Using Lean Practices in IT, Big Savings and Performance Improvement

May 1, 2012 2 Comments

It has been a busy 2012 for everyone, It seems everyone I know is like me, working harder than ever, hoping the economy picks up and that our Government gets budgeting and contracting plans set and in motion.  While weathering the current economic storm, I had the opportunity to work with a client in the first quarter of this year in one of my favorite environments – IT.  I have found myself in various IT positions and consulting roles throughout my career, picking up technical skills as well as experience with ITIL, CMMi, and various development methodologies.  I have in many cases applied Lean and Six Sigma in conjunction with IT best practices to help organizations improve performance and save money.  Recently, I helped an organization shave millions in annual operating costs while significantly improving performance by applying agile work cells and leveraging a few simple Lean techniques such as one-piece-flow.  This article summarizes three methods nearly any IT support organization can use to drastically cut costs and improve performance.  Given the current economic and budget environment, this may be a timely read for some of our followers.

******

A graduate school professor assigns a software development final class project to teams of five students each.  All students on each five person team will receive the same grade and it accounts for 50% of the final grade for the class.  Team 1 (Sally, Jack, Dan, Tom, and Ken) and Team 2 (Bill, Dave, Will, Cindy, and Beth) take two different approaches to tackling the project. Team one assigns requirements to Sally, Design to jack, Development to Dan, testing to Tom, and presentation of the product to Ken.  Each person will perform their respective part of the project and then hand their work to the next until all work is complete and the final product is handed off to Ken who will present the final product to the professor and his assistant and the grade for the project will be determined.

Team Two decides that they will tackle each task from requirements through final presentation together, but take turns as the task leader based on the strengths of each team member.  The members of team two do not completely trust each other and want to make sure the project progresses on schedule and with high quality since it can cause them to fail the class if done poorly.  They also want to make sure they are all at the presentation to the professor just in case something goes wrong.

Which team would you want to be on? On team one, you know your part of the work, you can focus on your piece and the roles and responsibilities are clear.  On team two, the roles and responsibilities are blurred and everyone on the team will be pounding away the entire time to create the best product possible.  Anyone that has been to graduate school knows that almost without exception, students inherently adopt the collaborative approach of Team Two.  Why do these young minds, yet to be trained by corporate master-minds and molded by policy, politics, bureaucracy, and standardization take this collaborative approach almost every time.  It is because they still have “common sense” and they feel a true sense of urgency and commitment to excellence.  They know their future is on the line with each major project.  They also know that the deadline cannot be changed, resources are constrained, and quality cannot be sacrificed.  Common sense brings them together into what Lean experts call a work cell and software professionals call a Scrum team using an agile approach.

Is this really the best approach?  Many managers will say “this approach is a waste of labor.” “By taking team one’s serial approach they can have multiple projects underway, or Work In Process (WIP) with the same labor pool, while the team two approach limits me to one project at a time with the same resources.”  This is a logical pitfall.  Managers should focus on level of effort in value adding activities and throughput while minimizing WIP.  The Team Two approach on the other hand ensures a “connection” among tasks and essentially eliminates rework within the process.  It also eliminates work waiting in queues and mitigates risks associated with single points of failure in your labor pool.

Lean/Operations Research people call this one-piece-flow in a cellular work cell system.  This article is not a lesson in Lean.  It is a message that assembly line type of thinking is simply wrong in diverse IT environments as proven by the many successful Lean/Agile Scrum implementations.  Yet, this thinking is still prevalent and still the dominant approach to tackling IT projects in most organizations.

I have worked with numerous IT organizations from the largest telecommunications companies to start-up software companies and internal IT shops and can tell you with certainty, that a serial assembly line approach is almost always the wrong way to complete IT projects.  I remember clearly how one of the telecommunications firms I worked with, rooted in old school Bell Corps thinking insisted on breaking the work of implementing new equipment at their Points of Presence (POPs) into a serial approach of power installation, rack installation, equipment installation, wiring, configuration, test, and turn-up.  They would go round-and-round trying to get vital services running with each step of the process pointing fingers at the other. Projects usually made their way to some ridiculous phone conference where the bosses of the various technical teams would accuse each other of various sins until someone higher up would finally tell them all to get their technicians to the site at the same time and don’t leave until the service is working.  In other words, they pulled together a collaborative work cell to get the job done.  The technical leads would declare victory after working nights and weekends to get the service running. This scenario would play out over and over, but the process never changed. That was well over a decade ago and I would like to believe things have changed, but from what I hear, they are only a little better.

