Empowering your Lean (Kaizen) Teams

Lean Nation;

Following up from last week's lean blog, I want to discuss empowerment this week.  What exactly is Empowerment? Dictionary.com defines empowerment as the following:

"1.to give power or authority to; authorize, especially by legal or official means: I empowered my agent to make the deal for me. The local ordinance empowers the board of health to close unsanitary restaurants.
2.to enable or permit: Wealth empowered him to live a comfortable life. "

For empowerment with respect to improvement teams, I am talking about allowing the teams to make the decisions to change how the work is done,  who is doing it, what the work sequence is, and how long the should take.   As a manager, or the manager of a manager this is extremely scary.  Why would I trust the foxes to make good decisions about the hen house?

As a lean leader, you get to create the conditions under which teams can be empowered.  I encourage organizations to follow three rules before empowering the teams.  First,  leadership defines the measures and the targets for improvement.  It is your responsibility to establish the measures for success and the percentage improvement expected.  For example, reduce the lead time (wait time) for services from two weeks to one week.  Or reduce the hours expended per unit by 25%.  The team's job is to meet the targets.

Second, leadership gets to define the process the teams use to deliver on the goals.  Leadership can require PDCA (plan -do -check-act) thinking documented on an A-3.  For example, the team is required to use the common tools to see and eliminate waste and is required to use the principles of lean thinking to develop solutions.  Additionally, the solution must be managed visually and supported by management standard work.

Thirdly,  management defines the team members to be engaged in creating the improvement.  There are a couple of theories with respect to team make-up.  One theory supports have team members that come from the supplier group, the people that work within the process, and representatives from the customer group.  This ensures that the people/departments in front of the area of focus and downstream of the area of focus are represented on the team.  This prevents waste from being pushed around the system.  We want waste removed from the system not shifted from one area to another.

Another theory involves the rule of 1/3,1/3 and 1/3.  One third of the team should be from the area being improved.  Not just from the area, but the actual people that do that work. The next third, should be the subject matter experts.  Perhaps you have someone that is an expert in clinical practice, or an expert in forging.  The last third should come from somewhere else in the organization.  This group brings "fresh eyes" to the process to help with some out of the box thinking. 

So which one is best?  Both approaches have strengths. For a fine scope, I prefer the latter, and for a larger, broader scoped project I prefer the former.

So let me summarize.  To empower a team, leadership must satisfy three conditions:

1. Select the right measures and targets
2. Use the correct process for the improvement
3. Populate the team with the correct stakeholders (team members)

If you have the correct goals, with the best process, and correct team members,  you can turn the team lose!

I would still encourage you to have periodic meetings to ensure that leadership is removing the barriers that hold the team back.  But you will not need to micro-manage the team and make and approve every change the team wants to put in place.

Empowerment done correctly, simplifies managements life and enables to team to reach its true potential.

Lean Blessings,

Ron

Ron Bercaw
www.breakthroughhorizons.com