Lean Quote: Customer Satisfaction Does Not Simply Happen; It Is An Effect

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.

"Quality is when the customer returns and the product does not." — Tim Robertson, PDGT Product Development Global Technology

Customer satisfaction is one of the most important aspects of any organization. If customers aren’t satisfied, they will take their business elsewhere and the organization won’t last.

Customer satisfaction does not simply happen; it is an effect. Quality is one important cause of the customer satisfaction effect, along with price, convenience, service, and a host of other variables. Generally businesses do not seek customer satisfaction as an end in itself. The presumption is that increased customer satisfaction will lead to higher revenues and higher profits, at least in the long term. To best serve customers, the successful quality program will apply specific principles, techniques, and tools to better understand and serve their firm’s royalty – the customer. The Customer is KING!

The responsibility of delivering quality products and services to customers lies on the shoulders of every single individual who is even remotely associated with the organization. It is not only the management but also employees irrespective of their designation, suppliers, clients, customers who need to come up with improvement ideas to make foolproof systems and processes to deliver quality products which meet and exceed the expectations of end- users.

Customer satisfaction is a very important part of quality management because it directly involves the products and services that are made available as well as what goes into the manufacturing process. That is why companies strive to offer products of the highest quality and work hard to maintain that level and make improvements or change where ever necessary. 

 

5 Ways Leaders Can Instill New Habits For Employees And Themselves

When it comes to habits David Mann tells the story of Smokey the Bear's campfire rules. Douse the fire with water, stir the coals and turn them over, then douse again. Not following the rules of Smokey the Bear you risk the fire restarting itself from the live embers that remain. Cultural habits are very much the same way.

Habits define how organizations behave, and therefore changing organizational habits often requires changing the organization’s culture. To increase your chances of success, start by changing your organization’s keystone habits, or the habits that by definition change other habits.

As a leader try to identify the right moment for the organization to introduce change and think about crises as opportunities to break old habits and introduce new ones. In the mist of chaos, people become both increasingly flexible and willing to rethink “the way things get done around here.”

Leaders of business have a powerful influence on the development of the company's culture. You might not be very aware of your culture, or you may just think of it as "the way we do things around here." But your company does have a culture, and it probably reflects your leader’s values for good or bad: People will have adopted the manager’s behaviors and attitudes toward their work.

The culture of a company is the result of the behavior of its leaders. If you change their attitudes, their values, their beliefs, their behaviors, you will change your culture. If you don’t, you will fail. Here are 5 ways leaders can make forming new habits easier for employees and themselves:

1. Start Simple

Don’t try to completely change everything in one day. It is easy to get over-motivated and take on too much. For example, If you wanted to study two hours a day, first make the habit to go for thirty minutes and build on that.

2. Commit to Thirty Days

Three to four weeks is all the time you need to make a habit automatic. If you can make it through the initial conditioning phase, it becomes much easier to sustain. A month is a good block of time to commit to a change since it easily fits in your calendar.

3. Make it Daily

Consistency is critical if you want to make a habit stick. If you want to start exercising, go to the gym every day for your first thirty days. Going a couple times a week will make it harder to form the habit. Activities you do once every few days are trickier to lock in as habits.

4. Run it as an Experiment

Withhold judgment until after a month has past and use it as an experiment in behavior. Experiments can’t fail, they just have different results so it will give you a different perspective on changing your habit.

5. Be Imperfect

Don’t expect all your attempts to change habits to be successful immediately. It took me four independent tries before I started exercising regularly. Now I love it. Try your best, but expect a few bumps along the way.

The culture of an organization is learnt over time. It can be taught to new employees through formal training programs but is more generally absorbed through stories, myths, rituals, and shared behaviors within teams. Organizational culture will impact positively or negatively on everything you try to do whether you want it to or not.

Leaders need to be mindful of their role in creating culture change.

Sustaining with Layered Audits

One of the most common questions I hear with 5S (and Lean for that matter) is how do you sustain.   Sustaining 5S can be very difficult without the use of 5S standard. A layered audit program is essential to ensure that your company’s 5S efforts continue.

Layered Audits are tied directly into the fifth S – Sustain – and they are the means used in Lean Improvement Systems to avoid “backsliding” into old habits, creating sustainable culture change.

Originating in the automotive industry, the concepts behind the Layered Process Audit are not new.  They find their origin in the well-known Plan-Do-Check-Act continuous improvement cycle.

Layered Process Audits require that multiple operational levels within an organization review the same key operational controls to ensure sustainability.  Simply stated, they are an ongoing chain of simple verification checks, which through observation, evaluation and conversations on the line; assure that the process is being properly performed.

The key is everyone is an “auditor”.   To paraphrase E. Edwards Deming, no one goes to work with the intention of doing a bad job.  Therefore, everyone wants to know that he or she is doing a good job. If people need to know that they are doing a good job, they need to have metrics regarding their job.  This starts with the operator personally checking their process for compliance.  Then the first line supervisor checks key processes, where feedback is immediate as are any agreed-upon corrective actions. The next level supervisor would then make the same checks, and so forth, up the chain of command in the organization.

