Debunking The Trimmed Roast Phenomenon

Have you heard the story of the mother who cut off the end of the roast? You can read it in detail on the Internet, but here is the short version:

A new bride, while making dinner, cuts off the end of the roast and throws it away. When asked by her husband why she did that, she states, “That is what my mother always does to make it the best.” Inquisitively, the husband asks his new mother-in-law and she reveals that because the pan was too small, she always had to do that. It had nothing to do with the quality of the roast.

In a hospital environment that has been around for over 100 years, I frequently run into processes that mimic that story! I only wish it was one question to one person that could reveal the answer as simply as the husband did. Even with all of the implementation and process change experience CIOs have been involved in, unless I am unique, this phenomenon repeats itself time and time again.

Frequent excuses, when we unearth these cut off roasts, include:

• “It’s a really complex process that involved so many departments that I’m not sure how we tackle it”
• “We are unique and we have to do it this way”
• “The physicians would never go for a change like that; they are set in their ways”
• “Wow, that is going to be difficult for my manager to agree to — they’ve always done it that way”

While an entire book could be written (and thousands already have been), here are a few suggestions on debunking the trimmed roast phenomenon in your organization:

• Who cares what the process is now? When working on process redesign, you might NOT want to start by documenting the current process. This sounds counterintuitive, but I’ve found that laboring through what the current process looks like provides a strong anchor to the existing broken process. Instead, ask this question: “If you were a high-paid consultant for another organization and you had to come up with the absolute best process for this problem, what would it look like?” Get the creative juices flowing and move away from the anchor. After the new process is developed, go back and find out if any steps are missing.
• Learn to love swim-lane diagrams. If you aren’t familiar with them, do 5 minutes of research and start using them. They do two things very well. They outline the process and they document the appropriate responsibility for the process steps. Using this type of visual aid helps team members from tossing around process redesign without assigning proper resources. It’s always easy for teams to talk about how process needs to change for others, but when you look at the entire process and whose responsibility it is to change, it breaks down barriers.
• Have difficult conversations. Most of time, good ideas on process redesign are not fully implemented because someone didn’t want to have a difficult conversation. Each of us has brilliant talent on our team that has the potential to come up with radically innovative processes for really complex issues. We also have people who, with a few words, can trample on that brilliant process and kill any benefit just based on the desire to maintain current process. It takes difficult conversations by leaders in your organization to take risks on new processes, to struggle through change, and to believe that the brilliant people in our organizations can make a new and better way to do things.

While there are hundreds of tools and suggestions to help bust through bad processes, these three can be the most impactful. They may not be perfect, but hopefully, by using them you can start to enjoy the whole roast.