Five Whys of Thanksgiving for Process Improvement

Five Whys of Thanksgiving for Process Improvement

Many people have heard of the Five Whys of Lean; the point being to keep asking “why?” about an issue until you come to the root cause.  If there is no real reason (classic: “because it’s always been done this way”) or no one seems to know of a good reason, that is indicative of potential room for improvement. 

For example, in a process improvement Current State Mapping session I conducted with a client last year, we discovered that the QC team was measuring something which the technicians at the equipment had already measured and passed on.  I asked a technician “Why do you measure this parameter at the equipment?”  The answer: “Because rework is required at the equipment if the parameter is out of control.”  Seems like a reasonable answer (though ideally we’d push for no defects at the equipment at all).   

Moving on in the process, however, I then asked the QC team why that parameter was measured again just after the employee already passed the measurement at the equipment.  In that case, the answer was that the QC team didn’t know it was being measured upstream of them; they had always taken that measurement.  Then the production manager spoke up that he instituted the parameter check a few years ago at the equipment, but never told the downstream QC team.  This resulted in a duplication of effort at the subsequent QC step which gated the product moving to the next stage of production and caused unnecessary delays to the overall process.  Needless to say, the team was pretty thankful for the Current State Mapping session highlighting this issue so they could stop the duplication of effort and save time in getting the product to the customer.

In the spirit of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States, it is worth exploring five reasons why teams are often thankful when external consultants are hired to facilitate process improvement efforts such as the example above. 

1)      Hiring a consultant demonstrates that Management recognizes employee “pain” and is willing to spend money to help

2)      Employees are relieved that someone else will guide their improvement efforts since they don’t have time, given their “real jobs,” to take on this added responsibility themselves

3)      Peers do not feel like the “bad guy” for exposing inconsistencies or waste in other areas of a process (and consultants typically maintain neutrality as they consider process problems, not directed at individuals)

4)      Exposure to an entire end-to-end value stream or process is enlightening for individuals and facilitates understanding and empathy between departmental “silos”

5)      An outsider will often ask questions that an insider wants to understand, but is afraid to ask for fear of being perceived as ignorant

As the owner and Principal of AJC, I am thankful that my clients recognize the value of hiring an external consultant to facilitate process improvement efforts.  Why?  There are at least five reasons (of course J) but the main one is because I feel good when helping others in a meaningful way – just like most of us, I suspect.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

One Quality of a Great Project Manager: The Buck Stops Here

There are so many qualities of a great Project Manager that this article will likely be the first of a number “too numerous to count” (TNTC*).  *Shout out to everyone who has ever grown cultures in a petri dish!

One aspect of being a great Project Manager is embracing the concept that “The Buck Stops Here.”  Another indication of this concept is that great Project Managers find they love the word “done.”  As in “Done, done, and more done.” Good Project Managers may not always know every single minute task associated with completing the overall project at the outset, but they can identify milestones, or gateways, and then articulate the steps required to accomplish each one.  As the situation changes, which so *rarely* happens J, a good Project Manager ascertains the new things which need to be done in order to remove roadblocks, complete enablers, or just plain move the project to the next phase.

Here’s an example, hearkening back to when I was a Project Manager on a large construction project.  We had to put in a major gas and liquid supply system where the tanks would be leased, but the piping was built and owned by the client.  Part of the lease deal was that the supplier would provide design services for the filling station and pipelines to the tanks themselves.  However, the supplier was busier than just our one project, and the entire design creation and approval, not to mention starting the actual work itself, was in danger of becoming delayed!

What is a Project Manager to do?  There are two choices:  One: talk and try to push the supplier to do their job, or Two: act (remembering that “the buck stops here”).  I chose the latter option.  First, I documented the history of requests and responses for the design that I had facilitated with the supplier.  Next, I discussed those with the Project Director, who was my boss, and obtained his support to act.  Third, I took action. 

