Small start

In conversations with clients, potential and actual, other consultants and various people who are interested, they always want to know how to get started. Some advocate a top down approach and some start small and spread, some like to hit everywhere at once with a organisational training programme and some talk a lot and never really get going. These are all valid (except the last perhaps!!). And different approaches suit different organisations in different situations.

One way to get going is to pick a small area and do a little project.

Some start with 5S (where you sort, straighten, shine, standardise and sustain) basically throw out the rubbish and clutter, tidy up, clean everything, reorganise what is left to suit the task, make sure everyone knows how the work station works and ensure that it stays tidy. 5S is good, but you can do better. It provides a visual indication that something has been done and in hospitals, factories it can be quite dramatic. But in service work places it can be difficult to know exactly what to do.

Some make a cell. Not to keep the boss in, but a "mortgage application cell" or "trade input cell". They bring together all the people that need to do a particular, currently disparate task and put them all together in the same place. This can be effective. But sometimes you are simple compressing a bad process.

I would start with demand. How does work arrive? How often? How much? How much does it vary? Is it value demand or failure demand? This analysis can be a smallish project (compared to the work that it reveals) but it is cruicial to find out how work comes to you before you try to redesign how it is done. For example what if you found out that 60% of your work was dealing with complaints. And that 90% of those complaints could be removed easily? That would be a very good start. Now imagine if you had not done that and instead tried to improve the complaints handling process. Waste of time.

So start small if you can't start big (I will write about that soon), but start at the beginning. Understand the work coming in. Understand demand.

Who Do You Think You Are?

So you have read the blogs, scoured the web sites, devoured the books and listened to peers at conferences and you want to have a go at Lean. Why not? Everyone is at it. Even the NHS is giving it a go.

But how exactly do you start? Your conviction and enthusiasm is about to come steaming out your ears - or maybe you kinda like the sound of it and want to test it a little before you roll it out to the whole enterprise.

Okay, one way to start would be to get on the phone to someone like me, a Lean consultant, and they will use their years of experience to tell you what is right for you. But I am going to assume that my phone will not start ringing off the hook right after I upload this, because you, rightly, want to test the water before diving in.

First you need to know who you are. Not in a navel gazing, fluffy, zen kind of way, but in a practical sense. Who are you in your organisation? Are you the CEO? A board member? A director of a division? A middle or line manager? A technical expert (this could be a doctor or any specialised worker, not necessarily a techie type)? Or are you on the shop floor doing the real work of the business?

Also who are you in terms of influence? Have you started off similar programmes before? Were they successful? If you are not the CEO, can you get support from people above you? Are you the influencing, persuasive type? Do you have a network to draw support from?

I ask these questions because these are the questions that I ask my "initiators", the individuals that I go to see. And sometimes it comes about that the people who bring me in have just enough influence to get me in to see someone else but not enough to carry through the programme. But they are happy to get the ball rolling.

So, how far can you push a change to Lean? Do you need to gather some support before you try anything?

Ponder this, and next time I will give a few ways, from small to large, that Lean can get started in an organisation.

Whoever and wherever you are you can get going, but some ways of starting are more appropriate depending on your current situation.