Lean Tips Edition #137 (#2266-2280)

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 #2266 - Communicate a Clear Mission, Vision and Goals.
Employees not only need to know how the business is performing but also where it's headed. All employees should understand the goals of the company and how their individual jobs support them. This is essential for employee engagement. Also, by asking for regular feedback about how employees are tracking toward meeting their goals, leadership can get a good idea of the organization’s progress.

Lean Tip #2267 - Promote Learning and Growth at Every Opportunity.
For everyone in a company, from the CEO to the entry-level employee, continuous learning is essential to growing and adapting to dynamic market conditions. Encourage employees to constantly improve their skills and market knowledge. Support employees who want to go back to school, attend training sessions or expand their market knowledge. This can provide tremendous long-term value to a company.

Lean Tip #2268 - Do Not Limit Yourself.
Don’t be afraid to try every single thing that might take you to your goal. In fact, be more concerned about the potential opportunities you might be missing out on when you don’t try something. Opening yourself up to possibilities will enable you to pick up on things which might be fundamental to your success.

Lean Tip #2269 - Go All Out; Work Really Hard.
With every success, comes hard work. Without hard work, you cannot achieve results. People who try to find the easy way out are kidding themselves if they think they can achieve excellence without putting in hard work. If you observe around you, the people who seek out ‘get-rich-quick’ methods are also the very people who don’t achieve much in their lives. Hard work is the universal quality that will pay off in the long-term. Once you invest the due time and effort, the results will start coming in.

Lean Tip #2270 - Never Give Up.
Don’t ever give up. Remember that defeat never occurs unless you accept it as defeat. If a certain problem is too big for you to handle, break it down into smaller pieces so it’s easier for you to tackle them. As long as you keep trying, you will eventually achieve your goal.

Lean Tip #2271 – Don’t Try a Solution before You Really Understand the Problem
You might start out believing you know where the problem is in your processes. You might already have a solution in mind. However, if you start out by changing processes without analyzing the problem, you may find that the problem isn’t what you thought it was. You may even make it worse.

Bring together people with different perspectives on the problem in your process. Talk about what everyone thinks is going wrong and listen to their ideas about solutions. It’s likely you’ll get insight you didn’t anticipate so you can make better solutions.

Lean Tip #2272 – Mapping Can Be an Effective Tool
Mapping your business processes is a formal way to bring together everyone’s insight on the problem. It creates a consensus view of what’s going on in your organization, and allows you to model the impact of solutions on the entire process, not just the problematic step or steps.

Lean Tip #2273 – Tie Process Improvement To Key Objectives
Your employees need to see the connection between their efforts to improve processes and your company’s mission. By linking process improvement strategies to organizational goals, you will be more apt to earn the support of employees across the board.

Lean Tip #2274 – Request Employee Feedback
Your front-line employees are the best embodiment of your company’s processes. They perform the same tasks every day and often have firsthand information regarding procedural strengths and weaknesses. Suggestions and feedback from front-line employees can play an incredibly vital role in improving your processes.

Lean Tip #2275 – Optimize Everyday Operations
Many companies are never able to grow because they spend all of their energy fixing broken processes. While addressing bottlenecks and other problems is an important part of process improvement, a more productive approach is to evaluate procedures that are not broken. Sometimes this can be achieved by making an adjustment that is as small as a minor tweak to the order entry process.

Lean Tip #2276 – Empower Employees With Improvement
By delegating key process improvement responsibilities to your managers and supervisors, you help ensure that key employees remain actively involved. Additionally, managers and supervisors are aware of key problem areas that require sustained attention. Some strategies to empower employees to manage process improvement include the following:

• Assign a team of employees to conduct an internal process improvement audit
• Establish regular reporting procedures to track results
• Delegate responsibility to employees who consistently model process improvement behaviors

Lean Tip #2277 – Focus on Long-Term Success
The most successful process improvement initiatives value future solutions over short-term fixes. You should expect to encounter obstacles as you focus on process improvement and strive to maintain a positive attitude towards process improvement.  Success requires patience and a long-term commitment to documenting strategies and outcomes from start to finish. This allows you to review your execution in detail to determine when and where a process faltered.

