Aligning Business – Processes – People

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This is a scene at most of the businesses where the Business goals very rarely affect the day to day processes that run the organisation or any changes in the process realign the goals to new scenario.  People are usually left on their own to figure their way out of this situation. Here Business planing is considered as an annual activity and once done is set in stone or worse just completely forgotten during the rest of the year only to review again at the end of the year. You know you are one of them if you look back at last year and blame each other or somebody or something  for not reaching your targets.

For a business to achieve its goals and be successful it needs to agile and continuously in sync with changing environments within and outside the organisation.

To achieve this agility we need to have a system which aligns our People to Processes, which in turn are aligned to our Business goals on Day to Day basis. It works both ways as everything works in sync like gears where change in one gears rotation or speed will proportionally change the others.

Visually this looks very simple but practically implementing this is a challenging but I believe is not impossible. Especially if you already have tools to standardize processes (Task Standard Work) and People ( Leader Standard Work ).

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Socratic Method

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so-called wise men thought themselves wise and yet were not, he himself knew he was not wise at all which, paradoxically, made him the wiser one since he was the only person aware of his own ignorance…. -about Socrates on Wikipedia

Paradoxes of Socrates have always intrigued me. Though I have not not read his work through  words of Plato I have come to appreciate the socratic method that we often use to find the root cause.

I always wondered how and why people behave and do the things they do….. one might think the answer is very complicated  and you need to very intelligent person to find it or there is no answer at all. But now it feels like the answer is so simple that we totally ignore it. The only reason we cannot explain everything is that we don’t know all the facts. Once the facts are placed in front of us the answer will be clear to us.If we use the  Socratic approach , start by being completely ignorant about the topic of concern, eliminate the influence of assumptions and opinions which may divert us from truth.

One must always ask the most basic question ….. ” why? ” till we are convinced that we have finally found the true answer which is often buried in the details.

Application of this philosophy are plenty, the “5 Why ” often used in Lean Methodology is an good example. It is the foundation of most detective work too. But the most important is  you can use it in your day-to-day life and understand why things are happening the way they are…. helping you to be aware rather than just exist!

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Distrust – The unknown waste!

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Having distrustful , vendors, customers and most important people within our organisation is one of the biggest waste that we don’t account for.

How is distrust wasteful? Imagine a person on your team whom you don’t trust to keep certain business secrets. Now you will always have to work extra to make sure that this person does not divulge secrets to your competitors.This unnecessary waste of time and effort would have been easily be used for more profitable purposes if there was no distrust.

Ideally an organisation  with minimal or no distrust will move faster on any change project. Thus I feel Integrity and trustworthiness are one of the important traits to look for in any team member.

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The Long Tail of Problem Solving

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As you may have noticed there are few unique types of problems which have very large impact (Financially or in some intangible way). As we get to the process level on the shop-floor we come across hundreds, if not thousands of low impact problems. If we plot all these problems we see something which look like a Long Tail distribution.Longtail

Though the solution of the individual problem in the “Fat Tail” may have a small impact, but together they contribute to the largest portion of the gain if solved.

How do we solve so many problems simultaneously without overloading our resources. This makes us realize the importance of empowering each and every person to solve their problem. What ever tools you use, like A3 , 5 Why, Ishikawa Diagram,  etc. to train should be aimed to decentralize the problem solution. When we have each and every person in the organisation trained in this manner it creates a synergistic effect allowing to solve several problems large and small simultaneously.

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Lean Management – Driving force of Lean Transformation

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How many times have you successfully implemented change using lean tools only to realize, after few weeks or months, that the manager and other people  have either reverted back to the old methods or have found ways to circumvent the newly established methods.

We learned the hard way that lean transformation cannot be supported and sustained with  traditional management system

Most of the times traditional management is results driven and may not focus on the process. Thus there is no inherent  motivation for the manager to improve the process. Also when lean tools are applied  this type of management does not provide a sustainable system to integrate, improve and sustain changes with daily feedback to realign to solve problems as they arise.

The “Lean Management” provides the framework to drive the lean culture. As identified by David Mann in his book “Creating Lean Culture“, there are 4 elements that makeup the Lean Management:

1. Leader  Standard Work

2. Daily Accountability

3. Visual Controls

4. Discipline

Leader Standard Work sustains the systems integrates the changes made during the transformation process. Visual Control and Daily Accountability helps keep the process and people aligned to solve problems as they arise. The Discipline of the leader ensures that standard work is followed and the whole system works coherently.

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Leader Standard work – A bite a day keeps audit away!

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I was reading “Audit Vs. leader Standard Work” by Mark Rosenthal and I suddenly realized what potential we have created at our work place.

Over the course of the year we have grown very fond of the audits. Especially for 5S and we are developing audits  for maintaining other lean management systems put in place. So far they worked fine and actually helped us to stay on track and also creating in culture of continuous improvement. So you may be wondering why that is bad?

As Mark explains Audits are snapshot and often people will try to fool the system to be good for the audit but bad on other days when there is no audit. Now I wondered why it was not realized at our place?

