The Roadmap to Organizational Excellence - Introduction

Lean Nation;

Any of you who have worked with me in the past know that I constantly preach the same formula for success.  There are some steps to organizational wide improvement that are proven to be successful.  Also there are no shortcuts.  Yet I find that many organizations want to hit the "easy" button to improvement.  Improvement is earned one team at a time.   This is why successful organizations take two decades to get to world class. 

As a reminder,  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.

In the next seven blogs I will be highlighting each of the seven steps in more detail.

What I want to leave you with today is that if you skip steps,  the odds that you will still have a lean management system in three years decreased by greater than 70%.  The odds of you becoming world class in 20 years decreases by 97%.

Lean Blessings;

Ron

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