Articles by: Ankit Patel
05/12/14 by Ankit Patel | Uncategorized | No Comments »
The Lean Way is on a Radio show this Thursday (5/15/2014) from 11:00-11:30 Eastern time.
Link to radio show:
Link to the radio show
Topic:
Using the Power of Conversations to Influence Change
Date & Time
5/15/2014 Thursday 11:00 – 11:30 Eastern Time
Register for a free 45 minute coaching session with one of our expert consultants! We will advise you on the cultural elements at play in your organization and how to address them properly. You’ll get tips on specific tools that will give you a higher ROI and be on the right path in no time…
Related Blog Posts:
How Quickly Should You Roll Out a Lean Transformation
How Great Leaders Inspire Action
Why is Lean So Difficult Part III – Behaviors
Why is Lean So Difficult Part I
Why is Lean so Difficult Part II – Strategy
Why is Lean So Difficult Part III – Momentum
Seven Things You Didn’t Know About Daily Meetings
Why Lean Fails Webinar
04/30/14 by Ankit Patel | Uncategorized | No Comments »
In recent articles we talked about different factors that will cause a Lean Transformation to Fail. We talked about how strategy is critical and without a big picture of direction it becomes very difficult to manage a Lean Transformation. We also discussed that how fast or slow you move and the momentum you create can cause a Lean Transformation to fail. Behaviors is the third leg of that tripod of reasons why Lean Transformations fail. Behavioral issues can manifest in several ways:
- Focus on subjective points like attitude vs. objective points like demonstrated behavior
- Focus on just procedures vs. the outcomes
- Change is viewed as a disruption of work
- Compliance is enforced vs. trying to get commitment
- Lack of commitment to the cause – a “not my job” mentality
- Changes don’t get implemented and there are breakdowns
- Being defensive towards change and having the approach of “decide, advocate, defend” vs. “listen, inquire, and co-create”
Reasons for Behavioral Challenges
When Lean was first developed by Toyota it was used as a way to gain operational efficiency and through time we’ve now developed it into a management system. Now when people apply Lean to their organization they are usually enamored by the gains they can get by implementing the tools of Lean and at times don’t focus as much on the management system. The reason so many people run into behavioral challenges is because of the different systems at play.
- Strategy
- HR Systems
- Reward Systems
- Current Processes
- Leadership Systems
- Organizational Structure
These six systems influence how people will behave in any given organization. Lean typically will only evaluate one of these systems (current processes) and usually doesn’t address the others. If these systems don’t support your Lean effort it’s setting up to be counter productive.
Case Study
A manufacturing company recently hired a new COO and he wants to do a Lean transformation. He decides to bring in trainers and start with a 5s effort. The trainers take an off the shelf training and modify it slightly for the existing company. The training process was delivered without any of the nuances of the organization taken into consideration. The 5s event was a success initially however the processes in place quickly feel apart. Here is what the trainers didn’t consider:
- There was no clear strategic vision for operations so as soon as demand increased the 5s process stopped
- HR systems in place never found quality people to replace the natural turnover. The people that were coming on board didn’t understand the new culture.
- Bonuses were given on individual operational performances instead of incorporating items a 5s audit score.
- The current processes that caused the mess in the first place weren’t addressed properly and started to show again soon after the event.
- Leadership only cared about numbers and if the daily numbers slipped people were only focusing on the numbers. Leadership also wasn’t as in tune with their work force and were not as interested in developing them and coaching them. Their preferred method was to correct and/or work them out of the business.
- The structure was silo based and a Lean transformation can overcome this issue. In this case the silos were rewarded for being able to perform their work to the fullest. The 5s effort required 3 different areas to coordinate and that cooperation fell shortly after the 5s event.
It’s critically to take into account all these systems when leading a Lean Transformation effort.
