LEAN and Leadership Lessons

Why should you read this? Because get it wrong and LEAN will demotivate your staff, upset your customers and increase your costs. Get it right and it can transform your organisation.

I recently reviewed the 160 page 2014 LEAN Management Enterprise Compendium, together with other books about LEAN and extracted (below) what I think are the key points. Since then I’ve had the opportunity to get feedback on the States of Jersey LEAN-Programme and note a number of common themes.

Key points from LEAN Management Enterprise Compendium

LEAN goes beyond deploying LEAN tools (eg 5S or 8W) ostensibly for process improvement and cost saving initiatives

LEAN is about alignment of mission, vision, goals, people, projects and technology so that LEAN is does not become a fragmented, silo based series of initiatives or un-co-ordinated projects.

LEAN is about simplicity (doing the right things) and the creating of a culture that pursues that simplicity, efficiently and effectively (doing things right) always from the customer perspective (doing only what is valued)

LEAN is not about targets (which can distract or misdirect resources) but instead about service, this means avoiding silo success and instead focus on end-to-end outcome.

LEAN is about regular, frequent communications via dialogue. The 15 min daily huddle around a whiteboard is essential to constant awareness of todays, tomorrows and future goals, challenges and successes and your people’s engagement and contribution to these.

LEAN is about coaching over managing and about constant learning more than task completion . This means LEAN is never “done” it is constant and evolving as a behaviour rather than a project.

LEAN is about getting out from behind the desk and talking with your people and your customers. It means fewer memos and emails and more understanding and empathy.

LEAN is highly visual: everyone should be able to point to whiteboard which clearly states todays, tomorrows and future goals, challenges and successes without clutter.

LEAN is about helping the organisation identify and solve problems in a blameless way. It is not about avoiding tricky issues or regarding them as someone else’s domain.

Key points from States of Jersey LEAN-Programme

LEAN has more success when it starts with Leadership and a senses of purpose and priority, without this it’s an unwelcome low-priority task

LEAN can be transformational when it is customer focussed, x-functional and high profile, otherwise it becomes a parochial process change and not a service improvement

LEAN works where understanding the customer trumps silo interests and customer value goes across the organisation not up and down “command and control” chains

LEAN must have commitment and emphasis and there should be regular (quarterly?) reviews to remind and maintain behaviour + action, otherwise the next item in the in-tray gets attention.

LEAN must be participative and interesting for it to “go viral” and so it is important to reward involvement as well as celebrate improvement, otherwise why bother?

LEAN must start with the willing, able and excited; the reluctant remainder can join the party later.

LEAN succeeds where there is alignment of competence, capacity and desire and it is therefore as much about HR (attitude, appraisal, personal development etc.) as it is about Projects (tasks, processes and outcomes)

LEAN needs to be part of the “service journey” rather than a “station” and should flow. An excellent station does not make a wonderful journey! Bring people and luggage with you (combine projects) and make it an exciting expedition.

LEAN leaders need to be crystal clear about priorities and be able to recite their “top 5” of projects, behaviours, customers, KPIs. If you don’t know your “top 5” how can you (or any of your team) achieve them?

As part of ciChange I have been working on pulling together a seminar/workshop on LEAN and Leadership. I am hoping to get Greenlight, Marbral, Mission, 3DPerformance, Leadership Trust, Richard Rolfe, Kevin Keen and many more to present their experiences of transformation and change in a TED Talks style, 20 minutes each. Please contact me if you are interested in participating. timhjrogers@cichange.org @cichange Mob 07797762051




ABOUT CICHANGE

ciChange is a not-for-profit forum for ideas and discussion, about all aspects of Change Management, including people, processes, teams and leadership. It is a place to share and exchange models, papers, ideas and information about change. We’ve run a number of FREE, well attended Breakfast Briefings.
ciChange is sponsored by Total Solutions Group http://www.tsgi.co/

Tim HJ Rogers

Mob 07797762051
Skype timhjrogers


Web: http://www.cichange.org/
Linked-In http://www.linkedin.com/groups/CI-Change-4301853
Twitter: www.twitter.com/cichange @cichange

Tips to communicating with influence

 
Below are some really interesting points from the BBC Radio 4 Programme Read My Lips, which was about how and why politicians speak as they do. Below are the key seven points discussed.

Society is horizontal not vertical & language needs to capture all people.

Message needs to have enough passion to engage, and short and rhythmic to be remembered message should be a story, with a plot, to hold peoples interest to the end.

Message with repeating words or rhythm should flow like a poem. The sound of words is important and S soft, silly, soapy sounds are safe. L loud, life, liberty, and luxury are liked.

Interviews have replaced speeches as key to communication. Often combative, do your homework & be prepared with facts beware of what you apologise for: in some cases it opens the door to attack. Authentic politicians however can get away with a lot, example Boris Johnson. He can get it wrong, apologise and survive.

