2009 Lessons Learned

Rather than another posting asking what you'll do different in 2010, let's talk about what we learned in 2009.

What's the most valuable thing you learned this year?

What's it worth to you...or them?

We talk a lot about ROI and the value of the work we do the business.  We've recently gotten some data back from our partners in the Finance group on this issue (sorry, nothing we can share at this point), which is the only source you can trust in these issues.  While it obviously doesn't encompass everything we do, it's nice to be able to have a method of quantifying at least some of the work.

Anyone out there getting good, valid feedback on the ROI of your work?

What's your latest project?

We all, to some degree, have a project in play.  Redesigning your compensation package?  Putting together a new training program?  Working furiously to meet your budget numbers for the year?  Looking for a new place to peddle your wares?

It's a busy world out there.  What's everyone working on, and what help could you use?

Pick a skill!

Let's pretend you are adding one person to your staff.  You have several qualified applicants, but each has an "extra" skill set that doesn't translate directly to the role (whatever it may be; the role isn't important here).  The "extra" skills are:

Sales experience
Second language fluency (though not one that will be useful for their client base)
Statistics/Data analysis
Non-profit group grant writing/fund raising
Stand-up comedy experience

Which skill would you most likely add to your team, and why?

LSS Deployment Benchmarks - How do you stack up?

Karen Welch from Abbott Nutrition presented in October at the 4th Annual Global Lean, Six Sigma and Business Improvement Summit. She quoted a few interesting (or depressing, depending on how you see it) statistics from Leap Technologies. I thought I'd share the ones that really caught my eye.

• Close to 50% of organizations making a significant investment in LSS complete fewer than 10 projects in the first two years despite significant training investment.
• Less than 15% Green Belts trained in LS methods (80 hrs classroom time) actually complete a project.
• Close to 40% BB training is devoted to teaching DOE, yet the majority report never using the tool in an actual project.
• Despite a goal of changing the culture, employee participation in LS projects average less than 10% of the workforce

How does this compare to your organization? We’ve spent a great deal of time on these very issues, and I’d like to think we’ve made progress in our organization, but I’m curious as to the state of the practice in other companies.
So how many of these four items would you dispute on your team?

Diversity vs. Inclusion

Worked with a team last week to brainstorm policies that promote inclusion. The discussion went in an unexpected (but very interesting) direction. But the question we first dealt with was the difference between inclusion and diversity.

Diversity is generally seen as compliance with US requirements along the lines of Affirmative Action Planning, or about making sure you recruit and hire people of different backgrounds and ethnicity.

Inclusion, as we discussed it, is more about making sure all those disparate and "diverse" individuals are turned into a truly blended workforce, and are able to work together as a unit. On a macro scale, it is about everyone understanding the direction of the company and how each business unit contributes. At a more micro level, its about how each individual plays a role in getting there.

How does your organization define diversity and/or inclusion? Are you making progress on both fronts, or do regulatory requirements alone drive your actions?

What Makes a Good LSS Belt Candidate?

I'm working this morning with a potential candidate to assess fit and likelihood of success.  Traits I'm hoping to find...

Action oriented
Comfortable with responsibility
Diligence
Flexibility
Comfort with numbers (I'm not as concerned about their specific statistical ability.  We can teach that if they have the mindset.)
Desire to learn
Willingness to change how you look at the world (I guess that's flexibility, but on another level.)

Project Ownership

In the last few weeks we have been busy building out the plans for Kaizens, JDIs and belt projects to reach our cost savings / productivity gain targets. One thing has come to light that I find very disturbing.

Our project champions/sponsors have a number of reasons for failed projects, many of which are due to the belt/team leader moving roles. We tend to nominate high potentials and high performers for the training, but then allow the projects (and therefor the certification efforts) to wither away in favor of "real work" or new positions.

The message for the month, then, is this. Champions own projects. Sponsors own projects. Team leaders and/or belts do not own projects.

We have established metrics on belt utilization levels (how many projects are being completed per belt/candidate per year) and ROI for the program (hard net savings/investment in training). I'm taking it as an action to also start reporting out completion rates for projects by Champion. If the leadership is not engaged in the process, it's all just wasted effort. And we all hate waste.

Translating "Corporate Strategy" methods to the HR world

In reading through "Lean Six Sigma for Service" (Michael L. George), I started thinking about the ways we leverage our HR team's priorities in our LSS deployment. 

George talks about how to benchmark against competitors on ROIC, WACC and EP (Economic Profit, the difference between the ROIC % and WACC %).  These are fairly easy numbers to obtain through annual reports, and can certainly be used as the cornerstone of resource deployment in an organization.
But we live in a slightly different world.  We are, in some respects, one of the largest costs of an organization.  These calculations, while meaningful, don't always help in deploying resources through HR.  I'm curious as to how we benchmark performance with that in mind. 
Do you benchmark against HR teams in your market sector, direct competitors, local companies, similar sized organizations, or some other group?
What are the key metrics you use for that comparison?  HR cost per FTE?  Total HR spend?  Turnover?  Something else?
Finally, how do you leverage that information to drive your deployment, and how often do you re-examine that strategy?

Obama appoints "Chief Performance Officer"

In the interest of keeping politics at a minimum, I won't ask people's opinions of the incoming administration (or outgoing, for that matter, though civil discussion is always welcome), I thought this new post was interesting enough to mention.  From Yahoo! News...

President-elect Barack Obama...named on Wednesday a former Treasury official as the first U.S. "chief performance officer" to oversee budget and spending reform.

"We can no longer afford to sustain the old ways when we know there are new and more efficient ways of getting the job done...Even in good times, Washington can't afford to continue these bad practices. In bad times, it's absolutely imperative that Washington stop them," Obama said.

Obama has repeatedly promised that his administration will go "line by line" over its budgets -- a task that will now fall to Killefer and Obama's nominee to as White House budget chief Peter Orszag.


I thought it interesting to see a high level position specifically designed to make the entire system work better, though it sounds more like a finance watchdog than a Lean practitioner position.  With all the waste that the new administration expects to find, let's hope they engage a few people who know how to clear it out and streamline the system.  That would get us past removing deadwood and start the country down it's own Lean transformation.