Everyone Is Busy… But Are They Doing the Right Things?

One of the biggest sources of waste I've seen in organisations over the last 37 years isn't poor effort.

It's lack of clarity.

People genuinely want to do a good job. Most employees come to work each day wanting to contribute, solve problems and help the business succeed. Yet across hundreds of operations I've worked in and visited around the world— I continue to see the same issue:

People often don't truly know what their role is.

And even more importantly, they don't know what other people expect from them.

That gap creates enormous amounts of waste, frustration and miscommunication.

The A3 Exercise

One of the first things we do at the start of any improvement activity is very simple.

We ask people:

"What do you actually do each day?"

Not what is written in a job description from five years ago. Not what HR thinks they do. Not what the senior team assumes they do.

What do they genuinely spend their time doing?

We ask everyone to independently write down their standard daily tasks on a sheet of A3 paper. No collaboration. No management input. Just their honest view of what is important in their role.

Then we place all the responses on the wall and invite the senior leadership team to walk around and read them.

And without exception — whether we are in a warehouse in the UK, a factory in China or an operation in Canada — the reaction is always the same.

"Why do you do that?"

"Who asked you to do this?"

"Why aren't you doing this instead?"

"I didn't even know that was part of the role."

It becomes obvious very quickly that different people inside the same business often have completely different ideas about what matters.

And when expectations are unclear, people naturally fill the gaps themselves.

When Expectations Are Unclear

Some create work that adds little value. Some duplicate activity already happening elsewhere. Some avoid important tasks because nobody made ownership clear. Others spend huge amounts of time producing reports or information that nobody reads.

Everybody stays busy.

But the business becomes noisy rather than effective.

Building Working Menus

The underlying problem is simple:

How can an organisation operate efficiently day-to-day if people don't clearly understand: what is expected of them, what good looks like, what outputs they are responsible for, and how their role supports the wider business objectives?

Without that clarity, waste is inevitable. Meetings increase. Emails increase. Frustration increases. And accountability quietly disappears because nobody is completely sure where responsibility begins or ends.

Once we complete this exercise, the real work begins.

We sit down with each role and start building what we call working menus or minimum role requirements.

Not vague job descriptions.

Clear expectations.

What are the critical daily, weekly and monthly activities? What outputs are expected? What standards must be maintained? How does the role support operational objectives? What should this person stop doing? What should they focus on more?

Most importantly, these are aligned directly to the company's goals and signed off by the leadership team.

That alignment changes behaviour quickly.

People stop working in isolated silos and start understanding how their role contributes to the bigger picture.

The culture begins shifting from: "That's not my job" to: "We're all working towards the same outcome."

Clarity Creates Momentum

What always surprises me is how much energy organisations recover simply through clarity.

Not new software. Not restructuring. Not change of leadership.

Just clear expectations.

When people understand: what matters, what success looks like, and how they contribute — performance improves naturally.

Because confusion is exhausting.

Clarity creates momentum.

Activity Is Not Productivity

One of the biggest myths in operations is that activity equals productivity.

It doesn't.

I've walked through countless businesses where everyone looked incredibly busy, yet very little of that activity was moving the organisation forward.

Good organisations do not just create busy people.

They create aligned people.

And alignment is impossible without clarity.

Lean Starts With People

At its heart, Lean was never just about process improvement.

It was about creating environments where everybody understands: the purpose, the standards, the expectations, and their role in achieving them.

When that happens, communication improves. Waste reduces. Accountability strengthens. And teams start pulling in the same direction.

Which, in most businesses, is rarer than it should be.

— Richard Pounder

Founder, Complete Lean Solutions

(Ex Toyota TPS Office)