In the land of the bland, Johnson, Farage and Brand stand out.

Powerful words in print may not be powerful in delivery. Delivery is key.

Average sound bite is 12 words, some of the best are ad lib People like professionalism, avoid cliche but always better not to be an idiot

What is pleasing about there being seven is that there are also seven ways to influence. This list is useful when thinking about how to persuade.

Do it…

Because you like me, and you’re like me

Do it to reciprocate, repay past or future debt or promise

Do it because everyone else is doing it

This offer is good for a limited time only

Do it to be consistent, with past, with values, with type

You can believe me, I’m an authority

Do it or else

My advice to anyone, based on the above, is…

to think very carefully how you want to influence (List 2) There are pros and cons to each approach dependant on the speaker, audience and context.

to think very carefully how to get your message across (List 1) This does require thought because whilst political speeches may be memorable (sometimes for the wrong reasons) you need to find words that neither teach nor preach.




ABOUT CICHANGE

ciChange is a not-for-profit forum for ideas and discussion, about all aspects of Change Management, including people, processes, teams and leadership. It is a place to share and exchange models, papers, ideas and information about change. We’ve run a number of FREE, well attended Breakfast Briefings.
ciChange is sponsored by Total Solutions Group http://www.tsgi.co/

Tim HJ Rogers

Mob 07797762051
Skype timhjrogers


Web: http://www.cichange.org/
Linked-In http://www.linkedin.com/groups/CI-Change-4301853
Twitter: www.twitter.com/cichange @cichange

Will a focus on costs damage services and increase overall expense?

There is an interesting article on www.bailiwickexpress.com: The Health department has missed a deadline set by the States to publish long-awaited plans for reform of the health service and a new way of funding it by the end of 2014. (See Link 1 below)

This is something broader than the States’ Lean Programme, but what is interesting is that the Lean Programme appears to have seen silo improvements without significant overall improvement in services and reduction in costs.

There is evidence that the focus on process and costs distracts from the provision of “right-first-time” service and ironically drives up costs as organisations “improve” what they deliver without checking that’s what the customer actually needs.

Whilst I could cite many examples , I think it is more instructive for people to read, study and understand for themselves. I have amassed a good library of texts on Lean and Systems Thinking which I am willing to share freely with anyone who contacts me. One of the more interesting documents is the transcript of a Scrutiny Panel at which Professor John Seddon spoke of Lean versus Systems Thinking and made a number of predictions about the former and some insightful case studies of the latter. (See Link 2 below)

I do believe that the credibility of Lean is at risk if it is only parochial and about process and not joined-up and about service. This is where the real need and opportunities exist.

With the current focus on government budgets the emphasis should not be “reducing costs” but delivering really efficient service.  What’s the core purpose of H&SS?  If it becomes to reduce costs then this drives one set of behaviours   if it’s “to deliver a really efficient service” then the behaviours align

Arguably if we deliver exactly and only what the customer actually needs, costs will go down, service will improve. If we don’t do this we will simply clog up the system with “failure demand” i.e. work and cost which is associated with service being late, wrong, insufficient, needing re-work, needing repeat, unproductive calls, more visits etc. This is a waste of time, money and talent.

We all (as customers) have plenty of experience of this, and it is expensive and frustrating!

This also applies to start-ups: many do lots of work, and incur lots of cost that don’t actually add value to the bottom line. Sadly this means that good ventures run out of cash not because the idea wasn’t great, but because the start-up funds were frittered on stuff that doesn’t matter until much later. (eg added features, marketing and promotion etc., ie things not central to the core product)

ciChange is keen to support and promote discussion and thinking as well as suggested tools, techniques and guidance that can help businesses and government. I should like to acknowledge with great thanks the contributions of Will Carnegie ( Lighthouse Consulting Group ), Jeremy Cross (Bailiwick Consulting), Kenan Osborne (Marbral Advisory), Dale Ibbotson (3D Performance), Kevin Keen, Lynne Capie and others. If you would like to contribute, potentially to a workshop/seminar event about Lean, Systems Thinking and/or Public Sector Reform please get in contact.

LINKS

http://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/news/health-miss-key-reform-deadline/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Bailiwick+Express+News+-+Tuesday+10+February&utm_content=Bailiwick+Express+News+-+Tuesday+10+February+CID_2751f2d977d248216248bc1be83b70c7&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=Read%20More#.VNstvr4hzdk

http://www.statesassembly.gov.je/ScrutinyReviewTranscripts/2011/Transcript%20-%20CSR%202012-2013%20and%20Delivery%20-%20Mr%20John%20Seddon%20-%2011%20April%202011.pdf




MORE INFORMATION
I have tried to keep this blog to one-side A4, but brevity is not my strong point. I have a lot more information, including supporting documents and other references. If you’d like to see the long version of this or if you are interested in further material please do not hesitate to contact me.

