by The HLH Team
Hahn & Houle is excited to welcome Trevor Lukey, CA as a its newest Partner. Trevor brings many years of public practice experience and a proven track record of excellent client service. We are thrilled to have him come aboard to join Bob and Richard in continuing to deliver great service and solutions for our customers.
To learn more about Trevor, view a quick video HERE, and check out his page on our website HERE.
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by The HLH Team
Remember when you couldn’t find the stapler? You know you saw it on that desk over there, but now it’s gone and the receptionist doesn’t know where it is.
Every minute you spend looking for that stapler is a frustrating waste of time, morale, and efficiency.
5S is a method of organizing the workplace that dovetails beautifully with lean methodology. It’s an important component in Continuous Improvement (Kaizen), and fosters efficiencies by saving time, improving discipline, and being a constant reminder of the importance of workplace standards.
It’s Japanese methodology and the name derives from a list of 5 words, which translate into seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu, and shitsuke. Companies embarked on a deliberate Continuous Improvement path typically employ 5S to some degree.
Sort (seiri)
Even with the time wasted in looking for staplers, how many old ones do you have lying in the bottom of drawers and at the back of office cupboards?
Before establishing a system, we need to first clean up from years of not having a system.
Ask yourself which items you need and which you don’t. Do all the pens on your desk actually work?
Do you really need 4 coffee mugs? Fewer items cluttering up your daily space will keep your head clearer and make it easier to find the items you do need.
Set in Order (seiton)
Give the stapler a fixed address.
Establish a home for all equipment and mark it off with tape or labeling if necessary.
People use the equipment on a first come, first served basis. It goes home after it’s finished with; no exceptions. Equipment is kept close at hand, so the people who need it most often don’t have to go far for it.
“A place for everything and everything in its place.” It reminds us of elementary school, but it’s the central pillar of 5S’s effectiveness. If you use the stapler, put it back. Elegantly simple.
Shine (seiso)
Clean the stapler. Clean equipment is not only more pleasing to use, but we tend to take better care of items we see as new over items we see as old and dirty.
Not only is clean equipment better for morale, it’s also safer. In 5S, equipment is cleaned while inspected and inspected by cleaning, so damage is caught as early as the next polish.
Standardize (seiketsu)
Now that your clean and functioning stapler has a home: standardize it. Creating high standards will formalize 5S and pivot it from one-off housekeeping to expected workplace standard.
The standards will help you maintain the order you’ve established moving forward. If you fall off the horse, refer to those standards to get back in the saddle. Eventually you wouldn’t have it any other way.
Sustain (shitsuke)
This is the hardest part.
Right now your mind is on keeping the stapler in its proper place but it won’t be for long.
Our busy minds move from focus to focus, but 5S cannot become “last month’s project” when we become engrossed in other things.
5S must become engrained in company culture if it’s to be maintained. More than just housekeeping, its long term integration requires a shift in how employees see their workplace.
It’s a microcosm of Continuous Improvement as a whole, in that it requires a shift in company culture and ongoing focus and discipline to be successful in the long term.
by The HLH Team
Continuous Improvement
We hear the terms “lean” and “continuous improvement” a lot, and often interchangeably. While lean focuses on improving customer value by eliminating waste (read more about lean here), continuous improvement focuses on making incremental efficiencies to internal processes which accumulate over time.
First implemented by Japanese industries struggling to rebuild after the devastation of WWII, kaizen was so successful that savvy American business picked it up. It’s now swept across the globe and has become a defining feature of many of the world’s most competitive businesses.
Continuous Improvement is Cultural
The Japanese term kaizen translates simply as “improvement.” Continuous improvement is a mindset. It’s the long term discipline of making incremental improvements that accumulate over time into big bottom line improvements.
There’s no room for elitism in continuous improvement. The CEO and shop floor or mail room worker alike must be committed to a cultural shift. Everyone endeavors, and everyone benefits.
Kaizen relies on workers’ grass roots ideas about how to improve the process they’re involved in everyday. It can’t be imposed effectively from head office because it requires intimate knowledge of ground level processes. This is why continuous improvement must begin with a cultural shift.
It’s About Empowerment
When was the last time you brought in a high priced consultant to talk to you about efficiency? Did you know that, most of the time, the answers he/she charged a bundle for were probably in front of you the whole time?
The beauty and the discipline of continuous improvement is that it’s not about hiring expensive consultants to tell you the secret of doing it. You have all you need to do it right now: they arrive at work every day for shift.
Continuous improvement harnesses the talent of your workers. It empowers workers to take more ownership of improving the processes they’re most engaged with. In exchange, management must take their employees’ ideas seriously and give them the consideration they’re worth.
You can simply think of it as the circle of business life.
When employees are motivated and engaged in their jobs, and not just performing automatic tasks, they become wellsprings of ideas. The ideas probably aren’t earth shattering, but shattering the earth isn’t the goal. Continuous improvement makes big bottom line changes out of small improvements amortized over time.
A few seconds saved in a process that’s repeated thousands of times will reap big dividends.
The Process of Continuous Improvement
Continuous Improvement relies on a 4 step cycle, iterated indefinitely and improving processes as it goes.
It’s planning deliberately, taking decisive action, gathering key metrics, and taking the data seriously, which you roll over into your next decisive planning process.
Companies are made of separate processes, like trees are made of leaves, and every process can be improved. Continuous improvement is about creating the culture where every employee is personally invested in making improvements. It takes time to create that culture, but once established it will become the solid foundation of your company’s future.
by The HLH Team
Establishing a company culture of Lean is about empowering the people behind your processes: the staff.
Fostering collaboration and teamwork can be the secret ingredient to better margins. Daily team meetings are a great way to start that journey.
