6 FEBRUARY 2017 Consulting®
Q&A with EFESO Consulting’s Neil Webers
EFESO Consulting was founded in 1980 and focuses on strategy and operational
excellence services. ALM Intelligence’s Nathan Simon recently sat down with
EFESO’s Neil Webers, Managing Director of the firm’s offices in the Americas, to discuss the firm’s “performance behavior” approach. Neil is founder of the Performance
Behaviour approach and author of the book Performance Behaviour, published in
2010. He has also published his second book ‘The improvement resource’ (2012).
Before joining EFESO Consulting in 2012, he founded Flecto BV and Rightselect.
com BV, which were both acquired by EFESO Consulting. Neil is an expert in World
Class Operations Management, with specialties in change management, leadership and behaviour processes. During his experience with Flecto and subsequently
EFESO Consulting he has delivered many improvement projects at global companies to embed Performance behaviour in World Class Excellence programs. He has
developed his expertise mainly in the Food & Beverages, Packaging, Logistics and
Retail sectors. Neil is also member of EFESO’s executive board.
: What is your back-
ground and role at EFESO?
Webers: I joined EFESO Consulting in
2012 through the acquisition of two companies I founded: Flecto BV and Rightselect.
com BV. I specialize in change management, leadership, and behavior processes,
and authored two books in these areas:
“Performance behavior” (2010) and “The
improvement resource” (2012). At EFESO,
I’ve been focused on embedding performance behavior in World Class Excellence
programs mainly in the food & beverages,
packaging, logistics, and retail sectors.
: Companies have been
working with lean and quality methodolo-
gies to improve performance for more than
a quarter century. What’s left to do?
Webers: There’s a tendency to over focus
on implementing a system, but the missing
link is the behavioral change that can bring
a new system to life. Rather than looking at
behaviors, the answer to poor performance
is more engineering that adds new proto-
cols and expands operating manuals. Part
of the reason companies overlook behav-
iors is they don’t measure them. There are
actually eight different types of waste that
result from sub-optimal behaviors:
Leadership: control-focused push
management rather than creative
problem solving
Comfort: insufficiently challenging
targets to motivate behaviors
Communication: misunderstandings
that set people at cross-purposes
Discipline: failure to hold people
accountable for targets
Goal: lack of clear objectives
to guide behaviors
Engagement: charging people
with responsibility for things
outside their control
Solving: resolving symptoms rather
than causes
Tuning: spending time discussing rather
than solving problems
Neil Webers
EFESO Consulting
