As many of those reading know, developing a mature culture of Continuous Improvement (CI) is a journey which some may feel is one they have been on for a lifetime.
Author: Tim Odokeychuk, president, AME Australia
Those who have well-established CI systems will have likely developed a daily management system – integrating their work with improvement for employees, leaders and in turn, specialised support resources ensuring stable processes, and allowing a team to achieve sustained performance.
Many of those businesses would have performance metrics that are timely and meaningful, with clear targets aligned with business plans and strategies to deliver success.
They go about exception-based or observational reviews to uncover opportunities for improvement, while employees use systematic methods of root cause analysis and problem-solving to address challenges.
Perhaps in less mature environments, there are only a few key people that can describe what is happening in a process and whether it’s meeting the needs of the customer. Management launches into erratic bursts of effort to ‘figure out’ what just happened and why the owner, customer or other department is unhappy with recent work.
There are likely issues related to turnover of people, less standardisation in the systems and generational loss of knowledge during staffing changes.
It can be underestimated the role that leaders play in the systems described above.
Many leaders will deliver a basic awareness in continual improvement to their teams and expect them to simply take the idea on board.
This give and watch approach is like providing our team a car and asking them to drive it while we sit in the grandstand. The team is bound to fall short of the desired results, regardless of the good intent.
Instead, an organisation who is truly wishing to strive for excellence must ensure its leaders practice, live and learn alongside their teams. They should be close enough to the process to feel the strength or fray within and to know where to hem, patch or tailor the next curve.
Achieving a bond is a matter of trust and confidence that the journey is on a shared pathway. At the heart of this journey lies respect for people.
Respect for people: connected cooperation
We hear the term respect for people often in our continuous improvement journeys. It often shows up in the ‘values statement’ of organisations – but what does it really mean?
Does it mean that everyone’s getting along and that there’s no conflict in the team? Does it mean that everyone gets a bonus if we meet our targets? Does it mean that we celebrate work anniversaries and birthdays at monthly updates? It’s likely a little more than this.
Perhaps respect for people means that employees understand the organisation’s direction and their role in contributing to its goals.
Individuals are well-informed, capable, fulfilled, and self-reliant, bringing out their best for the the team.
Most likely they are valued for their skills, knowledge, and experience, and have autonomy to make decisions and implement simple improvements.
Differences aren’t seen as defects but instead perspectives to leverage and opportunities to support each other along the way.
Ultimately, the team embraces a culture of experimentation and learning from practice and failure, where together they have the ability to challenge ideas and policies for the sake of improvement towards common goals.
In my experience, the above is not always the starting point however, achieving an underlying state of respect for people is the ‘grease between the gears’ that allows the methods, tools and continuous improvement thinking to thrive.
Over time, this state creates highly effective teams that can overcome great barriers, who reject negativity, dishonesty and defeatism all the while learning and building their capability, solving more and more complex problems together.
This connected cooperation sounds good, doesn’t it? So why isn’t it the norm in our industry?
The importance of people centric leadership
Leadership sets the tone for the entire organisation.
Through action or inaction, directive or suggestion, by praise or by punishment – ripples in the pond can become the behavioural waves that come back from the other shore to make changes to an organisation for the better.
At the root of things, employees who feel valued and empowered are more likely to contribute their best ideas, proactively identify improvement opportunities, and embrace change, fuelling the organisation’s growth and success.
This type of respect is needed as a constant from leaders within an organisation. When continual improvement efforts move from being an initiative; to a shared a way forward; then ultimately a culture through repetition and resilience that protects the underlying thinking and values of the group.
This can stem from a people centric leadership approach which recognises that employees are the foundation of continuous improvement.
Those practicing people centric leadership involve employees in decision-making processes, encourage collaboration, and provide opportunities for growth and development both one-on-one and in group development sessions.
They do so systematically but responsively in a way that’s understood and transparent – think ‘leader standard work’ which is highly proportioned to being where the work is happening and coaching with on-the-job learning where a shared perspective is created and mutual trust is rooted.
Through this approach, leaders can create an environment where individuals feel valued, motivated, and empowered to contribute their best. They also become better advocates for investment and system level change needed across the organisation to improve operating conditions and effectiveness of the work being done.
Unfortunately, traditional management creates the opposite effect.
Whether intended or not, a less people-centric approach stifles the potential of continuous improvement by disempowering employees and inhibiting their creativity.
Be on the lookout if decisions are typically made at the top and cascaded downward without meaningful involvement or input from the workforce.
This hierarchical approach often leads to a lack of ownership and resistance to change where it’s need most as no preparation or context of how this helps them secure longer-term opportunities for themselves, their families and their colleagues has proceeded the proclamation that from tomorrow we’re going to follow “a new way”.
Perhaps this contributes to how often we hear that someone has left their boss, not the company? As manufacturing leaders, I’m sure we all know which type of leader we’d rather be.
We should therefore do everything in our power to enable, not hamper our organisation’s ability to become better today than it was yesterday.
If we want to truly excel, we need to ensure we nurture and support one of the greatest appreciating assets in our company – our people, and only through building the mutual respect that comes from weathering storms and climbing hills together, would we truly have earned the privilege to lead others.
