Continuous Improvement Development Guide, PHASE 3: Starting the Journey

Phase 3 is where the journey starts. And make no mistake. Creating a business management system built around a continuous improvement culture is a lengthy journey. Starting out right is critical.

There are a few different schools of thought about how to go about making early changes. Some people advocate for the ‘deep end of the pool’ approach and throw a lot of tools at teams. Others like to slowly get acclimated.

Our approach is somewhat unique, not in terms of how fast we launch, but in what we recommend you start with. We have the leadership team make some pretty substantial changes, so they are thrown in the deep end. Why? If they are unwilling to change the way they do business, they won’t be able to get their teams to do things in a new way. We ask leaders to dive headfirst into policy deployment, and use a healthy dose of metrics to stay on track.

As for the frontline teams, you may recall from an earlier statistic that about three quarters of improvement initiatives come up short. With that high of a risk, we want your team to walk away with value regardless of how your efforts play out. Because of that, we focus heavily on problem solving for them during this phase. Individual value is not the only benefit, though. At their heart, continuous improvement is all about problem solving. You identify something that isn’t working as you want it to, and then apply a solution to close the gap between reality and the desired state. Most of the Lean tools, in fact, are simply pre-packaged solutions to common problem. As your company moves on to later phases, wide-spread problem solving skills will come in extremely useful.

We don’t want this to be entirely lacking in Lean tools, though. We do recommend getting started on 5S at this point. Generally, we want 5S to be tied to projects instead of treated like a separate activity, but in this phase, it is a learning activity. We want people to be comfortable with 5S early on so they will understand how to integrate it into other tools later.

If you want a more detailed understanding of Phase 3, be sure to get our CI Development Guide.

General Info

Timeline

3-6 Months

There are two time consuming tasks in this phase. The first is the need to proceed through a few cycles of policy deployment so the leadership team is fully on board. You don’t want them still cutting their teeth on how they will be leading when people are making big changes of their own.

The second is training. You need a critical mass of problem solvers to seed project teams. It takes time to roll out that training.

In addition, it is good to get people used to seeing metrics posted up on the walls so they get used to them before the big changes start happening.

Tools and Topics (Highlights)

• Small Business Lean
• Flow
• Lean Office
• Policy Deployment
• Metrics
• PDCA/Problem Solving
• Data Collection
• Problem Solving Tools
• Continuous Improvement Math
• 5S

Phase 3 Principles

• Look Within
• Align the Team
• Avoid Bureaucracy
• Invest Wisely
• Know Your Customers and What They Value

Key Gates/Tasks/Milestones

• Complete Phase 3 action plan
• Revise Phase 4-6 roadmap
• Create a steering committee
• Start policy deployment
• ID pilot areas
• Start using metrics
• Train key leaders
• Complete training plan. Include problems solving for frontline teams
• Post KPI boards

Purpose

The purpose of this phase is to (1) give team members a core set of skills that can be tapped into as the business management system is developed, and (2) introduce the leadership team to policy deployment.

Principles

• Look Within: There is a general tendency of people to focus externally first when assessing problems. For example, they might start assessing a problem with sales by focusing on competitors or economic conditions. The problem with that is that they are looking at the things outside of their control first. It is important to look at yourself first. This looks should not just be a cursory glance. It should be a true, unbiased assessment of where you are and where you need to be. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that you have far more control over yourself than you do over external factors. That control means opportunity. The second reason is that you will always be able to find an external reason for a problem. It is easy to get distracted focusing on others and never turn the spotlight on yourself. The truth is, looking within is extremely uncomfortable, but very productive.
• Align the Team: Very few people come to work with the intention of doing a bad job or doing the wrong thing. People want to be personally successful, and they want to be on a winning team. Unfortunately, many people operate in a vacuum of leadership. They have little idea how what they do on a daily basis affects the big picture of the company. The principles on this list go a long way towards getting people operating on the same page. Other leadership and communication tools such as policy deployment, daily management, and A3 reports turn this principle into reality.
• Avoid Bureaucracy: When a company doesn’t operate under a strong set of principles or with clear leadership, it needs rules and policies to guide behaviors. In most cases, this is not the most effective way to get things done. In fact, it often creates a tremendous amount of waste that hinders progress. The more people understand the guiding principles of the company and its leaders intent, the better they will be able to function when they encounter situation is not spelled out in the rulebook. Creating a strong structure reduces the need for bureaucratic leadership.
• Invest Wisely: Continuous improvement requires investment. Think of it like a rental property. There is an upfront cost to buying it and ongoing maintenance costs. But as the mortgage is paid off, more and more of the rental revenue becomes profit. If you think of the development of this business management system as a similar investment, you will also have to pay some up front costs to get bigger future returns. The point of this principle is to make sure that investments align with your business management system. That means investing in people. It also means letting the systems you have in place drive your investments, not the other way around.

