Lean Nation,
(Part 7 of 7) I am continuing to blog on a seven part series on how to create a world class organization. As a reminder, here are the seven 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 this blog, I will expand on step 7: spread your improvement to other parts of the organization. At this point in your journey, you have prioritized your improvements, created a detailed improvement plan, executed the plan using A-3 thinking, and sustained the improvements with equal parts of visual management and leadership standard work. While completing the previous steps, you have continued to develop the organization with ongoing training and leadership development. Now what?
If you are realizing and sustaining double digit improvement in your areas of focus, you should be getting many requests for help from other parts of the organization. Everyone wants to get better, make budget, meet targets, etc. Done well, you will not need to push change on other parts of the organization. You will get a pull from these departments.
Another key point of spread is that you will need to determine if you are spreading solutions and artifacts or lean thinking. We can take checklists, visual management tools, and workflows and apply them to other areas. This ensures consistency from area to area and shortens the lead-time for implementation. The main draw back is there is not a lot of buy in for the solutions since the receiving department may not have been involved in the development of the solutions.
The other approach is is to translate lean thinking to the other departments. Allow the areas to customizes their improvements consistent with lean principles. This leads to enhanced buy-in, but lengthens the implementation curve. I usually recommend a combination of both approaches. We want to aggressively implement standards while translating lean thinking through the organization.
Be sure to create the measurement systems to support spreading of improvement. We need to be able to see the status of both process and results at a glance. Many spread initiatives fail because the accountability for results and sustainability is not present. Having the systems to see the progress and results will help. Leadership will still be needed to get through the change management issues.
Summarizing the process to get to organizational excellence, there are 7 steps that I recommend you follow. We have discussed each of the seven steps over the last 3 months. (note, there is a different blog topic on each step) I think it important to note that there are entire books written on each of the seven steps. There is simply no way to provide all the details in a weekly blog covering only a few paragraphs on each topic.
If you follow each of the steps with the proper humility and intensity, you can get your organization on the road to excellence. This journey will not be a short one. It will take more than 10 years to create a world class organization. (Actually 20 years is a more realistic time frame). Because of this, many organizations skip steps. Skipping steps will lead to failed results or significantly delay your journey to excellence. This is not something that can be accomplished in the next quarter or the next year. You need to budget for the long term.
My first publication (available for sale in early October, 2011), "From the Assembly Line to Healthcare, the Application of Lean to the Healthcare Industry" covers several, but not all of the steps. Beginning in late fall 2011, I will be writing my second book, this one pertaining to Lean Leadership.I will be covering the leadership aspects of the seven steps to organizational excellence. Leadership remains the key to any organizational change!
Lean Blessings,
Ron
Ron Bercaw
http://www.breakthroughhorizons.com/
(Part 7 of 7) I am continuing to blog on a seven part series on how to create a world class organization. As a reminder, here are the seven 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 this blog, I will expand on step 7: spread your improvement to other parts of the organization. At this point in your journey, you have prioritized your improvements, created a detailed improvement plan, executed the plan using A-3 thinking, and sustained the improvements with equal parts of visual management and leadership standard work. While completing the previous steps, you have continued to develop the organization with ongoing training and leadership development. Now what?
If you are realizing and sustaining double digit improvement in your areas of focus, you should be getting many requests for help from other parts of the organization. Everyone wants to get better, make budget, meet targets, etc. Done well, you will not need to push change on other parts of the organization. You will get a pull from these departments.
Another key point of spread is that you will need to determine if you are spreading solutions and artifacts or lean thinking. We can take checklists, visual management tools, and workflows and apply them to other areas. This ensures consistency from area to area and shortens the lead-time for implementation. The main draw back is there is not a lot of buy in for the solutions since the receiving department may not have been involved in the development of the solutions.
The other approach is is to translate lean thinking to the other departments. Allow the areas to customizes their improvements consistent with lean principles. This leads to enhanced buy-in, but lengthens the implementation curve. I usually recommend a combination of both approaches. We want to aggressively implement standards while translating lean thinking through the organization.
Be sure to create the measurement systems to support spreading of improvement. We need to be able to see the status of both process and results at a glance. Many spread initiatives fail because the accountability for results and sustainability is not present. Having the systems to see the progress and results will help. Leadership will still be needed to get through the change management issues.
Summarizing the process to get to organizational excellence, there are 7 steps that I recommend you follow. We have discussed each of the seven steps over the last 3 months. (note, there is a different blog topic on each step) I think it important to note that there are entire books written on each of the seven steps. There is simply no way to provide all the details in a weekly blog covering only a few paragraphs on each topic.
If you follow each of the steps with the proper humility and intensity, you can get your organization on the road to excellence. This journey will not be a short one. It will take more than 10 years to create a world class organization. (Actually 20 years is a more realistic time frame). Because of this, many organizations skip steps. Skipping steps will lead to failed results or significantly delay your journey to excellence. This is not something that can be accomplished in the next quarter or the next year. You need to budget for the long term.
My first publication (available for sale in early October, 2011), "From the Assembly Line to Healthcare, the Application of Lean to the Healthcare Industry" covers several, but not all of the steps. Beginning in late fall 2011, I will be writing my second book, this one pertaining to Lean Leadership.I will be covering the leadership aspects of the seven steps to organizational excellence. Leadership remains the key to any organizational change!
Lean Blessings,
Ron
Ron Bercaw
http://www.breakthroughhorizons.com/
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