The efficiency of your organizational structure has a broad-reaching effect in your organization
We’re now several weeks into this discussion on building a continuous improvement culture. However, at this point in your journey, it is important to ensure you are properly organized to effectively build what you desire. Explore this and past blogs to identify if you are ready to take the next steps.
Building a Continuous Improvement Culture begins with the development of a strategy. This blog continues our discussion with National Graduate School. In this blog, I provide a strategic framework to help you develop your own culture change. Although I can’t tell you everything you need to develop–I can help you better understand the strategic steps you need to take and why you need to take them.
http://ngs.edu/2014/05/27/building-culture-continuous-improvement-crafting-continuous-improvement-strategy/
Everyone always wants to blame the failure to set a culture, or a bad culture, on leadership. Leaders are responsible for setting the culture, but it takes more than leadership. That being said, learn how leader set the environment that allows for a continuous improvement culture.
We talk about “culture” all the time and there is often a misconception of what culture is. According to Gallup, 30% of the US workforce is can be considered engaged in their work. A Continuous Improvement Culture depends on an employee based that is engaged. Building and Sustaining and Quality Culture had over twice as many sessions as three of the other theme and focus areas at the recent ASQ Conference, which presents it as one of the most important aspects in quality today. Continue on my journey with National Graduate School as we explore my Continuous Improvement Culture Model and discuss ways to drive this culture into your organization.
http://ngs.edu/2014/05/08/building-culture-continuous-improvement-culture-building/
The ASQ Conference opened with a tremendous presentation from Erik Wahl. I had no idea what to expect, but he did not disappoint!
Erik has some TED Talks out there…I haven’t seen them yet, but I recommend you check him out.
Over 2,000 in attendance here is Dallas and the hotel/convention center is beyond impressive.
Happy Cinco de Mayo!
I am now a weekly guest blogger with National Graduate School. Please check out my blog there.
Follow us as we explore how to build a culture of continuous improvement.
Building a culture of continuous improvement isn’t easy and can take a considerable amount of time. However, it’s very possible and results can be felt within weeks of embarking on the journey. Over John’s 25 plus years of experience, he’s developed a model rooted in strategy and designed to build this culture in any organization. Join John and National Graduate School as we weekly explore this model and ways to drive this type of culture. We look forward to your thoughts and inputs along this journey, so join us and watch for our future blogs about once a week with the tag line “CIC.”
http://ngs.edu/2014/05/01/building-culture-continuous-improvement/
The first step, I often see missed, in any process improvement activity is alignment of the process to the strategy.
In any process improvement, the first thing you need to do is ask yourself, “Why is this process important in the first place and how does it support the mission?”
This is often not done. People take for granted that everything you do is in support of the mission and aligned to your strategy. However, having this discussion with yourself up front might eliminate not only the need for the process improvement, but you might remove the process all together.
When I was working in Intel, they had done away with a certain type of operation…people listening into communications over a specific channel. However, during a visit, by a senior commander, to a unit, he discovered a team that was still performing that operation several years later.
People ask, “How is that possible?” Well, in large organizations, operations become very diversified and if you aren’t constantly validating your role, you might find it to become obsolete.
However, the tendency is to say, “We’ve always done it, so it’s obviously required.”
That is a severe example above, but I have seen processes where something was produced that people had always produced and other people in the process were not even aware that there was someone producing something. Every day people would come to work and produce a product in relation to a large process that spanned an organization and they would file their results as they always had. All the while, the people in charge of the process were not even aware of what was going on. Essentially, that entire process step was a waste of effort and the final product they were creating wasn’t even being looked at.
How do these things happen?
We validate process needs at the beginning of the stand-up of a process, but then the years go by and we just keep working the way we’ve always done it. Meanwhile, people change out, the process changes, and maybe the process gets automated. Suddenly the need for one of the steps goes away.
However, no one told the people performing that step in the process, because no one knows that that part of the process even exists. Unfortunately, that part of the process is still accessing the system, on the email distribution for workflow, etc. and they’re happily working away at a process that someone already made obsolete.
So, when you are in the initial phase of your process improvement whether it be Plan, Define, or something else, ensure the relevancy of the process you are looking to improve. Research that stakeholder list using the SIPOC and go talk to the people in the process to ensure your work is still aligned and valid.
To solve this problem, before it gets this far, any process that spans multiple areas, as most processes do, it is best that that process meet regularly to discuss changes and impacts, validate expectations, and ensure relevancy in the process. This is the reason that people are ‘missing the memo’ that the process has changed, because the process is so siloed that no one knows what the other hand is doing.
However, even if you are meeting with the parts of the process regularly, ensure the relevancy and alignment of your process before you go through the effort of improving it.
Lately this item has come up for discussion. What is the best approach to process improvement, should we teach all, how much of each should you employ?
From a practitioner’s point of view, this matters, but in reality, out on the floor, managers and workers need Common Process Sense. Recently, one of the managers I work with went through Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt training which is much more Six Sigma than Lean. She had already taken Green Belt because that was all that was available, but that course overwhelmed her.