ABOUT CICHANGE

ciChange is a not-for-profit forum for ideas and discussion, about all aspects of Change Management, including people, processes, teams and leadership. It is a place to share and exchange models, papers, ideas and information about change. We’ve run a number of FREE, well attended Breakfast Briefings.
ciChange is sponsored by Total Solutions Group http://www.tsgi.co/

Tim HJ Rogers
Mob 07797762051
Skype timhjrogers


Web: http://www.cichange.org/
Linked-In http://www.linkedin.com/groups/CI-Change-4301853
Twitter: www.twitter.com/cichange @cichange

What have the Romans (@DigitalJersey) ever done for us?

What have the Romans (DigitalJersey) ever done for us?

DigitalJersey recently launched their business plan for 2015 and it caused me to reflect on 2014. I can’t speak for everyone but I can say from my perspective that 2014 has been a great year for DigitalJersey.

Before listing the areas where I believe DigitalJersey has gone MAD (Made a Difference) I think it is worth explaining that I don’t see it as the role of DigitalJersey to be all things to all people, nor to be the experts of everything digital hardware, software, firmware or pinkware. Just in case you are a newbie pinkware is the item between the seat and the keyboard.

You should not expect DigitalJersey to fix your technology woes any more than you might expect to get a cash withdrawl or a mortgage from JerseyFinance!

I believe the purpose of DigitalJersey is to be organisation that joins-the-dots and from that exercise can create connection as to what is and a vision of what could be. This analogy only works if you understand the emerging fun of the drawing game in which from chaos something really impressive can emerge.

Below is a summary of my experience, if 100 other people have similar (but different) experiences then I believe DigitalJersey has had an outstanding year.

Sponsored Island Innovators which inspired various Y-Combinator Type Ideas

I have blogged about Island Innovators quite a bit and the legacy lives on. Quite a few initiatives started as a direct result of this, and for my part I can say this did influence collaborate.je cichange.org and TEDxStHelier as well as a number of schools and education projects, some of which are mentioned below.

Prompted St Helier to consider being World First Capital City to go bitcoin
As a direct result of Meeting of the Minds event I met with Constable Simon Crowcroft to talk about the ideas which we came up with to “Make St Helier a place to go to, rather than walk through” We also got St Helier to consider being World First Capital City to go bitcoin. For those interested I can point you to the thinking and the blog.

Sponsored Creativity Workshops which inspired me and my business

The Creativity Workshops , including Graham Daldry - Creative Director at Specsavers have been very influential upon me and my “day job” and whilst planting seeds seldom bears scrutiny in the short-term the passage of time and the benefit of nurture can create a forest of ideas from which to build a sustainable future.

Sponsored Meeting of the Minds which created Town Improvement Ideas

A direct link from this event was my attendance at TEDxBrighton and set-up of TEDxStHelier in 2015 to include BlockBuilders. You really should look-up their work. It is very relevant to the challenges we have in Jersey and I believe that one project in particular is worthy of inclusion in TEDxStHelier. Minecraft + Town Planning = Youth Engagement and something I think with real potential for both Education and Planning in Jersey.

Island Innovators which was a catalyst for NationalCodingWeek and Codex-DLD

It is sometime hard to trace cause and effect, but I do believe that DigitalJersey was a beneficial factor in NationalCodingWeek and Codex-DLD and a number of related coding related initiatives

As regards the future, I am pleased to say that DigitalJersey is again the lead-Sponsor for TEDxStHelier and this year we’ve built on the successes and experiences of last year and will soon announce details of our next event. TED Talks and TEDx are hugely popular and TEDxStHelier will be bringing top speakers from UK, Europe and beyond to wow, inspire and educate with their ideas worth spreading.

Well done DigitalJersey, you are MAD (Making a Difference)





ABOUT CICHANGE

ciChange is a not-for-profit forum for ideas and discussion, about all aspects of Change Management, including people, processes, teams and leadership. It is a place to share and exchange models, papers, ideas and information about change. We’ve run a number of FREE, well attended Breakfast Briefings.
ciChange is sponsored by Total Solutions Group http://www.tsgi.co/

Tim HJ Rogers
Mob 07797762051
Skype timhjrogers


Web: http://www.cichange.org/
Linked-In http://www.linkedin.com/groups/CI-Change-4301853
Twitter: www.twitter.com/cichange @cichange

What is LEAN-Leadership?

ciChange

Web: www.ciChange.org and Twitter: @ciChange

LEAN LEADERSHIP

I have been reviewing the 160 page 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium, together with other books about Lean (list below) and have extracted below some useful text which highlight what I think are the key factors in LEAN-Leadership.