Lean Tip #2278 – Share More, Not Less. 
Even in a small company, silos emerge. A policy of more sharing will help everyone stay in touch with what others are doing, and create a collective expectation. Keeping everyone pointed in the same direction is hard; sharing more about what’s going on, how you’re doing things, reasoning behind decisions, etc. will help.

Lean Tip #2279 – Inspire Employees
Employees are the eyes and ears of your business operations. If there are weak spots in your system, it’s likely employees know about them. It’s also likely they want a better process for completing tasks. But when your staff thinks you’re a “my way or the highway” leader, they usually aren’t motivated to come up with solutions.

Involve your employees in improving business operations. Ask your staff where improvements can be made. Take notes of the flaws that are pointed out and solutions offered. Make sure your employees know their opinions matter and you are open to suggestions. In addition to accelerating your business process improvement, showing your employees that they add value to your business can take the stress off of your staffing management plan by keeping employee turnover at a minimum.

Lean Tip #2280 – Set Time Aside to Reflect
It’s hard not to get caught up in the daily hustle of running a business. But if you forget to stop and look at your business operations, you’ll never know if they’re effective. Take a step back to review your business plan and processes. Schedule time as a part of your workweek to follow through on your evaluation.

As you reflect on the success of your operating efforts, decide which processes work and which need to go. Continue to try new practices to push your business forward.

Lean Quote: Perceiving and Thinking Are Not the Same

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.

"Perceiving means recognizing phenomena by means of our five senses. Thinking, on the other hand, is our mental ability to pursue causes and purposes by objectively asking 'why' about all phenomena." — Shigeo Shingo

Humans perceive via the five senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Looking up at the sky, we perceive that it is cloudy. Then there is thought: Will it rain or not?

Here is a little story that illustrates this point:

Foreman A walks into plant manager Ohara’s office with a safety part and says that a defect has occurred. “What do we do?” he asks.

Ohara examines the part for a moment and then instructs the foreman to bring him the next defective item if the defect shows up again. Dubious because he has received no instructions on how to handle the matter, the foreman goes back to the shop floor.

A week later, the defect shows up again and the foreman immediately rushes to the plant manager’s office. “We’ve got another defect” he announces. But when the manager asks him about the conditions under which the defect occurred, the foreman stammer incoherently.

“In that case,” the manager says, “bring the offending part to me if the defect shows up again.” The foreman quickly withdraws.

Ten days later, when the defect occurs again, the foreman visits the manager’s office for a third time. “The defect was caused by play in a stopper on the machine,” he reports. “We’ve fixed it so the defect won’t show up again.”

Here’s what happened: The first two times, the foreman merely perceived that a defect had occurred. The third time, having understood what the manager had in mind, he thought about why the defect might have occurred.

Thus there are two positions we can take: merely perceiving – or thinking objectively about what we have perceived. Action comes about in response to cycling back and forth between perceiving and thinking, perceiving and thinking, and then finally, perceiving the solution. The more this cycle of perceiving and thinking is repeated, the closer we can approach the truth.

We must remember to ask ourselves, as we move from thought to action in the course of every day, whether we are merely perceiving or whether we have really thought about the matter in question.

Adapted from “The Sayings of Shigeo Shingo: Key Strategies for Plant Improvement” By Shigeo Shingo

10 Ways to Show Your Employees Are Valued

Many companies proclaim that their employees are their greatest asset. Unfortunately, the phrase has become somewhat cliché, similar to saying employees are "empowered." These are valid statements only if companies put actions behind their claims.

In other words, if you say your employees are your greatest asset, do you treat them as if they are the most valuable part of your company?

