As 2015 comes
to an end and we look toward 2016 I wanted to revisit some tips. The Lean Tips
published daily are meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and
some knowledgeable tidbits about Lean to help you along your journey. Here are
the top 10 Lean tips from this past year:
Lean Tip #1100 - Remove Blame Culture –
Make Failure Acceptable
Innovation is
one of the key ingredients in business success and if you want to create an
innovative organization you'll need to motivate your staff to show initiative,
think creatively and even take some risks. But, they won't do this in a blame
culture environment where employees are castigated for failure and for trying
something new; they will become afraid to think creatively and won't be
motivated to innovate. Companies with a blame culture are disadvantaged in
relation to creativity, learning, innovation and productive risk-taking.
Replace a blame culture with one of learning from mistakes. Encourage workers
to own up to mistakes but with a focus on what has been learned from it. Senior
managers should lead the way by owning up to mistakes to show that it is OK to
fail.
Lean Tip #1155 – Build a Customer
Focused Team
Today’s best
leaders, managers and employees are customer-focused. They understand and
anticipate the needs of both internal and external customers. They meet and
exceed customer needs with timely, efficient and economical solutions.
Conduct
periodic meetings with internal and external customers to discuss their unique
challenges and the ways your team can be more supportive. Invite your employees
to participate in the meetings. Develop and ask a brief set of questions to
assess their satisfaction with your department’s services. Share the results
with your team and develop action plans to improve customer relationships.
Lean Tip #1205 - Develop Exceptional
People And Teams Who Follow Your Company’s Philosophy.
Exceptional
people thrive in environments that promote Continuous Improvement; however,
organizations that have a powerful culture of CI are not those that demand that
employees practice CI. Instead exceptional people are “developed” within the
“system dynamics of an organization” – in other words, they work in a place
where Continuous Improvement is second-nature.
People must
feel secure; feel as though they are part of a team; feel challenged in their
job; have some degree of autonomy and feel like they have some control over
their work.
Without a
culture of respect, where each person is valued for what they contribute to an
organization, the chances of developing exceptional people who strive to
improve what they do and how they do it every day becomes nearly impossible.
Lean Tip #1215 - Give Employee the
Chance to Fail -- and a Safe Place to Land When They Do.
Not all
employees are risk-takers. Fortunately, the willingness to take risks can be
taught -- or at least modeled.
First, stomp
out micromanagement in your organization. If your employees feel as if they
have to seek approval before making every decision, or if their day-to-day
routine is filled with monitoring and correction, they’ll never take
initiative.
A manager
shouldn’t be a babysitter. Encourage every manager to be a mentor, and give
employees opportunities to push out of their comfort zone. If employees fail,
train your managers to treat those mistakes as teachable moments. Train your
managers to help employees try again -- and to give them the tools and
motivation to do so.
Lean Tip #1221 - Develop an Environment
that will Encourage Continuous Training
Foster an
environment that will make your employees see that the future of the company
lies within continuous on job training. You should replace the idea of initial
training with ability to develop and become a better equipped employee. Coming
up with this kind of environment will empower your employees thus giving them the
self motivation that will drive them to the need of improving themselves. Your
business culture should be built around employee improvement and satisfaction.
Integrate continuous on job training in your daily routines so that it can
stick. Remember, employees that are encouraged by the fact that there is a good
environment within which they can grow have high chances of being loyal to the
company hence better productivity in the end.
Lean Tip #1242 - Encourage, Motivate,
Reward and Recognize
The employer
must ensure that on his part he always has words of encouragement for his
staff. Encouraging them helps them move forward and do even better, and makes
the worker feel happy. Innovative ways of motivating them spurs them even more.
For example, holidays or conferences paid for by the company have been found to
motivate employees immensely.
- Rewarding
the hard work put in by employees makes them continue to work in the same
fashion, and if the employee feels that his work is not appreciated in
words or in material terms, he may gradually stop doing so, since he may
feel that others working less are given the same too, so he need not work
more.
- Rewards,
and other ways of keeping employees happy makes them feel that their
effort is being recognized and that they are needed by the company.
- Without
these, they may soon start looking for greener pastures and new jobs.
Lean Tip #1263 – Stay Away From
Unrealistic Targets
Many
organizations set targets without any thought to current performance, process
stability or process capability. Industry benchmarks are helpful, but before
applying these benchmarks to an organization, the team should analyze current
process performance to ensure that unrealistic targets are not set. Unrealistic
targets create resistance within an organization and impact team and people
performance. In some cases, they also lead to data manipulation or incorrect
reporting.
Before setting
any targets, the metrics team should ensure that processes are stable and that
process capability can be measured in a reliable manner. Process capability
should be measured from the customer’s perspective. If teams do not consult the
customers, they may find that clients are still unhappy even when targets are
consistently met. Involving customers at each stage of target setting helps
teams set realistic and achievable targets that will meet customer’s
expectations.
Lean Tip #1306 – Learn From Your Past
Changes
Unless your
organization is brand new, it’s unlikely it has not rolled out a change (big or
small) before. You should use the
lessons learned from rolling out these changes to form and inform your new
change management approach. This is the
easiest and probably most valuable piece of information to shape your tactics
and build an even stronger approach.
Key questions
to ask about the previous change are:
what worked and what didn’t work?
Why or why not? If you can get
more details, ask for more! Find out
which communication mechanisms had the most impact, which champions were the
strongest and which resources were the most helpful.
Lean Tip #1320 - Change Requires
Constant Support and Attention.
To get better
every day takes knowledge, diligence, effort, focus and resources. It will not
work to simply give a team a book about Lean Manufacturing, turn on your heels
and walk away, ordering them to implement the process. The result will be
'short-term-improvement' and 'long-term-frustration'. Company leadership must
take an active role in steering the efforts of the team. Direction and
discipline to keep working on the Model-Line must come from the top. Otherwise
sub-optimization and shot gunning will occur. The short-term needs of the
manufacturing managers and the finance team will overshadow the long term needs
to establish something more than a brittle veneer.
Lean Tip #1322- There is No End to
Improvement
There is an old
saying that goes “Once you think you have arrived, you have already started
your descent.” One must never think they "have arrived." In the US we
say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." But the spirit of kaizen
suggests that there is always something to learn and ways to improve, and that
it is also better to prevent problems than to fix them. So, no matter how good
things may seem now, there is always room for improvement, and looking to
improve every day is what the spirit of kaizen is all about. It’s not about how
far you have come or how far you have yet to go, it is only about this moment
and being open to seeing the lessons around you, and possessing the capacity
and willingness to learn and improve. There are many small things you can do to
increase your design mindfulness and skills over time.
These 10 Lean
tips can help you with your journey in 2016. What advice would you share for
the new year?
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