My synopsis is

LEAN-Leadership goes beyond deploying Lean tools (eg 5S or 8W) ostensibly for process improvement and cost saving initiatives

LEAN-Leadership is about alignment of mission, vision, goals, people, projects and technology so that Lean is does not become a fragmented, silo based series of initiatives or un-co-ordinated projects.

LEAN-Leadership is about simplicity (doing the right things) and the creating of a culture that pursues that simplicity, efficiently and effectively (doing things right) always from the customer perspective (doing only what is valued)

LEAN-Leadership is not about targets (which can distract or misdirect resources) but instead about service, this means avoiding silo success and instead focus on end-to-end outcome.

LEAN-Leadership is about regular, frequent communications via dialogue. The 15 min daily huddle around a whiteboard is essential to constant awareness of todays, tomorrows and future goals, challenges and successes and your people’s engagement and contribution to these.

LEAN-Leadership is about coaching over managing and about constant learning more than task completion . This means lean is never “done” it is constant and evolving as a behaviour rather than a project.

LEAN-Leadership is about getting out from behind the desk and talking with your people and your customers. It means fewer memos and emails and more understanding and empathy.

LEAN-Leadership is highly visual: everyone should be able to point to whiteboard which clearly states todays, tomorrows and future goals, challenges and successes without clutter.

LEAN-Leadership is about helping the organisation identify and solve problems in a blameless way. It is not about avoiding tricky issues or regarding them as someone else’s domain.


THE EXTRACTS

Quote No1
It looked like a great system, but I wondered how we would find the capacity for it. At the time, we had so many separate projects under way technology projects, customer-transformation projects, capability- building projects and lean management looked like one more item to add to the list. But as I learned more, it became clear that lean management s focus on the customer would help us get more out of those other efforts as well. And it would give us a very practical, tangible way to integrate all of the changes for managers and frontline colleagues. We would be able to capture more value from the whole portfolio of improvement investments that we were making. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#alignment

Quote No2
The first few times that I got involved with some of the ideas underlying lean management, it was all about individual methodologies, so it was inherently fragmented. There wasn‘ t any emphasis on the belief system or leadership and management practices. A  lean project  would start when somebody saw a problem a problem big enough to warrant significant resources. At most, the project would fix a process. But it didn’t leave behind a continuous-improvement system; it didn’t leave behind motivated staff. Now I see lean management as an integrated system of beliefs, leadership practices, and management practices. The methodologies and tools are important in that they allow the organization to implement those deeper ideas in a practical way, but the tools alone are not lean management. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#alignment

Quote No3
Once their new management structures are in place, organizations must identify the appropriate metrics and create the appropriate measurement systems and incentives to support an emphasis on journeys. Even if a company already uses abroad customer-satisfaction metric, moving the focus from touch points to journeys typically requires tailored metrics for each journey that can be used to hold the relevant functions and employees accountable for the journey s outcome. Very few companies do that today. For the telco focused on new-product installations, this meant holding the sales agent, the technician, the call-center, and the back-office agents responsible for a trouble-free installation and high customer satisfaction at the end of the process, instead of simply requiring a successful hand-off to the next touch point.  ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#benchmarking #kpis

Quote No4
One of the most important effects was to build a real performance culture. Before, there were lots of discussions about figures and key performance indicators (KPIs) and so forth. But it seemed like everybody had their own reports, each showing something different. There were endless debates. So, in reality, people did not discuss performance. What they thought were discussions about performance were instead just discussions about data. In the transformation, we sought to identify which KPIs really were the most important for leading the business in the right direction. Those became the new report, which is now produced automatically on a weekly and daily basis. We announced that this is the only report that matters, and we shut down the other reports rogue reports, we call them so that there was only one set of figures. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#benchmarks #kpis

Quote No5
Most organizations are good at gathering and analysing financial and accounting data for reporting purposes. The average executive is inundated with management information on revenues, cost of sales, valuations, variances, and volumes. However, this information is geared toward financial outcomes, not operating processes, and works like a rear view mirror, showing where the organization has been, not where it is heading. It is of little or no use for identifying operational problems and uncovering root causes or helping leaders and frontline teams do their jobs better. Instead, organizations struggle to understand basic questions about their capacity and level of demand. How many transaction requests did we receive today? What was our planned capacity? How many trans- actions did we complete? What was the quality of the work? Why don t organizations have this information at their fingertips, as they do with financial information? Probably because they have never asked these questions or understood how the answers could help them improve the way they work. Once they appreciate how useful the information could be, they tend to assume that some kind of IT solution must be put in place before they go any further. But the cost and time involved in application development can be enough to stop the problem-solving effort in its tracks. There is another way. Taiichi Ohno, the executive often cited as the  father  of lean manufacturing, noted that while data are good, facts are more important. When operational data are not routinely available, teams can often find what they need not by commissioning new reports but simply by observing team members as they work and talking to them to find out exactly what they are doing and why. Observation and questioning provide a powerful and immediate source of insights into processes, work flows, capabilities, and frustrations with current ways of working. Teams can typically get the information they need within a week, sometimes sooner. Consider a team that experiences substantial variability in the time people take to complete a common task, such as initiating a mortgage application. A capable and experienced associate can complete the work in 30 minutes, but some associates take 40 minutes and a few need 60 minutes. The company could spend a long time researching how many associates complete the task at various speeds. For the purposes of making improvements, though, it is enough to know there is a difference of 100 percent between the fastest and slowest speeds. The team needs no further data or reports to begin narrowing the gap. By codifying how the top performers are doing their work and replicating their practices for the rest of the team, the employees themselves should be able to bring the gap closer to 10 percent. At that point, the whole process will reach a level of stability and predictability that will lead to significant additional improvements, both now and in the future. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#benchmarks #kpis #problems

