QualPro Helps Lincoln Paper Cut Costs

Dale Dauten: What seems unpromising could surprise you

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 03.31.2009

Opinion by Dale Dauten

KING FEATURES SYNDICATE

“There is no such thing as talent. Talent is pressure.”

— Alfred Adler

The surprising Paradox of Surprise: When it comes to trying

something new in business, the goal is to find the change

most likely to work. To find it, you talk to those with ex-

perience and maybe hire consultants, then implement the

change, feeling confident.

And guess what?

Any surprise you get is to the negative, leaving you saying,

“What? That can’t be right. Check your numbers!”

So here’s the paradox: If we are to have any chance for a

welcome surprise, then we must try what seems unlikely to

work.

Who does that? Well, for one, Keith Van Scotter. He’s the

CEO of Lincoln Paper and Tissue, and the one who got me

thinking about surprise. Back in ‘04, he bought out a shut-

tered paper mill and returned it to life. When I mentioned

this to Mrs. Dauten, her response was, “There are still paper

mills in the U.S.?” Yes, some nimble ones. In the case of

Lincoln, Van Scotter said, “We had to make five years

worth of changes in a couple of months.”

To do so, they had to become experts on rapid experimenta-

tion. They hired a company called QualPro. (I’ve previously

written about the company and its founder, Chuck Holland

— available under “columns” at dauten.com.) By helping

companies undertake a large number of experiments, si-

multaneously, Holland has concluded that half of corporate

experiments have no impact, one-quarter produce a positive

benefit, and one-quarter make things worse. Now there’s a

coin you don’t want to flip unless you get a lot of flips —

and that’s exactly the point.

An example from Lincoln: A 50-year-old machine was no

longer producing the quality of card stock that the market-

place demanded. Six other companies make a competing

card stock, and Lincoln’s own internal testing rated their

product as seventh out of seven. The experts, internal and

external, suggested that the only hope was to alter the speed

of production; otherwise, the old machine had to be re-

placed.

However, rather than merely testing that one factor, the

folks from QualPro interviewed all the employees who

worked on that production line and made a list of every

factor affecting output/ quality. They did their testing and

learned that the most likely factor (speed) had zero effect.

The response of the mill manager? “That can’t be right —

check your numbers!”

Thus, we see how expertise, combined with consensus, can

set up the sorry, one-way surprise. However, because Van

Scotter and his team had tested other variables — nearly a

hundred, including all the ones that didn’t seem to matter —

they had a series of welcome surprises.

Now, the 50-year-old machine is producing card stock that

isn’t seventh-best, but second-best, and does so by using

less fiber than newer machines in competing paper mills.

Van Scotter now has eight internal teams, all testing dozens

of factors.

He says: “We don’t have to bring in experts to tell us what

will work. We don’t have to listen to the people who say,

‘We tried that 20 years ago and it didn’t work.’ Now we just

do the test and see.”

One of the most beautiful sentences in the English language

is, “Let’s try it and see what happens.”

You don’t have to have the answer, just the willingness to

experiment. Not having the answer is the measure of a good

experiment, for it measures the opportunity for a welcome

surprise.

Opinion by

Dale Dauten

Dale Dauten is the founder of The Innovators’ Lab. Write to him in care

of King Features Syndicate, 300 W. 57th St., 15th Floor, New York, NY

10019, or at dale@dauten.com