Tag: Lean

Understanding the Levers of Change

As part of my presentation “Sustaining Change – Executing a Sustainability Plan” at the ASQ Lean and Six Sigma Conference tomorrow I’ll be talking about levers of change.

Understanding the change landscape

Change Management practitioners usually talk about seven levers:

  1. Infrastructure – Investing in the tools, processes, and other resources that employees need to be successful with the change initiative.
  2. Walk the Talk – active leadership is about ownership; it includes making the business case clear, modeling behaviors, clearing obstacles and making course corrections.
  3. Reward and Recognition – acknowledgement and compensation for employees who work to move the initiative forward
  4. Mass Exposure – getting out information about the change through broadcast messages and other communication pathways
  5. Personal Contacts – creating opportunities for advocates to share their experience of the change with peers who feel disengaged
  6. Outside advocates – bringing in resources (internal or external) to gain expertise for the change initiative
  7. Shift Resisters – moving people to areas less affected by the initiative.
7 levers of change

Conference Speaking -2020 Lean and Six Sigma

In February I will be presenting at the 2020 ASQ Lean and Six Sigma Conference in Phoenix on Sustaining Change – Executing a Sustainability Plan.

Here’s the presentation summary:

For Lean and Six Sigma projects a central question should always be “how do we sustain this change?” Sustainability is a major part of all the major change models but is often the easiest to neglect. This session will engage the participant in building a Sustainability Plan, a key tool to ensure the change is anchored and embedded in the organization. Through three case study examples of changes at the three major change levels -transactional, organizational and transformational – the participant will gain the knowledge to create and execute an effective change plan.

During this session examples will be given for each component of a sustainability plan:

  • Communication: Mechanisms for persuasive communication and ongoing socialization of the change, rites of parting (saying goodbye to the old ways of doing things), and rites of enhancement (acknowledgment of quick wins and continued adoption)
  • Metrics Tracking: How to identify and execute consistent and effective ongoing measurement and results reporting to track progress and ensure sustained results • Performance Management: Process for observing and objectively measuring desired behaviors and attitudes, including performance appraisal process, promoting, demoting and transferring, and training and development
  • Rewards and Recognition: Program of intrinsic and extrinsic incentives to reinforce desired behaviors and attitudes
  • Sustaining Ownership: Consistent process for ensuring sustained ownership of the change through the ongoing transfer of experience and knowledge
  • Continuous Improvement: Mechanisms for responding to changing requirements and implementing improvements based on feedback, observations, and metrics

The following questions will be explored, and tools for finding answers will be provided:

  • How should organizational achievements reinforcing the change be commemorated
  • What behaviors should be observed and measured on a regular basis?
  • What results should be observed and measured on a regular basis?
  • What metrics should be used for measuring behaviors and results?
  • What mechanisms should be used for reporting results? • What criteria should be used to allocate rewards and promotion?
  • What mechanisms should be used for training, coaching, and role modeling?
  • What processes and procedures should be put in place to ensure sustained ownership of the change?
  • What continuous improvement mechanisms will address low adoption rates and ensure the change becomes part of the organization’s normal functioning?

At the end of the session the user will have a template for creating a sustainability plan and will have been provided tools to successfully execute the sustainability phase of a change.

Learning Objectives 1. Assess the role of sustainability in the major change management methodologies and apply to lean and six sigma projects. 2. Facilitate the sustainability phase of change management. 3. Compose a sustainability plan.

WCQI Day 2 – afternoon

Leading Teams: Conflict for Innovation and Change” by Carolann Wolfgang, Marilyn Monda and Lukas Cap.

The Human Development and Leadership Division is one of those divisions that I don’t get. Not because I disagree with the content, it’s just I don’t get what makes it different from the Quality Management or Team Excellence Divisions. This presentation by three of the member leaders didn’t make that any easier.

This workshop was an attempt to blend a few concepts, such as powerful questions, human explorers and curiosity types together and build a tool kit for team excellence. As such it wore its source material on it’s sleeves and skipped a few spots. A few specific observations:

  • The powerful questions are good
    • Why does this [point] matter to you?
    • What outcome would make it a success for you?
    • Is the way you think about the conflict useful, realistic or accurate?
    • What events or choices led to this conflict?
    • What other courses of action can you think of?
    • What if this obstacle was removed?
    • What is behind that thought, resistance or idea?
    • What are the priorities right now, in this conflict?
  • Using the Five Dimensions of Curiosity is very interesting. I think it can benefit from more thought on problems and how different curiosities lend themselves to different types of problems.

“System Transformation – Your role as a Lean Leader” by Erin Christiaens and Jaret Moch.

Super high level review of lean transformations and lean leadership. I find these workshops valuable to check-in against and hear what people are saying. Plus the rest of the 3 pm workshops didn’t engage me.

Focused almost exclusively on lean leadership standard work. Gave a few nice templates, and I do like workshops that give templates.

It is fascinating to hear people on different levels of the lean journey, or frankly any quality culture transformation. It is one of my favorite parts of attending conferences.

Provided by Lead2Lean Solutions

Afternoon Keynote – Tricia Wang

Praising statistical analysis at a quality conference is a good crowd pleaser. Way to bond with the audience.

Four Types of Problems by Art Smalley

Four Types of Problems: from reactive troubleshooting to creative innovation by Art Smalley (2018, Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc. ) is a fascinating book focusing on dividing problem solving and innovation into four major types:

  1. Troubleshooting: A reactive process of rapidly fixing abnormal conditions by returning things to immediately known standards. While beneficial in the immediate term this approach often fails to solve the problem’s root cause.
  2. Gap-from-standard: A structured problem-solving process that aims more at the root cause through problem definition, goal setting, analysis, countermeasure implementation, checks, standards, and follow-up activities.
  3. Target-state: Continuous improvement that goes beyond existing levels of performance to achieve new and better standards or conditions.
  4. Open-ended and Innovation: Unrestricted pursuit through creativity and synthesis of a vision or ideal condition that entail radical improvements and unexpected products, processes, systems, or value for the customer beyond current levels.

Art Smalley is a well known Lean expert, and this book definitely grows out of the wisdom and is a pretty good read. He shares
the strengths and weakness of each problem solving technique providing many points of introspection, such as the questions at the end of each chapter and excellent illustrations.

This book provides s a framework, a mental model, to effectively approach and assess a situation in order to seek and bring the appropriate kind of thinking to calmly, confidently address the problem at hand.

In many ways this book was my favorite quality book of 2018. I think it could serve as a valuable primer and I’m contemplating how to use it for internal training this year.

Conference Speaking

Conference proposals are a different writing beast than articles or columns or papers. Don’t be coy. Don’t give us a promise.  Tell us the problems and what we will learn.

Johanna Rothman “Writing Advice for Conference Proposals”

Good advice from Johanna Rothman on conference proposal writing.

Giving back to the profession, sharing best practices and lessons is an important part of being an ethical practioner, and also a great way to build your career. Preparing and speaking at a conference is also a great way to build connections with the material and to stretch in order to build expertise.

In 2019 I’m speaking at 4 conferences:

In addition, I tend to speak at a variety of internal events and provide a ton of training.

I hope to run into some of you at these events next year.