Quote No6
Now, when you start a transformation, I think it’s very important to understand why you’re doing it in the first place. Far too often, when people talk about lean, the view in their head is all about cost savings and process improvement. The lean management that we want to be involved in is not about that, not as the primary reason. It’s about cultural change to deliver long-term improvements for our people, our customers, and our shareholders. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#coaching

Quote No7
would also say that a major part of the answer is our measuring and tracking of our lean-management discipline. For example, we worked hard to free up our managers  time so that they could spend 60 percent of their days on coaching rather than on filing low-value reports or completing non-customer-related work that others are better positioned to address. The team huddle board therefore shows how much time the manager spends on coaching. We reinforce this accountability at every level: each manager, starting from me, is responsible for coaching and for making sure that the managers who report to us are, in turn, coaching the managers and colleagues who report to them, all the way to the front line. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#coaching

Quote No8
But I would argue against launching a trans- formation by setting an artificial target for any of these dimensions. The danger is that people will then think that lean management is only for achieving that single target. As a result, they will implement lean management poorly, forget- ting that the reason it works is that it is a holistic system. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#coaching

Quote No9
Even in my current position, I can’t simply push lean management into an organization. Instead, I demonstrate my belief that lean management is important by taking the time to help senior managers understand it. I also encourage people to go and see another organization that is applying the same ideas. Seeing it live and talking to the people involved makes a huge difference in creating shared under- standing and conviction to try it out. Once an informal dialogue gets going, people start to trust their colleagues a lot more. Hierarchies start to level out. Respect for associates increases with the recognition that they have valuable insights. Managers come to realize that their job is to create the conditions for drawing those insights out, as opposed to giving top- down direction. Horizontal trust increases as people collaborate more closely across organizational boundaries. Not long ago, middle managers from two organizations came forward and jointly recommended moving hundreds of associates from the first organization to the second. The managers weren’t thinking of turf anymore; they believed deeply that the new configuration would lead to a better client experience and, almost as an aside, higher productivity. They came to value the system as a whole more than their individual function. That s what I mean by stewardship. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#coaching

Quote No10
Once a company has identified its priority journeys and gained an understanding of the problems within them, leaders must avoid the temptation to helicopter in and dictate remedies; indeed, they should refrain from any solutions (including ones from outside experts) that don t give employees a big hand in shaping the outcome. Even if a fix appears obvious from the outside, the root causes of poor customer experience always stem from the inside, often from cross-functional disconnects. Only by getting cross-functional teams together to see problems for themselves and design solutions as a group can companies hope to make fixes that stick. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#coaching #problems

Quote No11
It was a big change for them. Before, middle managers spent only about 10 or 15 percent of their time on real leadership performance management, coaching, finding out what s going on in their organization. Instead, almost all of their time was consumed by projects, mostly to fix problems. That s a very inefficient way of working. We needed to reverse those numbers so that managers could spend 80 percent of their time being managers and leaders. Some of the managers were truly unable or unwilling to make the change. But eventually most of them saw that what we were providing was a set of techniques that they could adapt as they needed. In working together with the frontline and senior leadership to design the trans- formation in their teams, the managers gradually came to recognize how the whole system of lean management could help them accomplish more. It took time, of course, but once they did, we saw more involvement from them than ever before. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#coaching #projects #problems

Quote No12
To help create this kind of environment, leaders must themselves change, respecting the expertise of the people on their team and finding ways to support them. No longer pretending to have all the answers, they should focus instead on defining targets, creating a safe environment for raising problems, ensuring people have enough time for problem solving, and helping them develop their skills. Adjusting to this change in role can take time for leaders accustomed to being the  team hero.  But by learning how to help others participate to the full, they can find a new identity and an even more powerful way to add value to their organization. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#coaching #projects #problems

