Manufacturing Manager Cutting Production Time 20%: The Innovation Habit of Questioning "We've Always Done It This Way"

    A manufacturing manager looked at a process nobody had questioned in 15 years, tried a new method, and cut production time by 20%. This is the story of that single question — and why challenging the status quo is the most underused form of Innovation on your Winning Kite.

    Manufacturing Manager Cutting Production Time 20%: The Innovation Habit of Questioning

    Manufacturing Manager Cutting Production Time 20%: The Innovation Habit of Questioning "We've Always Done It This Way"

    Fifteen years. That's how long a particular process had run untouched on a factory floor before one manager finally asked a simple question: why does it have to be done this way? He experimented, tested a new method, and cut production time by 20% — without a single new machine, without a management consultant, and without anyone above him asking for it. This is the story I use in my Innovation chapter of Stars at India Inc., and it is one of the cleanest examples I know of Innovation as an EQ trait, not a technical skill.

    In short

    Where this sits on your Winning Kite

    Innovation is the eighth trait on the EQ — left — side of your Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework). It sits alongside traits like Emotional Awareness and Adaptability because, at its root, innovation is not a technical competency — it's an emotional one. It requires the courage to be uncomfortable, the flexibility to admit a familiar method might be wrong, and the confidence to risk being questioned by people who are used to things staying the same. A kite doesn't rise on one string. EQ, RQ, and PQ have to work together — and this story shows exactly how EQ (the courage to challenge) drives PQ (the productivity result).

    The Process Nobody Had Looked At In 15 Years

    Picture a manufacturing floor. A particular production process — the kind that runs every single shift, every single day — had been operating the same way for fifteen years. Fifteen years is a long time in any industry. Machines get replaced. Technology moves on. Markets shift. But this one process had quietly become invisible. It worked. It shipped product. Nobody had a reason to look at it twice.

    That's exactly the trap. When something works well enough, for long enough, it stops being questioned. It becomes furniture. People walk past it every day and stop seeing it. New hires are trained on it exactly as it was fifteen years ago, and they never think to ask why — because "why" was answered a decade and a half ago, by someone who has probably since retired or moved on. The process had achieved a kind of institutional permanence. Not because it was proven to be the best way. Simply because nobody had bothered to challenge it.

    This is where our manufacturing manager enters the story. He was walking the same floor, watching the same process, that everyone else had walked past for years. But he noticed something the others hadn't stopped to notice: the fact that nobody could explain why it was still done this particular way, beyond "that's how it's always been."

    The Question That Changed Everything

    He didn't accept "we've always done it this way" as a valid reason. That single refusal — to let an unexamined habit pass as a justified decision — is the entire story in miniature. He started asking why. Why this sequence? Why this method? Why not something else?

    This is a smaller-scale echo of a bigger idea I explore elsewhere in the Innovation chapter: Sri Lanka's cricket team asking "what if we played differently?" before the 1996 World Cup, or Sumant Moolgaokar of Tata Motors quietly eating lunch with truck drivers at roadside dhabas instead of the executive canteen, because he wanted feedback nobody else was bothering to seek out. Different scale, same DNA. In each case, someone refused to treat the existing way of doing things as sacred. They treated it as one option among several — an option that had simply never been tested against alternatives.

    Our manager didn't stop at asking the question. He experimented. He tried a new method on the same process — testing it, likely on a smaller scale first, watching what happened, adjusting, and eventually rolling it out. And the result was concrete, measurable, and significant: production time came down by 20%.

    Why 20% Is a Big Number

    In a manufacturing environment, a 20% reduction in production time is not a small efficiency tweak — it is a transformational result. Think about what that number actually means on the ground. If a line was producing 100 units a day, it can now produce roughly 125 in the same time, or the same 100 units in 80% of the time — freeing capacity for something else entirely. Multiply that across a shift, a month, a year, and you're looking at a change that shows up directly on the company's bottom line, in delivery timelines, in the ability to take on more orders without adding headcount or capital equipment.

