Of course, if you’ve recently discovered that your organization has a large number of poorly-designed and under-performing processes, it makes perfect sense to utilize a force of experienced process improvement experts to go out and “pick the low-hanging fruit” as quickly as possible. However, your utilization of process improvement experts should be TEMPORARY, not permanent. If they are running their improvement events effectively, it should take no longer than six months to pick virtually ALL of the low-hanging fruit. So what should you be getting ready to do after the six-month fruit-picking push? Your supervisors must be ready to take over the improvement effort. In fact, if you had established the right expectations for your supervisors from the beginning, there would have been no low-hanging fruit to pick, and your business processes would already be performing the way you now want them to. Your supervisors spend every day in the middle of the processes they supervise*. They know the problems and they know the people who do the work. If they had been held accountable for leading their people to continually improve their processes, they wouldn’t need anyone to come in and “fix” their areas for them.
What should you expect, at a minimum, from your supervisors? They should be able to: (1) measure the performance of the business processes for which they are responsible, (2) set improvement goals for their business processes, and (3) continually lead their direct reports to think of and implement actions that result in the achievement of those goals. These efforts should result in a minimum of 10 percent improvement in quality, productivity, and lead time every year, in every process.
In order for your supervisors to meet those expectations, they must have a solid understanding of the operations improvement techniques and process technology relevant to your business, and be able to teach those concepts to their people. They must also have good management skills, most importantly (and most often lacking), the ability to deal with poor performers and behavior problems.
By keeping an internal staff of process improvement experts, you are sending the message to your supervisors that you don’t expect them to improve their processes. You are telling them that they are only responsible for maintaining the status quo after the experts “fix” their area for them, for enforcing the rules instead of changing them, for acting as highly-paid babysitters**. Is that really what you want them doing?
Think about your organization.
If each of your supervisors is delivering greater than 10 percent improvement in quality, productivity, and lead time every year, in every process, then you are in good shape. In this case, I guarantee your employee morale is fantastic, your revenues and profits are growing every year, and you haven’t had a layoff in the last five years. You are way ahead of your competition and you should have no trouble staying there. (These companies do exist, and you can read about one in the book “Maverick,” by Ricardo Semler).
If you think it makes sense to expect your supervisors to lead their people to continually improve their processes, but they are not doing it, you need a plan to get them there. You can figure out how to get there yourself, or you can get help. Our approach is called Professional Coach Certification Program.
If you don’t expect your supervisors to lead their people to continually improve their processes, then your expectations are too low. If you disagree, please e-mail me at ecg@everestcg.com. It would be interesting to hear from you.
• One might argue, “our supervisors are responsible for functions within a process (like purchasing, receiving, incoming inspection, and accounts payable), and we need our process improvement experts to lead cross-functional improvement efforts.” The real answer is to fix the underlying organizational design problem by putting supervisors in charge of processes instead of functions, so they can own a processes to improve. The redesigning of an organization along those lines is a legitimate use of experienced improvement experts or consultants.
• Most supervisors we know are consumed with personnel and production problems. In other words, baby-sitting and fire-fighting. That is the inevitable result of ignoring or being unaware of problems until they become too serious to ignore.
© 2002 Everest Consulting Group, Inc. (888)910-8326.
