5 Ways to Ensure Team Alignment

Whether you’re managing a two-person operation or a department of 100, it’s nearly impossible for your organization to grow and move on to the next chapter of success if your whole team isn’t on the same page.

Teams are at their best when they work cohesively and rally around shared goals. Alignment in the workplace occurs when all team members have a better understanding of company goals and have a clear vision for collective (and individual) long-term success. It isn’t enough to know the end destination; you need to all be rowing in the same direction.

Here are five ways to help encourage better team alignment in your business:

1. Communicate your purpose and strategy from the top down

Are frontline employees less likely than company leaders to say that they understand how their role contributes to purpose. If so this poses a considerable barrier to team alignment.

Aligning your organization begins with establishing and articulating your organizational purpose and strategy. While the CEO’s role in communicating the company purpose and strategy is an important one, management is responsible for translating how it applies to teams and individuals.

2. Tie people’s individual contributions to the overall business objectives

When people understand their role in your company’s grand plan, great things happen. Hanover Research found that 86% of senior leaders reported a 5% or greater increase in employee satisfaction when employees felt that their work was aligned with strategic goals and initiatives.

One proven way to track this is through the objectives and key results (OKRs) model. OKR is a collaborative goal-setting framework used by teams and individuals. It has helped companies to plan and measure success in alignment with their overall company strategies.

3. Encourage peer-to-peer collaboration over competition

Collaborative workplaces reward teamwork and encourage trust among employees. This prevents the old-school dog-eat-dog workplaces of previous generations.

4. Celebrate team wins

Recognizing individual’s and team’s large and small accomplishments encourages employees and reminds them that you value their contributions. Recognize individuals regularly, encourage peer-to-peer recognition, and even involve cross-functional teams by hosting in-person or virtual social events to celebrate cross-team collaboration and successes.

When recognizing individual and team accomplishments, tie them to wider organizational strategies to continually drive home the impact they have on the company’s purpose.

5. Use a collaborative planning process

Build the right processes and implement the right tools for team alignment to thrive. Using a collaborative planning process can help you get all the information you need to marry bottom-up tactical planning with top-down organizational strategy. Involving teams early on will help with engagement and close the communication gap between leadership and frontline workers.

Team alignment has a significant impact on the overall performance of your business. Without clear communication on your organization’s goals and shared company values, your team members might find it challenging to present a united front and stay engaged.

Lean Tips Edition #200 (#3211 - #3225)

For my Facebook fans you already know about this great feature. But for those of you that are not connected to A Lean Journey on Facebook or Twitter I post daily a feature I call Lean Tips.  It is meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and some knowledge tidbits about Lean to help you along your journey.  Another great reason to like A Lean Journey on Facebook.

Click this link for A Lean Journey's Facebook Page Notes Feed.

Here is the next addition of tips from the Facebook page:

Lean Tip #3211 – Innovators Need a Purpose

Innovators need a purpose. They need to believe that their suggestions have a realistic chance of being implemented. They need to feel that time spent developing an idea is time well spent. If they know good ideas will come to fruition, it is easier to bring teams together to develop those ideas. It is easier to sell ideas up the corporate ladder. Perhaps most importantly, regular implementation of ideas invites people to think creatively and that results in more innovation for your firm.

Lean Tip #3212 – Transparency of Ideas is Critical

In fact, ideas submitted to suggestion boxes are occasionally implemented. The problem is that there is often little or no communication with the idea submitter. Hence as far as she knows – nothing has happened to her idea.

Thus, it is critical that any idea generation initiative is transparent, not only during the idea generation phase, but also during the idea review and testing phases. Regular reports to the idea submitters lets them know how their ideas are developing and demonstrates the value that the firm gives to good ideas.

Lean Tip #3213 – Positively Accept the Feedback You Receive.

The way you handle employee feedback is very important. Any type of feedback should be met with positive language. If the employee hears phrases such as “I don’t think so” or “that’s a problem,” you will have a difficult time opening the lines of communication. Be encouraging at all times, even if the employee is saying something you disagree with completely. The fact that they’re even offering feedback is a positive development for the type of culture you’re trying to build, so honor it accordingly.

Lean Tip #3214 – Creating a Space for Open Communication

Gathering ideas from your employees is key to moving your company forward based on the people most involved in your day-to-day operations. As you build a space where your employees can feel comfortable sharing their honest opinions, keep a consistent open-door policy. This way, you’re inviting your employees to share their ideas even when you’re not sending out surveys. You’ll remove communication barriers between employees and company leaders – and show your employees how much you value them.