The essential part of the Layered Audit is the creation of a standard checklist   You must identify and ask the right questions on the checklist.  This is where Standard work at all levels of the organization is critical.  Layered Audits is a formalization of “management by walking the Gemba”.

Layered Process Audits can be compared to a preflight checklist. Is my operation ready for take-off?  Am I confident that everything is in place to build and ship conforming product to my customer?  When the flight, or day, goes smoothly, management and operators can use the time saved to work on improvements.

The Layered Audit approach is especially effective in sustaining process improvements and institutionalizing key process steps because all levels of the organization participate.  Managers often can learn much about the manufacturing processes from operators, and operators can learn much about what is important to customers from managers.

Lean Quote: Assess the 'Do-ability' of Ideas

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.

"The new idea either finds a champion or dies. " — Edward Schon

There are a number of decision-making tools for evaluating your ideas. One I prefer is the effort-impact grid for looking at the cost and benefit. Each idea is placed in one of the quadrants shown below, based on group assessment of the impact and effort required to implement the idea.

• Ideas placed in quadrant 1 are easy and cheap but produce minimal benefit. They are appropriate when they can be included in annual plans or address existing problems.

• Ideas placed in quadrant 2 are easy and cheap and produce significant benefit. They are easy to implement quickly.

• Ideas placed in quadrant 3 are difficult and expensive and produce minimal benefit. Ideas from this quadrant should generally be discarded.

• Ideas placed in quadrant 4 are difficult and expensive but will result in significant benefit. If these ideas are considered, appropriate time and resources should be made available for their exploration.

The steps in constructing an impact effort matrix are:

1. Retrieve suggested solutions from previous discussions.
2. Construct an empty diagram with effort required to implement the solution on the horizontal axis and impact of the solution on the vertical axis, and divide it into four quadrants.
3. Assess effort and impact for each solution. Place the solutions in the diagram according to these assessments. Use a symbol, color, or label to identify each possible solution.
4. Solutions falling into the upper left-hand quadrant will yield the best return on investments and should be considered first.

The Impact-Effort Matrix helps assess the 'do-ability' of a proposed change effort.

 

Daily Lean Tips Edition #75 (1126-1140)

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.

Click this link for A Lean Journey's Facebook Page Notes Feed.

Here is the next addition of tips from the Facebook page:

Lean Tip #1126 – Redefine Failure To Find a Solution.

This is important both to handle fear of failure and to get you started trying different solutions without too much hesitation. The definition of failure we are brought up with in society might not be the best and most useful to have. If you look at the most successful people you quickly notice that they have a different response to failure than the more common one. They don´t take failure or rejection that seriously. They know it´s not the end of the world if they fail. Instead they look at each failure and see the good part about: what they can learn from it and improve next time. They have an abundance-mentality. They learn from failure and then they try again. Redefine failure as feedback and as a natural part of a successful life.

Lean Tip #1127 - Keep Your Motivation Up.

It´s easy to be discouraged, especially if you fear failure and your first and second solution to a problem didn´t work. You might feel like just giving up. Then it´s time to give yourself a boost of motivation. Changing your mental state to a brighter, more positive and more motivated one can make all the difference in the world. It will keep you going. Even though you might just a few minutes earlier felt like all hope was gone.

Lean Tip #1128 - Use Parkinson’s Law When Solving Problems.

This law says that a task will expand in time and seeming complexity depending on the time you set aside for it. For instance, if you say to yourself that you´ll come up with a solution within a week then the problem will seem to grow more difficult and you´ll spend more and more time trying to come up with a solution. Combine this law with the 80/20 rule to find solutions quickly. Focus your time on finding solutions. Then just give yourself an hour (instead of the whole day) or the day (instead of the whole week) to solve the problem. This will force your mind to focus on solutions and action.

Lean Tip #1129 - Create Fewer Problems.

A lot of our problems are created by ourselves. You save yourself a lot of trouble by being proactive, thinking before you speak and trying to avoid creating or complicating problems more than necessary.

Lean Tip #1130 - Find the Lesson or Opportunity Within the Problem.

There is almost always a good side of a problem. Perhaps it alerts us to a great way to improve our business. Or teaches us how our lives perhaps aren’t as bad as we thought. Finding this more positive part of the problem reduces its negative emotional impact and you may even start to see the situation as a great opportunity for you. When you are faced with a problem ask yourself: How can I use this? What is the good thing about this? What can I learn from this? What hidden opportunity can I find within this problem?

Lean Tip #1131 - Management Needs to Listen and React to Employee Feedback

When it comes to leadership skills, employees need to know they’re being heard and respected. Management should work hard to solicit employee feedback and work on the common problems and issues which arise. Employees who see their issues addressed will feel empowered to continue making suggestions. Soon these employees will become leaders in the workplace because they know the organization values their contributions.

Lean Tip #1132 - Empower Employees to Think Differently

While it’s important to set clear goals and responsibilities, the key to having a successful business and engaged workforce is to empower all your employees to make decisions on their own. Make sure employees are comfortable and confident asking questions, bringing forward new ideas and even taking a different approach that may fail. Out of that failure will come knowledge and longer-term success.

Lean Tip #1133 – Empower Employees With Clarity and Trust

If management truly wants to empower employees to be leaders, they have to deploy two (often scarce) resources: clarity and trust. Clarity ensures that the employee’s well-intentioned efforts are aligned with management’s goals. Trust is the fuel on which new leaders run. Clarity without trust produces inaction. Trust without clarity produces wasted effort.

Lean Tip #1134 - Give Employees the Authority to Fail

If an employee is not worried that failure will lead to firing, they will take risks. Risk takers, by definition, gain followers — when successful — and having followers is the definition of a leader.

Lean Tip #1135 - Create Opportunities for Employees to Shine

While every company is pleased to have natural-born leaders, others may need a bit more prodding. Empower those employees by providing them with a bit more freedom to pursue to their passions. Then give them the opportunity to demonstrate their work to other employees.

Lean Tip #1136 - Implement Structure and Processes

When the team achieves success in a specific area, attempt to implement a structure or process that repeats that success over and over. Creating and adhering to checklists or standard operating procedures (SOPs) will increase the efficiency and success of the team.

Lean Tip #1137 - Recognize and Acknowledge Team Member’s Efforts and Successes

Acknowledge employees when they achieve a success or positively impact the team in an extraordinary way. Recognizing other’s effort gives team members a sense of accomplishment and inspires other employees to go above and beyond their assigned responsibilities. It can be as simple publicly highlighting their accomplishment in a team meeting, presenting a certificate, or offering vacation time. Recognizing employee’s efforts should make the team feel valued and inspire them to work even harder.

Lean Tip #1138 - Promote Open Communication

Gone are the days of the top-down communication structure within companies. The one-way communication, from management down to employees, prevents an opportunity to hear valuable feedback from people who are actually on the front lines. Regularly engage in open dialogue with your team, so they can feel comfortable sharing their ideas, feelings, observations or concerns. This will allow employees to have a greater sense of investment in and commitment to the company.

Lean Tip #1139 - Encourage Safe Failure

It is natural to have a fear of failure. By human nature, most people prefer to avoid risks, especially in the workplace. However, a fear to fail in the office can stunt employees’ growth and inhibit the company from exploring creative, new ideas and strategies. Create opportunities where employees can experiment with new ideas that doesn’t expose the company to any risk, but allows them to learn from their failures and success. This will allow the team to feel comfortable thinking outside of the box.

Lean Tip #1140 – Promote Open Communication

Gone are the days of the top-down communication structure within companies. The one-way communication, from management down to employees, prevents an opportunity to hear valuable feedback from people who are actually on the front lines. Regularly engage in open dialogue with your team, so they can feel comfortable sharing their ideas, feelings, observations or concerns. This will allow employees to have a greater sense of investment in and commitment to the company.

“Successful Lean Teams” in Boston

Two of my favorite Lean thinkers and practitioners are coming to my area to do a Lean workshop and I wanted to share this with you. Both have been contributors and subject of many posts on this blog. If you are available this is a wonderful opportunity to meet them and learn a little from their experience. 

Jim Benson and Mark Graban are doing a full-day workshop on Lean for knowledge work settings. It’s going to be held in Boston on March 31 (hopefully, the snow will be gone by then.)

In the morning, Jim will enthrall you with an interactive workshop on Personal Kanban – he wrote the Shingo Research Award-winning book on this subject. He weaves together some key lessons from W. Edwards Deming on systems thinking, as well.

In the afternoon, Mark will be teaching about Healthcare Kaizen, but it’s really a methodology that can apply in various settings and he’ll be sharing non-healthcare examples of staff-driven continuous improvement. They’ll do a fun simulation and exercise that allows us to practice the basics of Kaizen.

You can save 10% by using code “LEANBLOG” at checkout. Read more and register here.

Lean Quote: Leadership Starts With A Positive Attitude

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.

"Great leadership usually starts with a willing heart, a positive attitude, and a desire to make a difference. " — Mac Anderson

We are often not in control of the issues we face at work or home. Problems just present themselves. And chances are the issues you're facing aren't so cut and dry. The solution to the problem might just be your attitude. 

You can find at least two ways to look at virtually everything. A pessimist looks for difficulty in the opportunity, whereas an optimist looks for opportunity in the difficulty. Unfortunately, many people look only at the problem and not at the opportunity that lies within the problem.

Having the right attitude can make the difference between success and failure. A positive attitude can motivate other people to change their negative thinking and come over to your side. Everything is possible with right attitude behind you to push you forward. And since you do have a choice, most of the time you'll be better off if you choose to react in a positive rather than a negative way.

The attitude of the leader has a huge impact on the culture, environment, and mood of the department or organization. The leader’s attitude tends to spread and affect others dramatically. A good leader has the attitude of serving his employees at all times, often at the expense of his own morale or personal needs. A good leader truly cares about the morale of the team, pushes and motivates his team with respect, a relentlessly positive attitude and with a genuine heart.