Now that the layoffs have happened – you’ve re-organized the work as best you can, you’ve cut all non-essential expenses from your business, and it’s clear that your remaining work force is working harder than ever. Now what?
Ironically, I’ve discovered that the best time to implement a Continuous Improvement (CI) Program is during a time of crisis. A significant amount of time and energy is usually spent demonstrating why CI Programs are important and why everyone needs to be on board. During a time of crisis the need is already clear to everyone.
When you begin to implement your own CI Program, you will not just be developing habits that will reap benefits for years and years to come – you will provide your staff with what might be a new found sense of control and hope. It’s already clear to everyone in your organization that what has worked before may not necessarily work in the future.
For the purposes of this blog – I am defining a CI Program as any formal performance improvement initiative that is being led by a team of people in your organization to identify and remove unneeded waste. Think of it more as a way of thinking rather than a state you are trying to achieve.
The first step will be to start to “see” together. By this I mean that it’s important that everyone recognizes the types of waste that exist in your organizations (don’t worry — it’s in every organization) and be able to remove the waste and re-establish the standard of work from that point on.
Now, the word waste is where it gets a little difficult. Waste refers to any activity that does not add value to the customer. In other words, if it’s a task that the customer is NOT willing to pay for, then it’s a possible source of waste. This includes things like overproduction, wasted movement, transportation of information or material, repair or rejects, inventory, over processing, and missed opportunities.
A great place to start is to hold a company meeting. Identify a group of “subject matter experts” who can clearly define the current method for doing all major parts of the job – from the beginning of the customer stream (Marketing and Sales), to Operations, through Customer Service, to Billing or cash collections. Have the “experts” walk through each step of the process – to identify when something needs to happen, who would interact with the task, and how long it takes to complete. All you need is a big blank wall, and some post-its.
This is a picture of the first value mapping session I was part of. As the founder and CEO, it was a painful experience. But, I would say that it only made visible what everyone already knew – we had some pretty screwed up processes that were causing us to be incredibly inefficient. When you put it all down and try to measure how much time you actually spend adding value along the way, it’s a very sobering experience. It isn’t until you can see together that you can start to improve together.
In my next installment, I will walk you through in more detail how we documented our work and what we were interested in seeing.
Tags: Customer Value, Visual Management