An important part of being a coach is leading individual contributors to think of and implement improvement ideas, and an experienced coach does it naturally. For a traditional supervisor trying to make the transition, however, it can be tough to get started. In this article we’ll give you the top 12 tips to help employees think of improvement ideas. In our next article we’ll talk about how to get them to actually implement those ideas.
The Top 12 Idea-Generating Tips:
1. Give your team a reason to think of improvement ideas. Many people believe “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” You need to establish measures to show “it’s broke.” Figure out a way to measure your quality, cost, and speed, find out how your department is currently performing, and set a six-month improvement goal. Put it all on a big graph and post it in a place where your team can’t miss it. For help, go to www.everestcg.com/JTT_measures.htm.
2. If you are a traditional supervisor, you might think your job is to solve problems. Stop it! Right now you are probably better at solving problems than your direct reports, but they outnumber you, and if you can get them to apply their experience and brain power to solving problems and making improvements, they will soon blow you away. But they won’t start until you stop. It will be frustrating for a while, but once they know you are counting on them to do the thinking, they’ll make your life a lot easier.
3. Problems and improvement opportunities are like elephants. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Ask for and accept small ideas at first. Your people don’t need to change the world the first week, and doing little things is less scary than doing big things. Lots of small ideas will add up to lots of improvement in a short amount of time.
4. Make sure that all your direct reports are thinking of ideas, and that everyone on your team knows it. If one person is not participating, other people will think they don’t have to. Handle the non-participators behind closed doors, coach them to think of any idea at all (see #3 above), then make sure the team knows you’ve dealt with the situation.
5. Teach your people the concept of value-added work. Value is added during manufacturing only when material is being physically changed or assembled. In the office, value is added only if the work involves a mathematical manipulation of numbers, composing or editing of textual documents, or analysis of numbers, words, or ideas to produce knowledge. Ask your individual contributors to identify non-value-added work and think of ideas to get rid of it. The most common forms of non-value-added work are waiting and moving. For help go to www.everestcg.com/kaizen_lean_VA.htm.
6. Ask your people what annoys them most in the course of their work. Annoyances are non-value-added. Thinking about how to get rid of annoyances can lead to improvement ideas, and shows them you care about their morale and comfort, not just the bottom line.
7. Improvement ideas don’t always have to work. That’s why they are called ideas, not solutions. Just thinking of an idea to try (even if you don’t know whether it will work) is fine. If you have this attitude, your people will be much more willing to think of ideas.
8. Let your employees try ideas you don’t agree with but that won’t hurt too much either. More than any other leadership behavior, this shows you respect their ideas and think of them as your equal in their ability to think. If their idea works, they will feel great and be motivated to think of more ideas. If their idea doesn’t work, they’ll learn from it. Remember: when your people cause a change, they feel more ownership for the results of your department, and will try harder to make sure those results are good.
9. Discuss with your people the last few production problems your department experienced. Ask why those problems occurred and what they can do to eliminate them in the future. Whatever they say, agree with them and ask them for concrete ideas they can implement to solve the problem.
10. Have your direct reports talk to internal suppliers or customers, or to other departments like engineering, product development, or marketing. Have your people ask the other departments what they think could be improved about your department.
11. Teach your people about 5S (Sort, Straighten, Scrub, Schedule, Score). This workplace organization strategy applies in every work environment, and will result in hundreds of improvement ideas. To learn more, go to www.everestcg.com/Kaizen_Lean_5S.htm.
12. Get your people crossed-trained to do more than their individual job. Have them learn every job necessary to make/deliver the complete product/service produced by your department. If possible, have them learn jobs outside their department. The more they know about your company, the more problems and opportunities they will see. After all, your entire firm is one big business process with lots of room for improvement.
Thinking of improvement ideas will be a challenge for your team members, but the challenge will make work more rewarding for them. Use the twelve ideas above to challenge them successfully.
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