1. Say thank you.

Show your appreciation for their hard work and contributions. Identify the specific actions that you found admirable. This praise feels sincere since you took the time to spell out details—not just, "You did a good job." You also emphasize the actions that you'd like to see the employee do more often and everybody benefits when people experience clear direction.

2, Make time to connect.

Leaders have a lot of responsibilities, and it's easy to get caught up in your own work, without paying much attention to your team. But one of the best ways to show your employees you appreciate them is making the time to connect with them. Find out how they're doing--including their lives outside work.

3. Create new opportunities.

One of the best ways to win the hearts and minds of your employees is to give them as many opportunities as you can. Let them take on big challenges like a highly visible project or a new leadership role, or pick up the tab for a workshop or conference.

4. Show you trust them.

When you can show your employees you trust them, it sends a very important message. In essence, you're telling them their work is good enough that they don't need you looking over their shoulder.

5. Encourage input from them.

Ask for employee suggestions for other ways of getting the task or project accomplished. Listen and be willing to really hear the employees' comments. Employees hate to have no input and be told exactly how to perform their jobs, leaving no creativity.

6. Let them solve their own problems.

Listen to their problems but don’t bark out the answer. Instead, ask probing questions that will lead them to determine the right answer. When they get it, compliment them and tell them they don’t need to ask you about similar situations; that you have faith in them to figure it out. Don’t abandon them, but prove that you trust their judgment.

7. Make mentorship part of the culture.

In almost any organization, there are newer employees who could benefit from being paired with an old hand. Whether you establish a formal mentorship program or a more casual buddy system, there's no better way to transmit helpful information and give newbies a support system right from the start.

8. Be honest and transparent.

Honesty should be a given, but it's easier at some times than at others. Many people believe you shouldn't talk about the bad news, but those conversations--difficult as they may be--prove you care enough to deliver even hard truths. Truthful and transparent feedback will gain you respect and garner the best possible results.

9. Challenge them

Employees may become bored and dissatisfied if they are performing the same tasks and projects each day. Give your staff new challenges that are within their abilities. Provide constructive feedback as they work on new projects. Learning and mastering new challenges will give your staff a sense of accomplishment. It shows that you have confidence in their skills and value them as part of the organization.

10. Give them credit

Praise employees for their good work in front of their peers. You don’t have to spend a dime to reward hardworking employees for their actions and achievements. Your gesture lets employees know their unique contributions and positive attitudes make a difference for your company and the team.

If you're serious about creating a workforce that's engaged and productive, you must devote time and attention to creating environments in which the people on your teams can flourish. And when they flourish, you must take measures to ensure they are protected and well cared for, because that's what people do with their most celebrated and valuable assets.

Gemba Walks: A Tool for Leaders To Check

It has been said that the farther removed a leader becomes from the place where the work gets done, the less effective he/she will be in supporting those who do the work. And while that statement may be largely accurate, it’s also true that all operational leaders, but particularly department leaders and above, are pulled in many different directions during a given day, week, or month and may not feel that they have time to spend out in the operation where the products are made or the services rendered.

Additionally, some leaders, particularly those that didn’t start out working in operational roles, may not know how to productively spend time in the operation. Where should they go? What should they observe? Who should they talk to?

A “Gemba” Walk is a structured approach to getting leaders out of their offices and into the places where the critical work of the healthcare facility takes place to engage with the operation in a meaningful way and to look for signs of waste and inefficiency or other opportunities to improve. “Gemba” is a Japanese term that means “the real place”, “the actual place”, or “the place where value is created.”

Perhaps the best way to understand Gemba walks is to clarify what they are not. A Gemba walk is not a random, unplanned visit to “check up” on the workforce or catch employees being unproductive. It is also not the equivalent of a department meeting whereby leadership pull staff together to deliver a series of messages. Instead, a Gemba walk is a pre-planned and structured visit to a particular area or areas to better understand some aspect of the operation, dialogue with staff, and/or learn something that the leader can take back to his/her job. Along the way, the leader should be role modeling the behaviors that he/she expects from the broader workforce by identifying potential patient or employee safety hazards and other signs of waste or inefficiency to be addressed (e.g., disorganized work area, inefficient business processes, etc.).