Now, I am not a design engineer, but I did have one on my team.  I also had several representatives from the client who were the ultimate users of the building available for consult.  And I managed to get the supplier’s representative out to site for a meeting.  Together, we walked the site and I took notes and took pictures of the site while the engineer sketched what the users wanted while providing input as to what was feasible from an engineering standpoint.  The supplier representative basically just tagged along, happy for someone else to get the design work completed.   The meeting took less than an hour and at the end, we all agreed to the sketched design.  I documented everything and sent it out to the team for reference.   We were then able to move forward with the General Contractor and Subcontractors to complete the construction work. 

This type of situation has happened many times in my experience as a Project Manager.  Someone has to take responsibility and accountability to be the point person and get the work done.  That person rarely gets any glory – after all, she didn’t design the great layout, make the actual product, test it or approve the results.  Yet, without the diligent Project Manager striving for the ultimate “Done,” that buck has a funny way of not stopping.  

AJC helps in a myriad of ways in the Project Management space.  We can act as Project Managers, coach client teams to becoming independent project managers, or work with client individual project managers to hone their skills and support them as they then facilitate their team’s work.  The ultimate quality we stress the most is that the Project Manager is the person who embraces the adage that “the buck stops here.”

What is in a Form?

Clients often find they are buried in paperwork – often in the form of, well, forms.  “Why do we have to fill out all this information?”  “Can’t we streamline all this work?” “I can’t get any real work done because I’m always copying and pasting into yet another form.”

All of these very real pain points.  Before we delve into form complexity, however, let’s consider why forms exist in the first place.  Not in the sense of a historical research project on when forms were first used, by whom, how they developed and evolved, etc. (though that would be interesting), but rather for what use are forms helpful in a process?

IMHO, the main function of a form is to collect specific, necessary information in a standardized fashion from one source of knowledge to the next as a tool to provide value to a process.  When you go to the doctor for the first* time, it is valuable for that physician to understand your medical history in order to properly diagnose and treat you, as well as to understand your individual risks regarding future health considerations.  (*Aside:  different from redundant and repetitive collections of medical history via forms!)  When you apply for a loan, it is necessary to provide your financial situation to inform the bank about your reliability to pay interest on the principal.  Within an organization, it may be necessary to provide specific information about particular outputs of one process as inputs to the next that is handled within another department, or for entry into the System of Record.

The problem is that often we abuse the basic tenet of value-added form use by adding more or expanding forms without thinking why we need the information contained within them at all.  Just the other day, I was with an engineer who complained that the sales team did not list a negotiated customer price in a form passed on to engineering.  When I asked for what the engineering team used that information, the engineer faltered.  “Well, I think we copy and paste it and just keep track of it,” he said.  “Okay, but what value-add thing do you do with that information that renders it necessary to you?”  “I don’t know,” he admitted.  We went on to discover that the quoted price was listed in a Quote Letter that was available in a common shared folder for all team members to access. 

What’s wrong with this picture?  First, the receiving party did not even know for what they needed that information – only that there was a field on the form for that price, and in this case it was not filled in.  Second, the form had redundant information– the value in the field requested was available elsewhere.

“I’ll go to bat for you, (Engineer),” I said.  “If you can tell me why you need that information, we’ll make sure that it is always provided to you in this process in a standardized way.”  The engineer agreed, and we also discussed how the overall process is being overhauled in our Process Improvement project anyway, so this particular form is being replaced with something else that is scrubbed for value-add, as well as considered for direct entry by the initial knowledge owner to the system of record to eliminate the need for manual entry into the existing quagmire of forms fields.

If your organization is experiencing the pain point of too many or too cumbersome forms, step back and review the following:

• Why is each form needed?
• What value does each field in each form provide to the recipient?
• Is there some way for the knowledge owner to pass on that information into the ultimate “system of record” or resting place for the information directly, without using a form in the first place?

These are the types of things AJC considers in Process Improvement projects via our Current and Future State mapping methodologies.  If you need help, we would be happy to be of service!

Welcome to AJC!

Welcome to AJC and our new blog.  Here you will find pertinent information that we hope you will find helpful to your business, especially as it relates to Process Design, Development, Improvement, and Documentation, as well as Project Management tools and techniques.  Stay tuned for more content to follow.  - Andrea Jones, Principal, AJC