Team Leadership & Management Skills 2020 - LEAN TEAM KATA

The purpose of this Section is to present the basic principles of lean management and Team Kata.

Objectives:

1.To understand the essential philosophy of lean management.

2.Understand the over-arching purpose of Team Kata and how it may be applied to your organization.

3.To understand the coaching-learning cycle.

4.Understand the synthesis of prior methods, theories and practices and how these are incorporated in Team Kata.

Review the principles of lean management.

In many organizations, when people think of teams they think about a problem-solving, kaizen, project, or Six Sigma team formed to solve a problem and make a recommendation to managers. While these are useful, these teams are temporary. The culture of the organization, the norms and habits, are not embedded in temporary problem-solving teams. Rather, the culture is embedded in the norms and habits of permanent work groups – frontline teams, management teams and functional teams. These teams are permanent and they own responsibility for performance. How these teams execute that responsibility will determine the performance of the organization. Problem solving groups are responsible for improving some process, but they do not own that process on a
continuing basis. These teams are sometimes formed because the problem wasn’t solved more quickly by those doing the work.

It is very possible that you serve on more than one team. In this age of flexible organizations that is very normal. But, as you go through this course it is important that you are focused on the development on a specific team and you will seek to apply the lessons to that team.

1.Is my team a permanent team with on-going responsibility for a process and performance? What is the process or processes that my team “owns?”

a.Who is the formal leader of this team?

b.What is the relationship of this team to other teams – both horizontally and vertically?

2.Is my team a problem-solving (kaizen, project, etc.) team?

a.What is the exact problem that we are trying to solve?

b.When we develop a solution, who are the “deciders?”

Purpose

The purpose of this chapter is to help team members reach agreement on their purpose as a team and the principles that will guide their behavior. Your Charter will define your responsibilities and relationships.

Objectives

1.To engage the team in a discussion about why they are a team and their responsibilities as a team.

2.To have the team develop a charter that will define their work and responsibility as they serve their customers.

3.To have the team establish a code of conduct, or principles to live by.

Purpose

The purpose of this chapter is to assist the team to recognize normal patterns of development or stages of maturity that most teams pass through.

Objectives

1.To recognize the characteristics of a mature and well-functioning team.

2.To recognize the current level of maturity of your team.

3.To identify specific ways that your team may advance to a higher level of maturity and performance.

As every team begins to develop its skills it will pass through stages of growth. Whether you are on a frontline work team or a leadership team you are likely to witness some behavior that you may at times find to be “adolescent” or which you may describe in some other way. It’s OK! Just as your own offspring must go through some stages of exploration, testing, and learning to cooperate, teams go through very similar stages.

Purpose

The purpose of this chapter is to clarify who will make what decisions when, and in what style.

Objectives

1.To clarify how our team will make decisions in different situations.

2.To understand situational decision-making styles – why different styles are effective in different situations.

3.To understand the relationship between decision-making styles and the culture of the organization.

Deliverables

The team will reach an agreement as to which types of decisions within the team will be command, consultative or consensus and who will be involved in or own those decisions.

As you build a lean culture it will be necessary to shift how decisions are made throughout your organization.You will increasingly become a high-trust culture as teams demonstrate their maturity and their ability to improve performance.

This is a normal transition as everyone learns to focus on the process, rather than blaming people, and everyone develops a unity of effort around providing the best possible care to customers.

The reality of most work teams is that each individual is making some decisions every day. We must trust in the responsible nature of employees who operate equipment, interact with customers or do other work on their own. Most work involves making decisions.

The Performance Cycle

There are three major stages of learning and development within the Team Kata that bring a team to the status of high performance. The Learning/Coaching Kata is how one learns. But, what is the team attempting to learn? What is the behavior, if practiced by every team that will result in high performance for the organization?This illustrates the basic skills and activities of high performing teams. This is the lesson plan, if you wish to think of it that way. Both this book and the accompanying online learning course will teach these skills. It is these skills that your coach should be coaching as you go through the learning process. The skills and activities can be broken into three major categories.

1. Planning and Organizing

2. The Improvement Kata

3. Improving Team Effectiveness

Purpose

Every high performance team has an effective score keeping system. The purpose of this chapter is to help you establish that system for your team.

Objectives

1.To have the team reach consensus on their 4 to 8 key measures of performance.

2.To understand the importance of a balanced scorecard.

3.To establish a pattern of data collection and visual display.

Deliverables

First, the team will reach consensus on a balanced scorecard with between six and ten items. Second, you will agree on a visual display board and create that display with baseline data on each measure.