Lean Tip #3215 – Show Them Their Ideas Actually Make A Difference

One of the big reasons why employees are hesitant to speak out is because they feel like it’s not worth their time to do so. While they might feel listened to, they rarely if ever see their concerns taken seriously or their ideas have an impact. As a leader, it’s important to not only make an effort to sit down and listen, but also to take that information and insight and use it. Show your team that it is worthwhile to speak out. Prove to them that their feedback is a valuable piece of your leadership strategy, and show them how you incorporate their input. When they see that they are heard and are part of positive change, it will be easier and easier to get your employees to speak out, be productive and engage in the workplace.

Lean Tip #3216 – Identify a Problem That Can Benefit From Standardized Processes

A process map is set up to fail if it isn’t tied to a strong goal right from the get-go.

Don’t limit yourself to a specific type of process map until you’re 100% sure of the problem you’re trying to solve.

Are you trying to improve an existing process or plan an entirely new one from scratch? Do your desired results impact your customers, internal employees, or product or technology stack?

Answering these questions will help you determine the right starting and ending point for your process map.

From there, it becomes easier to visualize the actions needed to take you from your starting to your ending point.

Think about the levels of visibility you need to execute the process, whether that’s resource expenditure, cross-functional collaboration, system workflows or more.

Make sure you have someone in charge of documenting these planning notes so you can refer to them later when you’re ready to map your process out.

Lean Tip #3217 – Use Pen and Paper for an Effective Process Map

Even if you’re working in the high tech sector, you can begin business process mapping in a fairly low tech way. Don’t try and start mapping immediately in Visio, Powerpoint or Word. Start as simply as possible with a pen and a flip chart, it’ll help you really stand back and look at your process as a whole as you go along. It’ll also help you collaborate more successfully with other members of your team.

Lean Tip #3218 – Get Outside Input on Your Process Map

Although you need the people who undertake the task to help you document it, it can be useful to employ someone from outside the team to manage and adjudicate the mapping process. A neutral observer can bring a fresh perspective on thinking that has become entrenched and ask important questions to prompt new ideas as you proceed.

Lean Tip #3219 – Map the Process Together

Bring together the people who carry out the task you are documenting to help you get it down on paper. The people who do the job know everything about it, after all, and are best placed to understand and explain the pressures involved in carrying it out. It’s no good someone who is removed from the process deciding how it is done or how it should be done without consulting others. If the ‘process maps’ are worked on and developed by the team who deliver the tasks they describe, they will be much more accurate representations of the task itself, and there will be a greater sense of ownership of the output.

Lean Tip #3220 – Optimize the Process Using Your Map

If you are working with the team who undertake the tasks on a daily basis, they may all approach the job in different ways. You need to understand how and why these approaches differ. As your objective is to document ‘the way you do things’, at this stage you need to decide definitively how a task should be done in the future. A collaborative approach will help you agree the best way of tweaking processes so that particular objectives can be met and the risk of process failure minimized. Collectively, it will help you decide on and agree the best and most efficient way to perform a task, so that it can be replicated consistently and to the same standards time and time again.

Lean Tip #3221 – Don’t Dictate, Participate

Your employees will judge your commitment to improvement by what you do, not what you say. Set the right tone by rolling up your sleeves and getting to work alongside the rest of your team. Build a team of leaders who continuously improve their own processes and talk about it every chance they get. Once people see that improvement is worth the time of the leadership team, they'll know that it's worth their own time as well.

Lean Tip #3222 – Be Deliberate and Patient.

Creating a culture of continuous improvement is an exercise in demonstrating continuous improvement. You need serious commitment and sustained energy. Many of us make a practice to look for the quickest, highest value wins. Kaizen is more like the effect of oceans on the beach. It’s relentless and disciplined. It can take time to produce the results that many organizations want. A company with this kind of mindset may not be completely ready for kaizen. Also, keep this in mind: even if you have a healthy organization, it will likely be resistant to change.

Lean Tip #3223 – Emphasize a Personal Understanding of the Philosophy of Kaizen Across All Levels of the Organization.

Instilling an understanding of kaizen as a long-term practice, rather than a management initiative, is important in order to sustain continuous improvement. Continuous improvement is as much about mindset as it is about actions.

Making sure your employees understand the history and philosophy of kaizen will help sustain a culture of continuous improvement that permeates the company. Building a company culture with a steady focus on improvement is critical to maintaining momentum in your kaizen efforts.

