Month: April 2017

The discussion around Leaders Standard Work’ resulted in very easy and natural conversation, each person engaged on the topic with positive body language.  Individuals  had experience of LSW and shared their experiences of its implementation with the over all group.

The second group were as engaged and very positive on the process of collecting feedback. A bit apprehensive initially but found it very good.

In discussing ‘Leaders Standard Work’ the individual impacts were:

• A tool for sustaining work not for making the change. Do-It after improvements are implemented
• Shows a strong level of respect to front line staff, leaders work for the staff. Grows credibility
• Provides a framework to do take on new roles (eg become a coach or take on a leadership role) allows leaders who are technical and not ops experts us this to have a methodology to drive Ops. Provides continuity, consistence and standardizing work that is done on daily basis.
• For companies not using it can be used as new tool to measure what site management are doing and how could we use LSW (eg help with efficiency of meetings and drive improvements)
• Provides an opportunity to be aware of lightbulb moments from staffs. Leaders getting the voice of the team, forces leaders to listen to the team
• LSW can be as prescribed as necessary eg recognition walk does not state exactly what should be asked, they leaders have guidelines however they can go deeper to document exact details
• Provides an opp to get Lightbulb moments from staffs. Leaders getting the voice of the team, listening to the team.
• Requires peer accountability to keep leaders.
• Getting started do a phased approached, implement 1 item and enhance Implementing all of this quickly will frighten staff
• Behaviors of the leader is critical , should be engaging, involved, asking as opposed to telling.
• Who benefits form this LSW? Are the staff getting something out of it? Need staff to evaluate that it is working and have that checkmark in place. Great tool to sustain, do not make it a tick the box exercise
• Leaders should be accountable for action. Close the loop and feedback. Setting expectations on leaders.  If people believe in it and if something breaks down (eg no meeting) who cares about it and who will flag this as an issue
• People need to see value – needs to be 2 way communication and leaders know what is expected of them. Engagement.
• Part of an eco system of LSW in tandem with Lean tools. “People respect what you inspect” Fundamental to sustain the change

Following a discussion of  ‘The power of influencing and Motivating’  the group felt that the impact on the organisation was: mutually beneficial, thought provoking, inspired some small simple changes and awareness of your own presence.  Other points included

• Body language, must be positive, personal buy in, how you are excited about it
• Something small first then big bang, building trust, respect
• Know their beliefs before you start
• Realistic, honest feedback to build trust
• Influence v manipulation, WIFIM, how can they be part of creating that change, vested interst.
• Language, Impact of small words, positive and negative impacts, be affirmative, understand the dynamic.
• Expertise in creating the environment to have willing participant

Group 2 felt the topic area was powerful if it is done right, must educate and have confidence to do it right.  Awareness and ability to deliver the message was crucial and it must be consistently relayed.  Creating the correct cultural awareness was also cited as important.  Other points included

• Expertise at the right level, being persuasive, understand your gaps
• Knowing your audience, understanding the levels, format the message to the mood.
• Alignment in the messaging from leadership, common language, not just one department but all
• Deliver on what you say you will
• Confidence in the leadership, people will listen more to a confident speaker
• Better communications, correct sequence
• Messaging, how important and how it is relayed
• Consistency and commitment
• Confidence to give the negative messaging first followed by the positive, setting the expectation, feel good factor

All agreed  ‘Employing Continuous Improvement as a Means to Engage the Disengaged’ was very relevant – continuous improvement is completely dependent on engagement.  Other observations included:

• The case for continuous improvement needs to be explained – explain benefits and people will participate. Explain the WHY
• You will always have small number of people who are disengaged – one idea is to move them to an area where positive people are (this has worked for some companies in the group)
• CI is foundation for improvement – all felt that ci initiatives should be moved to other departments not just in operations but also HR, Finance etc.
• Could link to bonus system, but some companies have found that this doesn’t work (one company had people who preferred not to get small bonus by participating)
• Difficult to apply with new employees and employees have been there a long time
• Are people highly engaged because they’re involved in CI or does CI cause people to become engaged? This resonated with everyone – no definite answer
• Agreement that you need a strong-willed person in CI role – have to deal with engineers, managers etc and be able to withstand negativity
• Everyone agreed that if you get people interested, people get motivated
• Important to change view that CI is not about losing jobs – its about making things more efficient
• One company gave example that they were 3 weeks from closing, when they started Lean/CI and now jobs have been kept in Ireland
• Employee Engagement is a contact sport
• CI driven from top down
• CI can be about small things – improve peoples’ day to day work and they will become more engaged
• General agreement that HR should be involved – ci can be personal development, mentoring etc
• HR drives employee engagement initiatives – could HR use CI as a metric?
• One company had employees with long service and shifts. They have involved every shift in CI. They found that if you give people opportunity and explain WHY you are doing CI initiatives, people will get involved
• One company had Idea generation project where ideas were then voted on publically on SharePoint
• If people are not participating, it’s important to have conversation with them to find out why they’re not. Could be that people have to present their ideas and they would feel exposed…
• One company had a disruptor and decided to give him ownership of a CI initiative & now he is leading a project.
• Everyone agreed it was a challenge whether to spend time on top performers or disengaged
• Improving the work is the work