    And here's the detail that matters most to me as a trainer: this result came from questioning, not from spending. No new machine was bought. No large capital investment was sanctioned from the top. No external consultant was flown in to redesign the workflow. The improvement came from a person on the floor who was willing to look at something everyone else had stopped looking at, and ask a question everyone else had stopped asking.

    Why This Is an EQ Story, Not Just an Efficiency Story

    It would be easy to file this example under "process improvement" or "operational excellence" and move on. But that misses the real lesson. The technical part — trying a new method, measuring the result — is the easy part. The hard part, the part that required emotional intelligence, happened before any experiment began.

    Challenging a process that has run unquestioned for fifteen years means challenging fifteen years of institutional comfort. It means risking that colleagues — some of whom may have built or defended that very process — will feel criticized. It means being wrong in public if the new method fails. It means sitting with the discomfort of uncertainty rather than the safety of the familiar. None of that is a technical skill. All of it is emotional courage, flexibility, and the willingness to tolerate risk — which is precisely why Innovation lives on the EQ side of the Winning Kite and not on the PQ (productivity) side alone.

    I often see two types of professionals in the same manufacturing plant. One walks past the same fifteen-year-old process every single day and never asks a question, because the process "isn't broken" and asking questions about things that aren't broken feels, emotionally, like unnecessary risk. The other walks past the exact same process and asks: is this still the best way, or is it just the way we've always done it? The technical skillset of both people can be identical. The difference that separates them — the difference that shows up as a 20% production-time cut — is entirely in the EQ trait of Innovation.

    The Habit Behind the Result

    I want to be clear that this wasn't a lucky, one-time flash of insight. It's a habit, and habits can be built deliberately. In the Innovation chapter of Stars at India Inc., I lay out a structured five-step approach developed by creative-thinking pioneer Edward de Bono — the TOLOPOSOGO framework (TO – define the destination, LO – look at the facts, PO – think through possibilities, SO – decide what matters, GO – take action) — as one practical tool for exactly this kind of challenge. This manufacturing example is, in effect, TOLOPOSOGO playing out in real life on a factory floor: someone defined what they were trying to improve, looked honestly at how the current process actually worked, generated an alternative, decided it was worth testing, and then acted on it. I go deeper into applying that framework step-by-step in The TOLOPOSOGO Framework: A Manufacturing-Floor Example of Structured Innovation, and I unpack the broader trait — including the Sri Lankan cricket team's 1996 World Cup turnaround and Sumant Moolgaokar's dhaba lunches — in the chapter hub, Innovation at Work: Challenge the Status Quo or Fade Away.

    This idea echoes something Carol Dweck describes in her research on growth mindset — the belief that abilities and methods are not fixed, but can be developed and improved through deliberate effort. Our manufacturing manager was, in effect, applying a growth mindset to a process rather than to a person: treating a fifteen-year-old method not as a fixed fact of the workplace, but as something capable of getting better.

    How to Build This Into Your Own Work

    You don't need to run a factory floor to apply this. Every job, every department, every team has at least one process that has quietly become furniture — something nobody questions simply because it has always been there. Here is how I coach leaders and teams to find it:

    1. Look for the process nobody talks about

    The processes most overdue for innovation are rarely the ones causing visible pain. They're the quiet ones — the ones running smoothly enough that nobody has had a reason to revisit them in years. Ask your team: what's something we do every single day that nobody has questioned since before some of us joined?

    2. Replace "that's how it's always been done" with "why is it done this way?"

    This single substitution is the entire innovation habit in one sentence. The old process may well be the best one — but you won't know that until you actually ask, rather than assume.

    3. Get the real facts before you get an opinion

    Don't rely on memory or assumption about why a process exists. Go and look. Talk to the people actually running it, shift after shift. The manufacturing manager in this story clearly did his homework before experimenting — you don't cut production time by 20% through a guess.