Quote No13
In too many organizations, the role of a leader is to tell people what to do. Our ultimate aim was to define the role of a leader as someone who coaches others to be successful and achieve their true potential. That’s quite a difference from what we were used to seeing. So when I see leaders consistently holding problem-solving sessions and welcoming problems as opportunities for improvement, I know that s a great sign. Another good sign is when people begin to share ideas. Before, some people seemed to think that their competition was at the other sites in our company, rather than the other companies that are trying to win business from us. So when people start to show pride in telling others about their ideas instead of keeping them to themselves I know the change is meaningful. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#coaching #projects #problems

Quote No14
The best way to find out if a communications strategy is working is to ask the people being communicated with. The challenge, however, is getting enough people within a giant organization to open up and provide an accurate cross-section of views. Focus groups, surveys, and interviews are fine, but they are labor-intensive and can be costly. There is an additional resource that will cost less and can provide a more nuanced view: we call it a  listening team.  The team generally includes up to 12 managers, from senior executives down to the front line. They may come from different parts of the organization, with different ranks and tenures, but all must have a reputation as someone people trust. Each listening-team member makes listening to his or her people a core job responsibility  through everyday conversations, huddles, and even occasional interviews of influential employees. Every two weeks or so, the team meets (with a communications manager initially acting as facilitator) to compare notes. Is the communication getting through? Does there seem to be buy-in? Are any groups struggling to let go of old ways? Are any policies, practices, or structures impeding the transformation? What additional information, skills, or assistance do people need? What new channels are available? The existence of the team should be well-known, and everyone should be invited to speak with team members. This way, everyone will understand that leaders respect and want their views. The team codifies findings and then reports to transformation leaders, who must take visible action to address concerns and communicate this action broadly. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#communications

Quote No15
We therefore restated the goal as one of  providing product-based solutions,  explaining that while some answers require only in formation, others involve educating the customer on different ways that the bank can help them with new products and services. For example, if the customer mentions something about his or her children, there’s a natural transition to discussing a savings account for college...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#customer

Quote No16
Within each of lean management s other three disciplines delivering value to customers, enabling people to lead and contribute, and discovering better ways of working lies a question related to direction. What value are we trying to deliver? How do we want our employees to contribute? Which new ways of working matter most? The answers depend on the fourth discipline: connecting strategy, goals, and meaningful purpose. This discipline seeks to align what the organization as a whole wants to achieve, given its larger business context, with what the people who work for it want to achieve every day. The organization does this in two ways. First, it develops aspirations that provide a clear idea both of what the organization wants to achieve and how. Communicating the aspirations broadly and frequently ensures that the entire organization has a general understanding of where it is headed. Second, and equally important, the organization supports its aspirations with an infrastructure that makes them tangible. The aspirations inform the targets that the organization sets for itself, the tasks that people perform, and the measurements it applies to assess its performance. Over time, the organization also re-examines the aspirations by building feedback mechanisms that let it see how well it is meeting its aspirations and whether they need to change. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#customers #alignment #communication

Quote No17
Before, we relied much more heavily on specialists, so customers who needed multiple services ended up getting passed from one specialist to another. Now, the tools and skills we built in the lean-management program have given our generalists a wider range of options for helping customers. That lets them take ownership for a solution from start to finish. The handle time per call is a little bit longer, but the experience is much better for the customer and we have more flexibility in our staffing. The employees are also more engaged: they view themselves as advisers rather than just service providers. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#customers #silos

Quote No18
Definitely. We have boards at four levels of the organization. The one behind me is a level-four board. When some- body walks into my office and looks at that board, they know that I am totally aware of what is happening in the processes in which innovation and productivity is operating. From a management standpoint, that makes a huge difference. Lean management has also brought me a lot closer to my team, as we now have constant communication through daily huddles, problem- solving sessions, coaching, and floor walks. People can’t just sit quietly day after day until the end of the month or quarter. Everyone has to be able to know what’s happening every day, every week. I‘ m now regularly in touch with people who previously never had the chance to show their results. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#huddles #communications #visualmanagement

Quote No19
But even more important is the discipline to monitor and use data effectively. Some of that will come from the cascade of daily and weekly huddles and meetings, which center on data review. But they may not be enough to ensure follow-up. Again, greater transparency provides an answer: one Indian bank setup web-based  issue-escalation groups  using popular messaging platforms such as WhatsApp. The company set clear rules for the types of issues and ideas to be discussed in each group, along with a messaging template for effective communication and governance mechanisms to aid in tracking, prioritizing, and implementing the resulting actions. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#huddles #communications #visualmanagement

Quote No20
This office the CEO s office can be quite lonely if you let it be. If you want to be lonely, it s your call. I don t want to be lonely, so I go out and spend time with our people where they work. If you visit people at their level, they ll respect you. It s an expectation we have set for all executives. On every floor, every performance board has a place for the relevant executives to sign it each time they visit. If we see too few signatures, that is a problem we address quickly. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#huddles #communications #visualmanagement