This chapter begins the actual cycle of improvement. The development of the scorecard can be viewed as either part of the improvement kata or as part of the getting organized phase. It doesn’t matter. It is both getting organized and an essential component of the improvement cycle. The four major steps of 1) developing a scorecard, 2) setting targets, 3) analyzing and improving, and then 4) recognizing improvement and standardizing the new methods, can be seen as a continuous cycle of improvement.

The scorecard and customer requirements, discussed in the next chapter, are both ways to understand the “current state” of performance. This is the basis for establishing improvement targets and solving problems that are obstacles to achieving those targets.

When you think about developing your scorecard give consideration to each of the following types of measures:

1.Customer Satisfaction: How do you measure customer satisfaction? Do you conduct an annual survey? Do you conduct telephone surveys and ask for feedback in some other way. It is worth considering how we can measure and track improvements in the satisfaction of our customers.

2.Business Process Measures: These may be measures of the cycle time from input to output of any process. Or, they may be measures of the number of times rework occurs within the process. Or, any other form of waste or errors that may be caught before the product leaves the organization, but results in unnecessary costs.

3.Learning and Development: Every organization must be a learning organization to compete in today’s world. Many organizations have goals for how many hours of training are received by each manager or employee. How can you measure the degree of learning and development? Completing the training modules in this book could be a measure of learning and development.

4.Financial Results: This is obvious at management levels. But, how can we create financial measures at the level of frontline work teams? This is possible. There are costs associated with every work team. The costs of materials, people, space, etc. Those costs can be compared to the percent of revenue attributable to that team. In other words, if a manufacturing plant sold product worth one million dollars a year, and there are one hundred employees in the plant, a team of ten can be considered responsible for that percent of the revenue. Of course, this is not an accurate accounting measure. But, it is a way to give the team a sense of business/financial responsibility for their work.

Purpose

The purpose of this chapter is to help the team identify their customers and suppliers, know the requirements of their customers, and set broad goals to meet their customers’ needs.

Objectives

1.To identify those for whom you work, your customers.

2.To identify the types of requirements of your customers.

3.To identify your suppliers and the type of feedback that would help them serve your team better.

4.To reach agreement with your team on your customers and suppliers.

Deliverables

The deliverable for this section is gathering data on customer requirements and defining the key customer requirements this team should focus upon.

Our success is directly related to the degree to which we understand and appreciate the needs and requirements of our customers. For many years the pursuit of quality in either products or services has focused on defining exactly what will please, even delight, those who are on the receiving end of those products or services. We often think we know, but often do not know exactly what it is that creates satisfaction among our customers. During this chapter your team should seek to achieve clarity on those requirements.

There is joy in work when it is done in the spirit of service to someone else. There is joy in work when you feel that you have control over the quality of your work. There is even more joy in work when you know that you are expert and that you are daily striving to improve the quality of your work. All work should have joy. The process of continuous improvement can bring that joy to your work. In this chapter, you will begin to establish those conditions that create joy, or the simple satisfaction of knowing that you are doing your work well.

Purpose

In this chapter your team will be guided to identify their “core” and “enabling” processes, map the value stream of those processes, and, initiate continuous improvement.Every team should be expert in their process and should be able to visualize the map of that process. This mapping is also at the heart of any kaizen event.

Objectives

1.To identify the work processes that are the responsibility of your team.

2.To learn methods of analyzing work processes to improve cycle time, reduce costs, and increase reliability and productivity.

Deliverables

When you complete this chapter you should have completed a current state process map and a future or ideal state process map of the process that is owned by your team.

The Value is in the Flow

Continuous Improvement is about the flow of the work, from suppliers to customers, and creating the ideal flow that will add the most value for your customers and contain the least possible waste. The ideal process is so lacking in interruptions that it feels natural - it flows.

High performing teams or individuals appear natural when their performance flows with seemingly little effort. Athletes experience flow, or what they may call, “being in the zone.” A musician may say she is in “the groove.” Flow for an individual is complete focus, absorption in a task, when all energies move with ease and without interruption. Rather than feeling like great exertion, the work feels natural and exhilarating.

Relationship Maps (Who Did What?)

Relationship maps illustrate who did what and in what sequence. In other words, it illustrates the relationship between people and tasks.

