In 2001 the MIT researchers Nelson Repenning and John Sterman published a study of why process improvement programs so often fail. Its title quotes an engineer at an auto company: “Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened.”
Managers who “rely on working harder and shortcuts to meet immediate throughput needs” fall into what the authors call “the Capability Trap.” Working harder shows results at once, a pattern the authors call “better-before-worse.” Fixing the process pays off only later.