Lean Tips Edition #113 (1696-1710)

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.

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

Lean Tip #1696 - Discard Conventional Fixed Ideas

Part of problem solving is thinking “outside of the box.” Encourage fresh perspectives and ingenuity in your team in order to develop innovative ways to forward Lean manufacturing without changing what is already efficient and successful. With such a rapidly evolving climate in manufacturing, sometimes conventional thought is what leads to the problem in the first place!

Lean Tip #1697 - Determine What Works Best for You

It is important to understand that one size does not fit all and a one-off approach may not work. Concepts, such as value stream mapping, one piece flow/continuous flow or 5S initiatives can be helpful tools, but keep in mind that these “tools” are not meant to exist in isolation. At the same time, success depends on a comprehensive, but not necessarily complicated, strategy that is uniquely suited to your business. Not every rule or tool associated with lean will apply to your business, so take the time to figure out what works best for you.

Lean Tip #1698 - Don’t Forget the Basics

Many manufacturers are challenged with trying to manage hundreds or thousands of part numbers.  This can be especially challenging in relation to lean.  Therefore, I recommend developing part families. Many people skip this step and jump right into creating lean cells, but taking the time to first develop part families will make things much easier for you down the line. That’s because part families help you to further refine your core competency and eliminate unnecessary and disruptive parts, creating a more automated production flow.  To create part families, start by looking for parts that are similar in shape and geometry or ones that are produced using similar material or processes.

Lean Tip #1699 - People Can’t be Controlled like Machines

People are your major assets, but they are also your major cause of variation and can resist the change imposed on them. You must pay particular attention to people issues in the beginning of a project; this is achieved by including people working in the area on the Lean team or Kaizen event.

Lean Tip #1700 - Use Kaizen Events to Identify Opportunities and Then Develop Solutions

Kaizen uses common sense to improve cost, quality, delivery and responsiveness to your customer’s needs. Kaizen is a focused activity that uses small cross-functional teams aimed at improving a process or problem identified within a specific area in a very short period of time (“Quick Wins”). Employees should be encouraged to drive continuous improvements in their area that are more complex with a Kaizen event.

Lean Tip #1701 – Maintain Clear and Comprehensive Communication on a Consistent Basis

One of the most vital strategies that must be employed in order to align employees with the company’s vision is maintaining clear and comprehensive communication on a consistent basis. Not only must a company’s basic vision be communicated to employees in this manner, but the goals and objectives associated with the mission must be conveyed via consistently reliable, clear and comprehensive communication as well.

Clear and comprehensive communication regarding the company’s vision is best ensured by taking advantage of multiple resources. In addition to direct face to face communication with employees about vision related issues, a company needs to take advantage of high-tech resources as well — including email, texts, blogs and related avenues.

Lean Tip #1702 – Form Strategic Partnerships with Employees

When it comes to aligning employees with the vision of the company, the business itself — via its owners or managers — must form a reliable, meaningful strategic partnership with the workers. In other words, employees need to feel a sense of ownership in regard to the company’s vision in order to be fully aligned with it.

Although it is not always possible, one of the best strategies to utilize when it comes to forming this type of strategic partnership is to include employees in the development of the mission in the first instance.

This is particularly useful (and possible) when an existing business elects to make some changes or alterations to its stated mission. In that situation, employees are already associated with the company. Moreover, they may feel quite wed to the existing mission. By including them in the process of crafting a new or modified vision, they are less likely to be reluctant to embrace the newer mission envisioned by a business enterprise.

Lean Tip #1703 - Share Leadership Responsibilities.

People often confuse titles with leadership, but the qualities of true leadership can be found anywhere in an organization. Managers should take stock of their employees and spot the leaders among teams. These key employees take initiative, inspire and encourage others, and positively impact productivity and morale.

Take time to acknowledge the leadership skills of these employees, asking how you can support them in their leadership roles. Also, make sure their leadership skills don’t come across as bossy or top-down, because that will have a negative impact on their teams – and remember to encourage everyone to lead in the areas they’re most successful.

Lean Tip # 1704 – Clearly Communicate Objectives.

Teams need to communicate constantly to stay on course – not just once a quarter during ‘reviews’. Checking in with each other via email, an employee feedback platform, and/or in person is paramount to staying aligned on goals. Continual communications helps individuals understand where they fit in the big picture, and helps them prioritize tasks to line up with the company’s greater mission.

Of course, communication is also essential to deliver encouragement and coaching. Positive reinforcement inspires everyone to work towards a common goal – delivering a product, solving a sticky customer issue, or finalizing a plan.