Boundaries

Phase 3 starts with the formal announcement of the plan to create a business management system. The boundary between this phase and phase 4, “Building the Foundation”, however, is less defined. Training the entire team on all of the topics within this volume is a considerable challenge. The key point is to make sure that there is a foothold of knowledge for each of the sections before moving on. The program leader will have to determine how big a foothold the company needs to move forward.

Basically what this means is that when program leader sees a critical mass of these core skills, it is okay to start working on the sections of phase 2. It is important however to make sure that the leadership team has gone through a full cycle of policy deployment before getting too far into foundation building. Policy deployment helps managers put the tools and systems into context and will help give them clarity as various decision points present themselves.

Risk

Moderate.

A large part of the actual change during this phase lies with the leadership team. Since they have already gone through some of the challenges of the committing phase, the risk for them drops.

Frontline teams, however, get their first real taste of what’s to come. While the majority of what they will be doing is not very controversial, it is still a change, and most people have trouble adjusting to new ways of doing things. The management team is also unlikely to have much experience in dealing with this sort of widespread change. For that reason, there is still a moderate risk.

The failure mode of this phase is primarily about time. Even though each of these phases can take a significant time, the goal is to move through them rapidly. The more time you spend dealing with problems, the slower your progress will be.

Timeline

With a good steady effort, a company should be able to navigate through this volume in about 3-6 months. Again, this does not mean every single person in the organization will be trained on all the sections. What it means is that the company will have the necessary talent available to it as a start actually implementing things in phase 2.

Core Team

Senior Leaders

Major Activities

• Begin using policy deployment.
• Identify key business metrics.
• Select pilot areas to develop new improvement processes.

Key Prerequisites

• CI Contract: Each senior leader should sign a continuous improvement contract and get their direct subordinates to sign one also. While this, of course, is not binding, there is power in going through the process of signing the document. It highlights an individual’s responsibility to their team.
• Revised job description: Each senior leader should rewrite their job description prior to starting phase 1.
• Mentor identified: The road ahead is arduous. It will be extremely difficult to navigate without a guide. Even senior leaders should find somebody that can help them chart the course. If you don’t have a single individual that can guide you, attempt to find a composite of several people that can fill in your capability gaps.

Key Training

• Lean Management Overview
• Policy Deployment
• Managing with Metrics

Managers

Major Activities

• Manage new metrics.
• Develop KPI boards.

Key Training

• Manager rollout training
• Managing with Metrics

Frontline Leaders

Major Activities

• Manage new metrics.
• Develop KPI boards.

Key Training

• Manager rollout training
• Managing with Metrics

Frontline Teams

Major Activities

• Begin 5S efforts.
• Report data for KPIs.
• Monitor process metrics.

Key Training

• 5S & Visual Management
• Working with Metrics

Frontline Professionals

Major Activities

• Become subject matter experts in problem-solving tools.
• Focus on personal learning / OJT tool training.

Key Training

• Basic Problem Solving
• Cause & Effect Diagram
• Data Collection
• Flow Charts
• Pareto Charts
• Root Cause Analysis & The 5 Whys
• Run Charts

Support Team

Human Resources

Major Activities

• Revise job descriptions.
• Revise hiring process to support CI.
• Support voluntary and involuntary terminations.

Information Technology

Major Activities

• Develop service agreement regarding continuous improvement

Facilities

Major Activities

• Develop standards and process for work benches and shelving.
• Stock required materials for first round of kaizen activity (keep inventory low, but make sure needed materials are available).

Tooling

• Purchase required equipment to add any missing capabilities.
• Stock required materials for first round of kaizen activity (keep inventory low, but make sure needed materials are available).
• Create hiring plan that addresses missing capabilities.

Infrastructure

Resource Team

• Create training plan for potential resource team members.

Resource Area

• Create project area.
• Stock project area with project resources.
• Create mobile 5S work stations.

Knowledge Management

• Establish knowledge management system.
• Create Lean library.
• Develop forms warehouse.

Forms & Tools

• 5 Whys Form (+ Video +Form)
• KPI Bowler
• Policy Deployment Action Plan
• Policy Deployment Bowler
• Policy Deployment Matrix / X-Matrix (+Form +Video)

Mentorship

Internal Expertise

Major Activities

• Establish Lean Promotion Office.

External Expertise

Major Activities

• Complete a Lean Assessment: An outside set of eyes is often more unbiased than an internal observer. They also are immune from office politics and aren’t affected by personal relationships.
• Develop CI roadmap.
• Coach and train as needed.