Immersion
2 weeks of logging
The format for going all the way: not just the three big areas, but everything else too.
Same sheet, same effort for your team, but two series instead of one. Enough material to go down to the small time drains, the ones nobody ever counts because they only last a few minutes.
1600 x 1067Landscape photo, a team at work logging their daysemaine-temoin-2-semaines-hero.webpThe big areas, you already know
Ask any business owner what takes up most of their time: they'll name three or four things, and they'll be right. These big areas are visible, you don't need two weeks of logs to find them.
The problem lies elsewhere. Once those three areas are dealt with, there remains a long string of small things, each too short to think about, which laid end to end often weigh as much as the big ones. Nobody counts them, precisely because they're small.
It's this right-hand part of the chart that two weeks of logs let us reach. A single week stops at the first three bars.
Why it takes two series to go that far
A big time drain can be spotted in a week: it's too visible to go unnoticed. A small one can't. Seen only once, there's no way of knowing whether it's a habit or a fluke of the week.
We spot. The big areas stand out, along with a host of small lines we can't say anything about yet.
We confirm. A small line that reappears becomes usable. One that vanishes was a one-off, we set it aside.
Without this second series, we couldn't touch the small lines: we'd risk making you change something over an isolated incident.
How the two weeks go
The same process as a single observation week, with one extra series of logs.
We prepare the sheet with you
Adapted to your trade and your vocabulary. On paper at the counter, or on a phone, whichever your team prefers.
Two weeks of logging
Everyone notes what they do as the day goes on. No report to write, no justification to give: one line, and back to work.
We take stock after the first week
We already read the first series and spot what deserves closer attention. The second week starts with precise questions, instead of starting from scratch.
You send us everything, and your view with it
The team's logs, plus what you make of them. Your reading counts as much as the sheets: you know the context of every line.
We analyse, line by line
That's the long part, and it's ours. Everything is gone over, cross-checked, sorted, until the real time drains emerge from the logs.
The two weeks run back to back, unless your business has very different periods: in that case, we choose the two most telling weeks together.
What the team needs to understand before starting
Over two weeks, honesty matters even more: it's what makes the comparison valid.
- This isn't surveillanceWe compare nobody to anybody. The logs are there to understand a way of working, not to score the people who make it run.
- It doesn't add workA line takes less than ten seconds. If filling in the sheet becomes a chore, the sheet is badly designed, and we redo it.
- A forgotten line isn't a problemNobody will note everything, and that's fine: what we're looking for is what recurs, not an exact count.
1400 x 1050Photo, a hand-filled sheet lying on a countersemaine-temoin-releve.webpWhat happens once the logs are in
Twice as much material to go through, and an analysis step the one-week version doesn't allow.
We go over every line, from both weeks
Every sheet, from everyone, over the whole period. Nothing is set aside before it's been read.
We overlay the two series
It's the decisive step: what appears in both series is a way of working, what appears in only one was an event.
We go below the five-minute mark
That's where the material a single week can't make use of is found: the lines too short to count on their own, but which come back every day.
We put a figure on every line we keep
How many minutes a day, how many times a week, how many people affected. Without these figures, there's no way of knowing whether a small line is worth dealing with.
We cross-check with your reading
What you've written to us often explains why a line is there, and why it disappeared in the second week.
We decide and put everything in order
Our opinion, in black and white, on all the points we've kept: what is now established rather than assumed, ranked from most to least worthwhile.
How far down we go
Four levels of time drain. The first two can already be dealt with from a single week of logs. The last two are the whole point of this format.
What takes you hours
The three or four big areas. You know them, and a week is more than enough to bring them out.
What takes you half-hours
Less visible, but still spottable in a single series of logs.
What takes you a few minutes, several times a day
Too short to think about, too frequent to ignore. It takes two series to say for sure that it really recurs.
What only shows when you add everyone up
One minute for each person, every day, across the whole team. Nobody can spot it alone, and no single week shows it.
What it costs, and how that's decided
Every immersion is priced for your business. You have the figure before you commit, never after.
Two weeks or one, how to choose
For your team, the effort is the same: a few lines a day. What changes is how far down into the detail we go.
2 weeks of logging
The big areas, and the whole string of small time drains nobody ever counts.
1 week of logging
The three or four main areas, when you want to deal with the biggest without going all the way.
See this pageTwo weeks of notes, and we go after every last minute
Your team writes, we go through everything.
Start two observation weeks