The One Best Way: When Variation Becomes Dangerous

Anthony Perl: [: 00:00:00

Learn the difference between acceptable variations and dangerous deviations, and understand when you need one best way versus flexibility. Learn how to distinguish between processes that can accommodate personal touches, like different cake toppings, and those demanding unwavering consistency like aircraft assembly.

ystems From The Box Podcast. [: 00:01:00

I've got mine, but that's okay. Is it okay?

John Tonkin: Gee. The number of times you've heard things like that. I've heard it too, obviously, all the way to me. As soon as you say yes, it's okay, then you open up the largest can of worms you can think of because it isn't okay. There's only one way to do things properly.

an put them through into the [: 00:02:00

So there are times when they're, it's okay to be, have us have some variation. Most of the time we want what I call the one best way of doing things. So it's only one way that's gonna be there. So we can have all the different compromises and so on, but what you're doing is to compromise the output. If we want to have the same standard, regular, re repeatable, , consistent output, we have to have all those adjectives there against the system as well.

So the system has to build out all that variability. It has to lock it away. So that you can't get there because the last thing I want is someone saying, oh, John, yeah, I put that car together. , I put the wheels on it a different way though. You'd be surprised, you know, et cetera. I don't want somebody doing that.

supposed to be put together, [: 00:03:00

No, thank you.

Anthony Perl: I think it is important, isn't it, that there are variables as well to think of. I mean, most people think, and you know, the way to do it is A, B, C, and that's the way we always do it, but you also have to factor in, I imagine when there's. Something's different. That throws into the equation.

Yeah. That if this happens, then it may not be A, B, C, it may be A B, E, C. Yeah. Because E is the variable and the different route that we have to take to, to accommodate whatever the D was.

John Tonkin: Yeah. There's always gonna be real, a real need for some variation. The old saying was that no matter which McDonald's you go to in the world, there'll be a Big Mac and so on.

here else. I remember back in: 1994

Went inside and had a look at the menu and there was the Big Mac. Ubiquitous, isn't it? But alongside it was all the different sources that you could get with other things that were there, and there was chili sauce and a couple of other things which were distinctly, uh, Chinese in their nature, in the, you know, Chinese cuisine.

And they were fine to have, we ate both of them, obviously, the things we sourced straight away. And it was lovely. But that's not gonna be in a McDonald's store in New York or in Sydney, or in London or Paris, you know, and so on. You're not gonna see those. So you do have variation that can be there because of geographic, you know, location.

You've got different [: 00:05:00

Whatever it may be that we need there, but we've got skills and expertise, like availability. If we can't get somebody who can do this exactly the way it's supposed to be done, or we may have to either withdraw that from the menu or go to some effort to try and find somebody who can or do something, there'll be some variation.

so it's always gonna be the [: 00:06:00

Anthony Perl: with all the best of intentions.

It's, you know, variations. The obvious ones are in food, aren't they? Yeah. I mean, you can have a chocolate factory of a particular brand in one country in the same chocolate factory following the same processes in another country, but the fact is that the ingredients. One of the ingredients might be milk or cacao or whatever it might be.

If they're not sourced from exactly the same place, the chances that what is produced at the end are going to taste exactly the same. Yeah. Are extremely small. Yeah. Because you've got variations in it. You know, the cows that were used over here were brought up on a different kind of grass or fed in a different kind of way.

Therefore, the milk that's produced tastes a little bit different to the ones that were, you know, in a different region of the world.

John Tonkin: Yeah, I remember when I was in Paris, I was talking to a chef there. I used to cook many years ago, and I was talking to a chef there and I said, the butter here is so lovely.

utter are you talking about? [: 00:07:00

Really good for doing that. This one's perfect for pastry. This one's all the different things, and we don't think of it that way. We tend to get, you know, locked down. I mean, ultra processed food is taking us, sadly, , to me to introduce this, but it's taking us to the point where everything is absolutely universally the same, like any oil.

By the time it's been refined, bleached, and everything else, it ends up being the same as every other oil. We lose that variability. But, , when we're focusing on the reasons and we want a, a consistent process, you know, that's on the nasty side of it. I don't wanna talk about it, but when we're talking about the way we build these things, or the way we put this widget together, I want everyone doing it the same thing, the same way, the same thing the same way.

really tight. That's what I [: 00:08:00

Anthony Perl: It's, it's really interesting, isn't it? Because it so depends on what the product or service is, that service is that you are delivering as to whether that variable can be a good thing or a bad thing. So yeah, you know, the car analogy is a good one in that you don't want suddenly someone deciding to say that, oh look, we're gonna put the tires on the roof instead of on the side.

Yep. That would be a rather silly thing to be doing, but you know, in the chocolate example. The fact that it tastes slightly different in one country to the next. Mm-hmm. Well, there are positives with that. You know, some certain audiences will like it one versus the other. Yeah. And that allows some variables that can be a good thing.

Yeah. So that, you know, sometimes that natural variation and that's, you know, even at a level where it's a more of a service delivery where as much as you might have the staple lines and the staple way of doing things. At the end of the day, the personality of the individual that's delivering those Yeah.

he next person, and in fact, [: 00:09:00

John Tonkin: Exactly. What we don't want is the situation where, pardon me, you're going out with a friend in the city and someone, their friend says, well, let's go and get lunch. I said, oh yeah, that that place down the road. I've been there before. And he says, oh no, it's Tuesday today. We're not going there today. 'cause the wrong chef is there, the wrong person's there.