Related Blog Posts:
How Quickly Should You Roll Out a Lean Transformation
Why is Lean So Difficult Part I
Why is Lean so Difficult Part II – Strategy
Why is Lean So Difficult Part III – Momentum
Seven Things You Didn’t Know About Daily Meetings
Why Lean Fails Webinar
04/17/14 by Ankit Patel | lean culture, lean fail, Uncategorized | No Comments »
In the last two series of “Why Lean is So Difficult” we introduced the concepts of why it is difficult and took a deeper dive into one of the reasons – Strategy. Now we’ll take a look at the second factor on why Lean efforts fail often and that’s the momentum of the effort. First let’s frame what we are talking about when we say Lean effort. This is a sustained effort to transform your business. This can take years to implement successfully and you are in it for the long haul. It can also be that you are trying to see if Lean is right for your organization and you want to give it the best chance for success. If you are just doing one or two projects and have no intentions of continuing then this is not a relevant discussion point.
Momentum is how fast you decide to implement projects in your organization. Here are two opposite ends of the spectrum.
After Market Car Parts Manufacturer
The manufacturer wanted to start doing Lean however didn’t want to move quickly. They decided to start with the inventory management of their intake valves. They decided to start in the small portion of their business and see how it would progress from there. About 2% of their workforce was involved in the Lean project. They did the event and had great success saving 40% in inventory and reducing the total amount of processing time by 35%. This was a great win however the company decided that they didn’t want to move forward with more Lean projects till after their busy season this year. The next year came around and they never picked up the Lean initiatives again due to other priorities coming up.
Family Practice Clinic
The practice was very busy and they would see about 40-75 patients a day per doctor. The clinic wanted to go Lean and they jumped head first in trying to do improvement events. They first started with a 5s effort for the office which took a week then immediately the next week went on to doing visual controls, and the third week they worked on the process flow of the paperwork. They spent three out of four weeks doing process improvement and about 90% of their staff was involved in one way or another. They gained some successes however their patient load dropped during the three weeks so the Doctors decided not to continue since it was hurting their business.
Take-A-Ways
The chart above gives us a heuristic as to how fast we should be moving through a Lean transformation. This is a general rule of thumb and will vary case by case. In our after market auto manufacturer we found that they were moving too slow. They had about 2% of their work force spending less than 10% of their time on improvements. This puts them in the red zone (and off the chart). The family practice clinic moved too quickly. they had about 90% of their people focused on change 75% of the time putting them in the red zone on the other end of the spectrum. The manufacturer didn’t have enough momentum to sustain Lean efforts and it died off and the clinic moved too quickly and it hurt business which cause the Lean effort to die off. The focus should be on balancing the pace of change with the business needs.
Related Blog Posts:
How Quickly Should You Roll Out a Lean Transformation
Why is Lean So Difficult Part I
Why is Lean so Difficult Part II – Strategy
Seven Things You Didn’t Know About Daily Meetings
Why Lean Fails Webinar
For a more in depth discussion of this and other topics be sure to sign up for our conference calls and webinars
About the Author:
Ankit Patel is a Managing Partner for The Lean Way Consulting and is based in the greater Atlanta GA area. He combines his skills and expertise in Lean and Six Sigma that he gained in large and small manufactures as well as hospital systems with organizational development. By doing this he is able to get stunning results for his clients that far exceed industry norms.
For questions about anything in this article Contact Us
04/10/14 by Ankit Patel | Uncategorized | No Comments »
From Why is Lean So Difficult Part I we looked at the more common reasons why 98% of people who do Lean don’t get full results they want from it (Industry Week Survey). One of the main reasons is a lack of alignment usually do to a lack of a coherent executed strategy. Strategy is the set of activities that the company chooses to do or not do to give the company an advantage in the marketplace. A coherent executed strategy is one that is articulated well and that is being executed by all levels of the organization. Lean by itself can be a strategic initiative however if your organization isn’t good at turning a strategic plan into reality then Lean will be exceptionally difficult. Here are three things to consider:
1) Strategy is More than a Document
Many companies will spend money, time, and other resources on completing a document that is their strategy only to put the document on a shelf and to be seen only next year when you do the exercise again. Strategy should be what you do day in and day out. There should be a clear line of action from what the direction of the organization is to the work of the front line employee. For example a hospital has a strategic initiative to be more integrated with the community. What that meant was that the hospital employees had to find ways to engage with the community more. They were given time to generate ideas and then given resources to implement those ideas. Some of the larger projects included a community garden, an outreach/education program, and a community ambassador that would be the voice of the hospital in the community.