Continual communications helps individuals understand where they fit in the big picture, and helps them prioritize tasks to line up with the company’s greater mission.

Lean Tip #1705 - Rally Around Shared Values.

Teams are most effective when people are purpose-driven and feel they share a common mission. Beyond this shared end-goal, the best teams have the same vision of how to get to this end-point. In other words, they are aligned at every step of the way.

To align your team around common goals, it helps to create core values for your company. For example, our core values include supporting health and vitality; a commitment to customer success and delight; keeping things simple; embracing freedom and flexibility; holding one another accountable; and committing to constant learning and growth.

Teams are most effective when people are purpose-driven and feel they share a common mission.

Lean Tip #1706 – Challenge the Status Quo

Throw out all your old fixed ideas on how to do things. Replace “sacred cows,” personal opinions, and “it’s the way we’ve always done it” with performance facts and data. Numbers are the language of improvement. Avoid the emotional traps of blaming people or making excuses that prevent you from discovering the real problem. Once you have established the new best-way of doing something, stick with it until a better way is found. When confronting old ideas and traditions, apply the Rules of Engagement.

Lean Tip #1707 - Keep It Simple and Inexpensive

Ideas for incremental improvements that bubble up from workers are usually easier to implement and less expensive. Apply creativity and craftiness before cash for your solution. Follow the 80-20 Rule; do the twenty-percent of things that get you eighty-percent of improvement results. And do it NOW! Don’t wait until you can achieve perfection.

Lean Tip #1708 - Focus on the Right Things

Improve the core business systems that enable you to find and keep customers, and earn more money. Find ways to provide customers greater value and a better buying experience. Zero in on removing the obstacles, bottlenecks, and weak links in your business processes that slow lead-time, order completion, and collection of cash. Fast throughput of products and services creates happier customers and more profit. Remember: quality plus speed equals low cost. Put emphasis on enhancing business systems that drive your Balanced Scorecard goals, or that improve a line-item number on your financial statement.

Lean Tip #1709 – Provide Training For Improvement

Kaizen involves setting performance standards for your business systems and processes and then striving to elevate those standards. Continuous Improvement requires ongoing development of your most important asset—PEOPLE! Tom Peters, business-management author, teaches, "If your company is doing well, double your training budget; if your company is not doing well, quadruple it!” As process changes are made, face any resistance by employees head on—Listen-Thank-Consider-Decide.

Lean Tip #1710 - Never Stop Improving

Halt the process immediately to fix quality or customer-related problems. Don’t let problems accumulate for later handling. Reflect daily (in the Gemba) on your opportunities for improvement and innovation. Make business improvement kaizens a weekly habit. Implement a suggestion-box system that calls for employees to submit so many improvement ideas per month or year. And be sure to compensate people appropriately for implemented solutions. Just one improvement a day is 260 improvements a year!

Managing your Management System

Today's post is from our sponsor, The Lean Office, on effectively managing your management system.

In my experience, the typical Lean goes something like this: a company takes a stab at “doing this whole Lean thing” and gets started with a tool like 5S or value stream mapping. Pretty soon, kaizen events are scheduled, and the Lean initiative starts to demonstrate some impressive (albeit short-term) results. Then, the company’s Lean journey enters the dreaded “Valley of Despair” phase, when progress on Lean initiatives stalls, or maybe even goes in reverse. Processes start to push back against all this change, and entropy rears its ugly head. The companies that make it out of this valley and into the promised land tend to have one thing in common – some form of a management system to help sustain the results already achieved, while keeping momentum on improvement activities.

These management systems come in various names – Lean Management System, Lean Daily Management System, Management System, etc. While they may be called different names and have different approaches, most have a few things in common: engage and interact with your employees on a regular basis, use a disciplined approach to ensure your improvements are sustained, be proactive with identifying issues, and make the work visual whenever possible.

No one can argue with the effectiveness of a well-orchestrated management system. If you’ve ever had the good fortune to work for a company with one in place, you know exactly what I’m talking about. But, you also understand the effort that goes into managing the management system. Several times a day, supervisors are walking the floor, taking notes, updating metrics, and working to keep the system in order. That’s just the problem The Lean Office is designed to address.

Our software allows supervisors to spend less time on the paperwork side of the management system, and more time on the people and problem-solving sides of Lean. Plus, instead of notes and metrics being stored in hard copy, everything in The Lean Office is available for immediate, real-time access from a computer, tablet, or smart phone. We’ve got modules like Leader Standard Work, 5S Audits, Gemba Walks, and others designed to be customized to your specific management system, and visual tools to help you see your management system in action.

