Number 35 – The First Improvement Is Attention

Identify ergonomic, safety or employee satisfaction issues that may slow or jeopardize improvement efforts. 

Practitioners: tactical, integrative, and strategic

Most improvement efforts don’t stall because the plan is weak.  They stall because the work already costs something—and leadership is asking for more without first seeing the cost.  Sometimes the cost is obvious. A reach that pulls the shoulder forward all day. A twist that loads the back. A lift that looks “fine” until it has been done ten thousand times.

Sometimes the cost is quieter. A guard that’s missing “just for now.” A near-miss that becomes routine. A hazard everyone has learned to step around without thinking.  And sometimes the cost is neither pain nor danger. It’s the slow loss of dignity—the feeling that the work is being engineered around people, not with them. The sense that improvement means, “You will adapt,” not, “We will learn.”

This is where improvement becomes a wager: Will you ask me to go faster in a system that already takes from me?  Leaders often don’t mean to do this. They simply arrive with the scoreboard already in their hands—cycle time, output, downtime, headcount.  And the work hears a second question underneath the first: Are you improving the work—or improving your results?

This is where the mirror shows. If you can’t see strain, you will call it resistance. If you can’t hear fear, you will call it attitude. If you can’t honor dignity, you will call it engagement.  But the work will not accelerate on mistrust.  Ergonomics, safety, and satisfaction are not side constraints. They are the ground the work stands on. If the ground is unstable, people don’t refuse to improve. They refuse to be sacrificed.

So the first improvement is not a tool. It is attention.  Stand where the work stands. Watch the reach. Feel the twist. Notice what people do with their bodies to make your numbers true.  Ask about the near-miss that didn’t get written down. Ask what no one believes will change. Ask what part of the job people dread—quietly—because dread is information.

Then do the smallest thing that proves you heard it. Remove the strain. Stabilize the hazard. Give the work back its dignity.  After that, speed becomes possible. Not because you demanded it. Because the work no longer has to defend itself from you.

Questions For Your Consideration

Where, specifically, does the work “cost” the body (reach, twist, lift, repetition) in your highest-volume processes?

What safety concerns have become normal enough that they no longer get written down?

Where is employee satisfaction signaling a dignity problem—work done to people rather than with them?

When improvement slows, what labels show up first (resistance, attitude, engagement)? What might be truer than the label?

What is one small change you could make this week that would prove you are paying attention to the cost of the work?