Key Insights

• Social exchange – creating networks and teams
• Cross over ideas
• Leader support – emotional support
• Senior Leadership Team CI board
• Trust cycle

Following a discussion of ‘The(r)Evolution of Performance Management to unleash Organisation & Individual Potential’ the group shared the following

Organisational Impact

• 100% at the table felt appraisals were redundant
• Appraisals are just ticking the box,  more regular informal appraisals, and regular updated goals is what is needed
• 30 for 30 managers take out 30mins to spend time with employees- good idea
• Do we really need it is it relevant what does it achieve, has it lost its power as  ll appraisals need to fit in
• Need to simplify, setting Clear objectives
• How to manage behaviour to improve business there is a  big disincentive to out shine other areas especially in production
• Objectives already being managed, we need to change the culture – look behaviours of individuals
• In one company appraisal is 25% of metrics 75% behaviours.  this company looked at 4 corporate behaviours + 10 Shingo principles.
• Simple non-confrontational questions  were used  e.g. was everyone on time?
• When we talk about behaviours – how do you define them, very difficult? Humans complex different personalities introvert Vs extrovert work very differently
• Need guidance in helping employees change

 Individual

• People are human, how do we use motivation how to influence employees
• Use Rewards and recognition to engage a simple thank you means a lot
• Don’t have enough time to spend with people to motivate. Managers are missing out on opportunities to support employees because of time constraints
• Performance management is broken. When there’s no time, we don’t do it, it’s not valuable.  We need to revisit it and its importance
• Power of language, do our employees really hear the good review?
• Important to motivate employees in real time
• In multi nationals – it’s a franchise need to Feed in to corporate norm and methodology sometimes we have no control
• Better result if given Real time
• Productivity can drop if appraisals is spread out over long time frame
• False rewards – demotivating
• Team goals becomes impossible goal for individual
• Individual goals must be aligned to orgs strategic goals
• All people different, Engagement key to all , Investing in people and how we treat our people is way ahead
• All about people, tools and framework in last presentation was important  to help interact positively with employees

 

 

There was some level of ‘Leaders Standard Work’  in place in some of the organisations and  a general understanding of the concept around the table.

There was acknowledgement that this type of event is powerful way to capture and develop the network. Capturing and sharing information is key to learning. So this type of process is a nice addition.

Good conversation between all groups, great interactions and sharing of different views. Good pace to the conversation and engagement.

4 groups discussed the topic

Main Points captured

• Importance of presence of managers is key part of Leader Standard Work
• How does LSW account for manager styles and how can this be applied to different styles of manager
• Production Operator level have 100% defined by standard work and this changes in % as you go up the organisation
• It’s to drive a standard on what is key to the system
• As a senior leader your responsibility is around be seen, enable engagement ad recognition
• Education of the Leadership team and getting buy in is key
• What’ the “Why” – Needs to be understood
• Trying to find out what’s important vs. urgent.
  • Prioritise appropriately
• Reflection on what working and not and using this to influence the future.
• Highlights problems and allows them to be corrected
• Keep it visible and keep it simple – Allows all people to engage
• What the training that is required –
  • One system had the instructions integrated into the system
• Simplicity is key
• Send a designate if you can’t attend, system needs to be supported
• Management walking around is key
• Elimination of Email thru the Pulse of the business meeting –
  • So easy to communicate a common message quickly
• Operator like the face to face engagement option that recognition walks enable.
• Quick and easy recognition is another key enabler to get engagement
• LSW is about engagement but it may start of as a mechanical system.
• Trust – is driven by focusing on the process and not the “who”
• Accountability back to the person who identified the item, to close it.
• What’s is meant by leader in “Leader Standard Work”, anyone
  • On group –Senior Leadership Team and Middle Managers
  • One group – Anyone who has a direct report
• There is some cross over in LSW and standard work of Individual.

Group 2

Shared the last group’s topics and there was alignment with their observations.

Main Point Captured

• Good understand of what is needed but How do we get there is unclear
  • In the middle of rolling out our Tier boards
  • Meeting Structure and agenda is driven by the board
  • Some levels of checks in place
  • Tier 2 meeting with Sup and Eng. team and manager working
    • Dir. will comes in and observe
    • No standard to what the dir. is looking at
  • Most elements are present but its hit and miss – Looking to drive consistency
  • Driven from the top is key to success.
• Lacking Structure – Meeting and systems are in place.
• Looking at LSW to remove waste and making meetings and systems more effective.
• It’s not a tick the box exercise or engagement
• Drives engagement
• Challenge – Making things visible, if you don’t stick to it then you are lost
• The system is flexible and can be changed to fit circumstances.
• Needs to be genuine – can’t be saying great job just at a certain time and not calling it out in normal day to day interactions.
• SME dedicated to support LSW to embed the system. They were tasked with driving engagement.
  • This process created a scorecard on health check
• Focus on the process – Key to driving success – Not the person.
• Day in the Life exercise – people jumped into the role to see what was preventing people getting LSW done.
  • Working from the position that people are trying to do the right thing to understand what is preventing them.