This standard requires leaders to treat the identification and elimination of waste — in process, investment, capacity, and effort — as an active leadership responsibility. Waste is not self-evident in complex organisations; it hides in normalised process overhead, in work that has outlived its purpose, and in the gap between effort expended and value produced.
It supports the policy "Surface and Challenge Waste" by making waste identification a structured, recurring, and accountable leadership practice.
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| People & Culture | - Waste accepted as an inherent cost of complexity. - Challenging unnecessary work seen as risky or disruptive. |
| Process & Governance | - No structured processes for identifying or eliminating waste. - Reporting and process overhead grow unchecked. |
| Technology & Tools | - No tools for mapping or tracking waste in workflows. - Process maps exist but are not used to identify inefficiency. |
| Measurement & Metrics | - Waste not measured or tracked. - Cost of process overhead invisible in standard reporting. |
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| People & Culture | - Some leaders challenge unnecessary work when it is flagged. - Waste reduction seen as desirable but not systematically pursued. |
| Process & Governance | - Occasional process reviews identify some waste. - Investment reviews sometimes challenge programmes with unclear value. |
| Technology & Tools | - Some process mapping tools in use. - Cost and effort data available but not systematically used for waste analysis. |
| Measurement & Metrics | - Waste reduction tracked informally in some areas. - Process overhead not consistently measured. |
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| People & Culture | - Leaders regularly ask "why are we doing this?" and act on the answers. - Waste identification embedded in team retrospectives and leadership reviews. |
| Process & Governance | - Structured waste identification reviews occur at regular intervals. - Zero-based process reviews applied to high-overhead areas periodically. |
| Technology & Tools | - Process mapping and flow analysis tools actively used to surface waste. - Cost of process overhead visible in operational reporting. |
| Measurement & Metrics | - Waste reduction tracked as a delivery health metric. - Investment reviews include explicit challenge of ongoing programmes. |
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| People & Culture | - Waste identification a standing dimension of leadership effectiveness conversations. - Leaders coach others to identify and challenge low-value work. |
| Process & Governance | - Waste reduction targets set alongside delivery and investment targets. - Process overhead tracked across teams and used to drive governance improvements. |
| Technology & Tools | - Analytics surface time and effort data to identify waste patterns across the organisation. - Investment tools flag ongoing spend on programmes with unclear outcome value. |
| Measurement & Metrics | - Process waste and investment waste tracked as governance metrics. - Capacity released through waste elimination tracked and reinvested. |
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| People & Culture | - Challenging waste is an ingrained cultural behaviour modelled at every leadership level. - Leaders and teams continuously question the value of what they do. |
| Process & Governance | - Waste elimination is a continuous, organisation-wide programme rather than a periodic event. - Process landscape continuously right-sized to current needs and strategic priorities. |
| Technology & Tools | - Real-time intelligence surfaces emerging waste before it becomes embedded. - Continuous improvement tooling integrated into how work is planned and reviewed. |
| Measurement & Metrics | - Waste eliminated and capacity released tracked as strategic value metrics. - Waste challenge culture measured as an organisational capability indicator. |