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Leveraging Lean Six Sigma

By Ron Crabtree CPIM, CIRM, MLSSBB
President, MetaOps Inc.
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In my prior column I described a recent world café event at the Detroit Chamber of Commerce. I shared how the process works and the points of view about how to engage with employees in tough times. I had shared points of views from business owners, managers in non-profits and consultants. Here I will continue with more points from the consultants and then managers in for-profit companies.

More points from the consultants

Low cost measures to increase employee engagement, loyalty and productivity abound. Here is the short list I gleaned during the workshop:

• Effective communications. I agree with them — communicating openly and effectively is in the top three low-cost things we can do. What’s important about this from my perspective is that to be effective, communications must be two-way. When we share information we need to get feedback on what was heard — to verify we got the job done. In addition, we must also allow for a method for communications to flow to us when there are issues. Problems are not like fine wine — they don’t get better with time. So, finding out people have concerns and being willing to share the ugly realities in a timely way are very important as well.
• Making people feel important. Recognition and making a forum for people to be heard in a meaningful way both go a long way. One does not have to lavish expensive rewards. In fact, I argue that giving rewards to individuals that everyone can’t somehow share in is a huge mistake. It’s better that the recognition can be shared with the greater team. That’s not to say a personal “thanks” is a bad thing — we just have be sure we spread it around equitably.
• Connecting people at the human level. Helping our employees feel connected to the other people and ourselves creates a community and builds a feeling of belonging and connectedness. Doing simple things to promote this are not costly — especially if it can be structured as part of routine work.
• Sharing credit where it is due. Nothing de-motivates and alienates people more than failing to give credit when deserved — or worse, allowing someone to take credit for something they did not do.
• Helping people understand the big picture — and where then fit in. Like communicating, this is very important. People want to feel part of the winning team and making a point to help them understand how they matter is important. The way I like to do this is to describe the organization as a bunch of people who work together in a value chain. A series of activities that results in rendering the product or service our organization provides. My question goes something like this: “The level of results we can give to our customers who pay are wages is directly limited to what?. …the weakest link in our … chain.” The chain of events that occur in our organization to deliver the goods. The add-on question I might ask is: “Who wants to be the weak link, limiting our results?” I then go on to point out that only by making sure we treat each other as customers and make sure all the steps of our process are working well do we have a shot at excellence.
• Point “A” thinking won’t get us to point “B.” I love this. This goes back to an Einstein quote around the idea “the thinking that got us here won’t get us where we need to go.” To get employees to feel engaged and be at maximum productivity we must be willing to do things differently.

Managers and professionals who work in for-profit companies

I loved this comment from one of the managers: “People are going to think what they are going to think.” The point he was making is that rumor mills tend to always put the worst possible spin on things, and we cannot control what people think. That said, he quickly pointed out that the best defenses for this include these actions: Remember people do want to feel special and cared-about. If we are willing to keep the communications lines open we don’t give the rumor mill as much to work with. He also likes putting on a lunchtime pizza party reciprocally as a forum to show appreciation and foster better communications.

Yet another manager stressed that getting out of the office once is while for lunch or breakfast is important too. This encourages people to get to know one another outside the workplace environment and helps to open up communication lines when we see each other as people with the same problems. Another manager supported this with suggesting that lunch meetings are designed to have people talk about common values and objectives both inside and outside of work was helpful.

Another manager pointed out that if downsizing is in the future, it’s best to share the truth. — the conditions driving it and what the company’s plan is to make it as smooth as possible. Making it clear that nothing is personal — it’s business — and the greater good is what is being preserved. Sharing a sensible plan to deal with downsizing goes a long way to reducing the fear of the unknown and that little rumor mill thing I mentioned earlier. An important point one manager made was this: “Knowing is better than not knowing — even if the news is bad.”

In the face of downsizing and needed to more with less, several managers brought up the possibility of offering ways for better work-life balance as a way to re-engage employees to reduce stress and improve productivity. To find ways to do this a manager suggested that there be a structured and careful discussion with employees with just two themes:

1. What do we need to be doing tomorrow to make the business — and our security better?
2. What do we need to stop doing? This a great follow on question — as this identifies activities that are not relevant to where we are headed currently and by eliminating them, we free up resources for important things and reduce stress.

Another manager chimed in here with a theme of “building a thrive mode” versus just a “survive mode.”

Another manager piggy-backed on this with this thought: “Talk through a common understanding of the difference between ‘activities’ and ‘making progress’ to our objectives.” I think this is great and ties in nicely with the “what we should do and stop doing” to succeed.

Some final thoughts

The nature of a “world café” is not to fix all the world’s problems — but it is a helpful process to bring a large number of people together to have a meeting of the minds on important issues. As you can see here, the distillation of what I captured in less than two hours time was very helpful.

In my practice of helping organizations improve business processes to improve the bottom line, quality, speed and customer satisfaction I use tools in Operational Excellence (OpEx) like “Kaizen,” “Fishbone” diagrams and the “5-Whys” to name a few. These are powerful methods to bring large and small groups together to quickly identify what is important and then move to the right actions to make things better. Relating to the whole issue of employee engagement — these and other methods in OpEx are powerful ways to solve many of problems discussed here — and take employee engagement and productivity to the next level.

Ron Crabtree CPIM, CIRM, CSCP, MLSSBB is president of MetaOps, Inc., a training and consulting firm that specializes in business innovation and transformation. He is an internationally recognized expert and author in cutting-edge business process improvement methodologies.

He has co-authored three books on operational excellence and is published in multiple business publications to a global audience. He serves as adjunct faculty for Villanova University and the University of San Francisco as the lead subject matter expert in Lean Six Sigma, Supply Chain and Lean Supply Chain.

He has personally mentored thousands of people in hundreds of companies and government operations around the world generating countless millions of dollars in bottom-line results for his clients. For more you can review his ezine series at www.operationalexcellenceedge.com or by e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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