You probably have seen this cartoon: Two persons working hard while a third person is standing apart with a solution to ease their work. Unfortunately, the two persons are too busy to care about what the “process improver” has to say. No improvement is done, all due to the lack of time from the operators.
Stupid situation?
Now, suppose you are the owner of a medium size store. You found out that, by updating the payment system you could simplify the process, sparing time and money. To implement the update, however, you would have to shut-down operations for 4 hours. Would you still choose to update your system and loose 4 hours of sales? And what if your business runs 24/7?
The conflict of having a solution to a problem but lacking time to implement it, is found in most organizations. It is not a stupid situation. What seems obvious in the cartoon, becomes a complex trade-off: Short term benefits versus long term improvement.
The main question might not be if you are willing to improve. The main question may be:
Do you have the courage to stop working?
Stopping the process to allow the implementation of improvements will mean to keep customers waiting, loose business, loose productivity, reduce efficiency, increase costs in the short term. All this, to aim for an uncertain amount of improvements in the long run.
Do you have the courage?
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