The reason for this was simple , we had unknowingly incorporated that in our Gemba Walks. This ensured continuous followup of all the set systems on daily basis. This was an important move,  addressing to issues as we walk through the workstation was part of our Leader Standard Work (LSW). This kept the systems in check on day to day basis, for example an operator was informed about parts without any designated place immediately when it was seen rather then waiting to conduct the audit.

This has inspired me to think of new system where in we will no longer need audits as we will do bit of checking everyday by enabling it through LSW of responsible people.

Some things which helps to achieve this goal :

1. Try to break down big monthly tasks into smaller weekly  tasks , similarly weekly to daily tasks.

2. Use knowledge gained from issues of shop floor modify LSW to fit systems put in place to avoid these issue in future

3. Even if you have to use audits initially , make them stricter , raise the bar up as people start getting better

4. be disciplined to resolve issues  immediately rather than waiting for the next formal  audit

I am hoping to learn more by looking at audits and leader Standard work from this Perspective and ultimately be able to stay away from audits  by taking a bite a day using the Leader Standard work.

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5S- The Foundation of Lean Manufacturing

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5S is often misunderstood as just a mere housekeeping tool. Impact of having a successful 5S system is more profound than just keeping the place clean.

5S is the starting point of any lean transformation and forms a catalyst for culture of change. Due to the very visible results it makes the process of buy-in easy for both the shopfloor personnel and Management.

some of the key points why 5s forms the foundation of lean manufacturing is as follows:

  • Standardisation of process provide a stable base for incremental improvement
  • Visible results helps boost morale of the people who then take pride working in this area
  • Is an enabler of Continuous Improvement culture
  • Prepares the workplace and people for implementing other Lean tools like TPM, SMED etc.

5S implementation may sound easy but in reality it may be very complex and even more complex is how to sustain it. Not being able to sustain 5S is one of the biggest reason for failure any lean implementation project. Properly sustained 5s program helps continuously improve the workplace and shows managements commitment to the whole change process.  Leader Standard Work is one of the way to sustain 5S and new control measures developed by implementing 5S.

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The 8Fold Path

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Recently I was reading a book by Eknath Easwaran which mentioned about 8 fold path for right living and guide to spiritual enlightenment. More I read about it I felt as if that is how we learn and master the principles of Lean Manufacturing. Here are the steps of 8 fold path as described by Eknath Easwaran:

  1. Meditation: you become what you meditate on
  2. Japam: Silent repetition of word(s) to prevent idle mind from doing wrong things.
  3. Slowing Down: To get a big picture
  4. One-pointedness: giving complete attention to whatever you are doing
  5. Sense Restraint: ability to discern discriminatively.
  6. Putting others first: Person with little or no self will are more secure and can help others
  7. Reading Scriptures: through carefully selected Scriptures we can be inspired by the awareness of all ages
  8. Satsang: association with people who are or have already been on the same path
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A Lens to View the Transformation – Shingo Prize Model

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Often we need to see something of interest from differnt perspectives to get comprehensive understanding. The tools that allow us to see thing with different prespective is called a  “Lens”. This is very essential for a change agent involved in Transformation of a business.

Shingo Prize model offeres an excellent lens to view the transformation process. Let us first use typical Project management method as a lens. Using this you will view the transformation as different phases of the project mamngement:

  1. Initiation
  2. Planing
  3. Execution and control
  4. Closing

This will suffice if was just project management, but lean transformation goes beyond that. At strategic level we need to understand whether we have created a system which will be sustained with proper enablers in place. What most people don’t uderstand is that lean cannot be sustained if applied locally using few tools. It is has to be complete transformation of the entire system, the processes as well as the management system. Shingo prize model helps to identify what needs to be in place to strat this transformation (the cultural enablers) and then how the collective learning and implementaions of tools though out the system achive the goal of lean transformation, that is profitable business. Here are the phases of lean transformation as per Shingo Prize Model:

  1. Cultural Enablers
  2. Continuous Process Improvement
  3. Consistent Lean Enterprise Culture
  4. Business Results

If you are change agent trying to transform a business and have been wondering if you are on right track, step back look at the process using this lens.

You can read more about this at MissionModel

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Understanding Change

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As a Change Agent you often have to be able to understand the dynamics of change. Especially for processes where it is either too slow or too hard to come by.Different people will percive the change in different ways and some may not be able to see any change at all . This will lead to bad decision, giving up too early in the project and also frustations.

So how do we learn to  see the subtle process of change?

This is evident when you break down different phases of transformation for example; transforming a process from adhoc management to a one which is managed for continuos improvement:

We could possibly use the following phases as a lens to see our progress:

1. Observe

2. Observe to Detect

3. Detect to Measure

4. Measure to improve

The process does necessarily will follow this pattern , nor you should consider these words as only way to describe it, the important part is being able to differentiate between different phases and make sure there is progress  in the change process.  As this skill develops with practice it becomes an important skill to maintain your focused and keeping the team aligned during long projects.

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