Posts Tagged ‘ Change Management ’

How do you go to the Gemba when the Gemba is anywhere and everywhere?

February 1, 2012
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I have a dilemma. Since I have been blogging about ROWE and contemplating the virtual workspace, it is at odds with my affinity for Lean Thinking and, especially, the concepts of going to Gemba and Leader Standard Work. If process excellence is facilitated by having Leaders go to where the work takes place, how can this same process excellence be gained when workers are at home in their pajamas, banging away on laptops?

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You can’t bloviate your way to an improved workplace

January 10, 2012
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You can’t bloviate your way to an improved workplace

I think we’ve all encountered the senior manager who has been assigned to “fix” a dysfunctional chunk of the organization.  Typically, they come in with a great many ideas, usually born from experiences in other situations, and then they begin to implement the tools that worked elsewhere.  There’s often a short period of enthusiasm, if not grudging acceptance, but things tend to slip backwards in time and, eventually, the organization returns to a state very similar to where it began.  The problems that the person was facing never really went away, and the attempts at treatment proved to be...

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To change the game, ignore those willing to play

January 5, 2012
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To change the game, ignore those willing to play

When it comes to change you have to worry about the people in the boat. Those who choose to stay in the water will either find their own raft, swim strongly, realize our boat is a pretty comfortable place or, sadly, they will drown. While we regret that, we must also remember that they have made their choices, and the outcomes are not our problem.

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Change exposes the boss, so there is no change

December 13, 2011
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It's no wonder that those in power resist transparency or programs that put a spotlight on their knowledge base. By doing "what the boss wants" as a means of getting promoted, these folks never developed a strong enough knowledge base to fully understand the position. Of course, no one would want to put that on display. The end result is fear - fear, on the boss's part, that he or she will be exposed for having little to no knowledge of what in the hell it is their staffs do all day.

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It’s not, “Should HR lead change?” It’s, “Why do we need HR to lead change?”

December 7, 2011
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HR may or may not be at the Vanguard of creating the culture of the company. In fact, it might not be much more than a Benefits and Compliance department, but someone in the organization clearly has an understanding of the human resources, even if it’s not Human Resources that’s in control. Which begs the question, what if not just someone – but everyone – in the company adopted the people-first mindset?

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Ask yourself: When did you give up?

November 30, 2011
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For all the web sites, books, articles and tweets on how Leaders and Leadership must change in order to create better, more innovative, more prosperous and sustainable workplaces - perhaps the focus needs to turn more towards the rank & file. People have come to expect drudgery as the norm, and are unaware of their own worth. If they ever had a sense of it, it's been drummed out or, what's even worse, no one ever explained that they don't have to carry out the pointless orders of scoundrels or nincompoops just to earn a living.

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Scholtes: The workplace visionary no one’s heard of

November 29, 2011
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In recent years, we've seen some thought leaders offer up best selling books, visionary programs and torrents of articles and other works describing what is wrong, how to fix it, and attempting to explain the science behind their approaches. In particular, Dan Pink gave us Drive, Best Buy gave us the ROWE experiment, and Lean thinkers continue to encourage us to think of front-line emplyees first, as in Jim Womack's Gemba Walk. What I find interesting is that all of these approaches to improving the workplace, at least in part, have some basis in Peter Scholtes 1998 Book, The...

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ROWE, Lean and the Shingo Model

November 22, 2011
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ROWE, Lean and the Shingo Model

While they are, perhaps, competing approaches to creating workplace change I do believe that ROWE and Lean compliment and reinforce each other much more than they contradict and weaken. I think this presents a tremendous opportunity to generate a new understanding of how to both bring about, and sutain, the workplace transformation that has been so inconsistent, and so elusive, for so long.

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Role of Finance in Process Improvement

November 8, 2011
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Role of Finance in Process Improvement

I caught a great article from Brad Power that was posted a couple weeks ago on the Harvard Busines Review, entitled "Shifting Finance from Controlling to Improving." What Power demonstrates are several CFO's who have endeavored to make understanding finances simple to those who don't live & breathe it in daily lives. They change the terminology to something more intutitve. They measure performance in a way that makes bottom-line impacts intutive. They help to spread the word about Lean to others with no-nonsense, easily articulated, and most importantly - easily acted-upon information.

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It’s still Easier, Better, Faster, Cheaper…in that order

November 2, 2011
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It’s still Easier, Better, Faster, Cheaper…in that order

The focus of improvement, and not just in lean, is in cost reduction and increased cycle time. That focus misses the point entirely, and remains unaware of just how brilliant the Easier, Better, Faster Cheaper methodology - when pursued in that order and that order only, truly is.

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Site Creator & Author: David M. Kasprzak

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