How to Train Your Team to Hate Waste

I love my airplane because everything in it is there for a reason. Every object had to earn its place on board because everything in that plane has weight that hurts range, capacity, and overall efficiency.

It's a beautiful metaphor for building a lean company that's free from waste.

As you know from my earlier articles, I've established dozens and dozens of cultural phrases at DPS Telecom, which we call "DPSisms."

Today, I'm going to share many DPSisms that all relate to vanquishing waste in your business. Some, you've heard before. But, most have never been published outside of DPS.

My business designs systems for collecting and managing alarm and control information. We serve utility, telecom, transportation, and other companies with large, distributed equipment networks. DPS offers a unique combination of master?alarm management systems?and remote telemetry units (RTUs) that provide end-to-end, single-vendor network monitoring.

But the concepts I’m talking about here are not specific to our industry. So teach these concepts to your team – no matter which industry you are in – and watch your profits reach new heights.

1) "Every Dollar You Save Is 100% Profit"

Think of how hard it is to sell an extra $1 of anything.

In B2B (my world), you have to use marketing to find a prospect, spend multiple meetings explaining the value, and wait for budget dollars and committee approvals. When you finally get a PO, you then have to buy materials and work hard to deliver on time.

In B2C, making the sale is comparatively simple, but you live and die via mass marketing and (often) thin margins.

That's an expensive dollar!

But what if I told you a way to earn the profit equivalent of $5, $10, $20, or even MORE in sales?

It's simple. When you sell a dollar, you only earn real profit based on your profit margin. If your margin is 10%, you only make 10 cents by selling a dollar. When you eliminate $1 of waste, that's pure profit. With our example 10% margin, that's like selling $10 more.

This extraordinary leverage is a counter-intuitive fact that I teach to every DPS employee. We can't all (directly) affect what Sales & Marketing are able to bring in, but we can all get more of our own work done faster and cheaper.

2) "I Don't Pay You. The Clients Do."

Ultimately, work done poorly hurts your customer base. At DPS, we're so focused on avoiding this that we always use the term "clients" to reflect our service commitment.

You can teach your staff to hate waste by giving them agency in the economy. Don't let them think that their job doesn't matter. That is a recipe for apathy and poor performance.

Instead, educate everyone at your company on the basic process flow from sale until delivery. Explain how your customers/clients use the product once they receive it. Explain what can go wrong if the product is badly designed or flaky or dead on arrival.

I use two primary vehicles to deliver this message. First, for 100% of my team, we hold a monthly "all hands" luncheon. I buy hot sandwiches, a meal that pays for itself a thousand times over.

At each luncheon, managers and key staff talk about what they're doing to cut waste. They talk about good and bad interactions with clients and how we can do better next time. It's in this way that your new shipping person understands that getting an address wrong can potentially delay a $10 million project for weeks. What impact do you think that has on focus and attention, and motivation?

Secondly, I also teach the "I don't actually pay you" concept at my Success & Leadership Training class for those who volunteer to attend. Students apply this and other success principles to both career goals and general life goals in the class. The capstone of the course? Speaking in front of the entire company at the next luncheon!

3) "Don't Cut Corners With Our SOPs."

Every new person I hire starts at an entry-level position. Hundreds of people have made the same start and worked from the same SOPs (albeit earlier versions of them).

There's always a temptation among newer employees to "see a better way" and cut corners. In a job that has been done many times before, it's decreasingly likely that anyone finds a better way.

I teach new people to follow the SOP religiously because "it's the fastest, cheapest way we've found to win. If we wanted to lose, we could do that for free."

On my team, you can always ask your manager for clarification on the process. You might just get yourself a pat on the back and a bigger quarterly bonus.

What you can never do is simply start cutting corners unilaterally. You're probably breaking something for someone farther down the line.

4) "No Drama."

Some workplaces are infested with chaotic people. They enjoy pulling strings and pitting people against each other.

Every time something goes wrong, they always have a clever excuse – but they're always there.

These people generate "drama" by loafing around and making mistakes and spreading rumors. They eliminate any chance of maintaining a calm, professional work environment.

I fire all those people, and you should too. From that point forward, your culture will actively resist, expel, and quite simply bore anyone who wants to cultivate drama at work. They'll mostly just quit on their own.

5) "Make Incremental Improvements. Measure. Test. Repeat."

Once you've motivated your staff with clarity and eliminated the unforced errors of cutting corners and creating drama, a bit of math and science will take you to the next level.

I teach my employees to collect data whenever possible. We include auto log-ins for all of our tools and systems because (1) time spent logging is time that could be spent actually accomplishing something else, (2) auto log-ins allow for consistent data capture whenever someone is using our software, and (3) while it only takes a second, logging is another way employees commonly cut corners.

With this kind of continuously growing stockpile of data, you can start running experiments. You change something, measure the impact, then keep it or toss it.

Starting this almost always requires your involvement. It is possible, however, to train this as a habit among your key employees.

If Your Team Hates Waste, Your Profits Will Multiply

In business, culture trumps everything. You can't be everywhere at once. However, your message and philosophy, properly instilled, can be everywhere at once.

Invest in your teams, from your most seasoned veteran to your greenest new hire. Teach everyone that waste is the enemy.

Waste comes in many forms, but I've taught you some of the biggest ways to spot it and destroy it – now and in the future.

Pass this knowledge on to your team, fight waste, and watch your profits take flight!

What Are Your Teams’ DPSisms?

Many companies have their own phrases that serve as shorthand for cultural or procedural mandates. If you have these kinds of sayings in your company, I’d love to hear from you! Contact me at [email protected].