American Lean Weekday: Leadership | Lean Culture & Intrapreneurship | Lean Methods | Industry 4.0 | Case Studies

When people go through change they move through four stages of change. I cover the four stages in this episode.

1. Denial
2. Resistance
3. Exploration
4. Commitment

Everyone goes through these changes at their own pace. In this podcast I offer ways to help this transition.

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If you have been around the change management world at all, you’ll hear estimates that 70% of change initiatives fail. Why is that you ask? It often starts at the top. Leadership moved too fast with the implementation, there wasn’t a focus on training employees on the new methods, etc. Often ignored is the fact the culture isn’t ready to accept change. Especially today, it is important to develop your culture to embrace change!

My bet is your business has made some changes to the way it operates. Maybe it’s as simple as requiring everyone to wear masks. It could be you’ve moved more of your business to fulfilling online vs. a physical location. Regardless, how hard was it for you to accomplish? Did everyone pitch in and make it happen effortlessly?

It’s important that leaders instill a culture that embraces change. The hard part is that culture isn’t a set of rules you write down and expect everyone to follow. Culture is a combination of the company mission, vision, values, norms and purpose. While the products and services may change a company’s purpose should remain the same. Here are some steps to take to develop your culture to embrace change.

1. Identify a shared purpose

You might think companies that have been around a long time would have a harder time engaging younger employees to meet the demands of the future. It’s important to frame your company’s purpose in a way everyone can support.

You might think Toyota builds cars. The reality is their purpose is to increase the mobility of humans. That is a larger purpose that employees can engage with and support. Another example is Nike. A simple view is they produce running shoes and athletic wear. Okay, but for whom? They view everyone as an athlete. Their purpose is “If you have a body you are an athlete.” A purpose like that engages employees to embrace change.

2. Develop your True North

A True North takes into account the mission, vision, values, and purpose and acts as a constant reminder of the purpose of the business. It should guide every decision, every investment, every conversation within a company. Reflecting upon the True North makes embracing change much easier for employees because they know the why for the change.

3. Continually share the True North

After you have defined your purpose and developed your True North, it is important to socialize the True North with everyone in the company regularly. I worked with a billion-dollar company that began every daily huddle reviewing a small piece of the True North. They were a manufacturer, and the basis of their True North was safety and quality.

Once their employees understood those elements, they introduced more elements like measure what matters, employee engagement, and innovation. Over a short period of time, all 500 employees understood why they were there and embraced the changes we were introducing.

If you follow these three steps I know you can develop your culture to embrace change!

As always, it is an honor to serve you, and I hope that you and your company are getting better every day!

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We hear a lot about servant leadership, but do you know what that means? More importantly, how do you implement servant leadership in your company? Servant leadership is not a natural way of leading, but you can develop servant leaders if you have patience, persistence and practice. I want to provide some tips in this blog.

Tip 1 - Understand your current state

Like any journey, it is important to understand where you are starting. Robert Greenleaf identified 21 pillars of servant leadership in the 70s. There are many assessments you can take as a leader to understand your current state.  Here is one that I believe will serve you well.

Organizational Leadership Servant leadership assessment is here.

Armed with this information, you can decide about what to improve next with you and your team.

Tip 2 - Start with small teams

You can’t jump on a bike and ride 100 miles in a week without training for months or years. The same is true for developing servant leaders in your company. You won’t change the culture overnight. It’s important to start small and slowly allowing it to become part of your business.

Begin with a small team of your key leaders and have them begin with the assessment. Meet as a team and discuss the results. Be open and operate with a judgement free mindset. For success, it’s important your leaders feel free to share their starting points.

Tip 3 - Challenge the team with questions

Ask questions such as, “Are we moving in the direction of becoming a servant leader organization? If so where in the organization?”

“Is this important to us as a leadership team? How will we benefit? What are the consequences if we do not do this?

“Where can we try out servant leadership right now? Does our current culture support servant leadership? How will we hold ourselves accountable?”

Tip 4 – Review each area of the business

The next step in the journey is rollout servant leadership actions in the specific functional areas of your business. Conduct a review of each of your functional areas and try to identify a few that have the right leaders, culture and support for your rollout.

When you identify the areas for rolling out servant leader activities, have those leaders identify actions they want to start, continue or quit. Using this framework allows the leaders in those expanded areas to reflect upon their actions and identify areas where they can improve.

