1. Breakpoints - those insidious internal handoffs

insidious - Proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects:

Yup that is Breakpoints.

Most process improvement techniques focus on only a small portion of the improvement potential in every process… the tip of the iceberg if you will. 

How big is the opportunity resting out of our sight, hidden below the waterline of current process improvement practices? 

Recent research shows that as much as 70 to 90 percent of the work people do on a daily basis comes directly from Causes of Work and this work is NOT part of the “job” for which these people were hired! Instead, this is non-value added work that takes away from people’s ability to do their job.
Does this sound familiar? Can you identify places in your work or life where these Causes of Work are distracting you from what you really want to be doing?

Are you required to fill out this form, check up on that order, follow-up on those activities, fix the thing that is broken, find what got lost, or explain why this was done that way? 

Do you get tasked with finding the answer, knowing the rules, going to meetings (because), pushing something through, chasing down what really happened, explaining why you did this or that? The list goes on and on but you shouldn’t need to look very far in any part of your life to find all kinds of examples of non-value add work you are doing every single day!

The Break Points Toolkit explicitly targets these “hidden” wasters of time and money. Causes of Work are the “rest of the iceberg” for process improvement that, when addressed, lead to dramatic process improvement results regardless of what kind of process is involved or what kind of organization the process is in.

Can you envisage reducing the costs of your operations by 20%, 30%, 40% or even more than 50%?