Why Your Business Needs a Continuous Improvement Blog

Posted on11. Jun, 2009 by Monique.

Sharing online can be the source of tremendous rewards for many businesses and organizations.  A blog is an excellent way to connect with people outside your facility, location, department, or division.  Whether you decide to share via the internet or intranet, there is no better way to chisel away the walls of communication.

Here are four reasons why you should start a continuous improvement blog.

1. Connect with Multiple Locations: In order to avoid feelings of isolation, you can have a common platform to share successes, stumbling blocks, best practices, or benchmarks.  Within a large organization it may be easy to become disconnected from locations in different times zones.  Your company blog can be a medium for collaboration as well as a tool to help reduce variation in standard operating procedures. 
2. Develop Unity in the Organization:  As Forrest Breyfogle III teaches at Smarter Solutions, there should be two levels of planning within the organization – Enterprise planning and Project Planning.  Enterprise planning is the 10,000 foot view of the organization or the high level processes.  The project level is more of the functional, daily operations planning.  Whatever you are working on the project level should be directly tied to key enterprise level strategic goals and objectives.  The enterprise level metrics should be the same for the project level.  Everyone should be focused on the same goals.  Communicating on your blog would be an easy way for satellite locations to get direct feedback from corporate to confirm that you are indeed working on the right things, at the right time, and avoid project duplications.  Employees can stay up to date by subscribing to company RSS feeds via email.
3. Upload Training Materials:  With business process improvement projects you will map out new standards of work or establish new procedures for a particular function of the organization.  When you present project updates or tollgates, you will be responsible for releasing the details of the changes implemented.  Keep stakeholders and process owners in the loop of new expectations by posting the new standard work on the blog.  Get instant feedback to ensure the message was understood and clearly communicated.  Videos are also a great way to format training and accommodate multiple learning styles.  This training will also archive your steps toward meeting strategic goals and objectives.
4. Shareholder Value:  Publicly traded organizations can benefit from blogs by keeping shareholders up to date on improvements and having a medium to evaluate their return on investment.  You will always have to submit SEC filings, but what a better way to add value to the relationship than by providing a multimedia portal for two-way, transparent communication.

WordPress.org  is an excellent place to start to get your own continuous improvement blog started today!

I would love to hear your feedback on this post – Does Your Organization Currently Use a Blog?

Welcome back to Lean Six Sigma Source! Thanks for your continued support.

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3 Ways to Start Your Next Kaizen Event

Posted on25. Feb, 2009 by Monique.

• Kaizen Events

• can be a source of apprehension for many team members and team leaders. It’s at the beginning of the event when you want to set the tone that the team wants. . .”To Boldly Go, Where No Man has Gone Before.”

What you may find is that some of your team members may

• Lack boldness
• Are only present because their boss told them they have to be there
• Think: “This won’t work, so why bother”

Now, that you already know this you can keep your eyes open to the body language and realize there are ways to overcome these feelings.

Take a moment and just clasp your hands and fingers together like in the picture. Now, try to lace your fingers again with the opposite index finger on top. Feels weird, huh? Well, think of your team members experiencing that same level of discomfort or uneasiness on Day One. Here are three sure-fire ways to accelerate your team to the norming phase and feel a part of the continuous improvement effort.

1. “I add value to this organization or team by the following. . .”

In your lean training you will explain to the team the difference between value-added and non-value added activities. Everyone wants to feel valued in their role in the organization. Encourage your team to discuss why they are needed on the team this week. This is the opportunity for each team member to communicate to the entire team their knowledge, skills, and abilities. By asking your team to do this, you are saying to the team that EVERYONE has something to contribute.

You may have team members who have experience from previous jobs they can offer, in-depth knowledge of how to operate or maintenance a machine, direct contact with a particular product vendor, even have been a consumer of the product or service your company offers. All that background your team has to offer is invaluable to the success of your event. Sharing that information on the front-end makes everyone’s contribution to the team effort unique.

2. “I am willing to step into someone else’s shoes this week because. . .”

This statement encourages the team to express empathy for persons in other different roles. Sometimes you cannot truly understand the need for the improvement if you have not been exposed to the job task or process. Therefore a willingness to look at the issue from another persons prospective is critical to developing creative, comprehensive solutions. This event is also the time for each team member to ‘become an apprentice’ of the process. The team will work together to construct the ‘As-Is’ process map and learn operational and functional relationships. The process owners must be willing to exchange hats to understand how the process impacts someone else. Make sure you focus on the process, not the person.

3. “I am willing to be a change agent this week because. . .”

Change is hard for everyone. On your kaizen events, you will have to facilitate the breaking of old habits. You are in essence re-wiring the brain to do something new. This statement challenges each individual to visualize the change and become owners of the change. Some members may express that current process causes them stress, reduces their productivity, or simply costs too much money to continue this way. Remember, that ‘kai’ means change and ‘zen’ means good or for the better. The team was put together to make a change for the better.

I know some of these statements sound like you’re trying to have Dr. Phil moment, but actually you want to get started on the right track. Turn the attention on the process and the negative impact a ‘do nothing’ option would have. The goal here is get your team engaged and feel valued. Try it out, you may be pleasantly surprised by the results!

Resource: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/business/04unbox.html?_r=2#

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