Quote No21
But with the basic lean- management daily-management system(such as morning huddles, progress-tracking whiteboards, and improved capacity management) and clearly defined work standards, average employees were able to produce much more, with greater quality and consistency. The effect was to free up about 20 percent of the department s capacity. But rather than simply shrink the department by 20 percent, HR and IT leaders worked together to redeploy a group of high performers as a flex team devoted to overlooked long-term initiatives.  ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#huddles #communications #visualmanagement

Quote No22
All colleagues keep a tracking sheet to record any time that they can’t solve the customer issue by themselves if they had to transfer the customer or if they had to say no. Even if that transfer or  no  is within policy guidelines, we want to understand how often that happens and why so that we can improve the process for the customer. The colleague makes a notation and then brings the tracking sheet to the huddle the next morning. The huddle is where colleagues and managers discuss the previous day s performance. The metrics all take the customer s point of view: rather than  average handle time,  we talk about  valuing the customer s time.  As issues come up, managers will triage them and address those related to skill or knowledge immediately. Issues related to policy or procedure, or something that just isn t working the way it should, all get raised through our problem- solving process. Those items go on the huddle board at the team level. The team leader will then assign people to do further investigation. If the problem is bigger than the team can handle, the team leader brings it to the group-leader huddle board that day, and then the team leaders and group leader can work together to try to solve the problem. In addition, we collect all of the problems on a separate problem board, which is the basis for weekly root-cause problem-solving sessions at each tier of our organization. If a problem is not within the groups  control to fix, then the  lean sustain  team a small group of lean-management specialists will take over and make cross-functional team meetings ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#huddles #communications #visualmanagement

Quote No23
The tools matter because of how they help the organization change. But what matters even more is how you stay focused on clients, how you keep identifying problems and solving them in a sustainable way. Consequently, a tool that is useful at a specific point in time might not be useful later. It is crucial to apply lean to lean,  as it were to make sure that lean management also continuously improves. The focus should be more on the under- lying principles of lean management and less on any one tool. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#problems

Quote No24
Problem identification mainly operates through our huddle meetings, which happen at every tier, right up to tier six the CEO and leadership team. If a problem can’t be resolved at a lower tier, typically because it requires coordination among different teams or internal units, it gets passed up to the next tier. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#problems

Quote No25
But when I started reading about lean management and getting to know the methodology, I realized that we needed to think of innovation in a different way. I think most people see innovation as the search for a  big idea,  for a moment of epiphany that pushes a business into the future. Lean management helped us recognize that innovation is much more than that. It’s about small ideas that together have a big impact. And the best ideas tend to come from the people on the front line who serve customers and operate core processes day in and day out. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#problems

Quote No26
Bryan Robertson: To be honest, the most dangerous people in a transformation are those who claim that they understand what lean management is all about. The problem is that they probably know lean from a more traditional, cost-reduction point of view. They don t know about the capability building, the cultural change, the leadership role modelling all of which are absolutely critical. Their limited view is actually quite debilitating, with respect to what they can and can’t see as the potential for success. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#problems

Quote No27
As company leaders dug further, they uncovered the root of the problem. Most customers weren’t fed up with any one phone call, field visit, or other interaction in fact, they didn’t much care about those singular touch points. What reduced satisfaction was something few companies manage cumulative experiences across multiple touch points and in multiple channels over time. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#problems

Quote No28
The first big surprise was that the complete process wasn’t laid out on paper anywhere. Everybody had in their heads how the process was supposed to work, but no one had taken the time to document it, especially as it evolved over time. That led to still more surprises. We recorded everything that happened to a customers file from the time when the customer made first contact to when the loan was fully approved and disbursed. We found that the average file went through more than 30 separate hand-offs; if someone had asked me before we finished this analysis, I would have guessed 5 or 6 hand-offs at the most. And much of what was going on was rework checking data, rechecking data, going back to the customer for more documentation ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#problems

Quote No29
On the face of it, talking about issues  or  opportunities  rather than  problems  sounds like a good way to avoid sounding negative or critical. In practice, though, great problem solving begins with the ability to acknowledge problems and a willingness to see them without judgment. When an organization treats problems as bad things as mistakes, defects, or failings bringing them out into the open will make people uncomfortable. But problems that stay hidden will not get fixed. And problems that go unfixed keep the organization from reaching its objectives. The reluctance to acknowledge problems often stems from the tendency to personalize them to see them as someone s (usually someone else s) fault. Some leaders are quick to point the finger instead of taking the time to analyze problems to uncover their root causes. Looking for a culprit rather than a cause can be a hard habit to break, ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#problems

