Lean Tip
#3076 – Identify Bottlenecks, Roadblocks, and Issues.
To
produce meaningful results, you need to identify what’s holding your process
back. What’s going well or not? How can you improve it? Maybe one person’s task
is overly time-consuming or a step is unclear, constantly prompting questions.
Maybe the process is too dependent on other processes or people.
When
identifying roadblocks, it helps to have data associated with the process for
analysis. Tracking data points like time, output, and ROI will help you figure
out if the improvements you make are effective. The amount of data you need
depends; some processes (like our RFP process) might only require a month or so
of data, but embarking on an overhaul of a citywide passport request process,
for instance, would benefit from a year’s worth of data.
Lean Tip
#3077 – Find Ways to Resolve the Issues.
Technology—in
particular, automation tools—can often help solve efficiency problems.
Automation may already be embedded in the tools you use regularly, you just
might not be taking advantage of it. So look closely at the tools you’re using
and see how you can use them better; or, if the situation warrants it, consider
making a bigger investment into a software tool that includes automation and
would be helpful in eliminating unnecessary manual work for your team.
Lean Tip
#3078 – Share & Continue to Refine Your Process.
When your
process is formalized, document and share it with the team. But just because
you’ve reached the end of these process improvement steps doesn’t mean you
should stop looking for ways to improve further! Monitor its ongoing
performance and continue to refine as you hear more feedback from team members.
Over time, there may also be changes surrounding the process that might affect
the overall flow, and require additional fine-tuning.
Lean Tip
#3079 – Find the Pain Points in the Process
To
discover where improvement is needed, look for signs where the current process
is failing. Identify the location of bottlenecks and where multiple steps are
required to complete just a portion of a procedure. A clear sign of a process
pain point is at the stage where customers or employees are becoming frustrated
with the workflow. Find the areas where work needs to be regularly redone, or
it’s being repeated by different people. This duplication of effort is a waste
of time and resources, so you’ll want to find a way to eliminate it.
Lean Tip
#3080 – Obtain Stakeholder Buy-in Buy Explaining the Rationale for Change
People are
naturally resistant to change, even if it’s for the better. That’s why you must
explain the reasons behind the process improvements to obtain buy-in. Moreover,
by detailing how the changes will deliver value, such as a better customer
experience, stakeholders become motivated to help you.
Lean Tip
#3081 – Document Your Current Processes
A wise
mentor of mine once said, “You can’t automate what you haven’t defined.” More
broadly we can apply that same piece of wisdom to process improvement. When we
look at our breadth of offerings and our own processes, we may know in our
heads what we mean, and what the ideal process is, but if we don’t write down
or document our as-is processes, we lose our ability to experiment in changing
them.
By
defining our current processes, we can then start discussions from an informed
place. Documentation comes in all shapes and sizes. You can make process maps,
knowledge articles, scripts, storyboards, customer journey maps, a service
catalog and service definitions, or any combination of these.
Lean Tip
#3082 – Troubleshoot in Real Time
One of
the most useful concepts that continuous improvement borrows from Kaizen is the
encouragement to confront problems head-on in an effort to solve it faster. If
an issue becomes apparent fix it immediately instead of searching for the
“perfect” solution.
Waiting
will inevitably cost time and valuable resources. Instead, on-the-spot
troubleshooting allows production to continue while the new, improvised
solution can be analyzed using continuous improvement techniques. You might
find that what was first a temporary fix could lead to permanent positive
changes.
Lean Tip
#3083 – Encourage Leadership to be Open Minded
Continuous
improvement works especially well when individuals are encouraged by senior
leaders. Prepare your leadership team by offering special training to encourage
new ideas and removing any blockers that may be in a team member's path as they
are trying to improve a workflow.
One of
the hardest parts of using the continuous improvement model is the desire to
strive toward perfection. This is an impossible feat, and the philosophy behind
kaizen is to make small changes to be better than you were the day before.
Focusing on perfection can lead your team to make changes that aren’t actually
necessary.
Lean Tip
#3084 – Foster Discovery and Curiosity
Continuous
improvement empowers every team member to take ownership of their processes.
When your company culture encourages team members to improve business processes
in a way that works best for them, it encourages more discovery and curiosity
within the entire company. This enables individuals to experiment without the
fear of breaking processes or being judged for failure. If something doesn't
work, things can just revert back to what they were previously.
Lean Tip
#3085 – Keep on Keepin’ On
The part
of continual process improvement that can feel overwhelming is the continuous
aspect. With continuous improvement there is no perfection, and there is no
end, but one of the first rules of project management is that every good
project should have a start and end date. Where process improvement differs is
that there is likely to always be more we can do, and things we can change.
Don’t get defeated by this, but see it as a chance to break up the monotony,
and keep innovating.
One thing
that makes this easier is that there will always be new technology, solutions,
software, or cultural changes that enable us to rethink how we do things. This
can keep things exciting. The biggest difference with process improvement from
your typical project is that there will always be something new for us to
consider. If we ignore this, we run the risk of stagnating or falling behind.
Lean Tip
#3086 - Start Small. If Everything is a
Priority, Nothing is a Priority
As you
delve into a problem, there are many paths for improvement that will open up to
explore. It’s very easy to get
distracted from what you set out to accomplish when you start to see all of the
potential opportunities for intervention and improvement. It’s imperative to
keep your goal front and center and continue to ground yourself in what you are
trying to accomplish.
To
achieve sustainable, meaningful improvements, rigor (being thorough and
accurate) to the process must be maintained. What seems at the surface level to
be an “easy fix” requires a thoughtful establishment of the new way of doing
things for improvement to truly take hold.
Lean Tip
#3087 – Acknowledge Past Achievements
In most
businesses, improvement initiatives are not really brand new out of the box
thinking, as many people have already been exposed to and worked on improvement
concepts for a long time, and with some successes. It’ s important to
acknowledge past achievements and recognize the champions who made it happen by
assigning them significant roles for the new wave. If however, the approach has
been firefighting, you may want to build a different team and approach the
initiative more proactively. If past projects were not successful then it’s
important to show how the new initiative differs from the previous and why it
stands a better chance for success.
Lean Tip
#3088 - Involve and Work Through People
Avoid
being prescriptive with each step of your approach, rather opting to use a
facilitated approach to get support and buy in from the teams involved. Always
be open to a team using a different approach though still aligned to the
overall objectives. Forcing things down people’s throats doesn’t really work
well. Good facilitation should allow for a team to reach a pre-conceived
conclusion on their own accord. On the same vein, allow the teams to decide
what tasks and actions are to be done and offer to help rather than allocate
tasks directly to the different people.
Lean Tip
#3089 - What Gets Measured Gets Managed.
Put in
place a good monitoring system to track the number of ideas generated over
time, the level participation of people at any one time and cumulatively during
the process, the rate of implementation and the Return on Investment or
benefits. Tracking and showing a direct correlation between efforts and
benefits is the best way to sustain improvement. Use agreed targets and KPI’s
as your “dipstick” check.
Lean Tip
#3090 - Keep Everyone Informed of Progress and Results.
The
success of a good improvement program depends on good feedback and
communication surrounding progress. Reports on progress can take many forms, as
long as relevant and timely information is communicated. It’s also important to
publicly celebrate any success coming out of the program. Lastly, where new
records have been set and old improvement targets “smashed”, set new targets
and make them known.
