A second mis-alignment issue is initiative overload too many initiatives competing for limited resources and lacking in alignment to an overall strategy that links them in an understandable way. Beta is like most companies and has numerous initiatives. Each one is justified on its own merits and is typically approved as part of a strategy for improvement in that area. Examples include improving safety and environmental performance, driving major cost reductions, market expansion in product line and/or geographic areas, procurement initiatives for consolidation of suppliers or supply chain management, and often the use of one or more new tools for improvement (e.g., Six Sigma, TPM, RCM, and so on). Quality initiatives such as Total Quality Management (TQM) appear to have gone through their fad phase.

In the eyes of most people on the shop floor and in middle management, these initiatives appear to be independent and not linked to any particular overall strategy. The safety initiative is driven by the safety function, environmental by the environmental function, cost by the business unit leaders, procurement by the purchasing function, and so on. Each one is demanded as a matter of policy. Each initiative saps resources, which taken individually does not seem excessive, but taken in the aggregate very often is. Unfortunately, when middle management and the people on the floor try to implement these, there is often substantial dilution of their effort, or at worst confusion and failure. Most just try to do enough to satisfy the...