The short version: most work management improvement programmes configure a system, train the users, run a pilot, and report success. Six months later the operation is reactive again. The programme treated work management as a skills gap when the binding constraint sits in the operating model: the handovers between roles that report to different managers, the measures that reward the wrong behaviour, and the absence of anyone accountable for the cycle as a whole. Train the roles by all means. Fix the seams first, or the training leaks out through them.
I have watched this cycle run more than once across nine years on Anglo American operations. The pattern is consistent enough to predict, which is the useful part.
What does the six month decay actually look like?
It rarely arrives as a collapse. It arrives as a series of small, locally sensible decisions.
A planner under pressure releases a job that has not been materials checked, because the alternative is an empty schedule. A first line manager approves a batch of notifications at month end without cost limits, because the backlog on the approval list has become a performance conversation. A scheduler stops recording schedule break, because every week the number is embarrassing and nobody acts on it anyway. An artisan writes “job done” in the feedback field, because the last forty descriptions written properly were never read by anyone.
Each of those is a reasonable response to the incentives in front of that person. Stack them and the cycle stops functioning, while every individual remains defensible in their own review.
That is the signature of an operating model fault. When the sensible local choice degrades the system, the fault is in the design of the work rather than in the character of the people doing it.
Why does training alone fail to hold?
Training changes what a person knows. It leaves untouched what the person is measured on, who they hand work to, and what happens when that handover fails.
Send a planner on a planning course and they come back able to build a proper work package. Send them back into a department where the schedule is built by somebody who never attends the planning meeting. Materials are ordered by a buyer working to a different set of priorities. The weekly report celebrates orders closed rather than hours delivered to plan. The new skill has nowhere to land.
The skill decays because the system around it never asked for it. Within a quarter the planner is doing what the department rewards, which is what they were doing before the course.
This is the argument for assessing the operation rather than the individual before any programme starts. Find out what the department can already do, where the handovers fail, and which measures are pulling against the model. The training that follows can then be aimed at the gap that is actually binding.
Which seams break first?
Five, in my experience, and they break in a fairly predictable order.
Approval. Cost limits stop being set. Approval becomes a click, so the financial gate stops gating and the planner inherits work nobody has actually authorised the spend on.
Materials. The schedule is committed without a materials check. Jobs reach the face and stop. Two or three of these in a week teaches every artisan that the schedule is a suggestion.
Schedule break. Urgent work stops carrying the URG status, so unscheduled work becomes invisible in the measures. Compliance then looks healthy on a week that was ninety percent reactive, and the report stops describing the operation.
Feedback. Descriptions thin out. Six months later reliability engineering has no data to change a strategy with, so the maintenance plans stay as they were and the same failures return.
The daily meeting. It drifts from a decision forum into a status update. Nobody leaves with an action, so people stop bringing the difficult items, and the critical issues that the schedule could have absorbed on Tuesday surface on Friday.
Watch the daily meeting for ten minutes and you can usually diagnose the other four.
What holds the improvement in place?
Four things, and only one of them is a course.
An owner for the cycle. Someone accountable for work management end to end, across the roles, with the standing to arbitrate between a planner and a scheduler who report elsewhere. Without this the handovers belong to nobody, and unowned handovers decay by default.
Measures that describe the week as it happened. Schedule compliance in hours, against a stored frozen schedule, published next to schedule break and deferral age. A measure that can be made to look good without the work getting better will be made to look good.
A baseline taken before anything is taught. Measure what the roles can actually do at the start, per process rather than as one mark. It tells you what to teach hardest, and it is the only thing that lets you prove afterwards that the programme moved anything.
Coaching at the desk as well as in the room. The classroom builds the knowledge. The habit forms at the desk, in the first four weeks, while somebody experienced is close enough to correct the first attempts.
How do you tell whether a programme is going to hold?
Ask three questions before it starts.
- Who owns the cycle after we leave? If the answer is a committee, the answer is nobody.
- Which measure will move, and how will you know it was us? If the operation cannot say what it looks like today, it will not be able to say what changed.
- What are we going to stop doing? Improvement programmes almost always add steps to a department that is already behind. Something has to come off the desk to make room, and naming that thing early is the difference between a programme that lands and one that gets endured.
An operation that can answer all three has usually already done the thinking that makes the training worth buying. One that cannot is buying a course and hoping it behaves like a change programme.
DBiLL runs a role based competence baseline before any capability building programme starts, so the training is aimed at the gap that is actually binding, and so there is a before picture to measure against afterwards. See our work management service, or book a free delivery review.
Related reading: the five phases and where they break.
Frequently asked questions
Why do work management improvement programmes fail?
Because they treat the problem as a skills gap when the binding constraint is usually in the operating model: broken handovers between roles that report to different managers, measures that reward the wrong behaviour, and no single owner for the cycle. Training then decays because the system around it never asks for the new skill.
How long does it take for an operation to revert to reactive?
Commonly about six months, and it happens gradually through small local decisions that each make sense to the person making them. The early signs are cost limits going unset, materials checks being skipped, and urgent work losing its status flag.
Should we train the people or fix the process first?
Fix the seams between roles first, or at least in parallel. A planner trained into a department whose schedule is built without them will revert to what the department rewards within a quarter.
What is a competence baseline and why run one before training?
A structured assessment of what each role can actually do, scored per process rather than as a single mark. It tells you what to teach hardest. It also separates the person who lacks the knowledge from the person who is unaware of the gap, and those two need opposite interventions.
Who should own work management in an operation?
One person accountable for the whole cycle, with enough standing to arbitrate between planning, scheduling and execution when those roles report to different managers. Shared ownership across a committee leaves the handovers unowned.
What is the first measure to fix?
Schedule compliance, measured in hours against a stored frozen schedule and published alongside schedule break. It is the measure most often calculated in a way that flatters the operation, and correcting it usually changes the conversation on its own.
Can this be fixed without changing the SAP configuration?
Usually, yes. Most of what fails is discipline at the handovers and the definition of the measures rather than the configuration itself. The exception is when the statuses needed to separate urgent from scheduled work are missing, because without those the measures cannot be made honest.