When we think about variation, most of the time we think about our processes. You know, the equipment that goes around and around, what we manage every day, and the things that make us money. We create process control charts for our systems and quality parameters. We go through the project stages. But, how often do we look at the more general people effects on limiting variation?
In our rush for results fueled by the current economic downturn, it will do us good to apply some lean thinking to ourselves and those we lead or follow. Many of the lean tools can help us to work through and eliminate general variation in the process caused by people. For this to make sense, we’ll have to open up the discussion to the lean roots that are deep in the Toyota Production System and Deming’s Profound Knowledge (14 Management Points).
In the end, it is the people who execute. We gather data to define new systems and at times overlook the people involved. Somehow we think the “people stuff” comes with the package and then, after the project is done, we wonder why things didn’t end up exactly the way we wanted them to; the results weren’t quite as good as we thought they were going to be. Now I hear some of you protesting: “That may be happening at other companies, but not mine.” And you may be right, if you purposefully direct your attention to the issues affecting the people in the processes that you are trying to reduce variation in, and then you intentionally design in the actions required to achieve and sustain them.
We often say that the people are the most important assets – but are they treated that way? Do our actions match our words? What is the first thing your organization does when something goes wrong? Is “blame” the reaction? If it is, then you are building people variation into the process. When you are value stream mapping, how accurate are the results? Is there some holding back of information? Are there some topics that are taboo? Is your organization “trusting”? There’s a good book out by Stephen Covey called “The Speed of Trust.” In it, the author makes the point that when trust is present, the speed of accomplishment increases and the cost to get it done goes down. He further makes the point that when you have trust, there is a factor that acts as a dividend and gives results higher than you expected. The reverse also applies and the results are often much less than what you expected to get “just doing the math.”
To limit people variation, start by looking at the culture of your company and establish trusting partnerships between the teams running your operations. By the way, the best way to limit people variation is not through mandating the movements and activities of people within a narrowly defined set of operating parameters. The way to accomplish the most through the man-machine interface is to allow the freedom to continually discover new ways to accomplish results faster, better, cheaper … then to teach the whole organization, lifting it to a higher level of performance, and then keeping the improvement cycle going. Standardization is not “my way or the high way” or requiring people to be mind-numb robots. People have to see demonstrated value in conforming to a new way of doing something; they need leaders they can trust to help them get what they need.
Most organizations are far from being maxed out on value-adding activities, and yet why do the folks who work there think that they are overworked? And, by the way, the statistics are probably on their side. How much overtime do you have? How many meetings do you have? How often do you execute the plan on-schedule and with the results expected? Those who consider themselves management have to determine if they are leading in a way that is so unstable that people never can get stable enough to improve. Those who are not management have to determine if they are acting in a way that stabilizes their piece of the world.