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    Lean Culture: From 'Yes But' to 'Can Do'
    Lean Culture: From 'Yes But' to 'Can Do'
    Lean Culture: From 'Yes But' to 'Can Do'
    Ebook128 pages2 hours

    Lean Culture: From 'Yes But' to 'Can Do'

    By Marta Ferreira

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    About this ebook

    Are you finding your staff resistant to change? Is your workforce just going through the motions? Are they increasingly looking inward, reducing their focus on the customer?

    These are not uncommon challenges. Whether caused by globalization, bureaucracy or tight local competition, leaders all over the world are finding it more and more difficult to engage their teams.

    But all is not lost. Lean Culture shows you how you can get past negativity and resistance and build a workforce that enthusiastically welcomes change. It shows you how to move your people from ‘yes but’ to ‘can do’.

    Based on a real-life continuous improvement program implemented inside a major financial corporation, Lean Culture tells the story of a group of managers and staff who are struggling in the wake of a major restructure involving significant redundancies. Their challenge is not only to rebuild but to continue to find and implement changes that will build greater efficiency into their operations. When a new continuous improvement program, inspired by Lean thinking, is introduced by a senior manager there is widespread skepticism about its value. Egos, insecurities and busyness get in the way. But the program’s unique approach wins people over (some more quickly than others) and change starts to come.

    Lean Culture is essential reading for anyone interested in driving effective change in today’s demanding business environment.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMarta Ferreira
    Release dateMar 12, 2013
    ISBN9780987056184
    Lean Culture: From 'Yes But' to 'Can Do'
    Author

    Marta Ferreira

    Marta Ferreira Böing is a passionate advocate for the application of lean principles and methodologies to operations management, and the benefits this can bring to both organizations and their employees. She has worked in this area for her entire career, as a manager, consultant and educator. Marta studied mechanical engineering and completed a Master of Science in Operations Management in Europe before moving to Australia. There she joined automotive supplier TriMas Corporation, where she was promoted to Production Manager in just three months. In her next role, at Yazaki Corporation (Australian Arrow), she earned the opportunity to travel to Japan and observe lean principles and practices as applied by the pioneers of process improvement. It was on this trip that Marta learned the importance of lean culture and behaviors to lean success – that lean tools alone are insufficient for the creation of a sustainable lean enterprise. On returning to Australia, Marta worked on the introduction of lean principles to the local Yazaki operation, learning additional valuable lessons about the need to work with international cultural differences during such an implementation. In 2007 Marta joined the ANZ Bank as Lean Advisor to the Managing Director, Operations. Since then she has driven the ongoing translation and implementation of lean principles into the banking environment. She has instigated extensive and widely used training and leadership development programs, and taken a hands-on role with a number of cultural change initiatives. As Head of Global Operational Excellence, Marta managed a team of 17 direct reports and 43 matrix reports across three regions. Her team supported behavior change programs for the bank across all divisions and regions, promoting a lean and continuous improvement culture. Marta had strategic responsibility for overseeing the project managers and driving change in processes, people and systems by preventing error reoccurrences and optimizing operations efficiency through staff engagement and skill uplift, based on the lean principles. Marta developed an operational excellence program which was deployed across offices in Australia, India, Vietnam and New Zealand. Savings identified were valued at over $10 million as a result of 6,000 improvement initiatives implemented by more than 4,000 staff. The program was subsequently formally recognised as best practice by the well regarded international research organisation Corporate Executive Board (CEB) in 2010. She also oversaw the development and implementation of a number of other lean-based programs. Both staff and senior management at the ANZ have recognized Marta’s work. She was selected as a winner of the CEO Recognition Program in 2010, recognizing one of the top 110 staff performances of the year (of over 48,000 staff worldwide). She was also awarded an Individual Excellence Award for Leadership. Marta is also recognized for her expertise, having been invited to speak at the conferences of a diverse range of industry groups, including health care, government, manufacturing and tertiary education. Marta runs her own consultancy practice deploying programs similar to that described in Lean Culture. Her clients represent a wide range of industries, including health care, finance and manufacturing.

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      Book preview

      Lean Culture - Marta Ferreira

      LEAN CULTURE

      From ‘Yes but’ to ‘Can do’

      Marta Ferreira

      First Published in 2013

      by Monterey Press

      PO Box 319

      Carlton North  VIC  3054

      Australia

      www.montereypress.com

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright © Marta Ferreira Böing, 2013

      Author contact:  info@aleanbook.com

      Website:  www.aleanbook.com

      All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Marta Ferreira Böing asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      Cover design by Pedro Farelo

      Paperback designed and typeset by Just Your Type Desktop Publishing

      National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

      Author: Ferreira, Marta.

      Title: Lean culture : from 'yes but' to 'can do' / Marta Ferreira.

      ISBN: 9780987056184 (ebook)

      Subjects:

      Corporate culture.

      Organizational behavior.

      Organizational change.

      Dewey Number:     658.3

      To my team

      Your encouragement to write this book and help our program reach a wider audience is a reflection of your character and commitment to continuous improvement.

      Preface

      The topics of culture change and continuous improvement have both been covered very widely in management literature. So widely that it would be perfectly understandable if the average reader were left wondering if both topics are too complex to be worth trying to understand. Yet both, at their core, are quite simple because they center on just one thing: people. Work with your people and you will find making change relatively easy; try to work around your people and the opposite will be the case. This is especially the case with those who tend to say ‘yes but’ rather than ‘can do’.