The most effective Gemba walks are planned in advance and entered into with a particular objective in mind (e.g., teach something, learn something, role model a behavior, build a relationship, etc.). Contrary to popular opinion, the workforce will come to appreciate the presence of leadership in their place of work because it sends the signal that leaders want to understand the challenges they face every day and opens up opportunities for a constructive dialogue.

Nothing sustains itself, certainly not Lean manufacturing or Lean management. So, establish and stick to a routine including regular visits to the Gemba, check the status of visual controls, follow-up on daily accountability assignments, and ask the three simple questions everywhere. Gemba walks are really the check in our PDCA methodology of continuous improvement.

Lean Quote: Zeal Will Do More Than Knowledge

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.

"Zeal will do more than knowledge." — William Hazlitt

Without a sense of zeal, life sometimes can become pretty boring. Everything then seems to be done with a big sigh and a have-to. Going through the motions without a genuine want-to, turns everything into a must-do.

Nothing can take the place of being zealous or passionate. Opportunity can’t. Opportunity may open the door, but without zeal you won’t make the most of it. A lack of zeal, may cause you to miss a door meant to lead you toward your destiny.

Knowledge can’t replace zeal. Knowledge can be taught, and experience is earned in time, but it’s very hard to make someone passionate about something. And if someone is passionate about something, they’re more willing to take the extra steps and make the sacrifices to gain the necessary knowledge and collect the valuable experience.

Having a passion promotes a sense of creativity. All of the sudden, you'll find yourself connecting two aspects of your life together that you never thought could coexist. You may be inspired to start a blog to share your ideas with the world, or you may be more compelled to show your talents in a more hands-on environment.

Without passion, there isn't much motivation to work. Yes, there are material motivations such as a large bank account, the biggest house or a new car. When those things are put into perspective, though, one learns that these wants will only satisfy you for a certain amount of time before you want something else. Following your dreams suppresses all of these desires because you're striving for knowledge rather than money. Knowledge is a motivation in itself because it is infinite. You could never have too much, but you'll never have it all.

Finally, having good connections isn’t a substitute for personal zeal. You will never be successful without others, but merely surrounding yourself with the right people doesn’t guarantee success either. A team with no heart, passion, and vision won’t succeed.

7 Key Factors of Successful Teams

We all know that teams have the potential to achieve great things for organizations. At the same time, this is by no means guaranteed. So what are the seven key factors in any successful team?

Factor 1: Selflessness

This is my No. 1 factor for a successful team. It should never be “me, me, me” or “I, I, I” but instead always be “we” or “us.” Every employee should be asking, “What can I bring to my team?” as opposed to “What can the team bring me?”

If we’re focused on individual goals all the time, we're not going to achieve anything as a whole. Instead, focus on team-oriented goals, even if one of those goals is that we all get better individually.

Factor 2: Communication

Effective communication is vital to team success. They communicate openly with each other, sharing their thoughts, opinions and ideas with members of their team; as well as taking into consideration what others have to say. Communication is essential for keeping track of progress and working together efficiently on tasks. Poor communication can lead to crossed wires, that can mean work is left incomplete/incorrect or conflicts can arise.

Factor 3: High Levels of Trust

A team without trust will never achieve anything. At the same time, it is important to recognize that having high levels of trust does not happen overnight. In my experience, one of the easiest ways of creating trust is to let each other know that you can be counted on by delivering consistently on what you have agreed to do.

Factor 4: Mutual Accountability

When individuals on teams need to account to each other for what they have done to progress what they agreed to do, things happen much quicker. In truth, most of us, once we have committed to something, are more likely to do it if we know we are going to have to report back to the team.

