KaiNexus: Continuous Improvement, Leadership, and More

Mark Graban and Dr. Greg Jacobson address your questions on: - Getting front line staff to embrace Kaizen and continuous improvement as a win/win - Getting leaders and executives to buy in to continuous improvement - What's your process for planning a kaizen event?

Tracking the impact of a continuous improvement program is one of the most difficult challenges that an incoming consultant may face. As difficult as tracking impact is, it is also one of the most important metrics to measure. Organization leaders want to see a return on their investment of a consultant and being able to capture the results of the improvement program is the easiest way to do so.

Behind every improvement technique and tool, there is a winning spirit. There is no downside to the ideas that processes can always be made better and that positive change is the business of everyone. But today we are going to focus on one common improvement tool, the idea board, and make the case that there is a better way. After all, why would the force of Kaizen not be applied to improvement itself?

Gemba walks can be one of the most enjoyable and powerful learning opportunities for leaders, but only if they are done in a way that promotes learning and avoids creating tension between managers and frontline staff. I have written about Gemba walks before, but I wanted to delve deeper into what NOT to do on Gemba walks. If your Gemba walks aren’t going as well as hoped, or if they are causing tension on the front lines, be sure you are not making any of these mistakes:

Hosted by KaiNexus and Mark Graban In this webinar, you will learn: - What creativity is (and isn't) and what service excellence is (and isn't) - Why changing behavior first leads to mindset changes, not the other way around! - How to develop creative problem solving and critical thinking skills in daily 15 min coaching sessions - How using creativity combined with The Toyota Way to Service Excellence principles delivers peak service experiences for customers About the Presenter: An experienced lean consultant, coach and practitioner, Karyn is the coauthor, with Jeff Liker, of the Shingo Award-winning The Toyota Way to Service Excellence: Lean Transformation in Service Organizations. Focused specifically on services, Karyn has worked with small, medium and large organizations in sectors as diverse as insurance, financial services, HR, transportation and retail. Using her unique Practical Creativity(TM) approach, Karyn teaches people how to combine creativity with Toyota Way/lean practices to ensure that businesses continuously deliver the peak service experiences that retain current customers and attract new ones. Karyn is a practicing artist, with an MFA in Sculpture and lives in Naperville, Illinois with her family.

As you can probably tell from reading this blog or others about the Lean approach to business management, most of what is written about the subject is applied to manufacturing and healthcare organizations. We know, however, that its application is not that limited. We have clients in technology, education, agriculture, professional services, and more. One sector that is starting to embrace the Lean approach with increasing enthusiasm is construction. We have been delighted to see a new level of interest from leaders in the field. We thought it might be useful to share some of the questions we get asked most often about Lean construction.

March madness is in full swing, and we are not going to lie. We have basketball on the brain. The level of talent and dedication that players display even when they do not win the game is truly inspiring. As spectators, we see the game. What we do not see are the countless hours of practice, the sacrifice, the workouts, the strategy sessions, and all of the other hard work that goes into competing at this level. We are impressed. A Kaizen event is a bit like a basketball game. In order to win in basketball, there are some things you need to do during the game, but also a bunch of stuff that needs to happen off the court. The same is true for completing a successful Kaizen event. You must strive for great execution while the event is in progress, but much of the work happens before it begins and after it ends. Here are some of the most important things to keep in mind if you want your next event to be as easy as an uncontested layup.

It is important in any discussion of standard work to talk about what it is not, as a poor interpretation could mean results that inhibit improvement rather than supporting it. Leaders have an obligation to promote standard work in the correct way, so that staff will both respect the need for it and invest themselves in improving it.

Karen and David are the founders of Gimbal Canada Inc, a Lean practice management advisory firm that specializes in the legal industry. For the last three years or so, Gimbal has been working with law firms across North America on improving the way lawyers deliver legal services. They teach, write, and speak about Lean and the benefits of legal process improvement for law firms and in-house legal departments, and they work directly with their clients on improvement projects that focus on legal processes, as well as the business and administrative processes that support the work of lawyers. The question that comes up is, Why is innovation such a hot topic in law?

Lean organizations target 8 types of waste in an effort to create the perfect flow of value to the customer. Ideally, no resources are used unnecessarily and every task contributes something for which customers are willing to pay. Of course, achieving this is much more challenging than just saying it. That is why a set of Lean tools and techniques have been developed to aid Leaders who embark on this journey. We would argue that software designed to support this type of improvement is crucial to success.