To avoid these same inefficiencies, to improve quality, and to drastically cut costs there are three simple methods we recommend.  We call this the “Lean Agile Work Cell Approach”.

  1. Align your IT work force to customer value propositions (a.k.a. value streams)
  2. Implement a Lean centric, pull based cellular work cell approach.
  3. Adopt a unified process automation environment

Aligning your work force to customer value propositions is actually very simple.  Think in terms of the services your IT organization provides to the end customer.  For example, enterprise software projects and support, desk applications and support, and printer support.  You can also think in terms of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).  You need to understand the Voice of the Customer (VOC) for each line of value.  You need to quantify the key metrics for satisfaction, performance, cost, etc.  You then need to align your teams and processes to these value propositions and measure everyone in them against the key metrics.

Agile work cells aligned to the customer value proposition

Creating pulled based cellular work cells is partially explained above.  As an example, consider the process of deploying new desk top operating systems in your enterprise.  If this process is done in a serial process, disconnected from the customer, you get a situation in which technical details and requirements are gathered for months, then handed off the a integrator that has to figure out the requirements and then develop integration scripts, which are then handed off to a testing team who will then get into a series of re-work loops with the integrator and after many months of testing, the operating system push will be sent to some type of distribution team that will then blindly launch the distribution process.  Alternatively, a series of small work cells containing integrators, testers, distributors, and customer technical liaisons can work together on a focused integrated project team to integrate, test, and deploy operating systems in a rapid order.  By testing at an incremental level and developing deployment scripts with an eye for testing and distribution at the same time, cycle time is significantly reduced and defects essentially eliminated.  This approach also allows for the operating system deployment team to learn from each iteration and get better with each operating system project from customer to customer.  In my firm, we have implemented similar work cells in various organizations with profound improvements in both effectiveness and efficiency.

Lastly, adopting a unified process automation platform is a powerful way to significantly reduce your IT license costs, maintenance costs, and software support costs while improving process performance.  For the last ten years, these tools have been called Business Process Management (BPM) and for the organizations that have adopted them and implemented well, great savings, process improvement, and transparency have been recognized.  The process automation environment becomes a process centric integrated development environment eliminating the need for custom software development, institutionalizing processes, but raising the need for proper IT Governance and enterprise architecture.  Today, process automation tools are available in cloud computing platforms and costs are falling precipitously.

In summary, the Lean Agile Work Cell approach to information system management creates agile work cells working in alignment with customer needs that are developing new software and managing their own work within a common process automation/development environment.  This is bad news for custom software development shops and great news for the CIO with a shrinking budget and pressure to show results.

Filed under Business, Information Technology, Performance Management, Process Improvement, Strategy Tagged with , ,

Email, Email, Email – How to Survive the Information Flood

December 19, 2011 3 Comments

If you are like me, there is no way you can possibly keep up with the never ending flood of emails hitting your inbox.  Career professionals today have multiple personal and business email accounts and many of the people we work with from our customers to our children’s teachers depend on email to communicate important messages.

Unfortunately, not everyone observes the same email protocols and worse there are those that abuse email or even use it for malicious intent.  In this article, I share my research and practices my firm teaches to manage the flood of emails from those that are trying to send us messages they think are important.  With this article, I will share some best practices for effective and efficient email management and ask that readers please share their knowledge on this subject, as it is still a poorly defined body of knowledge.

I have researched email management several times in recent years in support of clients and spent time researching email management on the Internet and found many articles to find the latest trends.  The first thing I can tell you is that I could find no authoritative source for email management.  There are some good articles and blogs, but nothing one would consider a real standard for email centric personal planning and management.  If someone knows of such a standard setting organization, please post a comment letting us know.

My second major finding is that most of the articles and blogs say essentially the same things.  They say things like “setup email screening rules,” “keep replies simple and brief,” etc.  Rather than repeating the guidelines, here are three of the best articles I found on the subject.

