5 Ways to Keep Focused on Lean Productivity Improvement

Admit it or not, all companies face challenges. In today's competitive market, Lean is turning out to be "the solution" to manufacturing industries across the spectrum for survival and success.

Lean manufacturing helps organizations to achieve targeted productivity and more by introduction of easy-to-apply and maintainable techniques and tools. Its focus on waste reduction and elimination enables it to be engrained into organization culture and turns every process into a profit center.

In a nutshell, lean manufacturing is all about driving toward achieving profitability and productivity through continuous improvement and resource waste elimination. With all of the day-to-day tasks folks need to take care of, it is common that productivity improvement takes a backseat despite great intentions. To avoid that, consider some of these methods to spotlight Lean productivity improvement.

Goal alignment: Perhaps the most powerful aspect of goal setting is its potential use in building an aligned workforce, equipped, empowered, and motivated at all levels to work together to achieve its vision for the future. Setting goals can provide purpose and challenge to energize people to apply their efforts in a specific, planned direction. Well-set and monitored goals that are aligned holistically can put your organization on track for increased employee engagement, productivity, and progress toward achieving its vision.

Visual data management: Use visual boards to display its goals, targets, and performance metrics. The look and feel of the visual board should be standard across your system, with each board including the standard metrics as a designated space for discussion and prioritization of improvement ideas. The visual board in each department should be located in an accessible area in the Gemba so that the data and metrics stay in front of everyone.

Daily huddles: Daily huddles take place at the department level and last for about 10 to 15 minutes. Huddles are led by the staff and are attended by all members of the department Huddles take place directly in front of the visual board so that the metrics that are displayed on the board can be discussed and updated as needed.

Problem-solving: It is recognized that staff cannot implement all solutions or process improvement ideas alone and that process changes often involve other departments or functions. For this reason, part of the daily huddles should be dedicated to problem-solving. This portion of the huddle includes a review of improvement ideas submitted by staff, a progress update on ideas that have been selected for implementation, and feedback received from senior leaders on ideas that have been submitted to senior levels for implementation and/or resourcing. Accountability is achieved through review of progress on implemented ideas with use of a simple WWW (What, Who, and When) form. This process of problem-solving (idea generation), reviewing progress, and providing feedback is key to sustaining team engagement.

Employee recognition: The impact of recognizing employees who engage in Lean productivity improvement can't be understated. It is essential for the individual employee and helps cement a culture that values improvement and signals to the entire organization that leaders care deeply about efforts to implement positive change.

Each organization is different and so are the productivity challenges for your company. You’ll find, however, that even the most basic tools can really hone in your organization’s ability to eliminate waste and focus on continuous improvement.

7 Ways to Inspire Your Team for Peak Performance

In order to achieve great results, you should be constantly thinking about how you can motivate and inspire your team. The ultimate throttle on the growth of a company is the people so keep raising their inspiration and motivation levels. This will ensure a happy energized team always delivering great output.

Here are some ideas to consider:

Set the example

Of course, as a leader it is your responsibility to set the example for your team to follow.  The way you treat everyone is the way your team will treat their direct reports. Attitude is contagious so as a leader you want to set an amazing example of optimism which can radiate throughout the organization. Set an example by leading from the heart, taking calculated risks, treating people well, showing impeccable manners and finally sharing credit with the team always.

Share your vision and set clear expectations

You can only motivate and inspire your team if they know what they are working towards. Make sure your employees are aware of your vision and what your ultimate goals are for the business. This encourages everyone to work together to achieve better results.

Recognize peak performance and effort

This needs to be done at a level where the recognition is seen by others. Everyone likes praise and recognition, and if a good performance is publicly honored, the person shows that individual effort is seen at a higher level. And everyone else sees that too.

Get people to share their ideas and creativity

If people help contribute to something, they are more likely to take ownership and be committed to its successful outcome. So, get input and ideas from people when you are wanting to improve.

Encourage teamwork

Encouraging and promoting teamwork boosts productivity because it makes employees feel less isolated and helps them to feel more engaged with their tasks. You can do this by regularly holding team-building activities and opportunities for your team members to bond and get to know one another.

Give employees the space they need to thrive

A micromanaging boss can quickly stifle creativity. By giving your employees space and autonomy, you clearly show that you trust them the get the work done in their own way. This can inspire individuals to find more efficient or streamlined ways of completing tasks or to discover gaps in their skillset or the department as they work.

Provide opportunities for growth and development

Team members feel more valuable when they are learning and growing. To motivate and inspire your team to achieve great results you should provide your employees with opportunities for growth and development.

These opportunities should be tailored specifically to suit the individual employee and can be in the form of further training, setting challenging targets, inviting an employee to shadow you, or spending your own time teaching and mentoring somebody. Focus on teaching your team transferable skills they could use in different positions and encourage them to set themselves learning goals.

Motivation is an essential part of any workplace and you should be constantly striving to make your employees feel motivated and inspired. If you do this, you’re sure to achieve the results that you need. In the end, your workforce can reach operational excellence.

Lean Quote: March is a Month of Expectations

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.

"March is a month of expectation."   —  Emily Dickinson

March gets a lot of hype. More sunlight. More green. A more perfect breeze begins to blow. The ground begins to warm. Perhaps we smile more because we have gotten some rest in the winter. Flower faces turn toward the sun. Last year’s cold snap is forgotten. We don’t mind those coming disappointments, of tempting warmth and sun, because that is part of March’s thing. Gently inching us toward summer. Dusting off winter. Moving us toward imagination. Toward creating. From seed to bloom.

Low expectations are all around us and successful leaders know it. One of your challenges as a leader will be in raising the expectations of those around you. People tend to be creatures of habit and can be quite comfortable with the status quo. Challenging for any leader is the ability to cast vision high enough and realistic enough that people can catch on without being overwhelmed. You can raise expectations for a better future by making the case, showing the way, and explaining the advantages. Sometimes people around you settle for what they have because no one has shown them a better way. Your leadership should inspire others to reach for new heights, look beyond their present circumstances, and believe that they can achieve on a higher level. You can raise their expectations as you raise your expectations. Don’t just settle – go higher!

Maybe we can let March be March? Filled with hope and expectation as the birthplace of new life and possibility. Like a new year. I like that idea.

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.