Failing to Plan Is Planning to Fail

If I were to ask you, “What are you doing this weekend?” hopefully, you would have an answer that would enhance your life in some way. For instance, you might be helping your relative move, and incurring a favor for later. Or, you might be going to see a movie and stimulating your imagination. You might be prepping your yard for the winter to make the spring time work a little easier. No matter what, you have selected what you are planning to do by weighing the benefits to your life. Will it enhance you in the short term? Will it enhance you in the long term?

Six Sigma teaches us that you can use a Cause-and-Effect table to help you make these kinds of decisions. We can begin by looking at what should be measured, its performance, and what potential performance you might produce by implementing a change. Applying this type of decision making to your projects helps key in on the projects that are worthy of your time.

Let’s go back to your weekend and this time use the Cause-and-Effect table:

Benefits Categories	…Then	Cost of Doing Nothing (1 Year)	Cost of Doing Something (1 Year)	Project Benefit
Help Aunt Ellen move	Reducing her stress and earning gratitude	She thinks she can’t depend on you and struggles through the move	Energy and Time	Gratitude and Display of affection
See a movie with Jane	Start a relationship with a nice person	Loss of interest	Price of movie tickets	Potential relationship
Visit Grandma in her retirement community	Capitalize on the time with her so there are no regrets later	Regret and heartache for the loss of time	Energy and Time	Gratitude, Display of Affection, and Good use of time
Wash the cars	Keeps the value of the car in good shape, reduction of stress	Filth and disorganization	Car cleaner, Time and Energy	Clean and organized environment, keeps the car value high

This can be applied to business where the measurements in the Cost categories and Project Benefits can be more financial in their measurements.

Defects Reduction	Then company can decrease number of scrapped units per day from 50 to 10 given a daily production volume of 1,000	50 x 100 x 365 = $1,825,000 (cost per unit scrapped is $100)	10 x 100 x 365 = $365,000	$1,460,000
Warranty Reduction	Then company can meet order commitment of 980 units per day	Company is failing on average to deliver 30 units per day and the penalty is $1 per unit not delivered	$0	$10,950

If you understand that you are essentially already thinking in such a manner, it’s easy to do this as a group with concern to your business. It’s a fun exercise and it helps define which project could have the largest return on your investment of time and energy.