Invisible Waste in Maintenance Organizations, Paper360º July/August 2020

Several years ago, I spoke at a conference in Australia about the fox versus the hedgehog approach referenced in Jim Collins’ book Good to Great (see sidebar). I based the presentation on an IDCON survey that asked respondents if their organization was a fox or hedgehog. The survey results showed that only 16.7 percent of respondents thought their company was a hedgehog company. The rest viewed themselves as fox, or a mix of fox and hedgehog.

This means most organizations are taking a short-term approach to cost reduction and savings. In the long term this is very costly. I frequently see examples of this at client organizations. One common example is that cost reduction initiatives focus almost entirely on visible cost reductions while overlooking or ignoring the waste built into the day-to-day work system.

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