“I don’t know,” Denise delayed, mulling things over in her mind. “How do you just make something simpler?”

“It calls for a bit of analysis,” I replied. “Tell me about a simple process that your team does on a repetitive basis, something with several steps that they do over and over.”

Denise nodded and began to describe a system, with thirteen steps. On step number three, I stopped her.

“I want you to draw a simple picture, a series of circle, each circle representing a step in your system. And draw a line between each of the circles.”

I watched as she turned the paper to get all the circles on one page, carefully labeling each of the thirteen steps.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Now, ask which of these steps is necessary to achieve the goal.”

“The goal?”

“Yes, I want you to add one more circle and describe the goal, the quantity we want to produce at the quality standard necessary.”

Denise drew an empty circle and I could see the churn in her mind. As soon as she wrote something in the goal circle, I could see her make mental connections to the other circles.
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