What she came back talking about we’re tools. That’s great, but I realized that she’s not going to be a practitioner, she needed real world ideas that she could apply immediately when she returned to her office.
I believe that true Lean has more common sense approaches, but they can be just as confusing, especially when they use odd names and such, like Huddleboards, Gemba Walks, Ohno Circle, 5S, A3, Hoshin Planning, etc. Let’s face it, true Lean requires a Rosetta Stone course to fully understand.
Long ago, the Air Force created the Air Force Quality Program. They had some very basic courses that focused on Awareness of the program, how to manage Teams and use Basic Tools. The Air Force program was around from about 1990 to 2000–about 10 years. The basic common sense training that I started with is what really got me involved. I understood it and was able to apply it every day.
These are the basic skills that people working on the front lines need to know…they need to be taught and then mentored through application.
Process Mapping. Everyone needs to know how to write down their step-by-step process so that anyone can pick it up and follow it. I’ve said it before that leaders tend to say “Map to X level,” but that’s based on a belief that process improvement practitioners are doing the mapping…no. Everyone that works in a repetitive process should have a process map that outlines every single step of the process written in narrative form and if it uses a computer, the narrative should include screen shots and file locations. If there are physical steps that need to occur, then photos of those physical activities should be included. In Lean you would call that Visual Work. No one can tell me that this is a waste of time for the person doing the work. Additionally’ no one but the people doing the work and the managers that manage the work need these process maps. You don’t need any special software to do this…you can write it down with paper and pencil or use a simple word editor.
Basic Workload Data. Now that I know exactly what I do, I can actually identify key workload data that I would like to capture. There are three things that I want to know…they never vary from process to process.
Time: What is the average time it takes to perform this process from start to finish. Every cell phone today has a stop watch, use it. Here is the very simple way that I recommend you time your process. Assign an individual that will time an individual that will perform the process. Don’t change these people until you’re done. Every day the process is performed, take three timings of the process every hour that the process is performed. Unless only one person does the process, collect timings from at least two people and a maximum of four if a lot of people perform the same process. Make sure the person timing is the same every time. This seems like a lot of work, but it really isn’t and if you don’t know the true average time it takes to do the process, you really have no idea what is happening. Add up all the timings and divide by the number of timings you have…simple average. Find someone that knows how to analyze data, preferably with Minitab, and have them analyze the data–they will provide you a great deal more information that you can use.
Volume: You need a way to collect the number of times that the process is completed. Also, you need to know by individual the number of times they performed the process if more then one person performs the process. Truly you want to know how many times the process is performed and the actual volume of the finished product that left the work center. The reason is to know how much rework occurred–in other words, they performed the process more times because of errors than the number of finished products that went out. But, for basics, you need to know how many times the process was performed or the total number of finished products from the process that went out. If you don’t know how much work you do every day, well, I really don’t know what to tell you. By combining the amount of work every day and the average time it takes to perform the process, you now know the productivity of your process. If you perform the process 1000 times in the day and it takes 1 minute to perform the process, then it takes 1000 minutes to perform that process. That’s 16.66 hours of work, which equates to just over 2 full time positions working 8 hours a day. If on Monday’s the volume doubles, then you know you need staffing that equates to about five people.
Defects: When you write down every single step in the process, you will probably run into this situation where there is an “if then” statement. If the product received is incomplete, then send it back; if the the paper printed is blank, reprint; if the expected block isn’t filled out, call so and so; etc. Normally, we just treat those things…those if thens…as part of the process. They are not. Those are “exceptions,” which are better known as defects. As you write down the steps, document these exceptions to your “clean” process and then create a way to collect the number of times that these exceptions occur. By simply looking at the totals for the various process defects over a period of time–maybe a month–you identify which ones are the most frequent. Common sense can tell you how much time each of these defects actually takes or how much impact these defects cause in your process. This gives you enough data to determine what you want to work on to improve your process. Otherwise, you might work on improving the wrong thing just because it’s easy or more glaring/visible.
Just think if everyone at the lowest level were doing this? Problems would be identified and solved at the lowest levels. Work would constantly be improved and everything would operate smoother in the work center.
Those experts in Lean and Six Sigma are there to help you analyze all this data you’ve collected around your process. They can help you build key charts to examine and analyze and they can recommend some just in time methods. If you run into a major process issue that spans multiple parts of the organization, they can develop a full blown process improvement effort and can facilitate everyone to solve the problem.
Bottom line, process improvement is simply business common sense with a fair amount of elbow grease thrown in. It’s the way you should act every day and you’ll take these basics to every job from here forward.
What is the focus of your call center? What are the metrics that you look at and what behaviors do these metrics drive?
Is your call center focused on answering calls quickly, providing a quick call turn over, and getting to the next call? If so, I hope that the sole purpose of your company is to answer questions for customers as quickly as possible.
If your company’s business to to do pretty much anything else, then you’re not focusing on the value of your call center and you probably are not looking at managing all your channels to drive the right calls to your call center.
See, many companies, as they’ve dealt with scalability and capacity issues, they’ve moved to a very lean model in their call centers. Many business process outsourcing firms have jumped on this opportunity to provide less expensive and very manufacturing-like processes around call centers. On shore, near shore, and off shore, there are people answering phones for all kinds of companies.
