Process Improvement to Company Enrichment

CHAPTER 5

Designing Structural Integrity

We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form a team we would be reorganized. We tend to meet every situation by reorganizing and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.

—Gaius Petronius Arbiter, c. 27 to 66 AD, Author of Satyricon

At the toll booth at each end of the Albert Bridge, which spans the Thames in London, is a simple placard: “Notice: Troops Must Break Step When Marching Over This Bridge.” The command to “Break Step” (or the American equivalent to “Route Step, March”) is a direction to troops to abandon the highly regimented, synchronized cadences suggestive of military parades ...