One key challenge in Process Improvement Leadership can be the initiation of projects. As a CPI Leader you may or may not be privy to the challenges occurring in other departments (or, on a larger scale, other facilities). In a large (multi-site) organization it makes sense to coordinate efforts in order to reach maximum benefit for the organization as a whole. But if your organization doesn’t have a mature process for initiation of projects, how do you know where to begin? Sometimes it makes sense to focus at the local level (with an eye towards replication at other sites down the road). Below are some ideas:
- The facility leader is a good place to start. He/she should be able to state in very concrete, well-defined terms where the “head hurters” lie. Is scrap too high? Are customers being served too slowly? Are product or service defects on the rise? The person with the facility’s big-picture view knows where processes aren’t working (although they may not know exactly where the problem originates).
- Department leaders can be your best source of improvement opportunities and also your biggest obstacles. Some department heads are more than happy to seek outside assistance. They are able to leave ego at the door and use the resources provided by their CI leadership team to identify and attack improvement opportunities. Others are more reluctant and aren’t willing to let an outsider into their processes. These individuals can take a lot of work (in order to win their trust), but once you’ve won them over they can become your strongest advocates. I’ve had the pleasure of working with people I’d include in both of these categories (and many who were somewhere in between), and there are improvement opportunities with all of them.
- The workers “on the front lines” are an amazing (and unending) source of improvement opportunities. In one of my previous organizations I had the challenge of starting up a CI program virtually from scratch. There had been some training with a few individuals but the culture was not yet present. I immediately went to the production floor and earned the trust of the production team by identifying opportunities to implement Shingo’s “Easier, Better, Faster, Cheaper” framework. We started with small improvements and rapidly expanded the impact of the changes we’d implemented until we were performing Kaizen projects and Rapid Improvement Events without even thinking about it.
One important point: dispose of any thoughts of a “frozen middle” (a phrase used to describe a tendency for middle-management to be resistant to change, or “frozen”). Resistance to change can happen anywhere, and blaming lack of progress on an imaginary group of “change resistors” is little more than a convenient way to excuse lack of progress on your part. Yes, there will sometimes be resistance to change. But don’t fall into the trap of accepting it as the norm, and don’t let it stop you from initiating process improvement efforts in your organization.
What are some methods you’ve used in the past (or currently use) to initiate project ideas?