Making "Lean" & "Culture Change" Worth the Investment
Posted by Chris Holland on Thu, Aug 11, 2011 @ 09:09 AM
First ask yourself, "Where did the last change process go?"
One CEO of a nationally renowned healthcare organization announced to an executive conference that he was adopting “Toyota Lean” to re-establish the prominence of his venerable organization.
When asked what was at the core of the new model he answered, “it is a complete system for achieving business success ... it starts with listening to the people doing the work.”
One after another, participants asked how he was executing on his plan. “How big are your teams?” “What are the components of your training?” “How are you engaging your physicians?”
The audience was energized by the CEO’s confidence and commitment and they wanted to know how they could bring this new approach to their organizations.
But I knew first hand something that the other attendees appeared to not know. This CEO said all these things ten years earlier when his organization was leading the country in the implementation of TQM. (He was an executive team member back then and not the CEO.)
While others were eager to hear about how to replicate the CEO’s new initiative, I was eager to hear him speak about how his organization lost it the first time.
Why the last change didn't hold?
Because it was nice to have not critical to have. It was not designed
to be responsive to competetive and fiscal crises,which call for the following:
- Deep knowledge
- Sound judgement
- Tough decision-making
- Risk taking
- Speed
- Willingness to abandon what's not working
In fact the old change process had just the opposite:
- Adherance to a cumbersome process
- Complex tools when simple ones would do
- Over fascination with causes rather than cures
- Over-reliance on "Exemplars" trained in methods
- Expensive paralell support organizations
- Thought of as a "Journey" not a state of performance
- A new language invented for the change not for the business
- Training focused on "conversion" not advancing business savvy
- Denegration of sound management principles and history
- Not designed to speed decision making on most critical issues
Critical FACTORS for Sustaining Organizational Change
#1 Focus:
Having a clear, agreed upon description of the positive change your organization has achieved, an understanding of how vital it is for success, and an affirmative public statement about your commitment to maintain and continually improve that state, is at the core of “keeping it!”
The storage closets of American businesses, schools, healthcare organizations, and charitable organizations are bursting with forgotten Idealistic Initiatives that were supposed to be the elixir imbuing everyone manager and employee with magic powers and every organization with unbeatable competitive positioning. Their names were never to be mentioned as management brought out the Newest Solution seeking the top 10% of “Early Adopters” to create the momentum for revitalizing greatness.
It’s not that the previous 25 change movements didn’t achieve positive results for the enterprise and its customers. It’s just that they became routine, lost their status as earth shattering breakthroughs, or fell under the weight of their own cumbersome policies, procedures, structures, and superstitious rituals. Financial crises demanded serious hard-nosed decision-making relegating the new ways to “nice-to-have’s” and not “have-to-have’s.”
When the crises were over, new challenges seemed to call for new solutions. The thought of pulling out the old approaches that had proved to be lacking, was viewed as retro or uninspired. And into the breach came the consultants, selling the new line of potions specially designed for today’s more complex challenges.
Unless you had bought into the old New Approach you’d miss the fact that it had actually been folded into the pages of the latest books describing the new one.
Whatever it's called, it must work!
Your change may be called a new strategy, Lean, Competitive Breakthrough,TQM, Learning Organization, Re-Engineering, Continuous Improvement, or the XYZ Way. No matter. Whatever is proposed, it should stand the test of the following questions:
Ask yourself ...
- Will it help us achieve the state of effectiveness that we want?
- Will it advance our competitive strategy?
- Is it compatible with our mission and values?
- Is it worth the investment we'll have to make?
- Will it leverage our strengths?
Whatever approach or combination of approaches your organization employs to be successful and in creating delighted loyal customers, it will always be well worth your organizational time and resources to engage in a dialog that creates clarity and commitment to what you’re trying to achieve by when and why you’re trying to achieve it.
To borrow from an old saw, without Focus, any approach will get you there!
More FACTORS to come in future BLOGS