2) Strategy Needs to be Connected at all Levels
Have you ever had the gears slip while you were pedaling a bike uphill? If not it is not very fun and having your strategy not connected at all levels is like have constant gear slips. You’ll be putting in effort but not necessarily going towards your goal. One example is that a manufacturing had a strategic initiative to innovate. However the production floor is not allowed to make mistakes and are punished for making mistakes when trying no processes.
3) Strategy Needs a Cadence
Out of sight out of mind. If you don’t have a regular way to keep your strategy top of mind it will tend to slip. Create daily, weekly, and quarterly meetings to keep track of the strategic items. Daily meetings should be the very tactical day to day items, weekly should be a slightly larger view, and quarterly should be to course correct and do a market scan. If you have a strategic imitative to reduce costs of your inventory by 50% then the daily meetings would track day to day inventory levels and how you are progressing with improvement projects. The weekly meetings should be a snapshot of the past week’s performance and a look at what projects are working and not working. Quarterly meetings are to determine if the goal is still valid or does it need to be changed.
Doing these items will help you with your strategy and in the end help you with a Lean initiative since you will have much of the change infrastructure ready.
Related Blog Posts:
Why is Lean So Difficult Part I
Seven Things You Didn’t Know About Daily Meetings
Why Lean Fails Webinar
For a more in depth discussion of this and other topics be sure to sign up for our conference calls and webinars
About the Author:
Ankit Patel is a Managing Partner for The Lean Way Consulting and is based in the greater Atlanta GA area. He combines his skills and expertise in Lean and Six Sigma that he gained in large and small manufactures as well as hospital systems with organizational development. By doing this he is able to get stunning results for his clients that far exceed industry norms.
For questions about anything in this article Contact Us
04/02/14 by Ankit Patel | lean, lean culture, lean fail, lean manufacutring, lean medical clinic, Strengths based Lean, Uncategorized | No Comments »
“Going Lean” can be very exciting for a company because of the results it can produce. An engaged workforce, reduced costs, faster delivery times, better quality, and a competitive advantage in the market place to name a few. You hear companies like Toyota using it to compete in a very difficult industry, or Virginia Mason Hospital using it to lower costs. However in an Industry Week Survey only 2% of companies that do Lean get the results they wanted from it. Why is it so difficult then to get the results you want? Most surveys that you see point to the fact that changing culture is the number one challenge behind Lean. When doing Lean most people don’t actually have any tools to even begin address the cultural elements. So what all feeds the culture and what do you need to focus on as an organization when you do Lean?
Factors to can cause a culture not to reject Lean
- No Strategy
- Low number of people involved with the change process – usually people at top trying to push it down
- Focus on subjective points like attitude vs. objective points like demonstrated behavior
- Focus on just procedures vs. the outcomes
- Change is viewed as a disruption of work
- Compliance is enforced vs. trying to get commitment
- Lack of commitment to the cause – a “not my job” mentality
- Change is too slow
- Changes don’t get implemented and there are breakdowns
- Being defensive towards change and having the approach of “decide, advocate, defend” vs. “listen, inquire, and co-create”
All of these items can be broken down into three categories.
- Strategy
- Momentum
- Behaviors
In the following postings we’ll tackle each one of these and talk about how it relates to the factors that cause Lean to fail and how to assess where you are and how you can prevent failure from happening.
Related Blog Posts:
Seven Things You Didn’t Know About Daily Meetings
Why Lean Fails Webinar
For a more in depth discussion of this and other topics be sure to sign up for our conference calls and webinars
About the Author:
Ankit Patel is a Managing Partner for The Lean Way Consulting and is based in the greater Atlanta GA area. He combines his skills and expertise in Lean and Six Sigma that he gained in large and small manufactures as well as hospital systems with organizational development. By doing this he is able to get stunning results for his clients that far exceed industry norms.
