|
By
Paul Deis, CEO, PROACTION
Article Summary
·
Education – key to Best Practices
·
How to get the most value from your program.
·
Improving your “improver-ers” – greatest leverage.
Once one understands the value of on-going
(continuous) improvement processes, it may occur to
you that upgrading the effectiveness of the
improvement itself affords potentially huge
leverage.
Our considerable experience with education and
training programs strongly supports this view, while
explaining why many education and training (E&T)
efforts produce little in the way of visible
results.
The improvement spectrum runs from no improvement
process at all through companies like Toyota. Most
are somewhere between these two poles.
In this article we will explore how to make sure
your E&T program supports the improvement of the
improvement process (and people) itself, and as a
result, moves the company towards the positive end
of this spectrum.
Education – Key to Best Practices
Why have an E&T program at all? Any continuous
improvement team will eventually “run out of gas” at
least to some extent. This is simply because of the
inherent human tendency to settle into a stable way
of perception. Waste in a process may be blindingly
obvious to one person, yet completely invisible to
another. Why? A difference in perceptions.
Similarly, one group of people may just accept a
given quality level of a process as normal,
acceptable, and not something any action could or
should be taken. Another perception may regard the
same process quality level as completely
unacceptable and an occasion for high-priority
action. Same cause – a difference in perceptions.
At the very leading edge of Best Practice generation
are highly innovative companies who have mastered
the improvement process, such as Toyota and Honda,
who steadily generate new, never-seen-before ways of
doing things. Honda, for example has an annual
celebration for the most spectacular failure during
the previous year. This sounds completely insane to
many more traditionally minded managers, who think
failure is to be identified and punished – the
bigger the more severely. But who is gaining market
share over whom in this industry?
Most of us must start from where we are – by study,
internal growth, by putting more tried and true Best
Practices into use – gained from education, case
studies, benchmarking, hiring and other methods.
Innovation, trial and error can be added to the mix
at an appropriate time.
This learning takes the form of education and
training. Done properly, on-going education provides
the “fuel” for evolving, widening perception
processes among improvement program participants,
and provides specific, direct information about Best
Practices that have a successful track record, and
the thinking they are based on.
How to Get the Most Value from Education and
Training
Your E&T program should generate a measurable return
on investment, not just become part of some nebulous
benefit to employees that essentially just increases
indirect costs. So, how do we get this to happen?
The overarching key is to closely and integrally
connect the E&T process to an effective continuous
improvement process which utilizes what is taught.
Our view is that not having a continuous improvement
program is a luxury your company cannot afford. If
your company is not improving consistently over
time, it is in essence, living on borrowed time. It
is just a matter of time before a competitor or new
entrant to your primary market pushes your company
out. In the meantime, though, it can seem stable and
comfortable – seducing management and employees into
a complacent mind-set – until it’s too late.
We urge you to get started now to get an effective
continuous improvement process under way in your
company, and to provide the “fuel” for it with an
effective, appropriate E&T program. These have the
following characteristics:
-
Regular, on-going
– the E&T program has regularly scheduled
sessions, with content appropriate to what the
participants are working on. Someone at the
company is responsible for managing the content,
schedule and participants.
-
Part of everyone’s job
– professions such as nursing, real estate,
CPA’s and many others require Continuing
Education Units at specific levels. The same
reasoning applies to everyone at your company as
well, as nothing stands still in this world.
Your people are either growing in their ability,
or diminishing – smart money is on the growth
path.
-
Small, incremental
– large, intensive seminars are occasionally
appropriate. Generally, though, learning is best
done in smaller, “digestible” increments.
Ideally, a class is the “lecture” portion of the
learning, while actual improvement and job work
is the “lab.”
-
Closely related to current improvement efforts
and work
– new conceptual education, or proficiency
training in new tools or methods need to be
reinforced by real-world use either concurrently
with the courses, or very soon thereafter.
Otherwise the learning is soon lost.
-
Distinguish between education and training – course content should always be clearly
understood as providing either new ideas, a new
viewpoint, a case study of a similar company’s
practice in a given area – which we term
“education” from “how-to” work such as operation
of a specific software function, or applying a
technique such as statistical process control
(SPC).
-
Practical, lecture and lab orientation – the objective here is to produce improvements in the
performance of the business. Accordingly, each
section of content should be presented with how
the learning will be applied kept in mind. This
can be accomplished by “homework” questions or
projects, by bringing the work content into
discussion during the course itself or other
ways. Otherwise, it’s just “info-tainment.”
-
Measure results
– some form of measurement of relevancy and
support for specific performance improvement
goals should be maintained over time for all
education and training content.
Properly done, an effective E&T program fuels the
improvement process that will enable the company to
not only just survive, but to prosper and grow over
the long haul.
Greatest Leverage – Improve the “Improv-ers”
The most reliable way to improve performance is via
a strong continuous improvement program – right?
Well, with that in mind, consider the enormous
leverage that comes from improving the improvement
process itself. And how does one do this? By
constantly upgrading the perceptions, knowledge, and
skills of those who ARE the improvement process –
the participants.
First, remember that the improvement process is only
as good as the people participating in it. Secondly,
bear in mind that it is very, very easy for heavy
handed management to derail even the best
improvement process. Teams with many successes can
come to a complete halt when a new senior manager
arrives who likes the “command and control” method,
and hands out punishments to those who make
mistakes, or worse, does so publicly.
In summary, then we can see clearly that it is only
through a well integrated program of education,
training, and “lab” or practical, real-world work
that people become progressively more proficient at
the improvement process itself. The process is both
sturdy and resilient, yet fragile and very easy to
stop or reduce.
Short-cutting or stepping on any aspect of the
continuous improvement process in your company is
like eating your seed corn – these are the seeds of
future success, that must be planted, nurtured, and
encouraged to reach full bloom over time. Education
and training, as we have briefly summarized above,
is the means by which an effective performance
improvement process is itself improved over time,
and works best in a context of supportive, wise
leadership.
Subsequent PROACTION Best Practice e-Newsletters
will continue the discussion of the 4 Essential
Factors on the Path to Best Practices in more detail
as well as other closely related topics.
Also, you can, at no charge, participate in a Get
Started Webinar, and receive free White Papers on
various topics of interest to you. We encourage your
to explore these paths today.
We welcome your feedback and comments. Send us your
questions and we’ll answer them in a future
Newsletter.
Please type in the address.
|