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/4438.html

http://www.dailyblogtips.com/10-tips-for-managing-email-effectively/

http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2009/04/09/your-inbox-is-full-managing-email-overload/

From my research and experimentation, I have found six email management techniques that stand out.  These are the must have email management techniques.

  1. Ignore email.  Important messages will get to you.  Yes, this sounds risky, but I do it and it works.  Of course, your eyes are going to quickly identify emails from important people like your CEO, your customers, and your spouse.  Everyone knows how busy you are and if they do not hear from you on an important message, they will call, or instant message, or text message you.  Of course, you need to make sure you are technologically accessible to the people that matter in your life.
  2. Set an email schedule – Read emails on a schedule throughout the day, or limit yourself to a certain number of email minutes per time period.  To get thoughtful work completed, you must take time to focus without distractions and email is distraction number one for most people.  Some It firms are not allowing email for their developers and it significantly improves cycle times, quality, and even collaboration, because they are forced to actually talk about development ideas and issues.
  3. Keep it brief – Keep all messages to one subject per email and the same for all replies.  This is very important.  Emails are hard enough to interpret.  When people combine multiple subjects, the meaning of the message is lost.
  4. Enforce proper behavior – this is one not mentioned in the email articles I read, but I use it successfully.  Essentially, it goes like this.  If someone sends you an email with more than one topic, respond to them stating that you will review and respond to their email as soon as you can, but in the future they should only send emails with one topic per email.  That way you can quickly comprehend and succinctly respond to their email.  If the person persists in sending you voluminous emails, call the person and explain that you simply cannot take the time to read and comprehend his or her emails and that if they need to discuss complex topics to please pick up the phone and call.  Remember, the inverse of behavior shaping is also true.  If you behave badly with email, then your correspondents will do the same in return.  If you send large emails, they will probably give it right back.  If you respond quickly to every email, then people will continue to flood your inbox.  Email is not instant messaging and should not be used as such.
  5. Use lists and bullets – This is a great technique for communicating the steps you want a person to follow in a task, or the items you want them to deliver on a project.  Rather than weaving items into the text of email paragraphs, simply provide a list.  Many people consider lists to come across as harsh and impersonal and perception can be reality, but they are also more concise and accurate.  It is common practice these days to ask them to pardon your brevity at the end of an email, so if you are worried about hurting feelings by listing tasks, simply post that little disclaimer and they should get over any unhappy feelings.
  6. Use follow-up flags and categories – This is a great way to ensure the important emails that require your action get segregated from the masses of the marginally valuable.  Most email clients have some type of follow up flag or star you can click to tag the email.  When you are scanning your inbox, you should go through a process of deleting, flagging, and categorizing.  Personally, I prefer deleting emails, but that is not always an option.  Flag emails that need action and sort your inbox based on flag, then received date.  You can also categorize with most email clients and use hot key to quickly

There is also one recommendation from my research that I have not tried, but it is certainly interesting.  It is to charge a fee for emails.  The example given was an executive that takes a few dollars from the department of each person that sends him an email.  Supposedly, his inbox only contained important company emails because of this practice and collaboration with his leadership team was improved.  This sounds risky, but it may have a positive effect if people talk rather than email.  If someone tries it, please let us know how it goes.

Email is and will continue to be a major part of personal and professional life for years to come.  Like all technologies, it will eventually be replaced by something more efficient and effective.  Until then, we can hope that the ways in which email is used and managed will continuously improve.

Again, please post your comments and suggestions on how readers can improve email management.

This will be my last post of 2011 – Happy Holidays!!!

Filed under Business, Performance Management, Process Improvement Tagged with , , ,

Mentoring – A Powerful Business Tool

November 12, 2011 1 Comment

This week’s post is about something we at MSI do on a daily basis.  The subject is mentoring.  Technically, we coach and mentor, but mentoring in particular is a powerful business tool in many ways.  Mentoring is something a successful person will leverage as both a mentor and as a protégé or mentee.  First, let’s define the term mentor.  According to Webster, a mentor is defined as “a trusted counselor or guide.”

