A few years ago, I was exposed to an approach to work described as Lean while working for a large health care organization in Seattle. Lean is a framework used by companies in many industries to relentlessly pursue the ideal customer experience by eliminating waste in all of its forms. One of the neat things I like about Lean is the involvement of front-line people in examining their product/service through the eyes of their customer and my job is to help folks do those types of exercises/activities.
One of the Lean components I teach to folks is the concept of Waste and its 8 deadly forms. In health care, transportation, and other high-risk industries, Waste can truly be deadly, but you've probably experienced waste more frequently in your life at home, at work, or your involvement in some kind of organized group (fantasy football league, fraternity, club/social group). So what does waste look like? Well at my company we have a handy little acronym (DOWNTIME) to define waste in its 8 forms; I've tried to be somewhat brief in my descriptions:
Defects - producing incorrect, inaccurate work. You notice this when you ask for no relish on your hot dog and it comes coated in relish.
Overproduction - producing a service/deliverable before its requested by a customer. You notice this at the bakery when they're giving away free muffins at the end of the day that weren't needed/sold
Waiting - the easiest form of waste to identify. The customer is waiting for goods to be produced and/or service provided. You notice this when you're in line at the security checkpoint in the airport. Or when you're waiting for the cable installation guy to show up. And you notice this when you're waiting for your television program to come back from commercial (more on this later)
Not Using Talent/Overburdening Staff - this isn't as easy to see as a customer, but you know it as an employee. These are all of those ideas people have to deliver a better experience for their customer but aren't empowered to do anything about it. It also involves taxing the hell out of people's body (and mind), which is common in service industries where people are on their feet.
Transportation - this is another one that is pretty easy to see, but its the movement of people, information, or equipment. You notice this in the shoe store when they have to "go to the back" to get your pair of shoes to try on.
Inventory - excess piles of work that needs to be complete, information to be processed. Look in your inbox, I'm certain there are examples of work "in inventory" waiting for you to take action on it. (and don't feel bad, I do too)
Motion - unnecessary movement; this is often walking/bending/reaching/heavy lifting stuff that requires an employee to exert more effort than needed
Extra processing - this is putting more effort in to a task than is required to complete it. Its often seen when there's a "final check" or "review" before finalizing something. The thinking is if you do something right the first time, you can avoid those 'downstream' checks, reviews, etc. You've probably also got some kind of "workaround" either at work or home that may get your work/task complete but probably isn't the easiest way.
So you're probably wondering why the rant about waste? And how does Commercial Free Sports play a role?
When I was exposed to the concept of Waste, it made a whole lot of sense to me and helped put a finger on all of those things that drive me nuts as either an employee, a customer, or an objective observer. And these days, I'll often find myself daydreaming about how Lean thinking could be applied to some of the problems in completely different settings--education, athletics, politics (ick), social ills, etc; and I found myself thinking about waste as a customer experiencing the broadcast of an NFL Football game.
If you think about what it is you're looking for as a customer watching a game, its to see the two teams competing against each other. From a Lean standpoint, the value added activities are the plays on the field, and possibly the analysis of the action taking place. In professional football, that's 60 minutes with a few clock stoppages for things like the end of periods, incomplete passes, changes in possession, and penalties. So in my mind, the game should take about 80 - 90 minutes to watch.
But an avid viewers of sporting events (or any program for that matter) know that the time you spend on the couch is closer to 3 hours, meaning about half of that time is waste, non-value added activities. Most of that time is me flipping to other stations to see what else is on, but I had the idea last night during the Bears-Vikings game (I'll save commentary on the Bears for another day) that one of the big 4 sports leagues should experiment with a commercial free broadcast.
Think about it, rather than cutting to a commercial, wouldn't it be interesting if you had a brief interlude with a summary of team's performance on interesting statistics up to that point? Maybe a sideline reporter with an update on the sideline chatter? What about an interview with a fan or a vendor who embodies in the spirit of the home team? How about some of those 'experts' breaking down game film and sharing their insight/thought with us lay-people? Shoot, I'd even find it amusing if they had some kind of fantasy football analysis! ANY of these would be more valuable to me (as a consumer of football) than the 9,000 Subway commercials I've watched while waiting for teams to leave time outs.
I realize there are a whole bunch of financial reasons (advertisers) why we may never see this, but as things like Slingbox, DVRs, Tivo's become the standard those advertisers will need to find ways to get their product in front of people while meeting those people on their time. So why not have a "uniform/equipment report sponsored by UnderArmor" or a "first period data dive sponsored by Old Spice" rather than the mindless, annoying commercials that few folks are probably watching?
So if you know anyone who works with one of the major networks (or leagues), feel free to drop my idea in their suggestion box and you're free to take all of the credit for it. While you work on that, I'll watch the 93,000th Zales/Kay Jeweler commercial during tonight's bulls-sixers game.
