How do you successfully engage people in a Lean environment?

Lesley Fleming, Bourton Group

What is engagement?

The extent to which employees are motivated to contribute to organisational success and are willing to apply discretionary effort to accomplishing tasks that are important to the achievement of organisational goals.

Benefits of increased engagement

• Profit• Customer satisfaction• Productivity• Innovation• Retention• Well being• Health and safety

Four enablers of engagement

Source: “Nailing the Evidence” UK Employee Engagement Task Force, Bruce Rayton University of Bath School of Management - Nov 2012

• A strong strategic narrative provided by visible, empowering leadership

• Engaging managers who focus people and give them scope, treat them as individuals, coach and stretch

• Organisational integrity – values on the wall reflected on day to day behaviours

• Employee voice for reinforcing and challenging views, working between functions internally and externally, employees central to the solution

The leadership ‘value add’Focus

• Creating a vision that is inspiring yet achievable

• Sharing the vision in a way that is attractive to people

Structure• Creating the infrastructure to deliver the vision and business objectives

• Establishing clear roles, responsibilities, processes, methods and standards

Discipline• Managing systems and procedures consistently

• Developing and encouraging ways of working to achieve the vision

Ownership• Devolving responsibility, authority and accountability

• Being the change you want to see in the world

Focus: organisation needs

Translating the needs of the organisation into something meaningful that individuals can relate to and contribute towards

Focus: customer needs

Translating the needs of the customer into measures that individuals can influence and see the outcome.

Structure: deployment methodologyEngagement opportunity

Process Redesign driven by centrally led and resourced project team over a longer time scale•Project / programme management experts

Focused participation of process stakeholders, customers and suppliers•Lean Sigma DMAICT specialists

Lean Rapid Improvement Events focused on resolving cross team issues•Lean practitioners /facilitators

Locally generated operational performance improvements led by team leaders• Daily Work Group meetings• Primary Visual Display• 3Cs problem solving• 5S workplace improvements

few

many

eng

agem

ent

oppo

rtun

ity

Structure: tools and techniques

Shared toolkit used by all across the organisation in the conduct of everyday business.

Discipline – leadership behaviours

Discipline – team behaviours

People owning continuous

performance improvement

Measure

Display

Review

Prioritise

Diagnose

Improve

Work

Ownership – generating engagement

To be fully engaged, your teams need you to share:

•AAuthority to make changes - within agreed boundaries

•IInformation they can use - understanding the business issues

•RResources to adopt Lean - time, tools/techniques, help

Ref: Tannenbaum & Schmidt “Leadership Continuum”

Ownership – sustaining engagement

CHALLENGE

CLUBHIGH

PERFORMANCE

APATHY STRESS

highlow

highS

UP

PO

RT

Ref: Blake Mouton Managerial Grid

Discussion and conclusions