Because we have to answer calls and as we grow the number of calls significantly increase. Thus, we search for ways to deal with the increased call volume without significantly increasing our staff. Instead, we focus on really leaning out the operation, because it’s seen as not having value.
So let’s talk about that for a moment–value.
Value in a process is defined pretty much as, “what a customer is willing to pay for.” When a customer has a problem, question, concern, etc. with a company, they want to be able to pick up the phone and speak to a real person to resolve and respond to their issue. I know that as a customer, the value I expect and pay for is someone answering the phone and someone responding to my needs on the phone. So, if this is a value to a customer, are we diminishing it by forcing computer automated responses and focusing on getting them off the phone as soon as possible?
Let’s look at the “other type of value”–business value. Sometimes there are activities and steps in a process that aren’t of value to the customer, but are of value to the business. In other words, the customer won’t pay for it, but we clearly will. Again, unless your company’s sole purpose is to answer customer questions, anytime you have your customer on the phone is an opportunity to learn more about them, to deepen your relationship with them, to provide them advice, and to sell them other key products that they might need, but didn’t even know you offered.
Unfortunately, when you are focused on managing the call volume in a traditional lean approach, value tends to be over looked. Both value to the customer and value to the business.
What’s worse is that our other channels tend to drive the wrong kind of calls to the call center and not the right ones. Many times, your physical mail channel, your web channel, your mobile channel, your social channel, etc., deliver inconsistent and non-integrated messages. These create confusion and drive up call volume from concerned customers. Thus, the reason they’re calling is to clarify, complain, and the like. So, you see the call center as a necessary burden to literally deal with communication rework answering questions that should have been clear and consistent in all channels in the first place. When it’s seen as a burden, then you try to minimize the expense and time involved in it.
Change your way of thinking…
You have your customer–the most valuable person to your organization–on the phone. Do you realize how hard it is to get someone on the phone these days? Take advantage of that!
Figure out what is driving your call volume and focus on eliminating the communications rework–answering something that should have been answered by another communication. Focus on other channels to drive the right call volume to your call center–volume that increases your relationship, understanding, and sales with your customer.
When you have the customer on the phone, don’t focus on answering quickly, getting them off the phone, and moving on to the next call. Focus on building your relationship, deepening your understanding of your customer, and providing them with information they didn’t have about your products so they might buy something else they need or want from you. Measure that–customer and business value of each phone call–and see how your behaviors around your call center change.
Simply put, the day you stop having meaningful conversations with your customers is the day that you go out of business. This will happen no matter how lean your call center is.
The first step in change management is to define the “burning platform.” If you’re waiting for the platform to catch fire, you’re too late.
We’ve become a nation of reactionists instead of a preventionists. We’re constantly looking to identify a burning platform so we can put it out instead of spending our time making sure the fires never start to begin with. What’s worse is that if we can’t define the burning platform because the fire hasn’t reached our room, we tend to ignore the fact that the smoke alarms in the house are going off.
If you really want to be successful, you need to stop looking for the burning platform and start looking at what your company does good today and what you can do to make it even better. They say that Good is the enemy of Great and I believe it has to do with the fact that we wait for something bad to happen and until that time it’s “good enough.”
On top of that we’ve become a nation of hero worshipers, recognizing the fire fighters who wait until the house is burning down and then jump in to put out the fire. Instead, we should be focused on those that do well at preventive maintenance and never have a house fire in the first place.
What this amounts to is that we need to live in a world of constant change where readiness to change is how we exist–we thrive on change through constant improvement. This doesn’t mean that something won’t go wrong from time to time, but the more preventive we’ve been, the better we’ll be to react to the issue. More than likely, we simply won’t experience the issue in the first place.
The problem is that leaders are often too blind to prevention and its value. When something goes wrong, they can see the tangible impact of the fix, the money that was saved, etc. Prevention is hard to measure and thus leadership devalues it. I have worked on several projects that were focused on measuring this unmeasurable item–prevention and preparedness. I’ve done this because, all too often, those that are getting ahead of problems are often challenged by the hero worshiping leaders because they don’t see them adding any value and simply costing the company money.
The fact is that these leaders need to get a clue about leadership and vision. Constantly managing to the problem breeds poor leadership discipline. Leaders need a strong discipline to stay ahead of problems and they need the courage to recognize those people who prevent the fire versus those that put them out.
Recently I was sitting in an event where a team was getting recognized for solving a problem that they did nothing to prevent. When the problem finally flared up, they reacted quickly and put the operation back on track. This team was honored in front of everyone as the shining example for all to model themselves after.
The fact is, if we don’t change this nation of reactionary thinking and hero worshiping, we’re going to end up being full of a bunch or arsonists putting out the fires they create. Because, in the end, what gets measured gets done and if you’re only going to recognize me if I solve a problem, then by God, I’m going to create the problems to solve.
So leaders, put away your fire extinguishers and pull out your pocketbooks, because you need to start paying for prevention versus recognizing reaction. Stop looking for burning platforms and start preventing fires.