    4. Test small before you roll out big

    Innovation doesn't require betting the whole operation on an untested idea. Try the new method on one line, one shift, one batch. Measure it honestly. Let the data — not your enthusiasm, and not your fear — decide whether it scales.

    5. Expect resistance, and don't take it personally

    Fifteen years of habit doesn't get challenged without some friction. Some colleagues will feel defensive. This is the EQ test within the EQ trait — staying emotionally steady and constructive while you make your case with evidence, not ego.

    Employee Without InnovationEmployee With Innovation (like this manager)
    Walks past the same process daily, never questions itNotices the process has gone unquestioned for 15 years
    "We've always done it this way" ends the conversation"Why do we do it this way?" starts the investigation
    Waits for leadership or R&D to drive changeTakes initiative to experiment without being asked
    Avoids risk of being wrong in publicTolerates the discomfort of testing an unproven method
    Result: process stays exactly as it was for another 15 yearsResult: 20% cut in production time

    The Lesson I Take Into Every Training Room

    When I run leadership and EQ workshops for manufacturing and engineering teams — I've done this for organisations ranging from JSW Steel to the Border Roads Organisation — I use this example precisely because it has no drama, no crisis, no dramatic turnaround narrative. Nobody was on the verge of losing their job. Nothing was broken. And that's exactly the point. Innovation is tested most powerfully not in a crisis, but in a moment of quiet comfort, when everything is working fine and there is no external pressure forcing you to change. That's when most professionals stop looking. The star performer is the one who keeps looking anyway.

    Ask yourself the same question this manager asked: is there a process in my work — something I've been doing exactly the same way for years — that I've simply stopped questioning? You don't need a fifteen-year gap to find one. Sometimes it's been eighteen months. The habit is the same: notice it, ask why, test something different, measure the result. That's Innovation. That's a trait on your Winning Kite you can strengthen starting this week, in your own team, on your own floor.

    If you want to build this habit systematically across your team — not as a one-off training session but as a lasting culture shift — explore our Signature Corporate Training Programs or browse the full range of corporate training topics I deliver across India. And if you'd simply like to talk through what this could look like for your organisation, get in touch.

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    Avinash Chate

    TEDx Speaker · Founder, The Future Corporate · Author of Stars at India Inc.

    Avinash has trained the Indian Army, BRO, RBI, BARC, JSW Steel and 1000+ corporate leaders across India. His work focuses on leadership, emotional intelligence and behavioural training rooted in Indian values and modern business needs.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What is the manufacturing manager example in Stars at India Inc.?

    A manufacturing manager noticed that a particular production process had stayed unchanged for 15 years. Instead of accepting it as fixed, he questioned why it was done that way, experimented with a new method, and reduced production time by 20% — a textbook case of the Innovation trait in the Winning Kite framework.

    Why is questioning old processes considered an EQ trait and not just a technical skill?

    Challenging a 15-year-old process takes emotional courage, not just technical know-how — you risk criticism, resistance from colleagues invested in the old way, and the discomfort of being wrong in public. Innovation sits on the EQ side of the Winning Kite because it starts with the emotional willingness to be flexible and take a calculated risk before any technical fix is even attempted.

    How can I develop this kind of innovation habit in my own team?

    Start by treating "we've always done it this way" as a question, not an answer. Pick one process nobody has revisited in years, ask why it exists in its current form, gather the real data (not assumptions), test one small change, and measure the result. Avinash Chate's TOLOPOSOGO framework — TO, LO, PO, SO, GO — gives you a structured five-step way to do exactly this.

    Where does Innovation sit on the Winning Kite framework?

    Innovation is Trait #8 on the EQ (left) side of the Winning Kite Leadership Framework. EQ traits like Innovation combine with RQ (Relationship Intelligence) and PQ (Productivity) to lift the kite of Success — you rise on balance across all three sides, not by being strong on just one.

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