So we don't want that sort of variability. But if you look about it coming back to cars again, you know, the car I buy in the states will have left hand drive the car. The same model car, the same type of car, same brand. Everything else over here in Australia or somewhere else will be left hand drive. You know, it's not practical to sell it any other way.

lity based on something that [: 00:10:00

I want that to be the same every time, you know, management and supervision challenges. I don't want them coming in into a con conflict with the productivity. I want to have the everything working exactly the right way. We can predict the productivity because we know how it works, how long it takes to do this, what materials are used and so on.

Also, if we manage variability, we're also managing the stress level. People don't like to have things changing all the time, so if we've got the one way of doing it that we know works all the time, then we're going to minimize stress, minimize errors, repeat work, et cetera. We're also looking there that we wanna be able to analyze the outcomes.

whether that change is what [: 00:11:00

You know, we can only do that split testing. Is it gonna be better doing it this way rather than that way? We can only do that if we have a consistent way of doing it that says, this is the only thing I've changed. Not that's the main thing we've changed, but we've also changed a whole pile of other factors and they will.

Take away any reliance you can have on

Anthony Perl: the output. Hey John, I just wanna take a break from the main part of the podcast for a moment so you can tell us a little bit more about Brain In A Box.

John Tonkin: So Brain In A Box started. The idea started when I was working in corporate. Uh, I was working in a couple of major companies, internationals and.

started my first business in: 2000

So we work with the business owner, with the team. To capture what the business does and then to minimize the risk by going through and looking at all the risks that we have to manage, make sure we capture those and manage them effectively, and also to achieve the benefit. That's just effectively what it is.

So the other thing I'm thinking of is, you know that often when we got variability, you can have a breakdown in communication because you've got the team doing it the way they think is right. Then someone comes up and says, what are you doing? I don't do it that way. I do it this way. Straight away, well, who should we trust?

Who, what? What should be happening here? You know, it's not helping your communication within the team, so you really want to get past that. So,

Anthony Perl: yeah, and I think that, so what we, you know what the important distinction here is between what the natural variations that might occur and the variations where people are saying.

I just wanna do it this way, [: 00:13:00

John Tonkin: So really, if we've got variability, sometimes the variability is because people are challenging. What was the old way? I love challenging the way we do things, but what we wanna do now is to capture that challenge and any expertise that's in the business.

We want to capture all of that together. Capture that expertise and work out the one best way of doing it. So we must do that together. I wanna say collaboratively, but I don't wanna say, um, by compromising, which is what people assume collabor collaboratively means. It means we actually work together and we agree, well, it would be better if we do this and if we have any questions around it along the way.

ay, and we'll see how we end [: 00:14:00

Another fix, the thing is that we want to instill that pride, that sense of achievement based on standard quality indicators. So we wanna be able to say, every time you see that come through and. This is a tick or that's a mark, or that's been done to that level. This the level of tolerance on the equipment you're building or whatever.

That's something we can be pride in, you know, take pride in factories, talk about, you know, meantime between accidents and time between since the last accident, all those things, error rates and so on. Meantime between errors, we want to have those as low as we possibly can. You know, get towards that. Maybe not as far as that whole six Sigma, you know, which means one in a million.

achieving the quality level [: 00:15:00

Which is a horrible way of doing it. And I've got a friend who described somebody, I won't name my name, my daughter, but described my daughter and she said, John, she's just so wonderful. I can't fault her, I can't fault her. And I thought, well, why would you try to fault somebody? You know, it's not a good way of defining greatness or beauty or goodness or whatever else.

So we wanna have that idea that we wanna put effort into promoting everything that happens and so on. I think about when I say that I'm thinking about Blanchard. Remember back in the one minute manager, I don't know whether you remember the book. Great little series of books actually, and what he said was, catch people doing the right thing.

was such a, a topical thing [: 00:16:00

Because that's making them wrong and bad, which is never gonna achieve a good result. Now you think about our little children, when they learn to walk, there's no one, they can't understand any language. They're picking everything up from positivity. We give them positive feedback and they keep on doing what turns out to be the right thing.

And every child learns to walk. And we're only gonna have that if we put effort into promoting what does work. And we encourage that not into criticizing or knocking back the other side. Another fix for all of this, for variability and so on, for having all that in there, is to implement effective training.

that's the big thing for me, [: 00:17:00

We can implement quality assurance and quality assurance isn't some funny department that's simply saying, when we do, when we make these things, they should be that high, no higher, no shorter. They should be this big. They should be that high. They should be tighten this strongly on the nuts and or whatever else it is, et cetera.

We want to have something so that we can say, this is going to be effective. Here it is. There you go. I think that's the fix.

Anthony Perl: Yeah, it's so important, isn't it, that you've got these really ideas that are so firmly in place for a business that they understand that you can't, you can have a human natural kind of variable, but you can't have this whole concept of.

e started from the beginning [: 00:18:00

John Tonkin: Yeah. I did it my way is a great song. Uh, I think, but I don't want people doing that when they're in my factory or putting together the plane that I'm flying on, you know?

Yeah. I did it my way, you know, and oh. You didn't do it the Boeing way or the Airbus Way, you know, I want that little bit bit of firmness on that one. Definitely. I don't want too much air variability there. Pride in doing what you did. Yes, but not pride in doing it your way. This is your business.

Anthony Perl: Before you go, don't forget to hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you are tuned to.

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