The mentor can be a trusted counselor or guide at many levels and in many ways.  Mentors can be life coaches, technical advisors, career counselors, financial advisors, and so much more.  Existing survey data on the benefits of mentoring indicate it is well worth the expense and effort with a minimum of $2.00 returned for every dollar invested.  Additionally, most experienced professionals will agree that finding a mentor that will guide you and take you along a path of success is vital to a successful career.  Further, mentoring those less experienced is vital to both your success and the future of your organization or industry.  For the sake of this article, I will break business related mentoring into two categories: (1) career mentoring and (2) technical mentoring.  We will ignore personal, academic and other such mentoring as this is a business article.  Not to say those types of mentors are not vitally important, they are.  In many cases, the personal life mentor may be the same person as the business mentor.  However, most people reading this article will have a personal life and a business life and I am catering to the latter.  In all cases, there is one axiom that applies “learn from those that came before you.”  Learn from their mistakes and learn from their successes.  I would say one of the most important things that got me through my teens and twenties was my desire to learn from the mistakes of others and not make those mistakes myself.

Career mentoring is, from an individual perspective, the most important of the two.  Bad career advice leads to bad career decisions, which leads to a professional, financial, and personal death spiral.  Ego and ignorance are the enemies of good career mentoring.  I know many a humble person of average intelligence that followed sound career advice from a successful mentor that is now successful themselves. Unfortunately, I also know many more highly intelligent professionals living a dissatisfying career, knowing they are not maximizing their potential.  In most cases, it is ego and/or ignorance of the importance of having good mentors that constrains these people.  Things like title, degree, and personality get in the way of one allowing himself to be mentored.  The best leaders I know open themselves to mentoring from even those who work under them.  They know that the best advice can come from the most unlikely of sources.

To choose a good career mentor or mentors, the first step is to develop a realistic vision of your future.  Self-awareness of one’s capabilities, limitations, and tendencies is critically important.  Once you have developed that vision, identify people who are truly successful and living that vision.  I have found that people living a successful vision are fully aware of the importance of mentoring and are very happy to mentor those behind them on the same path.  Seek these people out, ask them questions about what they do and find out if their reality matches your vision.  If so, start asking them if they think you are capable of achieving what they have achieved.  Ask them to be honest and be prepared for a harsh slap from reality.  Note, a good mentor will not directly answer such questions.  Rather, they will ask you questions in a way that allows you to answer that question yourself.  If you come to the decision that your vision is sound and the path is righteous, these are the people you want to consider for your long term career mentor.  Keep your mentor informed, communicate via phone, email, and text, instant message, Facebook, and any other means that works for you.  To be successful, mentoring needs to be ubiquitously integrated into your routine, not just some formal meeting you have once per month.  Formal mentoring sessions are good, but only as punctuation in the series of ongoing mentoring interactions.

Technical mentoring is in many ways a different thing altogether.  Technical mentoring is often associated with a single technical subject one is learning, such as Lean Six Sigma or Project Management.  It will have a finite life-span.  It is more easily quantified and measured, and outcomes are clear.  Technical mentoring does not usually require the up-front personal discovery associated with career mentoring.  The mentee or protégé enters the arrangement knowing what they want to achieve and hope to find a mentor that can get the job done.

Matching the technical mentor to the mentee is again very important.  Personalities must gel and the pace of learning must be in synch.  Further, technical mentors are often needed for hard requirements the mentee has to meet, requiring a mentor that is available when needed and to the degree needed.  A risk with technical mentoring is the mentor doing too much or too little work for the mentee.  Further, the mentor has a more active role in the sense of keeping a mentor on track and on schedule with technical skill development.  The mentor may also be required to report mentee progress to management and may be mentoring numerous people on the same subject.  When choosing your technical mentor, be selfish.  Work to get the best you can in terms of the mentor’s ability to mentor you and the mentor’s time and availability to work with you one-on-one.  Ask others that have been mentored on the same technical skill how they liked their mentor.  Ask them to describe how they interacted and if they think the mentor would be a good one for you.  If you have your mentor assigned by higher management and don’t like the one assigned, speak up.  Management is making an investment in your skills and has an interest in making sure you get the best mentoring.  Lastly, when working with a technical mentor, ask “why” and ask it often.  Many technical mentors are not as experienced as they should be.  Challenge them and make sure they are giving you practical and proven advice.

