nothing”, stop doing it as soon as feasibly possible. .

Stop doing the rite thing

Start doing the right thing.