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  • Mount Fuji in the morning light, seen from Oishi Park on Lake Kawaguchiko. In the foreground is a field of orange cosmos flowers; behind it lies the tranquil surface of the lake, and beyond that the clearly visible cone of the mountain against a cloudy sky.

    Nothing to lose

    Today in Tokyo. I have two days free when I could go to Kawaguchiko to see the majestic Mount Fuji: the 3rd and the 9th of September. September isn’t the ideal time for this, so I ask the AI which of the two dates is more likely to be better. The AI checks. On the morning of 3 September, the view isn’t expected to be postcard-perfect, but it should be cloudless; on the 9th, it’s less likely. The AI goes on to explain: buy tickets online, then collect the physical ticket from a vending machine at Shinjuku station. Set off from Shibuya thirty minutes before the train departs.

    I’ve been to Tokyo before. Shibuya Station has nine lines across fourteen platforms, spread over several underground and above-ground levels. Shinjuku Station is the busiest station in the world: over 3.5 million passengers a day, more than two hundred exits, twelve railway lines, five railway companies. There’s even a dedicated app for navigation.

    I double the AI’s recommendation and set off an hour earlier. I arrive at the train ten minutes before departure. By early afternoon, the clouds have already shrouded Mount Fuji. Had I trusted the AI blindly, I’d be flying home without a photo.

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  • A stick figure is standing on the left, holding a compass. A dotted line runs diagonally from the compass towards a schematic map in the style of an adventure map. The map is divided into several islands connected by bridges. A small flowchart is drawn on each island. All the flowcharts are black and white; only one is highlighted in brand purple and has a gold border. The compass is pointing towards this flowchart.

    Which process comes first? The preliminary question

    Lean, 5S and Kaizen tell you how to optimise a process. They do not tell you which one you should tackle first.

    The person responsible for processes and organisation has three projects on her list, all of which are marked as 'strategically important', and she knows she cannot tackle them all at once. The head of customer service has forty manual processes and four fewer full-time equivalents than she did two years ago. She knows that automation is needed here, and she knows she cannot implement everything all at once. The sales manager is working on a campaign for heat pumps. Enquiries are coming in, quotations are taking too long to prepare, and margins are falling. He knows that the processes here aren’t keeping up. The IT manager has all the lists on his desk, each marked ‘very urgent’. He simply doesn’t have the resources to tackle all the projects at once. He starts with the task that’s being shouted about the loudest.

    All four assess the importance according to their own criteria. All four are right from their own perspective. Together, this results in four conflicting pictures. And none of them shows where the company as a whole should start. The management observes the discussion and delegates the task of resolving it.

    If the budget is large enough, an external consultancy is brought in; they charge five hundred thousand euros, deliver a hundred slides and leave. The four operational managers are left with the very question they started with.

    Welcome to the prioritisation conundrum.

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