S for simplification- How to save 2 million hours?
Last year, while doing my research to create The Cost Reduction Mastery Program for CXO's, I stumbled upon an amazing case study on simplification.
Before I share about the case study, let me ask you a question:?
Would you agree that simplification usually drive in efficiency and helps in saving huge cost?
I got your "YES" when you simply nodded:-)
If this holds true, then why very few companies take initiative to weed out complexity from their business processes??
Pause for few seconds and think about it!
There could be multiple reasons but one possible reason, as per my limited understanding, is that simplification usually never gets attention or priority in the to-do list of CXOs.
However, once I share this case study with you, there is a strong possibility that drive for simplification might become your top most priority.
Ready?
Ok, let me first give you the background of this case study.
Background of case study:
This case study is hosted on the website of Stanford Business School (I'll share the link at the end of this article) and pertains to a famous global pharmaceutical company- Astra Zeneca.
Yes, the same company which co-developed the Covishield Vaccine :-)
It was carried out in 2016 and talks about how simplification can impact the business so positively even when you have a global workforce of more than 60,000 people.
How it started?
It was the brainchild of CEO Pascal Soriot who strongly believed that?complexity was at the root of some of AstraZeneca’s top most challenges:
“Simplification is not just about standardizing and streamlining through big global programs and unit-wide initiatives.?
It’s about every one of us adopting an entrepreneurial mindset to challenge the norm and make changes, both large and small, that remove complexity and improve how we work.”?
Pascal Soriot?
Simplification Centre of Excellence
To drive simplification across the company, Pushkala Subramanian was chosen for this role and she was allocated just 4 employees for this big project.??
A Centre of Excellence (CoE) was created to institutionalize the simplification the way company work.?
Million Hour Challenge
After brainstorming among senior executives, CoE started a challenge to save million hours across the company. It was a herculean task and there was risk involved that employees may perceive it as a cost cutting exercise.??
To address this risk and get the buy-in, a slogan was coined.
The Slogan
The team started publicizing a slogan which became quite popular and every employee could identify itself.
The slogan was:?
领英推荐
Time for Science,?Time for Customers, Time for you.
Every employee was given an easy to achieve goal of saving?just 30 minutes?from their activities.?
How time saved was calculated?
Next big challenge was to calculate the time saved by employees through simplification of their process and activities.?
CEO had already told Pushkala that he didn’t want people "counting hours".
After internal deliberations, they could settle on a simple back of the envelope calculations through an easy to use online calculator.?
Pushkala's team said they measured the time saving using this principle:
“What we measured was, ‘before you simplified this certain process or this project, how much time did it take to complete the task? After you simplified it, how much time does it take to complete now? If you saved an hour for the task, how many of these tasks are performed, and how many employees perform that task a year?”?
This simple online calculator made it easy for employee to log in their time saving:
What got simplified??
The team at centre of excellence didn’t chase some big ticket simplification but they focused on some common and routine activities (did you observe that they used simplicity here too while choosing) which consumes lot of time and somehow employees have accepted them due to conditioning.?
Following activities were simplified which resulted in huge efficiency gain and employee satisfaction:
This is just a sample list.
The end result?
In Septemer'2016, when the million hour challenge was created, it seemed a uphill task but by the end of March'2017 (with in 6 months), the company had saved 2 million hours, twice of what they projected.
Yes- 2 million (or 20 lacs) hours!
Just pause here and let this giant figure sink in you mind.
They didn’t stop here and to institutionalize the simplification across the company, World Simplification Day was created on 17th May.?
Not only time saving, the simplification also led to cost savings. As an example in this case study, in China alone, there was a saving of 0.7 million hours per year and $ 0.5 million cost saving per year.?
Key learning
This case study demonstrates that simplification is a game changer strategy and it's quite effective if implemented with patience and persistence.?
You can access the full text of this case study at following link:
Did this case study open up something for you?
Looking forward to your valuable sharing in the comment box.
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Glad to see that my approach to leading simplification at AstraZeneca was useful in your research. It is hard to rally an organization by taking things away, which is the message that gets reinforced with cost cutting initiatives. But you can create a movement by giving time back to employees to focus on what matters.
Finance professional | CPA Australia | MBA | Data Science student
3 年Wow, really good read!! For me, the highlight is that it was an organization wide exercise and not led by the CFO. Cost reduction was not the target, but a pleasant outcome of "Simplification"
Corporate administration I Operational excellence I Cost Optimization I Infrastructure Management I Ex TCS I EX Birlasoft I Ex LexisNexis I Ex Honda R&D I Ex HT Media
3 年Thanks Chandan for bringing up topics like this, which add value to both people and organizations.
Finance Controller at Johnson Controls
3 年Thanks for sharing Chandan! Would be interesting to see the P&L impact or operational cash flow impacts YOY due to these initiative. Great initiative to get every employee to think about time saving since Kalay Tasmaih namaha! Time is God.
Author I Speaker I Transforming Accounting & Compliance for 20+ Years
3 年Does it open up something for you?