Are you getting the ongoing, incremental change you expected from your commitment to a continuous improvement strategy?
If not, you may not have to go very far for your answer as to why: YOU. Everything that happens or doesn’t happen in your organization is a result of leadership. Leadership is cause, all else is effect. If you want change, you and all other leaders in your organization need to change how you lead and manage.
As obvious as it sounds, a lot of organizations miss this step.
Don’t just take my word for it. In a July 2017 article, “Continuous Improvement —Make Good Management Every Leader’s Daily Habit” on McKinsey.com (link provided below), the authors state, “even organizations that have spent many years successfully investing in continuous improvement are telling us that they are not achieving the ongoing, incremental impact they want. The reason? Their leaders and managers haven’t fundamentally changed how they lead and manage.”
This can be an especially frustrating truth when you’ve invested time and money in supervisor training and other leader development. The McKinsey article authors suggest two primary reasons for the leadership gap; both start with executive leadership.
First, executive leaders tend to operate on the belief that change is for everyone else. I’ve seen this in my own practice. They require others to use CI methodologies and tools, but do not apply those same methods to themselves, often using the same objections that you’d hear on the shop floor when structure and measurement is introduced: Why do I need this? I’ve been successful doing it my way up until now, right? What is wrong with how I do things now? Why change what isn’t broken? Not to mention, the impact on the bottom line is harder to define. How would you know if it was worth the effort and time? It’s obvious how other people might need all this, but leave you out of it.
Second, executives also often assume that other leaders in the organization should be able to figure out on their own what they need to do to differently to support the change strategy. We forget that those leaders also have had some success that got them to where they are in the organization — and they have the same resistant reaction to structure as anyone else. To make things worse, if it is expected that line-leaders change how they work or adhere to leader standard work, it tends to be an add-on to the rest of their job duties. Nothing ever comes off the plate, just more piled on. It is not a recipe for success.
We like to say that what gets measured gets done, but really it’s what gets emphasized on a day-to-day basis. An extreme example is the company that says safety is its first priority, but what gets the most focus in words and deed are efficiency and speed of delivery. You need only check the metrics (on-time delivery and the safety record) to know which behaviors are rewarded. If you don’t actively stop doing some things, you won’t continue to do the new things and make them habit. Old triggers will win and the new habits will fall by the wayside.
Those kinds of changes require structure. In fact, structure is essential if you want to make change stick.
There are all sorts of structures in our workplace that we don’t even notice anymore. Originally these were designed to help foster and sustain change in process, culture, rules — anything that guides behavior. Over time though, they’ve become part of our way of life, so we don’t think about them as anything special. f you are advanced in your lean journey, you may have lean tools that are already integrated. t’s become just what you do.
It is far easier to think of structures that are new — the ones that you are being forced to use, the ones that feel awkward, oppressive, irritating or even insulting. But what you measure improves, and when you quit measuring, results slide. Still, there is something about structure that can make us feel small and stupid for needing it, causing us to resist and ultimately abandon it — even if results are proven.
Leader Standard Work provides structure for leaders, just like other lean tools like 5S, process mapping, and production boards provide structure for individual contributors. It provides a framework for promoting habits aligned with strategy and values. Organizations who really see transformation of their culture have Leader Standard Work at all levels of leadership, starting with the CEO.
Probably the best analogy I’ve heard for Leader Standard Work is the in-flight checklist. The plane (the business) is off the ground, but there are certain things that need to happen in-flight to ensure a good flight for all aboard, passengers (the employees) and crew (leader team). Not all crew members have the same duties or needs in-flight, so though their standard work is aligned to complete the mission of the flight, their tasks are not necessarily the same, but the effect is that they work together, one team, one mission.
The “one management team” approach is the key to successful culture change; Leader Standard Work promotes and ensures that (McKinsey article). It helps leaders at all levels become relentlessly consistent about the things that matter most, putting focus on what is truly most important. If done well, Leader Standard Work, like other standard work in your organization, has continuous improvement built in; that is, there is an expectation to review and improve standard work at least every six months.
Like it or not, as a leader everything you do, everything you don’t do, everything you say, and everything you don’t say, matters. If you want to change something, then YOU need to change something. If you want the organization to always be learning, you, too, must always be learning — even better, sharing and discussing what you learn with your team. You can even use what you learn to improve your leader standard work.
It may take years for Leader Standard Work to become a normal part of how things are done; it is possible may never feel like a way of life, even if it does help you get the results you want. But it is essential if you truly want to create a continuous improvement culture.
Link to McKinsey article: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/continuous-improvement-make-good-management-every-leaders-daily-habit
Susan LaCasse is a Leadership Coach and Business Consultant in the Twin Cities area. She writes a weekly blog on “making change a way of life.” For more information about Susan, visit www.leaderscapes.com.
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