Continuous Improvement: The Practice’s Culture

“Remember, a dead fish can float downstream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream.” 
W.C. Fields

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.” 
George Burns

"We do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you. Gort, berenga."
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

You’ve read in these blogs that waste is defined as: “anything beyond the absolute minimum amount of materials, manpower, or machinery needed to add value to a product or service”. (Flinchbaugh & Carlino, 2006)

In the last seven blogs, I’ve discussed each of the following, in turn:

• Overproduction

• Waiting

• Unnecessary Transport

• Over-processing

• Excess Inventory

• Unnecessary Motion

• Defects

Last month, I told you that it’s axiomatic to Lean management that everyone on the team is responsible for continuous improvement.

The question now is, “How do you build a culture of ‘change’?” How do you get all the snowflakes to feel responsible? After all, it’s your practice; your staff just works there – right?

The secret of managing change is ‘Leadership’.

At a company where I used to work, about once every six months, they’d ask for ideas on how to save money. They would pick the top 3 ideas and give a gift card to the winners. We were told what the top ideas were and what we could do to help implement them. It was usually something like, “Turn out the lights in the conference room when you leave”; or something like that.

As employees, we were never informed of the impact these ideas and there implementation made on the bottom line. But, every year, in the 1^st half of the 3^rd quarter, the same thing happened: no unnecessary travel (who travels for business unnecessarily?), all travel required the approval of a Vice President. In the last half of the 4^th quarter, the ax started to fall on personnel. Where can you get the biggest bang for the buck but in human resources? If you were lucky enough to make it through December, you were generally safe until next December. But, like clockwork, every December we’d see security pushing a trolley of empty boxes toward some poor employee’s cubicle or office.

So, what does ‘Leadership’ have to do with all of this? Let’s look at the difference between leadership and management.

Richardson (2013) says that a leader has a unique ability to rally employees around a vision. Managers are those who execute the vision in a systematic way. Now, keep in mind that the two are not mutually exclusive. There are leaders who are excellent managers and vice-versa.

Max Nisen (2013) cites LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner as saying, "For me, leadership is the ability to inspire others to achieve shared objectives. Managers tell people what to do. Leaders inspire them to it."

Linda Linfield (2013) has one of the best expositions on the difference. I highly recommend her article (see Sources at the end of this blog). She says that leaders are a causal force that causes things to happen that weren’t’ going to happen without their influence. Leaders are: future oriented, envision possibilities, innovators, inspirational, determined, and resourceful. In the context of her definition, she points out that every person in every role has the opportunity and responsibility to demonstrate leadership.

Management needn’t have a negative connotation. Good managers, “attend to operational excellence and, at their best, deliver against expectations. Managers provide the business and its stakeholders with reliability, certainty, and predictability, all of which are essential to the viability and longevity of the organization.” Great managers, “attend to continuous process improvement, monitor progress against objectives, and track and report the data that allows for solid fact-based decisions.” (Linfield, 2013)

Notice that little part about ‘continuous process improvement’?!

She says something very interesting that applies to what I’m trying to teach about continuous improvement: “Thus, every person in every role has management responsibility — the requirement to ensure that others can rely on them and their teams to deliver as promised within the parameters agreed.” (Linfield, 2013)

So, let’s look at this in the context of continuous improvement.

The Leader will outline his/her vision for continuous improvement as an integral part of the practice; that each and every minute of every day, the team members will be alert to opportunities to make the practice more productive and less wasteful. The Leader will inspire the team members to have the same vision and will help them see the possibilities.

The Manager will manage the change, keep track of recommendations for change, discuss the changes with the group, implement the change, and track and report on the metrics (data). The manager may be the office manager, or someone tasked with being the ‘change’ manager.

Looking at the example of the company I formerly worked at: the vision was not clearly defined, nor was it well managed. “Save money” is not a vision and can be so widely interpreted as to lead to arbitrary, ineffective management. “Save money” soon becomes “save more money because you’re not saving enough money” and eventually leads to “save money at any cost”.  As soon as team leaders hear about it, the reaction can range all the way to, “I won’t be able to effectively do my job”, or even, “Well, there goes my job.” The culture becomes one of distrust of management and lack of respect for leadership.

In summary, under the direction of the leader, the team must arrive at a vision of what the practice is in practice for. Each and every member of the team must buy into the vision and it’s the leader’s responsibility to inspire them to do that. The “how’s” of arriving at the vision must be well managed. The vision should be dynamic; it should be a journey rather than a destination and should have a goal of providing outstanding services and products to customers – both internal and external. The vision should become foundational to the practice’s culture.