As 2017
comes to an end and we look toward 2018 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 #1565
- Don’t Just Talk About it, Do it!
Once you have a
Lean strategy in place, put it into fast and thorough action. Naturally,
implementation is what ultimately yields results and improvement. The last
think you want is to devise and formulate a Lean campaign that then sits on the
shelf and collects dust. Run with your Lean plans as soon as you have
everything nailed down.
Lean Tip #1566
- Harness the PDCA Strategy
One of the key
concepts used in Kaizen is the “Plan-Do-Check-Act” strategy. This is a quality
model that can be used when implementing any type of improvement in the
facility. As you might expect, the PDCA strategy is a cycle of ongoing
improvement that should never end. The steps are as follows:
Plan – This
step is where you identify an area where improvement is possible and make an
initial strategy on what chance should be made to realize the desired
improvements.
Do – Implement
the change, but only on a small scale. This may mean having one department make
the change in some situations or for larger corporations, having one facility
make the update. During this step it is also very important to be gathering as
much data regarding the change so it can be properly evaluated.
Check – Review
the results of the change including the data that was collected. Looking to see
if they had the desired impact or not is critical to know whether you should
move forward with rolling the change out to other areas.
Act – IF the
data in the check step points to a success, it is time to push the change out
on a wider scale. Once the change has been successfully implemented you will go
back to the plan step to look for further improvement opportunities. If the
data from the check step shows that the change did not work as planned, you go
directly to the plan step to either start from scratch or attempt to make the
needed adjustments to get the desired results.
Lean Tip #1628
- One of the Best Forms of Recognition is to Provide Opportunities for a
Contributing Employee.
Opportunities
can take many forms. But, all of them are outside of the normal day-to-day
requirements of their job plan.
Employees
appreciate chances for training and cross-training. They want to participate on
a special committee where their talents are noticed. They’d like to lead a team
that is pursuing an important objective.
They are happy
to attend professional association meetings and proud to represent your organization
at civic and philanthropic events. They’d appreciate the green light relative
to implementing an idea they have for increasing morale in your workplace.
They are eager
to stop doing portions of their job that have become rote in favor of new goals
and assignments that stretch their skills and build on their abilities.
Lean Tip #1640
- Build Trust Through Open Communication & Clarity
One of the most
important components necessary to nurture and grow workforce alignment is for
the leader and management to have a strong relationship with their word.
Trusting senior leaders and management is a critical driver of employee
engagement. Integrity and open communication
is one of the most crucial behaviors of highly effective leaders. People do not
trust a leader of an organization who does not follow through on promises or
has a reputation as someone who re-negotiates agreements after the fact. Creating boundaries and agreements as well as
honoring those agreements and boundaries is where the rubber meets the road
with honoring one’s word.
Trust is not
about being perfect and certainly not about keeping things static and steady.
It is about clearly communicating when and why things need to change, and
giving people advance notice of those changes and how they can best adapt.
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 #1692
- By Failing to Plan, You are Planning to Fail
Good planning
mitigates risks and promotes learning early. While planning, teams consider,
talk through, and eliminate ‘flow’ blockages before they occur. The ROI on
planning is huge. A good plan has enough detail for it to be predictive of how
much work is really going to be involved, and therefore when you will be done.
Records of past plans can also help, as an input into how much work will really
be involved in the various tasks, and how much unpredicted work there typically
is in a project.
Lean Tip #1693
- Figure Out How the Work Gets Done.
We have lots of
assumptions about how work gets done that don’t mirror exactly what happens.
After all, during the day-to-day grind, we don’t think about how we do the
work, we often just do it. Ask an outside observer to record the steps of the
process in a way that he/she could repeat it themselves if they had to, without
assistance.
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 #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 #1718
- Effectively Engage Employees
Listen, listen,
listen. If there is another piece advice that a company should take, it’s to
receive and respond to the feedback that is provided by the employees. They are
the ones making sure that all the clients are happy and that all the work gets
done, so keeping them in the loop is vital.
Understanding
that no two employees are the same is another important tactic to use when
trying to understand the employee’s concern. Being able to realize that there
are going to be many different reasons for opposition depending on the person
is pertinent, because then managers can tailor ways to work out these problems.
Lean Tip #1779
– Keep Up the Positive Attitude.
It takes a
strong source of positivity to influence the attitude of the entire team. Good
team leaders always keep a positive attitude. Always. They need to maintain the
positive attitude to motivate the rest of the team to stay confident. Do your
work by anticipating problems and planning ahead, instead of discovering
problems only when they come and having to respond to them. Keep your team well
informed of such potential situations, so they can be well prepared. This can
help to keep problems small, so teams can continuously stay focused on working
on the main project without getting too flustered along the way.
These 10
Lean tips can help you with your journey in 2018. What advice would you share
for the New Year?