As they become more comfortable leading in a servant leader manner, use them to coach and direct others in the organization. Using this cascading will allow you to implement servant leadership in your company that will be successful!

As always, it is an honor to serve you, and I hope that you and your company are getting better every day!

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One of the key elements on my American Lean Weekday podcast is the weekly interviews that I conduct with companies on their Lean Journey. These companies are from various industries and are all different sizes. I have interviewed leaders from family-owned businesses to multi-national organizations. These are keynotes from a conversation with Tim Bayer, President of Hansen Plastics in Elgin Illinois.

Hansen Plastics is an employee-owned (ESOP) and they maintain a can-do attitude because their employees are also owners. Respect and trust for each other are key elements of their True North. They have over 70 molding presses pressing custom parts across multiple industries.

These are some key points taken from my interview with the President, Tin Bayer.

1.  We started our Lean journey in 2012. I was excited to bring my family in and show them the shop and it did not look good. The presses were a mess and it didn't reflect well on us. "I realized I was making excuses for people. It was a reflection on me."
2. "We wanted to design our culture and not have it by default. It went the way of default and we let it happen. We decided we needed to make a change."
3.  "we've been able to cut our customer complaints by 1/2 each year. We've had sales per FTE increase every year. Scrap has decreased by 32% year over year."
4. Our backlog has gone down from $615,000 to $2,000.
5. "Our employees are better leaders because of the growth, but they are also better parents and spouses as well!"
6.  "It's not just about the dollars, people feeling good, positive energy, everything that makes people want to come to work and do their best."
7.  "We would chase shiny objects when we began doing kaizens events in the plant so we began policy deployment about four years ago. That helped keep us focused."
8.  "We wanted to maximize our greatest asset- our employee owners. A big surprise has been how hard they have gone after getting to the root cause and making change.
9. "There is no perfection so just go do it."

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I'm sure you have heard of the four P's in marketing. In a digital marketplace there will be 7 P's. Learn about them here!

1. Price
2. Place
3. Promotion
4. Product
5. People
6. Processes
7. Physical Evidence

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In this podcast I cover the five mindsets that hold companies back from getting started on a Lean Innovation.

1. We're unique
2. We're not Toyota
3. We're high mix/low volume
4. We don't have time
5. We can't afford outside coaches
6. 
   

Hear how you can overcome these mindsets and the benefits you will receive!Rate and Review Here

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Developing a communication driven culture is important if you are going to have long-term success, especially now. We all know that it is harder to communicate via Zoom or Teams or any of the other remote communication platforms. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make improvements in your communication. 

I’m going to assume we have all been in a situation where we have received feedback we weren’t happy about. What happened in this situation? How did the giver of the feedback provide the feedback? Proper feedback helps shape individuals by correcting mistakes, recognizes their strengths, and provides objectives that help them grow. Here are some frameworks that can help.

1. Build the communication infrastructure

Starting day one when employees begin, establish the communication infrastructure you’ll use with them. Since they are new to the organization and unsure of the culture, start with twice-weekly communication. Then the next month, it moves to weekly communication. After several months, work toward establishing a regular pattern.

If you are gathering feedback from them about you as a leader, have them complete a form or provide feedback through an HR portal. Realize they will provide more honest feedback as they become more engaged with you as a leader.

2. Share the Why

I’ve seen companies implement processes or make decisions without sharing the why, and it confuses employees. Employees want to understand why something occurs. 

Organizations that stick to their True North can easily answer the why question. Referring back to the True North helps employees understand why a decision is made or why a process is changed. Make sure you are constantly communicating your True North with employees to help them understand the why.

3. Teach everyone how to give and receive feedback

Delivering feedback isn’t always easy. It’s important to train employees on the proper way to give feedback. The tone, setting, and words used in providing feedback can add or subtract to employee experience.

The opposite is also true. It’s important to reinforce the company provides feedback because it has a continuous improvement mindset. It’s important after providing feedback to develop an improvement plan together if needed.

4. Lead by example

Employees look to leadership to see what they are doing and how they are behaving and responding. If employees see a good example, they will follow the lead. Realize employees aren’t the only ones who should receive feedback, leaders should too from all levels.

It’s important as a leader you give and receive the feedback well is you want to develop a communication driven culture!