If you are ready to spend less time on managing your management system, click here to learn more and schedule a demo today!

About Author: Randy Siever is the founder of The Lean Office, Lean Management software that saves time and improves results. He helpa companies identify problems in their current management system, and determine if The Lean Office is the right solution for them.

Lean Quote: Awareness Precedes Choice. Choice Precedes Change.

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.

"Awareness precedes choice. Choice precedes change." — Lauren Herrera

If you aren’t aware of a problem, you won’t make different choices to fix it.  If you don’t make different choices to fix it, nothing will ever change.  Think of it as a three-layered pyramid.  The base of the pyramid is Awareness. The middle section is Choice. The top section is Change.

Awareness is necessary to make a different Choice.

Choices have to be made for there to be any Change.

Every problem you encounter will start as an awareness problem.  If you are in the position of pushing for change and people don’t understand/believe/buy-into the idea that there’s a fundamental problem that needs to be fixed, then you can forget about them making any decisions that will ultimately lead to a change.  It just won’t happen.

Remember, people don’t change for the sake of change.  They change only after there is an awareness of the problem.  Then, and only then, will it be possible to make different choices that result in change.

Think about it.  Get aware of the problems around you.  Invite others in to help you see the challenges that you don’t see. Fess up that there are problems, not failures, but opportunities to try solutions.  

 

How to Start a Movement

In his TED Talk, Derek Sivers explains that, contrary to popular belief, the leader of a movement isn't as important to making change as the first follower. The first follower is what transforms a "lone-nut" into a leader. Using footage of a half-naked dancing man at a music festival to illustrate his point, he emphasizes that his easy-to-follow steps to starting a movement can be used in any situation—particularly the workplace.

Watch the video below and read on for key takeaways from his talk:



"The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader." Sure, Derek Sivers' comment got a few chuckles from the audience, but in this short-and-sweet TED Talk, Sivers discusses one of the unspoken rules of leadership: You need (at least) a follower. And true courage, he explains, is in not being the leader but in being that first follower who believes in the movement so much he has the courage to join in and transform the "lone nut" into a leader. Another key takeaway: Leaders need to nurture their first followers as equals. It's this treatment that motivates them to stick around and attracts more to the movement. As I like to say, great leaders focus on creating more leaders.

Lean Quote: Fun at the Workplace Drives Employee Engagement

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.

"We think it’s important for employees to have fun… it drives employee engagement." — Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappas

An increasing body of research demonstrates that when leaders lighten up and create a fun workplace, there is a significant increase in the level of employee trust, creativity and communication -- leading to lower turnover, higher morale and a stronger bottom line.

The online shoe and clothing retailer, Zappos, has set a new standard of customer service. It seems that great things can, indeed, happen when you make employees happy.  That’s the philosophy that has guided Tony Hsieh’s stunning success at Zappos—transforming the company from a startup in Hsieh’s apartment to a billion dollar brand considered one of the best places to work in the country.

Each year, the Great Place to Work Institute asks tens of thousands of employees to rate their experience of workplace factors, including, “This is a fun place to work.” On Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list, produced by the Great Place to Work Institute, employees in companies that are denoted as “great” responded overwhelmingly -- an average of 81 percent -- that they are working in a “fun” environment. That’s a compelling statistic: Employees at the best companies are also having the best time. At the “good” companies -- those that apply for inclusion but do not make the top 100 -- only 62 employees out of 100 say they are having fun. That gap in experience is, surprisingly, one of the largest in the survey.

If people are having fun, they’re going to work harder, stay longer, maintain their composure in a crisis and take better care of the organization.

 

5 Ways to Encourage Collaboration within the Team

An efficient workplace and a strong working environment are the keys to business success. Getting the right people is one thing, but if they aren’t able to work together, the entire team is likely to suffer. This means that goals won’t be met and targets won’t be achieved, leading to knock-on effects throughout the business.

For that reason, it is essential to work towards improving efficiency wherever possible. Happy and contented employees make the best workers, but they also need to be able to function well as a team unit in order for things to really work to the best of their ability.

As the team leader, it is your duty to encourage this team spirit and promote a positive, friendly and welcoming atmosphere. However, this can be difficult if you find that members of your team are not getting along as well as they should. Collaboration is the key to worthwhile workplace relationships and a stronger team, but how can this be utilized and harnessed within your team?

