The Roadmap to Organizational Excellence - Part 1 of 7

Lean Nation:

As we discussed in our last blog,  I was going to blog a seven part series on how to create a world class organization. Here are the steps to creating a culture of continuous improvement:

1. Find a Sensei - You need a coach to make the journey.
2. Select your Organizational Wide outcome measures - these are known as the True North measures.
3. Prioritize and Map your Value Streams - select the areas with the most leverage.
4. Deliver Improvement - Use A-3 thinking and lean principles to make the changes identified in your value stream mapping sessions.
5. Sustain your improvements using visual management and leadership standard work.-
results are only realized if the gains are held.
6. Support your improvements with ongoing training and leadership development.
7. Spread your improvements to other parts of your organization.

Let's expand on step 1, "Find a Sensei"   A Sensei is someone who has travelled the lean road you are heading down.  This person should be skilled in the principles, techniques, and applications of improvement that transcend any industry.   This person should be equally skilled in the team based improvement and sustaining skills, as well as the management behaviors necessary to lead a cultural change.  There are a select few people out there that have the requisite skill sets.

Questions to ask the field to narrow your options would be the following:

• Have you lead or participated on over 100 lean improvement teams?
• Have you lead a transformation of an organization as a member of the Executive Team?
• Have you lead organizations through improvement in more than five different industries?
• Do you have a complete business system with training materials, forms, and checklists to transform an organization in the areas of new product/service introduction,  administration, supply chain, maintenance, quality, management development, and product/process flow?

If you can get positive answers to all five of these questions,  you are likley zeroing in on a Sensei.

Why hire a Sensei?  I can think of several reasons to hire a Sensei:

1. A sensei can communicate at all levels of the organization without political ramifications.
2. A sensei can be totally honest on your strengths and weaknesses with credibility.
3. A sensei will provide technical expertise to the teams while providing change management and sustainability coaching to leadership and management.
4. A sensei will bring ideas and thoughts from multiple industries to your organization to get you thinking about woarld class and not industry best in class.
5. A sensei will have you benchmarking about rates of improvement, not industry scores.
6. A sensei will be harder on you than you will be about your organization
7. A sensei will know when to bring in advance tools for problem solving versus keeping the solution approaches simple.
8. A Sensei will know the best pace to spread and transform your organization.
9. Your learning curve will be shortened and your risk will be minimized.

Can you think of other reasons a Sensei will create value?  Next blog will cover step 2 in the road map to excellence.

Lean Blessings:

Ron

Ron Bercaw
http://www.breakthroughhorizons.com/