Physical evidence of waste, such as dozens of versions of one item bought across sites, gets laid out in front of the executives who sign off, so they see the problem before any argument.
An example
Every job site at a regional construction contractor bought its own safety gloves, and the head of procurement had spent a year failing to interest the executive team in a single company standard. A spreadsheet showing 46 glove models and a price spread of nearly four to one had drawn polite nods at two meetings. Before the third, procurement staff collected one of every model from 31 sites, tagged each with its price and the site that bought it, and pinned them to rolling boards in the boardroom. The executives walked in to find them there. The chief executive picked up two pairs that looked identical, read the tags, and asked why one cost three times the other. The chief financial officer counted the boards. Nobody asked for more analysis. The standard was approved before lunch, and procurement was asked to do hard hats and boots next.
Why it works
A pile of real objects cannot be discounted as a modeling artifact, so the status quo looks worse, and it works through feeling as well as reasoning: executives who handle the waste feel how absurd it is, and that feeling carries the proposal. The fix looks better by contrast, since it answers a problem everyone in the room has just seen and touched. It works when the waste is physical or can be made concrete, when the decision-makers have already discounted the numbers, and when the display is accurate. People who know the operation catch an exaggerated display quickly.
The thinking behind it
John P. Kotter In The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations (2002), Kotter and Cohen argue that people change behavior more readily when shown something that makes them feel the problem than when handed analysis alone. Their best-known example is one of each of the 424 kinds of gloves a company bought, each tagged with its price and piled on a boardroom table, which moved division presidents to act on purchasing. The tactic takes its name from that table.
Chip Heath and Dan Heath The Heaths' Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (2010) frames change as a conflict between the rational mind and the emotional mind, and treats analysis alone as too weak to move the emotional side. A display of real waste speaks to both: the price tags carry the numbers, and holding two identical items with very different prices supplies the feeling that gets a stalled standard approved.
When it fits
The method suits problems whose cause can be shown in things: duplicate parts, idle equipment, stacks of forms, a wall of incompatible software licenses printed out. It needs the standing to collect evidence from across units, which usually means a corporate function with a reason to ask, and a meeting with the people who can approve a fix. It is weak for problems that are mostly about judgment or culture.
How to use it well
Collect the evidence honestly and completely: every variant, every site, the real price paid. Tag each item with facts the room can check. Then stage it where the deciders will meet it before you speak, and say little at first. Let them pick things up and ask.
- Tell the site and unit heads in advance what you collected and why, so nobody is surprised to see their purchase on a table.
- Have one plain page ready with the totals and the proposed fix, for when the questions turn to what to do.
- Ask for a decision in the same meeting, while the impression is fresh.
Keep the display about the system. The point is that the company buys this way, and no single buyer is to blame for it.
What it costs and where it backfires
Theatrics have a short shelf life. Use the method often and it reads as stagecraft, and the next display gets met with requests for the spreadsheet. Unit heads whose purchases are on the table can feel ambushed, and they are the people who must carry out the standard. Choosing the most expensive or embarrassing items and leaving out the rest makes a pile that misleads by what it leaves out, and at that point the display has stopped being evidence. The fix still has to work once the room cools down.
When it is used on you
Check first that a rival's display is complete and fairly chosen, and ask how it was collected. If it holds up, say so and argue about the remedy, which is usually where the real disagreement lies. If it was selected to shock, show the full set with the same care.