Lean Tip #3224 – Enforce Your Improvements

It’s easy for employees to regress to their old ways. Enforcing the changes you’ve made to your processes is important for the improvements you’ve made to last, and it’s key to sustaining continuous improvement in the long term.

Documenting improvements, making sure standard work is up-to-date, and training employees on new procedures can help sustain the progress you’ve made in your continuous improvement efforts.

Lean Tip #3225 – Encourage Leadership to be Open-Minded

Continuous improvement works especially well when individuals are encouraged by senior leaders. Prepare your leadership team by offering special training to encourage new ideas and removing any blockers that may be in a team member's path as they are trying to improve a workflow.

Lean Quote: The Supreme Quality of Leadership is Integrity

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"The supreme quality of leadership is integrity."   —  Dwight Eisenhower

Most leaders think their followers put vision or communication or problem solving skills first. Of course, all of those attributes are important, but what difference do they make if you are not trusted? Does it matter what vision you provide if there is little trust that it’s best for all? Does it matter how well you communicate if what is said can’t be trusted? Does it matter how charismatic you are if only a handful are willing to follow you?

Integrity gets lost…one degree of dishonesty at a time. There are no varying degrees of integrity. A leader is judged to have integrity or not based on what is seen. Minor lies can become a major problem. As minor as lies may seem, employees do not forget integrity mistakes.

There are 4 key ways a leader can earn employees trust:

1. Keep your promises. You don’t have to promise things just to make employees feel good. They are more interested in being able to depend on what you promise than in feeling good. Just keep the promises you do make and trust will follow.

2. Speak out for what you think is important. Employees can’t read your mind. If employees have to guess how you feel about something, they may guess wrong. Tell them how you feel and why. This builds respect.

3. Error on the side of fairness. Be fair to all.  Things are not always clearly right or wrong. Sometimes you have to make difficult decisions that affect many people. Sometimes those decisions include having to de-hire some employees. Be fair at all times – regardless of the type or decisions you have to make.

4. Do what you say you are going to do. Just let you “yes” be yes or your “no” mean no. When you say you’re going to do something, your employees should be able to “consider it done.”

It all starts with integrity. Your employees will follow only if you have earned their trust!

Lean Roundup #165 – February 2023

A selection of highlighted blog posts from Lean bloggers from the month of February 2022.  You can also view the previous monthly Lean Roundups here.  

 

When You’re Convinced You’re Right, You’ve Lost Your Ability to Learn – Pascal Dennis says we need to cultivate debate, dissent, and a healthy skepticism but first we have to recognize the corrosive effect of self-righteousness.

 

The Limits of Work Standards – Christoph Roser explains how to make your standard a success by training and motivating your people.

 

Revitalizing Leadership Training – Bob Emiliani shares why we need to rethink how we train people to lead organizations better since it has not produced the desired outcomes.

 

Building Habits to Support Lean Initiatives: A Guide for Business Leaders – Ron Pereira shares some tips to help business leaders create effective habits to support lean initiatives in their organizations.

 

How to Overcome a Possible Economic Recession with Continuous Improvement - Jeff Roussel looks deeper into the financial impact of continuous improvement.

 

Where Continuous Quality Improvement Strategies Go Wrong – Maggie Willard discusses some of the most common why quality improvement initiatives often experience short-term wins but quickly fizzle out, failing to achieve long-term transformation.

 

What Are the Advantages of One-Piece Flow? – Christoph Roser explains the benefits of one-piece flow production.

Learning to Solve Problems By… Wait for It… Solving Problems - Josh Howell shares lessons of a team learning what matters when it comes to problem-solving using lean thinking and practices.

Teaming Up to Overcome Common Business Challenges - Katrina Appell and John Drogosz explains why creating Collaborative Study Teams (CSTs) help organizations learn together how to improve their product and process development performance.

Ask Art: What Is the Biggest Cultural Change Barrier to Lean? – Art Byrne tackles the biggest cultural barrier to adopting lean practices in companies: the resistance of CEOs and senior management.

 

Lean Quote: Leadership and Learning are Indispensable Together

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."   —  John F. Kennedy

Leadership is a continuous learning process that has to be mastered if one would like to become an effective leader.

Leaders can't just put workers into situations, and hope they learn the right things. They should take responsibility for the message, combining real-life experience with direct coaching. An organization's principles should become guideposts to help people make tough decisions.

