23/04/2022
Decision Making - Improvement Areas
With BUKA following a slightly different ESCO model with a clear focus on the Boiler/ Steam Generator, it is natural that we have visited a large number of plants across different industries. The objective of these visits has been to sit with the Boiler O&M Team and discuss opportunities for efficiency improvement (If Any) and it has been an eye opener.
Plants owned and operated by large blue-chip organisations and staffed with experienced and qualified resources have, on most occasions, chosen to look the other way when it came to design and implementation of energy efficiency improvement solutions. These are organisations where budgets for CAPEX can be made available if the Project offers an attractive ROI/Payback. The plant team, for reasons not understood by us, has continued to operate at lower efficiency points. As a consequence, the operating costs tend to be higher and with fossil fuels still remaining dominant in the industry, the carbon footprint also is larger.
As a team of people who have majorly drawn their experience from Boiler OEM’s, this post is intended to bring to the discussion tables, reasons for maintaining “Status Quo” .
We have listed some reasons and are seeking views from one and all. Drawn from an article by Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School and available on the Internet.
As a Loss of control. Change interferes with autonomy and can make people feel that they’ve lost control over their territory. Our sense of self-determination is often the first things to go when faced with a potential change coming from someone else.
Excess uncertainty. If change feels like walking off a cliff blindfolded, then people will reject it. People will often prefer to remain mired in misery than to head toward an unknown. As the saying goes, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.” To overcome inertia requires a sense of safety as well as an inspiring vision.
Surprise, surprise! Decisions imposed on people suddenly, with no time to get used to the idea or prepare for the consequences, are generally resisted. It’s always easier to say No than to say Yes.
Everything seems different. Change is meant to bring something different, but how different? We are creatures of habit. Routines become automatic, but change jolts us into consciousness, sometimes in uncomfortable ways. Too many differences can be distracting or confusing.
Loss of face. By definition, change is a departure from the past. Those people associated with the last version — the one that didn’t work, or the one that’s being superseded — are likely to be defensive about it. When change involves a big shift of strategic direction, the people responsible for the previous direction dread the perception that they must have been wrong..
Concerns about competence. Can I do it? Change is resisted when it makes people feel stupid. They might express scepticism about whether the new system will work or whether the concept is really an improvement, but down deep they are worried that their skills will be exposed.
More work. Here is a universal challenge. Change is indeed more work. Those closest to the change in terms of designing and testing it are often overloaded, in part because of the inevitable unanticipated glitches in the middle of change, per “Kanter’s Law” that “everything can look like a failure in the middle.”
Ripple effects. Like tossing a pebble into a pond, change creates ripples, reaching distant spots in ever-widening circles. The ripples disrupt other departments, important customers, people well outside the venture or neighbourhood, and they start to push back, rebelling against changes they had nothing to do with that interfere with their own activities.
Past resentments. The ghosts of the past are always lying in wait to haunt us. As long as everything is steady state, they remain out of sight.
Improve your boiler efficiencies and contribute to a greener planet!!
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