Performance Matters

Last month, Lean insider posted Lean Deployment is coming into its own. In it, consultants find that “Companies can’t seem to move from their vision or strategy to the workplace, with the result that “employees are not working on those workplace activities that are directly supporting the strategy.”

Continuous improvement is on every manager’s mind. So we bring in consultants to train our workforce in new techniques.

But knowledge does not make change happens. It only allows it to happen.

Fifteen years ago I read an article about the Taguchi “House of Quality”. It was part of the TQM craze. The writer had been in a Tokyo bar in the evening, where he saw to engineers arguing about some home project. Both of them started drawing a house of quality on the back of a napkin, to convince the other.

Wow! That’s what I call transformation. Imagine training your staff in a new technique, - Lean for example. And they adopt it in such a way that they use it in their home!

That article made me think. Somehow, these engineers had made the method part of their comfort zone. They used it naturally, without even thinking about it.

Yes we need the training. If you don’t know what Lean is, you can’t do it. But we need more. We need a program that slowly brings the new techniques in everybody’s comfort zone. There will be resistance, because the new technique is most likely displacing and old one. So we will have to bring it about gradually.

I think the biggest mistake we can make is train people and hope they will be so enthralled with the subject that they will simply go and do it.

What’s your plan to make new methods stick?

This blog is about performance improvement in the workplace

I spent years as an executive overseeing improvement programs.  I know I’m not alone. From positioning a product launch against the competition, improving sales, reducing engineering costs to introducing the latest production method, improvement is always on the business agenda.

Thing is, it rarely worked out quite as well as I’d hope. To be frank, I sometimes failed outright. Sometimes, it produced great results for a while, but then things reverted to how they always had been.  The change did not stick.  I learned the meaning of the saying: The more it changes the more it remains the same.

So, I started to pay attention to what made improvement projects work, or not work. I discovered simple fundamentals.  When they’re missing, success is hard to come by, no matter how great the improvement program.  I also learned why all these training seminars we paid for gave so little tangible results.  (Don’t get me wrong, I think these seminar are important – it just that there something missing). 

I used what I learned as an executive with the teams I managed, and today, working with other companies.  With expertise both in R&D as well as in sales, (my bio is here). I discovered that the process is not discipline specific.  It became my business.  I enjoy it (because it works).

Then, a good friend with expertise in production asked me to explain it to him.  I did - but I couldn’t.  I was unclear.  It sounded good, but he didn’t quite get it.  So I took time to write it down.  When I was done, he said I had made it clear.  This blog was born.

Writing this blog, I clarify the methods I advocate and use – for myself as well as others.

I invite comments.  If what I say makes sense, or readers have been doing it at work, they can share stories.  If they disagree, the arguments allow us to dig deeper and improve the process – for all.

I write what I know, or discover, about what it takes to make lasting changes that improve performance.  Don’t look for the latest best practice in sales or manufacturing – that’s not what this blog is about (I’ll link to those).  The focus is on what it takes to make improvement stick: Performance Matters.