Need more than good intentions:
Your first tip for implementing consistent and effective team meetings is: keep this article. Why?
Because here are the 5 steps of what happens to most companies that put team meetings in place:
1) Initial enthusiasm about how awesome this new meeting format will be! The excitement is infectious and everyone is on-board.
2) You establish a reliable schedule and things flow nicely for a while. It’s working!
3) The meetings become routine and enthusiasm wanes. Topic drift happens. You learn more about your HR manager’s car trouble than wasted resources in your company.
4) The meetings lose their sense of purpose. All you can think about is how much they’re costing you in lost work time, and you throw up your arms and disband them.
5) You hear about an amazing new format for team meetings! See #1 and repeat.
So keep this article. Pin it to your bulletin board and read it during #2 and #3 to get back on track. Setting up a consistent flow for team meetings takes time.
It won’t happen in a week, but keep true to your goal and agenda and it will happen.
Elements of an Awesome Team Meeting
The best time is first thing in the morning. Give people 15-30 minutes to shake off the sleep, check emails, and get past commuters’ road rage.
Stand up. When we sit down it’s like someone flips us into a lower gear. Our energy changes and nursing our coffee mug becomes a matter of life and death.
Standing embodies energy and readiness.
A lot of companies follow Pavlov’s example and use an audio cue to start meetings. Playing the same upbeat song, at the same time, will remind people office-wide to join the circle. Make it early enough in the morning that people won’t be on client calls yet or in meetings.
If you have a Kanban board (the multi-coloured sticky note whiteboard), make it your focal point.
Kanbans make processes transparent and create accountability; that’s what lean meetings are all about!
No phones. Period.
Beware of topic drift! Make everyone understand that this is not the forum for Saturday night recaps or sick cat laments. Be a strict enforcer of people staying on topic.
You’ll feel like a schmuck at first but people will get the point quick. Everyone will thank you for this in the end.
Make sure someone takes minutes. The duty can rotate but it’s essential.
Documented accountability always trumps the “I think I remember that being assigned to me, maybe… sort of.”
Above all: make it fun. Start with a joke and keep the atmosphere lively, enthusiastic, and collaborative.
It’s a crisp start to the day that reinforces a sense of team, opens communication, and makes people feel listened to and empowered.
Is it Effective?
If you stick to the agenda and engage staff, you’ll have effective meetings.
Knowing if they’re engaged or not, unless you’re lucky enough for your staff to be painfully honest, is about body language.
Are they looking the Team leader in the eye? How bout each other’s eyes? Are they standing farther from each other?
Is their gaze glazed over as they think about coffee or what their phone is doing?
If you’re the boss, set the example by making it a priority. Don’t wander in late or skip it because you’re working on a project. Be a part of the team by being within the group; don’t reinforce old and unprofitable hierarchies by looming above it. See my last post on Lean Leadership for more on this topic.
The true test of its effectiveness will be the office culture. Within a few weeks you should notice increasing collaboration, employee feedback to management, and productivity overall. Be resolute in the meetings and you’re a solid step closer to making Process Improvement a systemic part of your company culture.
by The HLH Team
The word “leadership” gets thrown around a lot in business writing. Countless articles and books preach “first out of the trench”, but few of them give leadership the seriousness it deserves.
Lean understands that a company’s leadership is either its driving force or the wall it runs into. A good leader sparks self motivation in employees and makes them want to do better. The principles of lean leadership are both elegantly simple and counterintuitive to corporate culture.
In my last post I examined why lean initiatives often fail. Spoiler alert: it was leadership. Let’s find out what kinds of leaders make process improvement initiatives prosper.
This isn’t your standard blog post. Below are 3 comparisons of Lean vs Traditional leadership traits. I’ve included questions so you can think about what kind of leadership is in your company. Whether you’re the leaders or not, be honest in your answers. Process improvement begins with transparency.
What’s the leader’s Philosophy?
Dreams of short term revenue growth dance in traditional leaders’ heads. They ask “who” will do this and “who” will do that, all to push more product out the door.
Lean leaders have a longer term approach, and care about margins more than revenues. Putting customers first, lean leaders build processes that react to customers’ pull. “Why” becomes a tool that streamlines processes over time and exposes waste.
Question #1: What is your leadership philosophy and, more important, do you practice it?
Question #2: In your opinion, should business prioritize revenues or margins, and why?
What’s the leader’s Approach:
Most business models silo companies into departments, each with their own processes. Employees have little or no power to stop the processes: that power is in the corner-office.
Traditional leaders use spreadsheets to track their teams’ KPIs, ROIs, COGs and mistakes. When something goes wrong, they don’t find out until the news, via various data entries, hits their inbox. Reacting to what has already happened defines traditional leadership style.
Lean leaders empower employees to provide actionable input on wasteful processes. Instead of looking at last week’s spreadsheet, these leaders are present for today’s processes. They’re on the shop floor and at the morning meetings. They break down departmental silos so that the company becomes a unified, transparent system. They catch mistakes either as they happen or even before.
Question #3: What is an example of an employee providing feedback in your company? Was it acted upon and what was the result?
How does the leader deal with People:
Traditional leaders slot employees into functions. They create systems that sacrifice creativity for efficiency. Expensive consultants get hired for feedback but staff aren’t empowered to speak their minds. Traditional leaders set goals and provides feedback based on goal performance. No matter how many management seminars they attend, they are the boss and the sole problem solver.
Lean leaders are coaches. They put processes before goals, and dialogue with staff about continual process improvement. These leaders empower their staff, and staff respond by finding problems in processes before they erode profits.
Lean leaders make people want to excel by giving them the chance to improve the processes around them. Our employees want to make our businesses successful: we just need to give them the chance.
Question #4: What is one process in your company that no one has examined in a while? Every company has them.