Ideally, technical mentoring will be a shared responsibility that is part of the culture of paying it forward that exists in an organization.  I recently attended the annual awards dinner for the Maryland World Class Consortium.  The Key Note Speaker was Mr. Richard Sheridan, CEO of Menlo Innovations.  He described their agile, human centric software development approach.  A key component of that approach is the pairing of developers on each task and the rotation of pairs each week.  A great approach to peer review and quality control/assurance, but with the proper assignments and a little measurement, this is also the ideal way to mentor.  Mentoring of this nature would be truly integrated at the task level of business operations and would create a continuously learning and highly aware organization.

Lastly, technical mentoring should be quantified using a consistent set of criteria and reported on numerically to track the progress of all mentees.  A snapshot of corporate skill levels should be developed from mentoring tracking data.  At MSI, we have employ a structured mentoring approach based on Experiential Learning that quantifies individual ability on several dimensions and informs managers of both the progress of employees and the quality of mentoring.  We encourage our clients to manage toward an even distribution of personnel on the learning curve such that the organization always has a flow of people learning and moving on to the next thing as identified below.

Mentoring Pipeline Images

Far too often we see unhealthy personnel capability pipelines where there are gaps in the progression of personnel and somehow trainees mysteriously jump from being a trainee to an expert.  Organizations with an unhealthy capability pipeline typically have no mentoring program or a loosely managed mentoring program at best.  Such organizations benefit greatly from taking internal mentoring and the management of corporate skills more seriously.

Whether or not you work for an organization that takes mentoring seriously, you are wise to do so for yourself.  Even in a corporate mentoring vacuum, you can seek out a capable mentor.  You may have to go outside your organization, but it is critically important to find a good mentor.  Do not let ego or laziness get in your way.  Ironically, many a person that does not seek out a good mentor or resists mentoring ends up frustrated and/or failing.  It is only after they reach post failure catharsis that they are humble enough to seek out the mentoring that could have gotten them on the track to success and kept them there.  It is never too late to start, but why wait until after a series of failures.  Mentoring is a simple and effective practice that will make a huge difference in your career and can transform your organization.

Filed under Business, Strategy

Level Zero Value Stream Maps

October 24, 2011 Leave a comment

This week’s post is about a simple tool any group of managers can use to help clarify relationships and streamline operations among major organizations in a value stream.  Level Zero Value Stream Maps or Phase Maps as they are sometimes called are an excellent tool for gaining consensus on the way things are or should be accomplished at a strategic level across organizations.  The level zero map is a high level overview documenting who owns and who supports each phase of an enterprise value stream.  It communicates things like the major inputs and outputs of each phase, the objectives of each phase, information systems used, and the major tasks associated with each phase.  Something I like to add to my level zero maps is the overall set of objectives for the value stream.  In fact, I like to do this first.  It is a “begin with the end in mind” approach to documenting the value stream and it gets everyone on the team aligned to a common set of goals.  From this start, the first pass is to move backwards defining the inputs and outputs of each phase such that you can pull the string on a single objective and see how it draws on inputs and outputs all the way back to the beginning.  The second, forward pass is to flush out the details.

The minimum set of information a level zero value stream map should include is.

  • A brief description of each phase
  • Who leads, who executes, and who supports each phase
  • Inputs and outputs of each phase (documents, etc. for back office processes)
  • Entry and exit criteria for each phase
  • The objective of each phase
  • High level list of tasks for each phase
  • Information systems used
  • Policy, manuals, or other references
  • Each phase should be numbered
  • Give each phase a meaningful title
  • High level metrics
  • Identify the variants of the value stream, meaning the different ways things enter and flow through (e.g., [micro, normal, large] or [trucks, trailers, spare parts]).  Create level zero at an level where these variants can be generically described, but make it clear that each is actually processed differently.

Creating a level zero value stream map requires some facilitation skill and it is easy to document something a bit myopic if the wrong person is leading the team, but is not rocket science.  The key is to be open minded, focus on the objectives and be willing to ask dumb questions like “Why do we create that document every time when it does not seem to be part of an objective?”

During the process of creating the level zero map, keep the notes on easel pads or a large white board.  Capture lists of the following: Problems Identified; Risks to the Desired Outcomes; Action Items; and Ideas.  When documenting the problems and risks, make a note of where they reside in the process this will be your first indication of where you may want to start working on performance improvement of the value stream.  It usually makes sense to identify the serious problems within the final outputs of the value stream and then perform root cause analysis to find the places in the value stream where those serious problems are starting.  A cluster of problems in a specific area is not enough to decide where to start working.  Make sure the problems being fixed are the ones most important to the final outcomes.