Firstly, it is important to establish what collaboration is and how it differs to similar buzzwords such as co-operation. Of course, both are important, but it is collaboration which really has the power to bring about a real positive change at work.

Within a collaborative workplace, the entire team are working towards a common goal. Everyone shares any resources or information with their colleagues and this helps to guarantee the success of the team as a whole. It is this shared goal which helps individuals to bond with one another and will provide a focus on promoting greater levels of success and achievement.  

Here are five of the best ways in which you can encourage collaboration within the workplace.

Improve the Environment

It is common knowledge that the right work environment can do wonders when it comes to boosting morale and improving the overall happiness of employees. However, how can the environment help with collaboration? Creating the right environment will not only improve rates of motivation and productivity, but it can also work as a great shared incentive for reaching targets and achieving goals.

Ascertain Leadership

The best leaders have the ability to inspire colleagues and team members, helping to make the entire team more successful. Strong leaders are motivational yet also understanding, recognizing that the success of the entire team rests on the shoulders of each unique person as an individual.  

Partake in Team Building Activities

Team building activities and corporate events can be a great way of re-energizing employees and promoting workplace relationships. Fostering strong friendships at work is a great way to help employees to bond and get to know one another, which is something team building is geared towards enabling. Whether it is indoor or outdoor activities, there are plenty of different alternatives for team building out there, providing plenty of opportunities for you to find one to suit the needs of you and your team.

For more team building ideas, check this site out.

Share Knowledge

No two people are exactly the same, meaning that everyone is going to have different strengths and weaknesses. Within the workplace, this can combine to create a useful database of shared knowledge – a real bonus when it comes to problem-solving, for example.

Adapt to New Ideas

Within business, it is important to recognize that sometimes, things just don’t work out. Therefore, it is vital to allow yourself and your team the room for growth and development. Trying out new strategies and adapting to change can bring about a real positive impact, helping to improve the workplace for the better.

By following these handy tips, you should soon be well on your way towards creating a more positive, efficient and successful collaborative approach to your team. 

Author Bio:

Maise Hunns is a business journalist and works with many Team Building Companies to help broadcast the benefits of healthy employee well-being on a business.

Be FAIR with Your Strategic Initiatives

One of the most persistent challenges that managers face these days is “initiative overload” – having too many projects on the plate and not enough time to get them done.  If too many projects are launched, too many improvements strived for or too many goals targeted, chances are that despite great efforts and spending, the dilution of limited resources will not earn noticeable / satisfactory progress.

It's about prioritizing. If you chase two rabbits, you won't catch either one of them. So you have to prioritize.  - Eric Thomas

The lesson of focus and choice is certainly a driver of success with strategic initiatives. Effective leaders have the discipline to focus, choose the best target, and pursue: it is the #1 characteristic of outstanding performers.

World class organizations focus on the vital few projects, instead of the trivial many. If you want to improve your revenue and profitability performance, you will get better performance by limiting your portfolio to a few key strategic initiatives. And it’s worth abiding by the definition: not everything is a strategic initiative. As it becomes clear which are the strategic initiatives, it becomes easier to give them sufficient resources and the best of leadership.

Improvement opportunities are infinite in any organization. Think about a factory, a hospital or an office building. What comes limited are resources: money, people, equipment, material, floor space… and time.

Hoshin Kanri or Hoshin planning, strategic planning or policy deployment is a method designed to focus and align all contributions of the organization’s staff on required breakthroughs in order to achieve the top strategic objectives.

The Hoshin framework is made up of four phases similar to the PDCA cycle. The entire process is also designated as 'F-A-I-R'.

1. It begins with the Act stage, where senior company executives, along with general managers, revise the company's corporate strategy. This is termed the 'Focus' phase of Hoshin Kanri, where a few vital strategic objectives are determined for the company.

2. Next is the Plan stage, termed the 'Alignment,' when the select few vital objectives are rolled down cross-functionally within the company to each division or business unit. The divisions work to develop the plans necessary to meet these objectives.

3. The Do stage is the 'Integration' of these plans into daily management and project working.

4. The Check stage, known also as the 'Responsive' phase, refers to the management of the strategic objectives in the processes of daily working. It involves both daily and periodic reviews of the work in progress. While the processes should be continually monitored, and modified as necessary, a major quality audit is conducted annually.

Hoshin Kanri is an excellent method for improving communication within the organization. It works on both a strategic planning level and an everyday level to make certain that all levels within the company are aware of the major goals of the organization and are implementing processes to successfully to achieve them.