ConsultingThe Situation
A global resources operator with genuinely world-class technology — and manufacturing excellence that lagged behind it. Plenty of useful improvement tools existed across the business, but not aligned to each other and without systematic deployment. By the operation's own estimate, people were busy, but roughly 40% of that time went to activity that created no value for the business or its stakeholders — a gap the organisation could quantify in the millions when traced through the value chain, and one that meant improvement opportunities kept being missed rather than captured.
An enterprise-wide operating system was already being introduced to lift overall effectiveness, built on eliminating waste and making people the linchpin of the system rather than something to be managed around. What it needed was a way to define roles, select and develop people, and value performance that matched that philosophy — because a lean operating system designed around discretionary judgement fails quickly if the people system underneath it still rewards compliance over contribution.
The Approach
We applied our patented Work Diagnostic Model directly to the operating roles across the business — analysing each role by its impact (the accountability, judgement and effect on the value chain) and its input (the knowledge, integration and interpersonal capability required to do it well), rather than by hierarchy or years of service.
Every role has prescribed elements — what must be done — and discretionary elements, which define its real effect on the business. We defined "scope" for each role explicitly: the areas where discretionary effort was best applied, and what the role would look like when it was being done exceptionally well. For a process operator, that meant naming the judgement calls — adjusting plant parameters, anticipating safety issues — that a procedure manual could never fully specify.
Alongside role redesign, we built a benchmarking model linking business performance to workforce engagement — a research-based, "what-if" tool connecting operating metrics (safety, cost, production, quality, plant availability) to the people-management drivers behind them (responsibility, involvement, motivation, safety and wellbeing). The model let the operation see, for the first time, which engagement drivers were actually moving its production and cost numbers, rather than assuming the relationship.
The Delivery
The redesigned roles and diagnostics became the basis for assessment-centre selection of high performers into new operating roles, for setting clear expectations for people entering them, for new career-path options that hadn't existed under the old structure, and for performance reviews, coaching and development that could be traced back to the same role definitions. Recognition and pay were realigned to follow contribution against those definitions — not tenure, and not position in the hierarchy alone.
The Outcome
Non-value-adding time identified by the operation's own estimate — the gap the redesign targeted.
Work-value dimensions used to redefine every operating role, from process operator to plant leadership.
Transparent line from business need, to role, to performance, to pay.
Cross-boundary collaboration on process problems, reported directly by operating teams.
People took on more, with more ownership and a stronger customer focus — collaborating across boundaries that had previously stopped problems from being solved. The system was licensed for ongoing use across the operation, becoming one of the longest-running applications of the Aequus methodology.
From the engagement's feedback and outcomes review