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Lean
Tip #1666 – Overcome Resistance By Addressing Personal Concerns First
Most
organizations justify the need for change by telling their employees—the
ultimate users of the change—all of the wonderful things the change will mean
for the organization. This is a poor approach to getting audience buy‐in.
When faced with a change, people react first with their own concerns: “What’s
in it for me?” “Does this mean I’ll have a different schedule?” “Will this
break up our department?” So, first things first. As a change agent, you should
deal with the users’ personal concerns first and focus later (if at all) on the
organizational benefits.
Lean
Tip #1667 – Improve Communication and Engagement to Prevent Resistance to
Change
Communication
solves all ills. But a lack of it creates more of them. This is another crucial
reason why employees oppose change. How the change process itself is
communicated to the employees is very important because it determines how they
react. If the process of what needs to be changed, how it needs to be changed
and what success would look like cannot be communicated, then resistance should
be expected. Employees need to understand why there is a need for change,
because if they are just thrown the notion that what they have been used to for
a long time is going to be completely renovated, with that will come much
backlash.
Lean
Tip #1668 – Enable Trust to Overcome Resistance to Change
Trust
is a vital tool to have when running a successful business. In organizations
where there is a lot of trust in management, there is lower resistance to
change. Mutual mistrust between management and employees will lead to the
company going into a downward spiral, so trust is a must.
Lean
Tip #1669 - Implement Change in Several Stages
Change
doesn’t happen all at once. Companies should first prepare for the change, then
take action on the change and make a plan for managing the change, and third,
support the change and assure that all is going as planned.
Lean
Tip #1670 - Do Change Right the First Time
Failed
attempts to change aspects of your business process will have a negative effect
on how employees view future initiatives. If you’re going to make a change,
make sure you’re doing everything in your power to ensure it’s successful and
set realistic timelines. Many companies fail to successfully implement change
because they overload employees and expect near-immediate gratification. The reality
of change management boils down to one fact: It takes time.
Break
the initiative down into stages and guide employees through the process to
ensure, at each mile marker, adaptations are unfolding correctly to support the
next stage of change.
Lean
Tip #1671 - Establish an Enduring Culture
Adaptability
and an action oriented leadership team are inherent components of a continuous
improvement culture. Resistance to change exists in all organizations to a
degree and it must be recognized for what it is, an impediment to improvement.
Lean
Tip #1672 - Facilitate Process-Centric Thinking
Process-centric
thinking does not have to be overly complex. Sometimes, all it takes is a
thoughtful examination to uncover significant areas for improvement. Rather
than tolerating mistakes and repeat errors, facilitate process-centric thinking
to continually improve, correct, and overcome execution difficulties.
Lean
Tip #1673 - Ensure a Penalty-free Exchange of Ideas
Ensuring
a penalty-free exchange of ideas is beneficial to both the giver and the
receiver of new ideas and approaches and will ensure a safe two way exchange of
thoughts and ideas.
Lean
Tip #1674 – Measure Your Performance
It
is not possible to improve what is not measured. Determine in advance the
approach and techniques to be used in measurements. Scorecards can be useful to
monitor the key performance indicators of processes that support capability and
performance.
Lean
Tip #1675 - Establish Core Values
Establish
the core values that comprise the continuous improvement culture such as a
focus on supporting the customer, teamwork throughout the extended enterprise,
receptivity to evolving continuous improvement concepts and tools. These core
values will create a sense of belonging and a common vision for all involved.
Lean
Tip #1676 - Don’t Measure Everything that can be Measured
Don’t
measure everything that can be measured and don’t blindly trust an analytics
tool to collect the right data. Instead, use the business goals to choose a
small amount of metrics that truly help you understand how your product
performs. Otherwise you take the risk of wasting time and effort analyzing data
that creates little or no insights. In the worst case, you action irrelevant
data and make the wrong decisions.
Lean
Tip #1677 - Employ Lagging and Leading Indicators
Lagging
indicators, such as revenue, profit, and cost, are backward-focused and tell
you about the outcome of past actions. Leading indicators help you understand
how likely it is that your product will meet a goal in the future. Take product
quality as an example. If the code is becoming increasingly complex, then
adding new features will become more expensive and require more time. Meeting
profit targets and delivery dates will therefore become harder. Using backward
and forward-focused indicators allows you to tell you if you have met the
business goals and helps you anticipate if the product is likely to meet the
goals in the future.
Lean
Tip #1678 - Make Only a Few Measures the Priority at any One Time.
Usually
you’re measuring a goal or result because you’re NOT currently achieving it to
the level you really want or need. And that means that your business or
organization doesn’t yet have the innate capability to do it well. When you
can’t yet do something well, trying to focus on dozens of things is like trying
to learn to swim in a giant washing machine.
The
more priorities you have, the fewer of them (if any) you will do justice. Each
month or quarter, choose just your 3 to 5 highest performance priorities and
give your attention to them first.
Lean
Tip #1679 – KPI’s Start at the Top, But Cannot be Imposed
KPI’s
should reflect the larger picture of what the business is trying to accomplish,
and therefore should be defined top-down. But if the KPI has to be actionable,
it has to be measured bottom-up. For a Performance management program to be
successful and effective, it undoubtedly needs senior leadership commitment,
but it also needs to trickle down through the layers through a focused organizational
change management and communication exercise. People should take ownership for
the KPI’s, and it will only happen if they also feel that they are part of the
KPI creation process. Make it a collaborative exercise. It doesn’t end there.
Nothing speaks louder than results. If your performance measurement program
starts yielding favorable results (as it should), make sure everybody knows
about it; the buy-in will happen automatically.
Lean
Tip #1680 - If you Can’t measure, You Can’t Fix
Performance
management measures are fairly useless if you have no way to measure and report
them. It is also important to determine the correct frequency for reporting. A
KPI has to be an invaluable aid in timely decision making. If you are not
monitoring it frequently enough, you are not acting soon enough. While I am a
great fan of Microsoft Excel, it is not a measurement tool. The process of
report preparation in Excel is highly manual, so it can’t be frequent enough,
and it is also prone to errors. A good measurement and reporting tool is
invaluable in your performance management efforts. With the advent of cloud
computing, technology has become ubiquitous. High quality tools are now
available at a fraction of the cost. Affordable reporting and BI tools are
accessible to businesses of all sizes. Choose a tool that can be easily
configured to meet your local requirements.
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