Ignite Lab

If I were to say, ‘think about costs like salami’ you might think I’d lost the plot. In fact ‘the salami metaphor’ is just one of the many ways to think about cost cutting. Metaphors as insights are clearly vital, but it would be wise to exercise caution; they don’t always do justice to what we mean.

Cost cutting and the salami is a great example of this. In the public sector, for example, every time the government instigates funding cuts, the individual sectors react accordingly. They are usually small, let say 2-5%, and organisations tend to deal with them by ‘slicing’ a little off the end of their organisation; removing some funding for a periphery service here, a few job cuts there- cutting a small slice off the end of the salami.

Today the challenges are greater; many public sector organisations will now be facing reductions of up to 30%. Simply making cuts around the edge is suddenly redundant- you can’t slice a third of the edge of the salami without fundamentally changing it! The answer, as proposed by Ignite is to fundamentally rethink the way an organisation is constituted; radically overhaul the approach to the problem. To quote the metaphor, the way forward might be to throw the salami in the blender.

I however am not a big fan of the salami metaphor; I think it gives the wrong impression. Just because an organisation needs a radical rethink, does not mean they should be scrambling the whole business together in a blender- undoing existing strengths or important values.

Ignite’s approach is more sophisticated than this; yes, we say totally overhaul the way you approach the problems and yes, be bold; but we don’t  believe it is necessary to destroy what is already in place in order to make transformative change. We work with an organisation’s strengths and values and build on them.

A better metaphor is a man on a diet. A fat man who eats unhealthily all day, snacking incessantly on crisps and chocolate has decided to loose weight. To lose just a little, he could just cut out his extra snacks. Yet, to lose a lot and become genuinely healthier, he must totally rethink his diet; completely changing the types of food he eats and transform his lifestyle. For the diet to be truly successful, he would adapt while maintain some of the things he enjoys; perhaps eggs for breakfast or healthier, homemade versions of junk food.  

The change essentially is positive and productive, not simple or destructive. While Ignite values transformation over reformation, the transformation must be constructive and lead by an organisation’s existing strengths.