The style of flow chart used at this level varies greatly.  The best advice when it comes to style is to choose a style for your level zero map that will be consistent with lower level detailed process maps and will enable upward and downward integration of the process maps.  An example of a simple level zero is shown below.

If the value stream you work in does not have a value stream map accurately representing how business is done, you need one.  Make the development of one an agenda item at the next executive off site, or pull together a workshop with your value stream stakeholder to build one together. It is a great exercise that brings management together, develops unified vision, and can be the starting point for serious process improvement.

Note: There are formal standards such as BPMN and the Learning to See approach for documenting your value streams.  I have often found these standards are a great starting point, but not the total solution.  Do some research on these standards and come up with an approach that works for you and your stakeholders.

For more information, visit us at http://www.msi6.com

Filed under Business, Performance Management, Process Improvement, Strategy Tagged with , ,

A Simple Strategic Analysis Tool

October 5, 2011 Leave a comment

Table of Strategic Constraints – A simple tool that exposes significant constraints in enterprise processes and value chains

Large organizations often find that the internal and external functions of supply chains and value chains are at odds with each other. They battle over lead times, quality of documentation, requirements, specifications, delivery schedules, pricing, engineering plans, etc.  A common example is the eternal battle between sales and delivery in numerous industries such as telecommunications, medical devices, and construction.  I will pick on telecommunications since I know that industry well.  Sales personnel sell circuits and value added services in various configurations across the globe.  Inevitably, what was sold is reviewed by a sales engineer under tremendous pressure to get reviews done.  Working with limited information and disconnected from the reality of field engineering, he does his best to approve the sale.  Once the sale is done, it ends up in the hands of some provisioning center and assigned to field installation and configuration personnel that immediately reach out to the customer to find out what they actually want and often to tell them they can’t get everything they were promised when it was promised or maybe not at all.  The same scenario plays out over and over in Government, DoD, and numerous industries.  While we all know this exists, it is often difficult to document and communicate.  This week, I am posting about a tool any manager or leader can use to document organizational misalignment and conflicts that cause these inefficiencies.

The tool is what I call the table of strategic constraints.  It is essentially a system analysis and optimization tool that anyone can use to quickly document certain important attributes of each major function in a supply chain or value stream to easily identify where functions, departments, or entire organizations are out of alignment and possibly even working against each other.  In a process, the optimization of a step or sub process places constraints upon related steps.  Sub system optimization creates whole system sub optimization. Yet, in many value streams each phase struggles to optimize itself at the expense of others.  The result is a never ending series of myopic initiatives to reduce costs and improve performance.  To solve this, the entire process must be optimized on the whole at a strategic or enterprise level.  This will ultimately lead to sub optimal performance of the steps within.  This model analyzes the root causes or drivers of sub process optimization and myopia by qualitatively assessing the objectives and incentives of each phase of the process.  An example of a completed table is shown below.

The concept and the process are simple.  Call a meeting of managers from each of the organizations in your supply chain or value stream.  You can make this as broad or narrow as you wish.  Use some common sense.  Explain to everyone that the exercise is to help everyone in the chain, not to point fingers at any one organization.  If they are honest, they will all learn things that can help everyone to better serve the end customer and streamline their relationships.  Starting at the top, list the phases as shown.  You can also list the organizations if desired.  Now continue to work your way down one row at a time with the team.  Identify the Primary Objectives, then the cost, cycle time, and performance objectives.

The motives and incentives is where cold hard honesty is required.  Ask “what are the people in this phase really incentivized to do.”  You should see things like “avoid getting called into the boss”, “earn commissions”, “execute the budget”, “sell the inventory”.  This is an area where you can truly expose a lack of alignment with the needs of the customer.  You can also expose root causes of lingering problems.  There are no hard and fast rules for completing the table, just enter honest and meaningful information that can be compared across the columns.   Use consistent terminology across the columns of each row.  In other words, for cycle time, don’t enter “yes”, “100%”, “per metrics”.  These entries are almost impossible to compare.  Rather, enter useful and comparable information, such as “top priority”, “no concern”, “based on artificial metrics”.  In this example, one can deduce that the first phase makes cycle time a priority with the customer and the rest of the value chain either does not care or has established internal metrics they probably fudge to make themselves look good.

