The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service recently provided technical guidance for cattle producers that flies in the face of business’s oft-quoted 80/20 rule.
Pre-Harvest Interventions
The guidance isn’t a regulation exactly; instead it explains a list of what it calls “Pre-Harvest Management Controls and Intervention Options” that beef producers should implement. FSIS says beef processing players should prefer cattle from producers who implement one or more of these pre-harvest interventions.
Some of the items listed include basic sanitation practices as well as vaccines and targeted antibiotics that are new or that have only spotty results in research studies. Those in the industry may view these items as small or insignificant, ideas that may not do enough to stop the spread of E.coli to be worth the trouble. However, the agency’s thinking seems to be that “multiple interventions, even if their individual effects are small, could reduce E. coli prevalence as cattle go to slaughter.”
But I Don’t Raise Cattle
Some will argue that until a particular course of action is proven to work, we shouldn’t try it. Or that the results we can expect from implementing a small change aren’t enough, that we need to see massive improvements and small ideas just aren’t worth the time. That’s 80/20 thinking at its best. (If you’ve never heard of the 80/20 rule or Pareto’s Principle, it basically suggests that 20% of your causes lead to 80% of your problems; in other words, focus on the big stuff first.)
But what if following the 80/20 rule keeps us from going far enough? What if smaller causes or ideas can combine to produce compounded positive results?
The E.coli Rule
Here are some ways you might consider following the “E. coli Rule:”
- Think about your pre-harvest parallels: What are the characteristics of the processes that come before what you do? How could you influence those who perform those processes to give you something that has higher quality, less detail or fits more seamlessly into your process?
- Round up the small ideas that people have mentioned and then dismissed: How could you mix and match these smaller concepts to create momentum and improvement?
- Regularly challenge the wisdom of blindly following the 80/20 Principle: Certainly part of the job is focusing on the big stuff but don’t let your organization get lulled into thinking that the small stuff can’t make a difference. Expand your thinking patterns and require others around you to use creativity in finding solutions to nagging problems.
- Banish workarounds: Workarounds develop when people or processes aren’t functioning as designed. Don’t make working around a problem the normal way you do business. Fix the underlying problem and you’ll erase the need to compensate.
Pareto’s Principle is too popular to go away anytime soon and there is definitely wisdom in it. However, thoughtful businesspeople will learn an important lesson from the USDA’s recommendations for reducing E. coli. We can apply 80/20 in our decision making but maybe we should “sweat the small stuff” too.
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Jean Houston Shore works with organizations that want their people to work together better. She can be reached at 770-643-9724, by email at jean@thinkbusiness.com or through her website at www.working-together-better.com. Ask for your free copy of her book Working Together Better.
Copyright © 2010, Jean Houston Shore, Business Resource Group. All Rights Reserved Internationally. No portion may be reprinted or used without prior written permission.
