Creating Demand For Process Improvement
We talked last time about the need to create demand for process improvements. The key to meaningful process improvement is getting the impacted teams to buy into the idea. Too many times, we fall into the misperception that the team sees the need to change.
It is important to understand why that perception exists before you can try to address it. In our engagements we see 3 primary reasons:
- Positive Re-enforcement: we are too quick to blindly praise performance. While creating a positive environment is essential in building a team, there must be a healthy dose of managed expectations. We must teach our teams to believe that more is always possible. The team will take on the persona of re-enforcement we provide – you’re doing great, we are great vs you are improving, we can improve.
- Life is Good: the team does not feel any pain associated with the issues trying to be solved. Their life is good, what is the need to change? It will only make their life harder. People are naturally resistant to change, but more importantly, they are generally against making their lives more difficult.
- Misaligned Value Systems: The team performing the tasks prioritizes things differently than the issues trying to be solved. For instance, take high service organizations. Most metrics are focused on service to their customers. The day-to-day discussions in the process are about how we served the customer. Then we introduce a process improvement to drive cost of service. The team’s value system that is heavily indexed on service, drives concern over the impact of the cost effort to their service metrics. Consequently, they are hesitant to embrace and often create perceived roadblocks to the effort. In reality, the values systems are simply misaligned.
It is easy to fall into the trap that everyone is reasonable, and you can simply explain the “why” process improvements are a good thing. Don’t fool yourself into being overly optimistic. Change is hard for everyone. And even though they may understand and see the benefit, if you have not addressed the underlying issues, you’ll fight their perception forever. The perception will still be that the change is being forced on them. You have not created ‘demand’ to change from the operation.
There are several strategies you can use to create an internal demand for process improvement. When the team sees the need to change and is calling for it, process improvements are significantly more successful than forcing them on people. These strategies include:
- Value System Realignment: We see too many people use the story line of “we have to take $X out of the operation so we need to….” This messaging re-enforces the idea that they have done well but now have to improve because we said so – no matter the reason. This will be met with resistance 100% of the time.
It becomes imperative to make the team re-think what good looks like. Create a holistic set of KPIs that simply defines success inclusive of cost, service, and employee success. With some creative goal setting, you can begin to illustrate where the team is failing. Illustrate that they are not meeting expectations before you try to improve them. This often takes months to do but will expedite the improvement realization once you’ve reset the mindset.
- Feel the Pain: The team has been insulated from feeling any pain related to the performance you need to improve. I grew up in organizations that required compliance to improvement goals and when exceptions occurred, it was my responsibility to overcome the performance shortfall. While not ideal, it does create extreme ownership in driving results. When that happens, you begin looking for ways to improve and welcome any help you can get.
Underperforming organizations often overstaff the operation to manage overtime and meet volume requirements to compensate for the performance shortfall. If you reverse this logic and say that the team must stay until the work is complete, people will become more willing to change their behavior to avoid the extra, unpredictable hours. Once they begin to feel the pain of this, they will again open their minds to process improvement ideas.
Couple this pain with a strong WIIFM (‘What’s In It For Me”) message, and you can gain faster acceptance of process improvement efforts.
- Disrupt the Process: Create a catalyst within the operation that accelerates the need for process improvement. These can be in the form of increased service requirements, increased volumes, reduced staffing, leadership changes, or hours of operation. If the catalyst created makes the operation uncomfortable and that is allowed to continue for several weeks, the concept of process improvements becomes a welcomed idea.
- Incentives: Another method of creating demand is simply incentivizing the team to get better. Gain sharing programs where the team receives some portion of the gains can drive buy in significantly faster than hoping for their altruistic values. Creating an incentive program that is meaningful and controllable by members of the team that can drive commitment quickly.
Creating demand for process improvement within the operation will yield a significantly greater impact than forcing improvements. While it may take a bit longer to get started, the results are worth it.