Completing the table will take several iterations.  Once it is complete, simply scan each row, across the columns and identify the areas in which the phases/organizations are out of alignment.  Document these problems and discuss them with the team and brief them to leadership.  The findings can also become valuable inputs for your strategic planning process.

Filed under Performance Management, Process Improvement, Strategy Tagged with , ,

MMAP Your Processes

September 26, 2011 Leave a comment

This week I am going tactical with an approach I have found very helpful in creating continually improving business systems.  As a Master Black Belt, I have seen numerous high profile, high impact performance improvement initiatives.  Many of them achieved great things, delivered ROI, and enhanced careers.  Far too often though, these business systems that rose to high performance slipped backward over time into a state of disarray and poor performance.  Alternatively, they sometimes maintain initially achieved performance levels, but do not continue to evolve.  MMAPing your process is a simple guide you can use to establish a process management framework ensuring long term continuous of any business system.

No, MMAP is not a typo.  It stands for Measurement system, Metrics, Accountability, and Process.  I tell the Lean Six Sigma Black Belts I mentor to “MMAP the control phase of your project and MMAP your processes or I will not sign off on your final toll-gate.”  This is a simple approach that any business person can apply, Lean Six Sigma Certification not required.

MMAP Defined

Measurement System:  How will the inputs, operating parameters, outputs, and outcomes of the process be measured?  Ideally it will be part of an automated enterprise measurement system.  However, it can be localized or even manual recording in MS Excel.  Either way, there should be clear definition of what is measured, how it is measured, why it is measured, standardized analysis such as control charts, and definition of how to calculate values.

Metrics: The performance thresholds, control limits, acceptable values, and other specific mathematical targets the measurement system is measuring.  These metrics must be represented within reports generated by the measurement system.

Accountability: Who is accountable for the continuous improvement of the process or business system.  Who ensures the measurement system works, the metrics are relevant and accurate, who analyses the data and reports, who stewards the process to improvement when data indicates change is required?

Process:  What is the process for conducting analysis, proposing change, vetting, approving, implementing improvements, and verifying outcomes?  Examples include the Deming Cycle (Plan Do Check Act) and the Six Sigma (DMAIC) – Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control.

In government and some large businesses, one can add a second P to MMAPP the process.  This second P is for Policy.  In this case, we ask has policy been updated to ensure the MMAP will be enduring and enforced over time.

It has been my experience that even very expensive Lean Six Sigma Black Belt training often under emphasizes the importance of a solid approach to ongoing control of processes.  Much time is spent on how to define  and analyze processes.  Further, the tools of how to measure process performance are typically explained well.  However, the method for tying it all together in the control phase is often missing.  I have found this simple approach very useful in providing structure to continual process management.  I hope you find it useful in your process improvement endeavors.

“Processes do not manage themselves”

Filed under Business, Process Improvement

Times are Tough, Stick to Your Strategy

September 15, 2011 1 Comment

In times like these when new business is hard to find, top employees are weighing their options, and suppliers are begging for help, you must have a clear and concise strategy and you must align all resources and activities to that strategy. This week’s post is to share a tool that will help your organization operate daily in a manner that aligns with strategy, maximizing the effect of your precious resources. If you are like me, you have more great ideas than you do resources to execute. Further, it is natural for managers to see any opportunity as a good opportunity in lean times. The worst thing you can do in these times is chase every opportunity that comes along in the hopes that something good happens. One of my favorite axioms “Focus and Achieve” applies now more than ever. This doesn’t mean you need to be myopic. Not at all. It just means you need to have a good strategy, SMART objectives, and effective initiatives in place. Then you need to track your market and competitors closely, adjust smartly, and do not allow shiny bobbles to distract you away from your strategy.

The tool best suited for keeping your organization’s activities in alignment with strategy is the goal deployment matrix. This tool is from the Japanese Hoshin Kanri body of knowledge and it is used successfully in numerous high performing organizations such as Toyota, Xerox, and Caterpillar. An example of the matrix is shown below.