Factor 5: Results Focus

At the end of the day, a team exists to deliver results and it is key to keep the focus of the team on the end result. It is easy, especially when the going gets tough, to lose sight of the results and get lost in activities that distract.

Factor 6: Optimism

When a team is faced with a challenge, it is easy to fall into a downward spiral. Successful teams on the other hand will generally be optimistic and recognize that, even if the way forward is not immediately obvious, there is a way forward at the end of the day.

Factor 7: Proactive

Successful teams make things happen and don’t sit back waiting for others to do something before they get started. They grab the bull by the horns and start to make things happen.

The Bottom Line: While all of the above factors really matter, I have also noticed that you need to underpin them with appropriate rewards and a culture that recognizes and values team working.

Teams have basic needs that must be acknowledged and fulfilled if you expect your teams to experience their greatest success. No team will succeed if these basics do not exist.

10 Tips to a Better Value Stream Map

Business is growing more competitive every day. In order to keep up with customer demand and expectations, companies are having to work faster and be more efficient than ever before. A VSM activity can help to identify and better coordinate operational teams and process segments that are integral to the overall process.

To understand value stream mapping, we need to first understand what a “value stream” is. Simply put, a value stream is a series of steps that occur to provide the product or service that their customers want or need. In order to provide the product or service that the customers desire, every company has a set of steps that are required. Value stream mapping enables us to better understand what these steps are, where the value is added, where it’s not, and more importantly, how to improve upon the collective process. Value stream mapping (VSM) provides us with a structured visualization of the key steps and corresponding data needed to understand and intelligently make improvements that optimize the entire process, not just one section at the expense of another.

There are some tips to creating a VSM for your organization.

       1. Define a value stream.
Include all the activities required to bring a product from “raw materials” into the customer’s hands or provide service to a target audience.

2. Base the value stream map process on customer requirements.
You must understand what the customer values, and use that as your starting point. If you don’t, you risk, in the words of my favorite band The Fall, paying “the highest attention to the wrong detail.”

3. Capture the process as it operates now, not how it’s supposed to operate.
A process that worked well when you had 20 employees may not perform as efficiently now that the business is a 200-person company. Be sure you map the process as it happens now, not the way it used to work—or how you wish it worked!

4. Assign a value stream map manager to lead the mapping effort. 
Input from team members and stakeholders is important, but appoint (or elect) one team member to draw the entire value stream map. This ensures that the manager understands the material and information flows.

5. Walk through the process to ensure that the flow of materials and information is accurate.
Make sure your map reflects the reality of the process—verifying this by following the process from start to finish can reveal crucial details you might have missed.

6. Focus on one small step at a time.
Make sure you capture each step accurately. For example, don’t trust the clock on the wall to measure cycle times—use a stopwatch.

7. Identify critical paths and bottlenecks.
Your map may reveal a number of potential areas for improvement. Which ones will make the biggest difference in meeting customer requirements?

8. Create a future state map from the current state map.
Your current-state map suggests where to focus your efforts, so you can draft a map that shows how value will flow through an improved process.

9. Limit the improvement plan to achieve the future state to a one-page document, if possible.
List the actions that need to happen to improve the process. Use simple, clearly-defined steps.

10. To implement the improvement plan quickly, focus on individual areas.
Take a step-by-step approach to putting your plan in action, then update your future state map as you implement each step.

Value stream mapping provides a great way to make changes and improvements to the process without doing so at the expense of other processes. Creating a value stream map of the current state of your process helps you focus on areas of waste such as excess inventory, non-value-added time, and multiple operators. If we don’t understand the current process, we can’t really make intelligent decisions about how the future current state might or should look.

At the end of the day, the goal is to develop a corporate culture that provides the best possible product to meet or exceed customer needs and expectations. This is ultimately done by making continual improvements to the value stream. As our customers’ needs and expectations evolve, so also will our value streams need to change and constantly evolve.