Small Changes Can Make A Big Difference

Wal-Mart.

Whether you love them or hate them, there’s no denying their scale. The company is just huge. When they make a small change, it can have large-scale implications.

When Wal-Mart Changes A Light Bulb

Hal Macomber has a post up that cites an upcoming Fast Company article that covers Wal-Mart’s anticipated change to using coiled fluorescent bulbs instead of standard incandescent bulbs.

Its estimated that if Wal-Mart can successfully do so, that would be the equivalent of pulling 1.3 million cars off the road in terms of reducing carbon emissions.

Besides the environmental impact, the savings in energy costs to Wal-Mart (and therefore reduced energy demand in the economy) are really big.

Each fluorescent bulb uses less than 1/3 of the energy of a similar 60 watt incandescent bulb. When spread out over the entire network of Wal-Mart’s 3,000 plus stores, we’re talking millions and millions of dollars in cost savings and a huge reduction in wattage demand.

This is a great example of how a small change can have large benefits.

Often, companies try to improve operations or project performance through large, revolutionary sweeps. These are accompanied by the sounds of “new paradigms,” “rethinking everything” or “massive organizational change.” People can spend a long time rethinking their processes, defining requirements and risks for an anticipated change, all the while growing the scope of the project.

Soon, the scope is so big and complicated that it becomes impossible to fund, politically risky to support and near impossible to implement. At the end of the day, nothing gets done and management gets burned-out on the idea of process improvement or improved project management.

Companies can sometimes get more accomplished by taking tiny steps, changing little things that make a big difference.

In every company there are well-defined, discrete areas which can be changed. Champions of these well-defined projects can see them executed and delivered, from start to finish. They can measure the results and build a solid foundation for further improvement.

While the change may not impact energy demand on the planet, it can make a big difference in the performance of your company or process.

          

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 31st, 2006 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Workplace, Project Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.