Goal Deployment Matrix

Typical Goal Deployment Matrix

Using the tool is simple Once you have identified your goals and objectives, enter them in to the left most column. Then work with your internal teams and departments to define the means for accomplishing these objectives and enter them into the top row. This is often accomplished through a back and forth vetting process. Assign ownership and metrics for the objectives and the means. If you are a Lean Six Sigma organization, you will charter the means, assign Black Belts, etc. Then use this tool to review status at least monthly. If you have a large organization, you can cascade these goal deployment matrices to avoid creating one overwhelming document. Now, every great idea and every request for funding must be analyzed against the goal deployment matrix for fit and alignment. Further, if progress on strategic objectives and means is not apparent in monthly reviews, you may have a hidden factory that needs to be exposed.

To learn about the entire body of knowledge for goal deployment or Hoshin Kanri, comment here and I will help you as time permits, or you can find a lot of good information on the Internet.

Effective and efficient operations don’t happen by chance.

Filed under Business, Performance Management, Strategy

Principles Based Management

August 28, 2011 10 Comments

It seems the business world has gone mad.  Times are tough in every industry.  Employees fear losing their jobs, leaders fear losing contracts and market share, not to mention damage to their reputations.  It seems most of the business leaders I talk with are dealing with customers acting erratic and employees that are either too nervous to perform or are playing cat and mouse with their employment status.

In the last year, I have seen first-hand: corruption between government officials and contractors; bullying of small businesses; fraudulent proposals; and I think the spam mail is at an all-time high.  At MSI, http://www.msi6.com, we’ve had our own dealings with corrupt behavior in the past year.  I recall going through some similar nutty behavior in the early 90′s as an engineer and manager in bio-tech.  Hillary health care had the industry in a panic and the recession of the time still lingered.

Then and now, I noticed two truths (1) the “schemers” made a lot of work for themselves and tore each other apart. (2) The “principles based managers” were calm, focused on a better future, and ultimately won in the end.  The phenomena is simple, the schemers are focused on the near term and change their schemes on a daily basis.  They see conspiracy in every email and hear it in every conversation.  In some cases, there is a conspiracy.  However, in those rare cases, the conspirators are usually too inept or too insecure to actually execute any meaningful conspiracy.  Hence, the schemers spend their time spinning like a feather in a whirl wind.  They make no progress toward a better future for themselves or their organizations.  Ultimately, they damage their reputations to the point that when times are good again, they are not able to reap the full benefits of a good economy.

On the other hand, principles based managers do not waste time with scheming and conspiracy.  Some realize the futility of scheming, others are just principled people that know no other way, and some realize the best scheme is to not scheme.  Principles Based Managers understand that the world around them is going to change in unpredictable ways, but human nature and the tenets of right and wrong will not.  Principles Based Managers believe things like:

  • Treat others as you wish them to treat you
  • Honor, respect, loyalty, professionalism, and ethics are not just words. They are the way to act.
  • Focusing on deliverables and customer value is more important than image and silly games
  • Slow business today means it is a great time to prepare for a better tomorrow
  • Cost cutting and performance improvement can be done to a large degree without laying off employees
  • Employees and contractors are people that need jobs and you should do what you can to keep them on the payroll rather than cutting them for personal gain.
  • Family time is important, even if business is down
  • Be loyal to those who are loyal to you
  • Lying to someone is not the same as outsmarting them.  Rather, it is the cowardly way of business.

 

When you are at work today or tomorrow, take note of how many conversations you have about how the boss, a co-worker, or a customer is scheming and how you are scheming to counter their schemes.  Do you respond to schemes with schemes of your own?  If so, maybe you have fallen into the trap of the schemer.  If so, just stop and ask yourself, what is the right thing to do?  Yes, the right thing may be painful at first.  It may even cost business in the short term.  However, if you step out of the scheming whirl wind, you will find clarity.  You will see the unethical and illegal things the schemers are doing to each other and maybe even to you.  This clarity will help you deal with issues directly, fairly, and firmly.  You will have the upper hand and you will develop the reputation of an ethical person to be respected, not open to silly games and schemes. Best of all, when the economy improves, you will be positioned to maximize your benefits. Being principles based, you will likely share these benefits with those who deserve them.

Give it a try this week, make your decisions based on right and wrong, be steadfast and confident.  You may even have to get tough, but the schemers will cower and you will obtain the upper hand.

Filed under Business Tagged with , ,

Newer posts →

%d bloggers like this: