Just Like New Year's Resolutions Lean/Change Efforts Can Be Hard

We Are Looking For Companies That Have Had a Slow/Failed Attempt at Lean for a Study

Change efforts typically succeed 25-30% of the time the first time you try.  Here are the reasons why they fail:

• Not Strategic
• Attitude vs Behavior Focused
• Agreement vs Alignment Focused
• Procedures vs Outcomes Focused
• The Change is Experienced as Disruption
• Enforce Compliance Over Commitment

Typical results:

• A Few Try to Convince Many That Change is Needed
• Partial Responsibility/Ownership Mindset
• Change is Perceived as a Disruption of "Real Work"
• Pace of Change is too Slow
• Breakdown at Implementation

What's Missing:

• Attention to Stability-in-Change
• Creating Positive Emotional Attraction at the Outset Making Change internally Driven vs. Perception of Being Forced To Change
• Finding a Compelling Positive Future Image - Fosters Internal Drive vs. Perception of Being Forced to Change
• Emphasizing Co-learning vs. Participation for the Sake of Making People Feel They Have a Voice

If you are interested in learning more about a new program we have to facilitate everything that is missing please reply to this email or go to the Contact Page.

The services will be part of a study and the first three qualifing companies will have little  to no out of pocket expenses for services.

Related Blog Posts:

-Change Effort Not Working? Try Appreciative Inquiry And Changing The Culture

-How To Make a Change Management Effort Like Lean Stick

Services

Stop SOPA/PIPA

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.


If the latest version of SOPA - Protect IP Act (PIPA S.968) passes it would mean the end of the internet as we know it.  It allows the government and the entertainment industry to shutdown sites just because they feel there are copyright infringements or there are links to sites that are copy write infringements.  What this means is that bloggers like myself could get 5 years in prison just because a commentor left a link to a site the corporations feel is supporting copyright infringements. Such sites can include youtube, facebook, and others.

Please contact your representative and senator and tell them you oppose PIPA S.968

More information on what's in PIPA

The Money Trail - which representatives and senators are given money by pro PIPA corporations

What's Missing With Your Lean Initiative

We are currently looking at new innovative ways to deliver services to folks that have superior value.  We want to hear from you on what you would like to see from a consulting company that you don't see.  It can be cost, product, services, or any other items but we want to hear from you.

Here are some of the ideas that are in the works:

-Distance facilitation
-Online coaching for managers
-Full package implementation (strategy, org structure, training, and some projects) at a single price point
-Strengths based problem solving

We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments section or contact us directly.


Related Blog Posts:

Change Effort Not Working? Try Appreciative Inquiry And Changing The Culture

How To Make a Change Management Effort Like Lean Stick

Services

Lean in the Office

You might think of a scene like the one in the picture when you think of a "non-Lean office."  The fact is that Lean in the office is much more than just a 5s program.  For those unfamiliar, 5s is a 5 step process to help organize the work space and more importantly you use 5s to help see where there might be opportunities for improvements.  The 5s process is 1) Sort 2) Set 3) Shine 4) Standardize 5) Sustain.  For more information please contact us.  

A Lean office is an office that is designed to deliver the most value with minimal waste to a customer.  5s is a great place to start because it will usually lead to other findings which you can improve.  We have found a slightly different way to approach a lean office.  First step is to give everyone Lean training and teaching people to see what is value and what is waste.  The next step is to look at what you are currently doing well and try to see how you can do more of it.  An example of this is at an office I helped they were a a couple of people great at communicating with customers/clients.  We decided to standardize as much as possible their process and train others on how to have good interactions with customers/clients.  The training was done by the people who  were thought to be the leaders in the area (a receptionist, a manger, and a technician).  You can find what's working well by doing an appreciative inquiry.

After leveraging what you have working well then there is an opportunity to work on the problem areas.  We usually like to do some mapping events to get a good feel for where the main opportunities lay.  A value stream map or multiple value stream maps is ideal for this step.  In an office setting value stream maps can get a bit hairy and may not be as clear as in a manufacturing setting.  Don't worry that is ok just do the best you can in mapping.  Once you've mapped out the current state for a particular area then design an ideal future state map. The difference from the current state and the ideal state will be the projects you will need to work on in your office.  Don't worry if you can't get everything done this year, just prioritize and pick which ones you want to do.  Just remember that this is iterative so if it's not perfect then don't worry you'll have another change to improve it.  We recommend doing a value stream map at least once a year and doing both a current state and future state map.

From this point you can go in several directions but you will have multiple projects to work on through out the year.  For sustaining and continuous improvement we find that daily management helps.  This is a simple board with metrics and if the metrics aren't meet then we try to root cause the problem and solve it so it doesn't happen again in the future.  It's a great way to engage all people and give them ownership in their work space.  For more information on daily management, value stream mapping, or any other questions you may have please contact us. 

Change Effort Not Working? Try Appreciative Inquiry And Changing The Culture

This is the abbreviated post for the more detailed post on how to make change management work.

Many of my clients approach me because they want one of three things.
1) Process improvement
2) Strategy facilitation
3) Cultural changes

Mostly they ask for the first two choices because they are more concrete.  When clients choose to do only process improvement or only strategy the gains from their efforts and the lean way consulting are short lived.  Ultimately true sustainable change only comes from cultural change and that is not easy.  Organizations fall into typically two categories.

1) An organization wants to do a process improvement effort like Lean and are excited to use the tools because of all the great things they heard Lean can do for their organization.  While that is true they miss the critical element of the management and sustaining side.
2) An organization wants to do a process improvement effort like lean and understands it's more than a tool set but will focus on a problem orientation when implementing Lean.

The lean way consulting's system for process improvement is to integrate cultural changes at the beginning with an approach called appreciative inquiry.  Appreciative inquiry is an approach designed to build on the strengths of an organization and address the weaknesses in the context of building on strengths.  Normal Lean implementations are based solely on what's not working.

By looking at the positive side of things we activate the parasympathetic system which allows us to be more creative and able to solve problems easier (this is an oversimplification of the biological system of the PNS but the end result is still the same).  It doesn't take much effort for people to be more positive and open to other solutions.  Cornell university did an experiment where they asked physicians think out loud while they solve a case of a patient with liver disease.  They found that when they gave physicians just a small bag of candy or some kind of small gift those physicians were better at integrating case information and less likely to become fixated on the initial ideas and coming to premature closure in their diagnosis.  This is the type of thinking you want from every person in your company.  You get less resistance, more buy-in, and a sustainable solution.  Here is the basic approach the lean way consulting uses for a new change management effort:

0) Training (ongoing)
1) Start in a place where there is a need
2) Build out an area to experiment and grow momentum
3) Expand by creating tension to constantly move people out of their comfort zones
4) Integrate what you are doing in strategy

For more information please contact us oh where you can get started.  You can also take our free assessment and we will analyze your current culture for free.

If you enjoyed this post you may also enjoy these:
Facebook Page
Twitter @ankittheleanway
Google+

How To Make a Change Management Effort Like Lean Stick