Rules in continuous improvement project using lean

I’m in my second implementation of a lean based performance improvement project. The first one started in September 2013 in Essent, the Dutch OpCo of RWE. The program was called “House in Order (HiO)”. I’m an IT manager. In Essent I was responsible for the “RUN” of IT. Applications (Application Operation and Application Maintenance), Office Automation, Network and Infrastructure belonged to that responsibility. Now I’m in the second performance improvement project in VSE the Slovak OpCo of RWE. The program is called “New Way of Working (NWoW)”.

Increasing performance on the IT KPI’s agreed with business and realization of cost savings on Incident and Request management with 20% is common in lean implementations. Depending on the start situation much more can be achieved when using Gartner’s Shift Left (G00264146 Three Simple Ways IT Service Desks Should Handle Incidents and Requests)

Here are some rules I use to sustainably change the culture and behavior of the personnel involved.

Create a win-win for the employees and the IT department

Plato: “Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge”.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery : “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men and women to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” (to yearn = desire strongly or persistently)

HiO and NWoW (lean implementations) are teaching our IT staff how to use the lean tools. By this skills are trained and knowledge is gained for identifying improvements and to find ways to mitigate the root causes that are in the way from reaching goals set with business.

If employees yearn for the same goals as the IT department and emotions are managed during a continuous improvement implementation it can be done. (see picture on the emotion curve)

Here are the rules I used to set the goals

Reduction of overtime

Overtime and overloading of (some of the) people is, unfortunately, common in IT. Everyone desires the right balance between work and the private life and to get rid of the overtime (I always check in a personal engagement if the employee is organizing overtime for a financial reason). So my first promise is that undesired overtime is the first casualty of our efficiency improvement.

Reduce boring stuff

Repetitive actions are for most of the IT employees boring. Personally I am always glad to eliminate it. And this is the second mutual goal I can set with the team. Here the Shift Left paradigm kicks in. Eliminating incidents by solving the root causes, automating repetitive actions and simplify IT tasks so it can be executed by the Service Desk or the user itself. (Self-services). This frees up time to do the fun stuff. The definition of fun can differ from person to person but most of them are in line with other IT goals like education, working on innovation, steering the performance of our suppliers and not unimportant to meet the business.

Empowerment

If goals are aligned and responsibilities are made transparent the foundation for empowerment are set. Most of the IT employees better specialists than their manager in analyzing optimization potentials and to make options transparent for decisions taking. In the course of the lean implementation the empowerment ensures my teams start feeling more responsible for their tasks and steer on the goals. They are coached on individual base. An important factor is that I give them room for making mistakes. Lessons learned meetings and coaching sessions will give insight how to prevent from making future mistakes.

Have fun

Having fun is the forth rule that I use. So if goals are achieved we will celebrate. It can be announcing the achievements of the team members in the daystart. We go out for a joint team-lunch when special goals are reached. Having fun also means for me that I keep the human touch in managing the KPI’s and team members.

Last week our CIO rewarded the IT employees with chocolate treats to reward energy put into the improvement. For the first time all KPI’S were green.

 Persistent

I have seen some remarkable behavior changes from my team members. Even from people colleagues told me they cannot be changed. When I used these rules teams perform better and changes are persistent.

The rules I used will certainly not be the only right ones. Please share the rules that worked for you.