As always, it is an honor to serve you, and I hope that you and your company are getting better every day!

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When you have a servant leader mindset, you are there for your employees and not the other way around, it’s important to ask open-ended supportive questions. Realize that employees are struggling with homeschooling and working from home. Employees that live alone have had their social interactions change overnight. I want to provide some great servant leader communication for WFH employees.

What was only a temporary situation is now becoming permanent? I read an article today that said many more companies are having employees work from home until June or July 2021. This is like being at an airport ready to board a flight and having it continually canceled. The frustration level keeps increasing and you never know when it will end.

Being a successful leader in these times is difficult. What used to work probably needs to change. Leading now requires more caring and checking in on a personal level. Kindness is calming. Here are some suggestions for gently probing and finding where you can provide support.

1. I hear you

It’s important to be fully present when employees share their concerns and questions. Be aware of your facial expressions or sideways glances (grimaces) when speaking over video. I know when I was an employee it’s important to feel that I was heard when sharing.

You might not know how to respond, and that’s okay. Sometimes people want to vent their frustrations. I know as an outside consultant I get vented to all the time. It’s fine. I listen patiently and then work to put their concerns at ease.

2.  What can we do to help?

Framing the statement this way, shares with the employee that more resources are willing to help than just yourself. It sends a subtle message that the team or the whole company is there to lend support. If they ask for help, provide it.

3.  How are you managing these days?

Pre pandemic, we didn’t have the insight into people's lives that we do today. Pets make themselves known on Zoom calls. Children interrupt with questions about school assignments. Maybe they need help to go to the bathroom. I suggest being flexible with work hours if your employees need it and the company can accommodate it. It might help relieve an enormous amount of work-related stress.

4. I know you are doing your best

Believe it. Your employees are doing their best. They didn’t ask for this. Many are seeing friends and neighbors losing their jobs. They’re concerned. They are caught without separation from work and home. Many are working longer hours than before. People with school-age children are working after their kids are asleep expanding their day. They are doing their best, please acknowledge it.

5. Say thank you

You can’t say this often enough. Please let your employees know you appreciate them. Thank them. Over and over again. After all, they are what makes the company great! 

I hope you can have great servant leader communication with WFH employees by using these comments. Let me know how it goes!

As always, it is an honor to serve you, and I hope that you and your company are getting better every day!

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One of the key elements on my American Lean Weekday podcast is the weekly interviews that I conduct with companies on their Lean Journey. These companies are from various industries and are all different sizes. I have interviewed leaders from family-owned businesses to multi-national organizations. These are keynotes from a conversation with Ben Griner from Persyst Consulting.

PerSyst Consulting was founded in 2005 and located in Seattle, Washington is a nationally recognized consulting organization focused on organizational change, vision alignment, processes, and systems most importantly, digital transformation.

These are some key points taken from my interview with the President, Ben Griner.

1.  When you add hardware or software to a business transformation, it becomes a digital transformation. We evaluate a companies ability to perform a digital transformation on three things: If they have the operational competence to know what they want. Does the organization have the ability to keep sustained continuous improvement? Do they have the technical capability to leverage what they want to change in their business?
2. Nike had one of the most successful connected devices launches ever recorded. It changed the nature of connected devices.
3. Disney deploys a similar method with their magic band changing the face of consumer delight.
4. Carnival Cruise line deployed their Medallion project allowing the cruise line to better manage employees, manage food and beverage, schedule employees better. This also allowed them to increase upsells and improve revenue while enhancing the guest experience. The results we astounding!
5. Then look at oil and gas. They want to know how to anticipate maintenance on equipment. We can add technology to old environments. Technology provides all kinds of options even in remote places. In the case of our oil client, they saved hundreds of millions of dollars in improved operational efficiency and improved maintenance.

Reach out to PerSyst Consulting if you need excellent support for your digital transformation!

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There are nine enablers in industry 4.0 and this podcast introduces them.

1. Cybersecurity/blockchain
2. Cloud computing
3. Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
4. Big Data
5. System Integration
6. Autonomous robots (cobots)
7. Additive manufacturing (3D printing)
8. Augmented reality
9. Digital twins/simulation

Learn about the technology changes coming to your company soon!

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More show notes are hereSchedule a free 1/2 call with Tom Reed.Buy the Lean Game Plan