Aligning your management team isn’t important, it’s essential. If just one member of your team isn’t committed to your continuous improvement journey, you’ve got a problem to fix. Why? It’s really pretty simple. When any change initiative is started, the members of the organization will have a variety of opinions about the need for change, the direction taken, the commitment level, and so on. There will be the early adopters who will welcome almost any change that seems reasonable and necessary. In contrast, there will be a fair number of CAVE dwellers (Citizens Against Virtually Everything) who will choose not to engage no matter what the cause or benefit. But the critical mass of people in most organizations will not let their opinions control them at the outset, instead, they will wait and observe the behavior of managers and assess their level of commitment. It is this level of commitment that will strongly influence their decision to get on board with a change initiative or not. This is why alignment is so critical. A manager who is not aligned with an initiative single handedly creates and perpetuates skepticism, apathy, and complacency. These mindsets are fierce opponents of change and make the work of improvement much more difficult that it has to be.

3 keys to aligning your management team

First determine what you want to achieve

Most managers consider themselves pretty good problem-solvers, but sometimes a rush to solutions prevents people from first defining what is wrong or what they want. It is critical to be clear about what you want to achieve before you decide how to achieve it. This may seem elementary or obvious, but most failed continuous improvement initiatives never had a clear and concise goal or objective. Many times, if there is a goal, it is vague and hard to measure, something like “we want to create a continuous improvement culture.” It is much more effective to define quantitative and measurable goals like reduce lead time to two days and reduce external defects by 90%. When you have these types of goals you can easily measure progress and people can see the scale of the initiative and eventually, how they will contribute. By clearly articulating what you want to achieve, you create something for managers to align with, without this, you leave it up to interpretation.

Define the roles and behaviors required of managers

Most people need to know what they are signing up for before they can fully commit. Likewise, most managers vastly underestimate what will be required of them in leading change. Once the goals are defined, the management team should spend time together discussing and documenting what will be required from each of them in the change process. It is important to define both the roles and behaviors of managers in these discussions. For instance, a goal that we often see is to improve relationships with customers. A role of a manager might be to initiate feedback from a customer in order to understand what needs to change to improve the relationship. A required behavior change might be to never utter an unappealing word about a customer and to take immediate action when someone else does. This might seem like a waste of time to many managers but it is critical to define different roles and behaviors if you want to achieve different results. Be wary of anyone on your team who is not engaged in this process and appears to be going through the motions. Alignment means that each of your managers is in full agreement with the goals and accepts their responsibility to be a leader.

Create a high performing management team

Whether it’s in business or sports, high performing teams with exceptional teamwork skills achieve the greatest results. Your organization is no exception. The success of your business will be heavily influenced by the level of teamwork that your management team can achieve. This is not soft, tree-hugging stuff, teamwork skills are just that…skills! Your managers need to develop the skills to effectively communicate, utilize resources, trust and be trustworthy, give and receive feedback, support and be supported, and be good team members. Managers who choose not to be good team members need to be removed. In addition, you should spend no less than 10% of your time in the early stages of a change initiative developing teamwork within your management team.

PDG provides a number of products and services that will help you create and sustain continuous improvement using lean, six sigma, and organizational development. If you would like a free 30 minute consultation to help you deal with any CI issue you are experiencing, you can email me at slage@pdgconsultants.com to set it up.

Thanks for reading our newsletter. Please feel free to pass it on to anyone who could benefit from it.

Steve Lage
President, PDG

www.pdgconsultants.com 1-866-404-7221

This is the second in our series of five best practices for sustaining change. Last time we talked about the limitations of auditing systems, this week we’ll discuss changing behavior.

Best practice #2: Leaders’ behavior must change first

I believe it is Einstein who said “Insanity is doing what you have always done and expecting different results.” This couldn’t be more relevant when it comes to sustaining improvements. Kaizen events and auditing systems are not enough. Sustaining changes will ultimately require behavior change from every member of the organization, but it must start with the leaders. If you’re not ready to do things differently yourself, don’t expect much from anyone else. If you are, here are some things to do.

First: Identify the behaviors that will be required to sustain improvements. Don’t trivialize this. You should spend time as a leadership team discussing and agreeing on what you want. It is also important that every leader agree to hold people accountable for the behaviors that you have defined.

