Sometimes the thought of getting your business from A to B can seem like a real drag. You’re doing OK and suddenly the world is full of new ideas. Things like partnering, benchmarking, worker empowerment and the like.
So here you are at point A and all you want to do is get to this new point B as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Not wanting to take on too much change you decide to dip a toe in the water - to try one thing at a time. You change one thing and then find you can’t take real advantage of it as other systems in the company are still at the old point.
Worse still you’ve spent mega-amounts of time developing the new corporate vision based upon the changes you want to make and you just cannot understand why the people you employ can’t or won’t perform in the way you expect.
If you’re in this situation - or you don’t ever want to be in it - allow me to share a couple of ideas with you.
The first concerns the training of your people in new techniques or processes.
Ken Blanchard, author of the One-Minute Manager books and videos, used to talk about the big differences in the way we go about training children and animals compared to how we train our staff.
He would illustrate his talks by asking the audience to think about how a newborn baby is taught to drink water.
Do we just put a glass in front of the baby, show it a couple of times how to drink and expect it to work it out by itself - as we might when training an employee?
No, of course not. We show it, encourage it, praise it every step of the way and finally embrace it with pride when the child finally does it for themself. As Blanchard said, if we trained our children like some train employees there’d be a lot of dead dehydrated babies around!
Blanchard also pointed out that to train a dolphin to jump 20 ft out of the water and over a rope you start with the rope under the water and offer a reward when it swims over it. You then raise the rope step-by-step until the dolphin does exactly what you want.
When it’s short of a leaping dolphin Sea World does not send two boats out into the Atlantic with a rope tied between and the captain shouting “here fishy”.
So, if you have a vision, do think very hard about its implementation throughout your organisation. Change is difficult for many to accept and constant feedback and encouragement will be required. As Blanchard would say, you must try to catch your people doing things right - even if they are still a long way from getting it all right.
My second idea comes from an outstanding book that was recently recommended to me. It enthuses me so much that all I want to do at this moment is to buy a manufacturing company and put its ideas into practice.
The title of this book is certainly not in the “Transform your business overnight with this fantastic new flavour of the month” category.
On the contrary, to follow its programme to the very end will take any company several years. In fact you’ll never come to the end - you will always find some improvement potential somewhere.
The name of this book is “20 Keys to Workplace Improvement” by Iwao Kobayashi.
In my humble opinion no-one has written an easier-to-understand book on what it takes to reach perfection. No-one has found ways to measure the journey in simpler ways and no-one has found a better way for a company to get its people, all of its its people, involved.
20 Keys according to the author is the methodology for implementing Pporf (Practical Programme of the Revolution in Factories). Pporf is a simple improvement method with concrete and systematic steps for drastically reforming and strengthening every facet of the manufacturing organisation.
The 20 keys refer to 20 different but interrelated aspects of the manufacturing operation and its administrative support areas. Which means it involves everyone - not just the people on the shop floor.
The keys range from Key 1 - Cleaning and organising through to Key 20 - Leading technology and site technology. In between there are keys covering team activities, reducing inventory, time control, quality assurance, developing your suppliers, empowering workers and more.
Each key has five easy-to-follow and easy-to-measure levels. In other words the journey from A to B is split into manageable chunks. Each step is described in about 10 pages and is illustrated with cartoons showing how you might look, feel or behave when you are at that particular level. Typical problems you might find at each level are also illustrated.
The levels have been established based upon the experience of many companies across many industries. Therefore when you establish your current level for each step you are in fact benchmarking yourself against world class manufacturers - not just companies within your own sector.
Imagine that the very best company would score 100 points (which means being at level 5 on each key) then most companies start out at around 25 points - a little above level 1 in each key. According to Kobayashi each subsequent 20-point improvement represents a 100% improvement in productivity.
Reach high score levels and you are on your way to making your products better, cheaper and faster. You will enjoy shortened development periods and stay ahead of the competition.
As an added spin-off daily attention to the 20 keys can make everyone more safety conscious, thus creating accident-free workplaces.
One important aspect of the 20 keys is that they are designed to run together. It is better to make systematic changes in levels across the whole business rather than make big changes to one key which you cannot maximise because other elements within the business lag behind.
Although written with manufacturing operations in mind the author sees no reason why the 20 keys cannot be adopted in almost any type of enterprise.
This is obviously a hands-on book written by people who have practised what they preach. The accessibility of the information is what makes it so special.
John Suter, vice-president of manufacturing at the National Rubber Company Canada said in a review, “This is the first book I have read that sets a structure and framework for organisations to follow if they wish to revolutionise the workplace. Kobayashi has removed the mystery of how to accomplish major improvement in a business. His insight is pure genius”.
I couldn’t have put it better myself!
20 Keys to Workplace Improvement by Iwao Kobayashi is published by Productivity Press, a division of Productivity Inc, Portland, USA.
Unlocking your team’s potential
To illustrate the step-by-step approach on 20 keys - here is a very brief insight into key 3 - Improvement team activities. As Iwao Kobayashi says, “Team-based improvement activities have trouble when company and team objectives are different. Teams need to work on issues that matter to management as well as their own jobs.” The five levels are described as follows: Level 1 - Employees have no desire to get involved in team activities Level 2 - An employee suggestion scheme is established. The company gets involved in starting team activities. Improvement suggestions climb to at least six per employee per year. Level 3 - Team activities are based on autonomous improvements. Groups complete at least two improvement projects per year. Each member submits at least one improvement suggestion per month. Level 4 - Improvement goals combine employee goals with company goals. Improvement teams complete at least four improvement themes per year. Team members submit at least two suggestions per month. Level 5 - After-work activities where people can relax and enjoy themselves promote mutual understanding and help align team goals with company goals. Improvement team activities are active and enthusiastic. Teams average six completed themes per year. Team members average at least five suggestions per month.Source
Building Homes
Postscript
Malcolm Pitcher is a director of PCL and In-house Research. He specialises in marketing strategy, brand strategy, culture change, change management, marketing research and customer satisfaction monitoring.