For questions about anything in this article Contact Us
03/26/14 by Ankit Patel | Uncategorized | No Comments »
“Innovation is anything but business as usual” – Anonymous
Innovation can be broken down into two categories:
1) Evolutionary
2) Revolutionary
Evolutionary innovation is applying existing solutions to existing problems ad revolutionary innovation is coming up with a new solution to a challenge. Evolutionary innovation is building a faster horse buggy and revolutionary innovation is building the model T. Both types are necessary if you are in an industry where innovation needed but how does Lean and Six Sigma play into innovating at a company?
The Dilemma
Lean Six Sigma is at best an evolutionary innovation of your processes. It is taking an existing solution and applying it to your organization. This is a good thing and is very useful to many companies. However without any revolutionary innovation you see marginal returns and eventually you don’t get much from your Lean Six Sigma efforts causing the leaders to scratch their heads and ask “what can we do now?” Don’t feel bad if you are in this situation because it’s a trap you fall into because of your brain. Critical thinking tasks like Lean Six Sigma tend to activate centers in the brain that are more analytical. For revolutionary innovation we need more insight which is required which is completely different part of the brain. If you are constantly operating in the Lean Six Sigma portion of the brain then it’s going to be very difficult for you to switch gears and focus on revolutionary innovation.
A Solution
If you are seeing marginal returns in your Lean Six Sigma effort and need more innovation to get to a new level of performance there are a few things you can do.
- Shift thinking from analytical to insightful type activities
- Practice the new behaviors
- Integrate the new behaviors with your existing Lean Six Sigma Effort
Shift Thinking
To engage the parts of your brain that make you more insightful, open, and creative there has be a shift in how the culture behaves.
- Use positive language – Positive language and thinking positive and big picture stimulate the centers of the brain that stimulate insightfulness and creativity.
- Create learning spaces – Innovation of all kinds requires a space to learn and grow as well as make mistakes. Creating a safe space to experiment is important.
- Converge and Diverge – Much of the type of thought that happens to “open” you to insight is divergent thinking, you also want to implement some balance with the convergent thinking (i.e. coming up with action plans for how to implement your ideas).
Practice New Behaviors
Honing insightfulness and creativity are like lifting weights. If you do it once in a while you don’t really change anything. So be sure to practice the new behaviors and ways of thinking and try to integrate it into your daily work.
- Use more positive language and creative problem solving daily meetings
- Coach and develop people vs. just holding them accountable
- Develop people as they want to be developed
Integrate with your Existing Lean Six Sigma Effort
You want to build off of what you have so do not discard your Lean Six Sigma Effort.
- Integrate tools like Appreciative Inquiry with your Lean Six Sigma practice
- Use Lean Six Sigma to help improve revolutionary innovations that you create
- Understand the limitations of Lean Six Sigma and when to apply it and when not to apply.
References and more reading:
Your Brain and Business: The Neuroscience of Great Leaders
HBR article on Evolutionary vs Revolutionary innovation
Strengths based Lean Six Sigma
Designing Growth
For a more in depth discussion of this and other topics be sure to sign up for our conference calls and webinars and other educational material
For questions about anything in this article Contact Us
03/20/14 by Ankit Patel | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Link to video
Register for a free 60 minute coaching session with one of our expert consultants! We will advise you on the cultural elements at play in your organization and how to address them properly. You’ll get tips on specific tools that will give you a higher ROI and be on the right path in no time…
Other articles you may find interesting:
7 Things you Didn’t Know about Daily Meetings
Where to Start Lean or Another Change Initiative
Climbing the Mountain of Change
For a more in depth discussion of this and other topics be sure to sign up for our conference calls and webinars and other educational material
For questions about anything in this article Contact Us
03/10/14 by Ankit Patel | company culture | No Comments »
Related Blog post:
7 Things you didn’t know about daily meetings
For a more in depth discussion of this and other topics be sure to sign up for our conference calls and webinars
For questions about anything in this article Contact Us
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The Lean Way is on a Radio show this Thursday (5/15/2014) from 11:00-11:30 Eastern time.
