Stop Optimizing Yourself – Optimize the Whole

Optimize the Whole, Not Yourself

Here’s the deal. There is a concept that will help you go back to your teams, your projects, and your company and see whether it is happening to you. It is called optimizing the whole. It is a Lean concept, and it means you optimize the entire project, the entire effort, and not just individual parts and components.

Short answer: Optimizing the whole means doing what is best for the entire project, not for one trade, one team, or one person. Resource efficiency asks each trade to go as fast as it can. Flow efficiency keeps the train of trades moving through the zones at the same speed and the same distance apart, which is what actually finishes the project faster.

What Resource Efficiency Looks Like

Think about the trade partners who say, I want to lay out all the duct on all the floors and just bang through it. Or the fire sprinkler contractor who says, let me just do the whole floor and bang it out. Or the framing and drywall contractor who wants to go at their own speed.

Each of them is looking at what is called resource efficiency. They want to make themselves, the resource, efficient individually, instead of the train of trades. Optimizing the whole means keeping the train of trades going the same speed, the same distance apart, adding the same amount of value with the same amount of work in each of the zones. It means we do what is best for the entire project, and not what is just best for one contractor or one person.

The Question That Started This

I was at a job site where we were talking about the possible implementation of Takt. I love these people, and there is no drama or lack of love here. I am just saying this way of thinking is out of control in our industry. There were quite a few people on the project, and there was a scheduling team. The first question was, how much more work will this add to my scheduling team if we implement this?

You might not think that is a big deal, but to me it is. I do not care at all how much effort this adds to your scheduling team.

Think about a cooking or baking competition show. Nobody says, I want you to have an easy time while you are making this. They say they want it beautiful, they want it to taste good, they want it fluffy, to the right specifications, and they do not care how hard it is to make. They want it to be delicious.

I have talked to you about this before. CPM is a list of ingredients, and Takt is a recipe. A recipe is harder. It is harder to make a good plan. It is harder on a superintendent to actually think it out. It is harder on the general contractor and the project team to enable the trades and help them make money. I do not care. That is your job.

A colleague has a sign in his office that says, do your job. I do not know where he got it, but I love it. Do what you are supposed to do. Superintendents, project managers, project teams, and general contractors are here to enable everyone else.

So here is my one-sentence sermon. I do not care in the slightest how much added time or effort this gives your team. I care only about what it does to the workers, the foremen, the trades, the productivity on our project site, and the entire whole of the project. I do not care about resource efficiency. I want flow efficiency, which comes from trains of trades going through zones at the same speed, the same distance apart.

People Trying to Optimize Themselves

We have a problem with people trying to optimize themselves. We have it with trade partner crews sometimes. We have it with individual scheduling teams, quite a bit.

Someone who cares deeply about people saw one of my posts criticizing CPM and said, Jason, you need to calm down. There are people who make their living doing this, and we need to be respectful. I appreciated her input, and I said I would be a little easier. But let me say one thing to the scheduling managers, scheduling directors, and schedulers who keep perpetuating the CPM world. See how this lands for you.

In all of my travels, I have never seen an organization hire a professional scheduler focused on CPM where that scheduler was not then in the way. They really only cared about what they knew. They framed everything in their own mindset. They worried about their own efficiency and the strengths and optimization of their own team. And they set up systems that counteracted almost every single productivity gain we could get in the field.

I would like to ask owners and contractors to only hire scheduling managers, directors, and professionals who really know Takt, Last Planner, and Scrum. If someone has a CPM background, I would want them to go through some mental restructuring and make a commitment to changing their approach before they structure the company’s systems in a way that counteracts all the productivity we could gain on the site. Too many people are worried about resource efficiency, about their own teams, and about the system they know, instead of learning the right way to schedule. It has to stop.

Optimizing the Office

We also have a problem with optimizing the office. I have talked over and over about office teams, software companies, and other vendors saying, here is a new desk, here is a new type of office, here is a new software, here is a new computer. When are we going to start asking what is right for the field crews? When are we going to get them better gloves, better tools, better equipment, better schedules, and better visuals?

We need to optimize the field crews and the whole of the project first. Resource efficiency is the least Lean thing we could possibly do. I do not care. Do your job. Let’s get it done.

Don’t Care, Do Your Job

You hear it when project teams respond like this.

• Asking how hard it will be to implement Takt.
• Asking how morning worker huddles will affect them, since it seems like a lot of time and commitment.
• Asking how long it will take to build bathrooms and lunchrooms for their people.
• Saying that in pre-construction, they cannot really do this because they are too big.

My answer is the same every time. I do not care. Do your job. We could go through any of this. We could talk about procurement management and holding a weekly procurement meeting. We could talk about prefabrication, visualizing the logistics systems, and quality pre-installation. We could talk about zero tolerance, roadblock removal, Lean contracts, Takt, Last Planner, and Scrum. We could talk about setting up the conference room trailer, implementing Takt steering and control, grading contractors, quality at the source, and doing a field walk and finding ten or fifteen things that need to be done that day.

I could talk about any operational system that is part of Lean, and I guarantee someone has said to me, I do not have time for that, how is that going to affect me. And my answer is the same. I do not care. Do your job.

The Whole, the Workers, and the Foremen

We need to be optimizing the whole. We need to be optimizing the workers. We need to be optimizing the foremen. When we only think about our selfish little selves, we are not optimizing the whole. We are focused on resource efficiency, and we are being selfish. As my colleague’s sign says, we are not doing our job.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

So here is the challenge. The next time you catch yourself asking how a Lean practice will affect you or your team, ask what it does for the workers, the foremen, the trades, and the whole of the project.

Bottom line: Optimizing the whole means we do what is best for the entire project, not what is best for one contractor or one person.

On we go.

FAQ

What is optimizing the whole?

Optimizing the entire project or effort, not just individual parts. It means keeping the train of trades at the same speed, the same distance apart, adding the same value with the same work in each zone, and doing what is best for the project instead of one contractor or person.

What is resource efficiency?

Making an individual resource, such as one trade or one team, efficient on its own. Jason contrasts it with flow efficiency, which comes from trains of trades moving through zones at the same speed and distance apart.

Why doesn’t it matter how much work Takt adds to a scheduling team?

Because the purpose of Takt is to make work easier for the trades by putting more effort into planning, coordination, and preparation upfront.

Who should owners and contractors hire?

People who understand Takt, Last Planner, and Scrum and are willing to rethink their approach, especially if they come from a CPM background, before setting up the company’s systems.

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Want your team trained on this? See our Last Planner System and Takt training.