Despite its age, maturity and clear business benefits, why is Problem Management one of the least utilised Service Management practices?
At an academic level, the benefits of Problem Management are universally understood. Fundamentally, the benefit of preventing problems and failures of products, equipment, systems and software, one could argue, should be common sense:
Increased customer satisfaction
Better customer experiences and loyalty
Reduction in costs from remedial work
Reduction in costs from returns
Reduction in costs from warranty claims
Reduction in costs from lost time
Reduction in costs from lost productivity ...and so on.
So if the benefits of cost reduction and increased customer satisfaction are clear for all to see, why is the Problem Management practice not given sufficient attention in our organisations?
Whilst most people can see the benefits and most would agree that that benefits are a good thing, is it seen as a practice that makes a significant impact on growth?
Practical? Yes. Beneficial? Undoubtedly. Creating Massive Growth ? Errr, Nope.
Unfortunately, a lot of senior leaders in organisations are not compensated or collect bonuses for reducing operational costs relating to remedial work, returns, warranty claims, lost time or lost productivity from avoidable causes. Put another way, generally speaking leaders are not incentivised to make existing things incrementally better.
That’s quite a bold claim, but think about it... in many organisations, senior leaders and staff are incentivised for growth rather than improvement. Why? Shareholders want growth, growth and more growth.
Is this a cultural problem that is endemic across the western economies? Often it seems like the concept of making things better is discarded in favour of the next big thing that gives more growth. Is this shiny ball syndrome? Maybe. Is it the nature of the western capitalist philosophies? Maybe. In eastern cultures like that in Japan, the concept of continual improvement (or Kaizen) is an art form. Many western companies have looked to adopt a Kaizen (continual improvement) philosophy. In which case, why then is problem management not seen as fundamental to good change (Kaizen)? Why is problem management not given more credence in the board room?
Let’s face it, who gets the big budgets, the leaders who create initiatives for growth in sales, or the leaders who create initiatives for continual improvements and reduction in costs?
In the smart organisations funding will be allocated to those initiatives that can show demonstrable potential value that link to the organisational strategy. Perhaps, in the case of Problem Management, it is difficult to forecast the value because it might be difficult to link a problem management initiative to a strategic endeavour.
Digging even further, is the problem (please excuse the pun) that organisational strategy is not communicated or recorded in a way that makes it easy to link or connect any new initiative of any kind, and because almost every enthusiastic sales director in any organisation can articulate sales growth targets easily then the initiatives that claim to boost sales growth are the initiatives that receive the funding... just saying, enthusiasm and empty promises can go a long way sometimes!
It certainly is a difficult situation to resolve, or is it?..
We would love to hear your opinions and success stories of Problem Management initiatives, please do comment.
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