If you take to innovation alone - you will drown. Innovation only works in a team.
I'm Lean and I'm quitting my job!
Poland's first postgraduate program in Lean Management. European University, Cracow 2005. Production Management students, mostly young engineers. They are amazed at the different approach to improving production. There is power! Go Gemba! A few bring their desks out into the hall. They map processes, implement 5S, shorten changeovers, listen to employees. Process efficiency increases 10-20%.
At the end of the study we make a circle. Everyone has to say what they will do with Lean skills. What are the new ideas? What's next? Suddenly, I notice the uncomfortable faces. A wave of grievances pours out. 3 people decide to change jobs. The problem is one. The strength and energy of a single engineer can only last a few weeks at most to maintain 10-20% growth.
The sinking island of innovation
A lone effective process will always drown. It sinks in an ocean... of ineffective departments and processes that surround it like an island.
Since then, I have had a rule: never start a complex transformation without two conditions: the involvement of managers and the help of departments supporting the process being improved. "Lonely island" keeps the results for a few months at the most and once frustrated with the decline, the team is very reluctant to pick up flight again.
Is a committed Lean manager like the Yeti?
Apparently he is but no one has seen him... Managers get involved in two cases.
First, when they are Lean Management enthusiasts themselves. Particularly effective can be a new director using Lean like a broom sweeping away old principles. There is only one problem - in such companies the transformation continues, as long as our enthusiast is managing. One change in management and the transformation based on the Lean manager, falls with a big bang.
There is a second way. Much more effective. Lean activities tied to something that is most important to management - the company's strategy. Lean knowing how to improve while supporting the strategy. Hence the growing recent interest in Lean Strategy.
Supporting processes - which ones first?
There are at least a few departments that should support streamlining processes. Anyway, sooner or later, a Lean transformation should include all of them. However, there is one that plays a key role from the very beginning. Another in production; another in non-manufacturing processes. Why crucial? Because the crushing number of problems that employees and their leaders can't handle goes right there.
In production, "the winner is": The Maintenance Department. In this environment, what Lean tool you don't touch - there is something to screw up, fix, patch, add, install, etc. Even taking on visual management or metrics - we get into problem boards and the problems pretty much go to UR.
In administrative processes... yes, that's what came to mind now! The IT Department is king. I will admit with remorse that we tried at several clients to pretend that the IT Department did not exist. We put restrictions in place: "All problems and ideas are allowed, except for IT". Sooner or later, IT problems crawled out of the burrow anyway and, if not solved, they piled up, crippling innovation.
Connect key departments.
Once you know transformation is needed, start with a grand coalition, Kotter says. Managers and heads of key supporting departments - must be part of it. It is also very useful to partially delegate one of the employees of such a department to manage the next waves of incoming problems and the resulting work. But that's a topic for another Lean story.
GP
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