The Question: How do I get my organization to stop seeing TBM as a cost-cutting exercise?
What's Going On: We started TBM two and a half years ago to find savings, and we did. Now it's mostly dashboards that few people use, and it feels like a finished project, not a capability we're building.
What I'm Afraid Of: That it never matures past the original savings goal, and we eventually get defunded.
Honestly, this reads as an executive sponsorship issue. It’ll be hard to change if your executive sponsor doesn’t communicate expectations and set the tone for how the organization should engage and work with the program once the immediate challenge is solved.
It’s common for TBM programs to start with a specific cost exercise. It’s just as common for them to lose sight of the capability-focused vision and lean too heavily on dashboards and exportable data tables. Here’s what I would do in your situation:
Assess the most popular requests coming your way. They signal the unique thing your team has that others struggle to get.
Evaluate which recurring activities or processes your team can improve that leadership truly cares about.
Investigate why people don’t come to your team when relevant cost exercises or efforts come up. If people complain that the work is built on too many assumptions, that will inform the next steps.
Complete a SWOT analysis, define a vision for how the program should serve the organization as a capability, and identify what you need to get there.
Take it to your executive sponsor (or targeted leader) with a specific ask, and review it with leadership.
The goal is for the program to be seen as part of how the organization runs, not a project that finished. Programs that get there rarely face the defunding question, because leadership can point to decisions that depend on them.
Hope that helps!
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