Beyond Folders : lean

Coaching Your Culture Change: Tricks to Make it Happen

Community Manager — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:28:00 GMT

The recent election shook up the political landscape but many of the newly minted elected, who ran on campaign promises of bringing change to Washington, have their work cut out for them. Changing culture is no easy task, as many business leaders could tell their counterparts in government.

An organization's culture is formed over many years for a variety of reasons. Sometimes company culture is rooted in the style of the company founder. Other times culture is established by the prevailing management team. Since managers tend to hire people like themselves, organizational culture is reinforced by new hires.

Changing office culture is difficult to be sure, but not impossible. In How to Change Your Organization's Culture the "Wall Street Journal Guide to Management" states "changing an entrenched culture is the toughest task you will face. To do so, you must win the hearts and minds of the people you work with, and that takes both cunning and persuasion."

So how to begin? In their book "Blue Ocean Strategy," authors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne suggest three initial strategies.

Start the change process with people who have disproportionate influence in the organization. If they can be brought along, others will follow.
Look for ways to get people to understand the glaring realities that make change necessary. For example have senior management field customer services calls or pull an "Undercover Boss" and have leadership spend some time in the trenches.
Look for ways to redistribute resources toward "hot spots" areas that require few resources but result in dramatic change rather than devoting resources trying to effect changes that aren't high visibility, high-impact.

Finally, consider evaluating your company's personnel structure. Too often only a small portion of workers' creative capabilities are tapped. Spend time identifying employees' strengths and create task forces with a tailored mix of talents and experience levels. And start to watch the needle the move.

Does your organization have a particular office culture? Share your thoughts here and at the Beyond Folders Facebook page.

by Bradley Eggers

Making a Picture Worth a 1,000 Words

Community Manager — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 13:26:00 GMT

We all know the expression: a picture is worth a 1,000 words. At Esselte, where innovation and enhanced efficiency are both company goals and the guiding principles behind the office products we create, we value products and processes that can do more with less.

Whittling down a thousand words to a single crystal image is exactly the type of efficiency we admire. That's why we put great stock in visual management, or the use of visual controls, to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our work.

Visual controls circumvent "out of sight, out of mind" and keeps what's important highly visible and top of mind. They also act as a "standard" giving all viewers the same visual cues and vantage point. Visual controls get everyone reading off the same page.

Examples of visual controls include color-coding folders or reminders posted on office cubicles. The cues don't need to be fancy; they just need to clearly communicate information needed to make effective decisions. In short, visual controls are useful for:

Making problems, abnormalities, or deviation from standards visible to everyone so corrective action can be taken
Displaying the operating or progress status in a easy to see format
Providing instruction
Conveying information
Providing immediate feedback to people

Does your office make use of visual controls? Share your thoughts here or at the Beyond Folders Facebook page.

by Bradley Eggers

Talking Quality

Community Manager — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 19:20:00 GMT

Quality, that measure of excellence that defines all that is desirable in a product, a process, or a service, is the Holy Grail of companies. At Esselte, delivering quality office products that enhance productivity is our raison d'être.It is our belief that delivering quality products requires strict attention to quality processes: it's the chicken and the egg if you will.

At Esselte, we make use of kaizen or lean tools first popularized in Japan to continually improve all business functions, for all employees, from the CEO to assembly line workers and administrative personnel.

As part of our continuous quest to enhance efficiency and improve value, we are constantly on the hunt for new and better tools and resources. Often, we are introduced to resources online, by experts or through research, but another fantastic avenue for ideas is homegrown. Often a company's own employees are the best source of inspiration. Witness the examples in Harness the Power of an Employee Suggestion Program: Beyond the Suggestion Box.

The article posits that an employee suggestion program can enhance existing idea-generating mechanisms such as brainstorming sessions and staff meetings. To set your suggestion program up for success, be sure to designate an administrator of the program and establish guidelines for suggestions. Also, define rewards or recognition for ideas that are selected and successfully implemented. Making employees stakeholders in success encourages participation.

Does your company have an employee suggestion program? How are valuable ideas generated and shared in your office? Share your thoughts here and on the Beyond Folders Facebook page.

by Bradley Eggers

Problem Solving with the 5 Whys

Community Manager — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:18:00 GMT

Anyone who has ever spent time with young children has heard the question:"Why?" over and over again. Kids are onto something: "why" is not only a classic information gathering tool, it does double duty as a problem-solving device.

Consider the 5 Whys, a problem solving method developed by car-making kingpin Saikichi Toyoda of Toyota Industries. Toyoda advocated a 5-step question and answer process to discover the root cause of a problem and find a solution. Today, the 5 Whys are used by proponents of lean manufacturing-a business practice that focuses on reducing waste-to solve problems, improve quality, and reduce costs.

Why ask Why?

So how do the 5 Whys work? Here is an example from Lean Tool Box How-To: Five Why's Problem Solving.

The problem: A key piece of equipment failed.

1. Why did the equipment fail? Because the circuit board burned out.

2. Why did the circuit board burn out? Because it overheated.

3. Why did it overheat? Because it wasn't getting enough air.

4. Why was it not getting enough air? Because the filter wasn't changed.

5. Why was the filter not changed? Because there was no preventive maintenance schedule to do so.

Solution: Develop a preventive maintenance schedule.

In this example, the 5 Whys neatly lead to a useful and easily executable solution. Problem solved. However, problems can be more intractable so care should be taken to develop an effective problem statement. If the problem is inaccurately characterized, every step that follows will be wrong. Remain open to amending the problem statement as you learn more during your investigation. Also, take care not to combine multiple problems into one.

For more on the 5 Whys, we've assembled some useful resources:

Have you found the 5 Whys helpful in problem solving? Share your thoughts here and on the Beyond Folders Community's Facebook and Twitter pages.

by Bradley Eggers