Second: Tell and show people what you expect from them. This isn’t enough but it’s necessary. Communicate the expectations you have defined with great clarity and in different formats. Use all employee meetings, emails, letters, visual reminders, informal conversations, progress reviews, etc. This may seem like overkill, but it isn’t. Behavior change is personal and only happens when people decide it is worthwhile. In addition, people will interpret your commitment to change in part by how much energy you put into it. A small amount of energy will be interpreted as a small level of commitment.

Third: Change your behavior. People will pay much more attention to what you do than what you say, so you must act in a way that tells them you mean what you are saying. This goes for the entire leadership team. If you walk by a tool board and something is missing, stop and insist that it be put in the proper place. Audits and steering committee meetings are not the tools to deal with non-conformance. Counterproductive behaviors need to be dealt with in person at the instant they are observed. If a manager or supervisor isn’t dealing with behaviors, give them the choice to change and remove them if they make the wrong choice. In contrast, be sure to recognize and reward people who are doing the right things. Communicate examples of success with enthusiasm and offer praise to the early adopters.

 All of this may seem like more work than it’s worth, but it isn’t. While the process of behavior change is front-end loaded and full of challenges, the returns on cultural change are enormous and almost impossible for your competitors to replicate.  In fact, I recently had the privelage of meeting with a leader who is making tremendous progress. He said “If you’re not focused on changing behavior, beginning with yourself, you’re faking it.”

Next time we’ll discuss holding people accountable.

If you would like to discuss how to get help on this or any other change topic, email me at slage@pdgconsultants.com to arrange a time for us to talk.  

Thanks for your time. As always, your feedback is much appreciated.

Steve

This week we are sharing our first of five best practices for
sustaining 5S. These are lessons learned from dozens of our
consulting clients.

Best practice #1: Audits aren’t enough

I can’t tell you how many factories I have toured where the 5S
auditing system is better than the 5S program itself. The truth is
that audits, no matter how good, are vastly insufficient when it
comes to sustaining 5S. Worse yet, they take time and energy to
manage. I suppose the reason so many organizations focus on the
audit is that they believe that measuring something will
automatically cause it to change. The problem is that what they are
measuring is the result of behavior, and behavior is tough to
change.

So the bottom line is that audits by themselves are a waste of
time and energy. What is really needed is for supervisors and
managers to learn how to change behaviors. Then an auditing system
can be effective because what it is really measuring the the
capability of the supervisor or manager of the area.

This doesn’t mean that you should abandon your auditing system.
However, if you’re not dealing with behavior change along with your
audit, you’re missing the boat.

Next week we’ll talk about changing behavior.

Steve

FYI: Last week I mentioned our 5S Self Study CD. There have been a lot of requests for more information so we created a link where you can see a short demonstration.

5S Basics

Feel free to email me or call Lisa at 1-866-404-7221 for more information.

This week we deal with one of our most common questions from email
subscribers.

“We have read about 5S and been on several tours to other
organizations and they all seem to have traveled different
paths on their 5S journey. Is there a best practice when it comes
to starting a 5S program.?”

While there is no cookie cutter 5S approach that seems to work with
every company, there are some common lessons learned that we can
share.

First: Start small, keep the focus tight and confined to one
manageable area. Go an inch wide and a mile deep. Raise the level
of 5S so high that people can’t help but notice.

Second: Develop and practice sustainment skills before you begin
work in the next area. It does you no good to run rampant through
the factory or office if you can’t sustain.

Third: Use your success to set 5S expectations for all areas of the
business and move through the entire company (factory and office)
one step at a time.

Remember the most challenging and important part of 5S is to change
behavior. This takes new skills and persistence from leaders. Do
not underestimate the importance of this. You should expect to
spend a good amount of time with first line supervisors and leaders.
Next week, we’ll share our first of five best practices for
sustainment. In the mean time, feel free to contact me for a free,
20 minute 5S consultation. Email me at slage@pdgconsultants.com to
set up a time.

Steve

P.S. If you’re looking for training materials and a practical approach to establishing an effective 5S system, we invite you to take a look at our 5S Kit.

To receive more information, contact Lisa at 1-866-404-7221