Beyond Survival - Lean Engagement
In many countries around the world growth has collapsed
. The hope is that we have now turned the corner and that the world economy is in recovery.
However our customers will have significantly less money to spend, in the public sector funding will reduce in real terms, in some cases by 25% plus over the next three years.
This will drive a significant downward adjustment in consumer, organisational and central/local government spending patterns.
For many organisations the natural responses to this dramatic collapse in demand/funding (for the public sector its likely to be increasing demand and reduced funding!) are:
deep cost cutting programmes,
sales of surplus assets,
redundancies, wage freezes and short time working,
sourcing of cheaper materials/products and
discounted sales of surplus products
However necessary these might seem to be, in the short term, these actions are not a long term fix. Arguably they are not even and effective short term fix. They will impact negatively on the "value add" in your own organisation; the impact will reduce employee morale and engagement and increase the likelihood of employee relations disruption. Resulting in the further destruction of "value" be careful to take in the totality of costs associated with such "cuts" programmes.
The challenge that needs to be met right now - is how your organisation can learn to deliver increasing value to customers (patients, council tax payers, students etc) and still make a reasonable margin (operate within significantly reduced budgets) while producing (delivering) your products and services at up to 30% lower costs or delivering more and higher quality public services with less resource. This significant adjustment needs to begin now if it is to help organisations do more than survive.
The change should be sustainable; it should rebase your organisation not just cut its cost till things get better!
The upside is that these challenges create the opportunity to redefine the basis of your business/organisational model and the bargain with your employees to create the foundations for delivering customer value, value for money and hence sustainable jobs for the future.
The only way to make an adjustment of this scale in your organisation is by engaging all of your employees in your organisations "change and improvement engine" the most effective means of achieving this is through lean continuous improvement.
Lean provides a practical, effective and engaging methodology/toolkit that will provide your organisation with the basis for fundamentally redesigning its processes to meet these new challenges.
If all organisations performed at the level of the sector best practice in each of their individual functions they could produce a 30% (or more) reduction in the resources deployed to achieve current outputs.If that level of effectiveness can be achieved by the current "best in sector" it can be achieved by all and because this approach is based on continuous improvement the best can also improve! given they are the best they are likely to be doing that in any case.
Taking a fundamental look at organisational activity through the focussed toolkit of lean continuous improvement - and as a result engaging all of your people as part of your organisations "improvement engine" - will begin to deliver the step change you need to meet future demands.
Lean organisations enhance their effectiveness because they understand customer value.
Organisational activity is closely synchronised. Those synchronised activities are directly aligned to delivering that identified customer value.
These organisations understand customer demand and relentlessly look for more effective ways to satisfy it. They create an environment where they are continuously removing "non value adding" activity (waste) from their processes.
They equip and encourage their managers and employees to continually seek to deliver customer value more effectively.
Change, in these organisations, consists of small steps taken at high velocity moving towards a predefined and shared vision. The are agile and "fleet of foot".
These organisations relentlessly pursue value from the customer perspective. They engage all of their people in continuous improvement.
They are on the journey to becoming a "learning organisation".
As they take this journey they deliver ongoing practical improvements allowing them to progressively deliver customer value more effectively through sustainable and supported change.
Beyond Survival - Lean Engagement
By: grant myles
Engagement Ring: A ring that connects two hearts Employee Engagement – You can't do it alone