Quote No30
One of our objectives this year is to make sure that we have an effective problem- solving culture throughout the company that we see a common set of practices regardless of what business or level of the organization we are in. We therefore built problem solving into our definitions of what managers and leaders do. To borrow lean-management terminology, problem solving is now part of the role expecta- tions of leaders, so a large part of their time ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#problems #coaching

Quote No31
Problems are particularly difficult to see when they are hardwired into  the way we do things around here.  For instance, some organizations place a lot of value on certain tasks that their best employees perform in order to work around uncooperative business partners or cumber-some IT work flows. Yet under closer examination, many of these tasks turn out to add no value as far as customers are concerned. At one commercial lender, senior underwriters were so inured to complex processes, multiple hand-offs, and long delays that they had come to define their value by their prowess at navigating around these obstacles. Rather than wait for automated updates on the cases they were handling, they would routinely leave their desks to tap specialists  shoulders for the latest information. The company was so oblivious to the problem that it even began trying to standardize the work-arounds and encouraging others to follow them. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#problems #coaching

Quote No32
Most companies, and most leaders, have developed a bias toward tackling what we might call  rocks : large, top-down interventions such as reorganizations, IT investments, or mergers. For most organizations, the hierarchy, performance metrics, and interaction rhythms all center on managing rocks, which usually translate to projects each with a manager, a set of objectives, and milestones. But business isn’ t all about rocks. There is also  sand : the innumerable small issues that cumulatively can wreak havoc on daily work. Sand can take the form of applications that always seem to have errors, progress updates that arrive too late, or workloads that skyrocket and then crash. Sand is ubiquitous, especially at the front line. But a project-based approach is too cumbersome to work at such a granular scale: the only way to deal with sand is to catch it as it comes in and constantly sweep it away. That means empowering, coaching, and trusting people at all levels of the organization to see the problems (the sand) all around them, trace their root causes (where the sand is coming from), and take steps to solve them (to sweep the sand away). ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#projects #problems

Quote No33
We also decided we could not ask line managers to implement [LEAN] on their own. So we put together a transformation team, which we call our [LEAN] Implementation Office. We ran a very public process of inviting and interviewing applicants, who would have more access to leaders and the potential to accelerate their careers. With that, we were able to handpick some exceptional people to help roll [LEAN] out across the bank. If anything, we might have taken that step even earlier in the transformation. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:#teamwork

Quote No34
They fall into the trap of confusing decisiveness with problem solving and rush into action instead of taking time to reflect. Why does this happen? Following a systematic problem-solving process takes discipline and patience. There are no shortcuts, even for leaders with a wealth of experience. An organization that consistently uses a single, simple problem- solving approach across its entire enterprise can achieve more than just greater rigor in asking the right questions it can create a new  shared language  that helps people build capabilities more quickly and collaborate across internal boundaries more effectively. But to do so, it will need to avoid getting caught up in sophisticated problem-solving techniques until it captures all that can be learned from the simple ones. The main objective is to uncover problems, ask the right questions, engage everyone in the problem-solving effort, and develop the organization s problem-solving muscles. An effective process for identifying and solving problems involves five steps: 1. Define the problem. Clarify what should be happening and what is happening. The gap between the two is where the problem lies. Defining the problem well ensures that the team has a shared understanding of the real issue. 2. Identify root causes. Learn as much as possible about the problem, preferably by observing it as it occurs. This step is often skipped, but it is essential; without it there is no way of knowing whether you are solving the real problem. 3. Develop a solution. Crafting a good solution rests on distinguishing cause from effect. A solution that tackles the root cause will eliminate the symptom that the problem causes; if the root cause has truly been found, removing the proposed solution will lead to the symptom s return. 4. Test and refine the solution. The solution must be tested to ensure it has the expected impact. If it solves only part of the problem, further rounds of the problem-solving process may be needed before the problem disappears completely. For validation, conduct a final experiment without the solution to see if the problem recurs. 5. Adopt new standards. The last step is to incorporate the solution into standards for work, with training and follow-up to make sure everyone has adopted the new method. That should eliminate any possibility of recurrence; moreover, sharing the solution more broadly across the organization allows others to glean insights that might be applicable in seemingly different scenarios. Although easy to understand, this process is hard to master. In our experience the first two steps are often skipped, so the third step becomes weak and it s far from unusual to see the last two steps skipped as well. ...
[Source: 2014 Lean Management Enterprise Compendium]  Tag:

OTHER READING MATERIALS

Business Model Canvas ( Alex Osterwalder)
Lean Canvas (Ash Maurya)
Lean Start-Up (Eric Ries)
Startup Toolkit (Rob Fitzpatrick)
The WHITEHALL Effect (John Seddon)
Why Should Anyone Be Led By You (Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones)
Winning (Jack Welch)





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