The following is a very simple map. This is a process with which we are all familiar. It is a simple work process: making a meal. If you are a good cook (like me!) you know that the order in which you do things is very important. For example, if you are going to make a spaghetti dinner, you don’t start your preparations by sticking the pasta in a pot of cold water, and then thinking about how to prepare the sauce. You begin preparing the sauce long before putting water on to boil for the spaghetti. Order is important in most work processes. It is one of the reasons why you should map your processes. Problems often occur because the order is wrong. Or you have missed a step or have unnecessary steps.

How to Turn Processes into Flow

Here are some simple steps to follow to create a process map.

1. Clarify Purpose and Goals

The purpose and goals of every process should be clear. You have may have already done this. Just review them here. The purpose should make clear why the process is important and to whom. The goals should not be detailed scorecard goals, but the general goal of the process.

2. Agree on Responsibility

Is the process the responsibility of the entire team, more than one team, or just a few members of the team? The process should be defined by those who “own” the process. Who owns this process?

3. Define Inputs & Outputs

If you have completed the work in the previous chapters, you have already done much the necessary work to be ready to work on process improvement. You should have answers to the following questions

·
What are the inputs to your work process (include materials, information, capital, people)? What are the requirements for each of these inputs?

·Who are the suppliers who provide input? What capabilities are needed on the part of suppliers in order to meet these requirements?

·What are the feedback loops from your team to your suppliers, and how do they function (speed, quality of information)?

·What are the outputs of your work system?

·Given the above, what are the requirements for your work process?

·What are the feedback loops that inform us of customer satisfaction, and how do they function (speed, quality of information)?

4. Define customer Requirement

If you followed the guidance in the previous chapters, you have this. It is helpful to just put this on a flip chart so the team can see and refer to these requirements as they begin mapping the process.

5. Map the Current State

It is a mistake to start mapping how you think things should be until you have mapped how things actually get done today. This is the “current state” of the process.

It is often true that even people doing the job don’t know how the whole process gets done. People only understand their very narrow piece of the work. You can’t analyze how things can be improved or study the causes of variances if you don’t know how things are currently done. First, map the current state of the process.

6. Identify and Analyze Variances:

A variance is anything in a process that varies from the way things should ideally be done or a result that varies from customer requirements. The next chapter will deal in more depth with analyzing variances.

7. Map the “Ideal” Process

There is no such thing as an ideal process. There is only the most ideal process we can imagine at this time. That ideal will change as we experiment and learn more about our process. But for now, map what you regard to be the ideal process. Start where input comes into the organization and the first step is taken. Go through all the steps you would recommend for a future process. Be sure not to add back in waste or sources of variance that you have eliminated.

8. Implement and Improve

If you have followed all of the steps above, it is now time to implement your new and improved process. However, you may feel that you have more work to do to analyze problems in the process. If this is the case, the next couple of chapters will help you find and make those improvements. Finding improvement and implementing those improvements should be an ongoing process, something you do many times in a year. By finding and implementing improvements to your process, you are doing your job as a high performance team.

9. Measure and Evaluate

If you have developed your team scorecard, you have identified measures of your work process. These are measures that you should be graphing and monitoring on a daily or weekly basis. The improvements you have made in your process should be reflected in these scores.

Purpose

A variance is a problem. It is something that varies from either the standard way of doing things, or from performance that meets the customer’s expectations. In other words, it is a problem. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze your work process to discover and eliminate causes of quality, productivity and cost problems.

Objectives

1.To understand the costs and causes of variation.

2.To identify variation within our own core work process and seek to reduce the causes of variation.

Deliverable

Your team should produce a variance analysis sing the variance analysis worksheet.

Purpose

A variance is a problem. It is something that varies from either the standard way of doing things, or from performance that meets the customer’s expectations. In other words, it is a problem. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze your work process to discover and eliminate causes of quality, productivity and cost problems.

Objectives

1.To understand the costs and causes of variation.

2.To identify variation within our own core work process and seek to reduce the causes of variation.

Deliverable

Your team should produce a variance analysis sing the variance analysis worksheet.

If you are to become a truly lean organization you must become process focused and must continually seek to reduce or eliminate variances.

The term variance refers to a performance that varies from how it should be. A variance is a gap from how things are to how they should be. Variances may be of any of the following types:

·Variances may be quality defects.

·Variances may be from standard operating performance.

·They may be variances from customer satisfaction requirements.

·Variances in costs of production or service delivery.

·They may be variances from our principles.

·Variances in behavior or standard work.

In each of these variances you may discover them simply by observation or by reports from customers. However, they may be observed statistically. It is important to have an understanding of statistical variation.