Leaders must not only be teachers, they must also preach and promote teaching at all levels. Lean Leaders make sure that all of their direct reports are good teachers. In classical leadership, the role of teaching is frequently delegated – not so with the Lean Leaders.

To teach, a leader has to learn, and learning Lean is more than a cerebral exercise. By applying Lean to everything, a leader becomes a more effective teacher. Remember what leadership is really about: It's not a job; it's an act. Leaders have to learn how to teach, build creative tension, and eliminate fear and comfort. Leaders need to actively participate in the transformation of the business, and apply Lean to their own jobs.

True leaders are never satisfied with what they know about their leadership and are always in pursuit of new learning. That means constantly seeking feedback, taking time for relevant learning and guidance, and looking for positive changes in the organization.

Establish a Culture of Trystorming

I learned from my time at Wiremold, originating from Art Byrne, the fundamentals of trystorming. This method consists of, “Rapid cycles of real-time experimentation, used to test and adjust improvement ideas before establishing standard work or implementing processes broadly.” In plain language this means – try it out! Try Storming incorporates physical actions that can engage other senses and give testers a better sense of whether an idea is viable or not.

Trystorming is different from brainstorming in that it encourages the rapid development and test of an idea rather than merely thinking about the possible solutions. It allows people to visualize, touch and further improve on an initial idea. It also models action rather than talk. Often in our desire to design the perfect Future State we forget that the best way to build a process that works is through the iterative process of trying, adjusting/correcting, and trying again.

The process is built on three basic principles:

• It is not important to create perfect solutions.
• Be action-oriented.
• Keep solutions simple.

These principles work hand-in-hand to develop effective solutions. When implemented correctly, Try-Storming can be used to continuously improve any business process.

One of the key reasons to utilize trystorming as part of any process design activity is that it models action rather than talk. By leaving the conference room and actually trying ideas during the course of the work, your team will quickly realize that your activity is more than just a meeting or an exercise in theory.

In addition, taking action typically increases the level of idea generation and team engagement exponentially. By mocking up and trying concepts the team will be able to visualize their ideas and transform plans into tangible improvements quickly. While trystorming requires much more energy than the traditional design approach, use of this methodology will significantly reduce the overall time needed to reach a workable solution.

Whether you are a business just looking for a new way to create together or are looking for a practical, yet fun way to reduce costs and optimize an existing or new process, TryStorming can be an immensely useful tool for your company or work team.

Five Leadership Lessons form George Washington

The very first Commander in Chief of the United States of America set the standard for leadership in the new country not only for his tactical prowess but especially for his character and trustworthiness. George Washington’s administrative and organizational skills in conjunction with his merit, passion for country before himself, and the mutual trust he shared with those he led, makes him one of the greatest leaders in U.S. history.

Every third Monday in February America celebrates President’s Day, commemorating all presidents, but first established in 1885 in recognition of George Washington whose birthday is February 22.

To celebrate this President’s Day, here are 5 lessons on leadership we can take away from the exemplary standard of President George Washington:

1. He treated others with the utmost respect:

Washington treated the lowliest private with the dignity and respect he afforded a visiting dignitary from Philadelphia. How we treat service personnel, subordinates at work, people on the telephone, the guy at the garage, our family members, all impacts the effectiveness of our role as a leader.

2. He held his men accountable:

Along with respect came expectation. I believe in you… therefore I expect you to come through. Same thing at home. We demonstrate to our children that we believe in them, and that we respect them – but if there is no consistent response in terms of guidance and discipline, we will eventually lose our edge as leaders.

3. He placed the welfare of his men ahead of his own:

It’s not just that Washington was willing to take a bullet – there’s no glory in vain bravado. No, what Washington demonstrated is why he was willing, and it wasn’t for his own glory, it was for the cause and for the welfare of those who looked up to him and trusted him.

4. He was personally invested in the cause:

The great general put his money where his mouth was. He personally invested in the cause, not only blood, sweat and tears but cold hard cash too. Those who look to us for leadership are always conscious of the priorities that guide us.

5. He did not waver from his guiding principles:

He was against tyranny, so he was not a tyrant. He valued freedom, so he extended it to others. He believed in the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and he lived as if they were worth his own life to secure.

Being a great leader takes hard work and consistency based on strong principles and values.

As we celebrate our freedom, it is important to remember the great leaders who worked hard and suffered much to create this great nation. We can take lessons in perseverance, the development of competence and of living a life based on core values from a man like George Washington.