      This book is about culture change and continuous improvement, based on a real case study. The program, which has been fictionalized here for ease of understanding, focused heavily on people and their behaviors and motivations. As a result it was very successful in driving process improvements in offices of the same business across four countries. Although the program was originally developed for use in manufacturing environments, the implementation portrayed here took place in the local and overseas offices of one of Australia’s largest banks.

      The real-life roll out of the program on which this book is based commenced in 2008. As in this story, the program started with a pilot, deployed into a market operations department with highly volatile demand processes. After significant success in that department, the program was rolled out into other divisions, becoming mandatory across all departments in all cities. It was eventually deployed into international offices, where it enjoyed further success despite quite different cultural settings, and was ultimately recognized as best practice by the Corporate Executive Board (www.executiveboard.com).

      As is demonstrated in Lean Culture, a number of aspects of this program contributed to its success.

      The program had senior-management sponsorship and support, which gave it greater importance in the eyes of middle management, team leaders and operators. From the outset, the focus was not on cost reduction but on increasing value to the customer. This created a win-win situation, as it improved customer retention while making the work of many operators easier and more efficient than it had been previously.

      The program drew on many of the proven techniques of the well-known Japanese concept kaizen. Where a traditional improvement program would start with detailed business analysis and mapping, this program started with training the people to see waste and inefficiency under their own noses. Where a traditional program would involve consultants making lengthy recommendations for change, this program saw those recommendations, and their implementation, come from the people who know the job best – those who actually do the job. Where many improvement programs and cost-cutting initiatives in large enterprises rely on a small number of ‘big ticket’ changes, this program made more of the hundreds of smaller, incremental improvements that exist in every organization.

      Another major difference from traditional improvement initiatives was a focus on fun. Instead of dry workshops, potential improvements were identified via specially designed games, rolled out across a number of departments at the same time. The games gave the improvement identification and, importantly, implementation a competitive edge. This kept the motivation and interest keen, and ensured a high participation rate. Rewards were provided, but they were token: the emphasis was on making the work easier on one hand, and more effective for the customer on the other.

      After making continuous improvement important and fun, the final step was to make it stick. Rather than the typical scenario of consultants making change then disappearing with their knowledge, this program focused on retention of knowledge within the employees. Further, because those employees had benefited from the improvements they had made, there was a strong desire to continue the process and find further improvements into the future.

      For those familiar with the concepts of Lean Thinking, this book also demonstrates how, by focusing on behaviors, meaningful change can be made using only two of the fundamental Lean tools and principles, namely the Seven Wastes and 5S.

      If, having read this story, you want to learn more about the concepts presented here, you will find further information and suggested reading at the end of the book. In addition, tools you can use in your own work are available by registering at www.aleanbook.com. On the last page of this ebook you will find a promotional code. Enter that code when prompted for access to additional, reader-only materials.

      Who’s who in Lean Culture

      Chapter 1 – Restructure

      MEET MONA. Every office has a Mona: the person who loves to whinge and whine. Nothing is ever right; everything could be done better, or differently, if only people would listen to her (or him). Mona is the eternal pessimist, always thinking the world is about to end. She latches on to everybody’s faults (though seems blissfully unaware of her own) and always expects ‘them’ to do something about ‘it’ while rarely acting to do something about ‘it’ herself. Mona seems constantly to expect utopia just over the next hill yet, of course, having climbed the hill, utopia turns out not to be all it was supposed to be. Perhaps over the next hill …

      As I enter my road I notice that the streetlamp outside our house is still on the blink. Why can’t they get something simple like that fixed? I mean, at this time of the year it’s already dark by six, and with the annoying rain as well it’s just dangerous. I make a mental note to ring them again in the morning.

      I run from the car to the front door, dodging the rain and wondering why we didn’t buy the other unit – the one with a door off the garage. As I open the front door at least it’s nice and warm and light – Justin must be home. There are moving boxes spread all over the place.

      Hi Mona, I hear from behind the kitchen bench at the far end of the room. I’ve unpacked two boxes since I got home and managed to find the rice cooker. How does a curry sound? For now I’ve just unloaded things straight in to the cupboards – I figure we can sort it all out later. Pity we didn’t label the boxes in the first place.

      As I reach the kitchen and put my bag down, Justin stands up. How was your day? he asks.

      Terrible, I say. You know how I’ve been saying for ages that they would soon be sending a whole lot of jobs offshore? Well I was right. Today was the day. They announced about four hundred redundancies – four hundred! They’ve let go Sarah and Melanie. What’s the sense in that? I don’t think they know what they’re doing.

      Wow, says Justin. Those two have been working with you for years. Didn’t you all start together?

      That’s right. But loyalty and dedication don’t mean anything anymore. They tell us the jobs are going offshore so we can provide better customer service. I think the jobs are going offshore so the bank can make more money.

      So how are they taking it? he asks.

      I shake my head. Not well. Neither of them said very much at all. I mean, what can you say? Sarah is having a baby in six months, and Melanie’s boyfriend just lost his job too.

      The stupid thing, I tell Justin, is that they could have avoided all this ages ago. They make it so hard for us to do our jobs, no wonder we’re inefficient. But will they let us make any changes? Of course not. The bosses know best.

      Well I know it’s not a great consolation, but at least you’ve still got your job.

      "For the moment. I don’t know how long for. If they don’t change anything I can’t see

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