SQT Blog

At the end of 2014 the LSS Network was officially 10 years in existence so it was fitting that we had a small celebration (lent was ignored for 1 day). I shared with the group the first official photo of the Network members taken back in 2004 but the reaction was so severe that I have decided not to publish here (needless to say the general opinion was that we have all improved with age so let’s just leave it at that). John Ryan, the Chairman of the Network was unfortunately unable to attend due to training demands, but Éamon ably took the chair.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wilbert McIlmoyle attended the very first LSS Network meeting back in 2004 (along with Éamon and I) so he is officially our longest serving network member and so gets his own special photo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Network Meeting gathering Feb 2015

It was as always a lively and interesting meeting with topics ranging from the Pros and Cons of FMEAs, holding Quality Clinics, Mistake Proofing in an administration process, Communicating project stories successfully, a look of some new papers coming down the line… to name but a few.
Always open to new members – if interested please contact koshea@sqt-training.com

Many service related process (e.g. Insurance claims, processing a tax return) can be quite complex and cumbersome. It is only when these processes are mapped and clearly understood that opportunities to eliminate NVA steps and simplify a process become apparent. In many cases, the ‘As-Is Process’ involves navigating, through a maze of screens of different databases and information sources.

To redesign the ‘To-Be Process’, the Sort and Store elements of the 5S can be very useful to improve the process layout and flow e.g.

• Simplify work screens in a software application or database by removing the unused or non-required work fields (Sort)
• For those that are left over, create icons or shortcuts that are easy to see and access (Store)

Submitted by Éamon Ó Béarra, SQT Lean Six Sigma tutor

Let’s be honest about it. In many cases, collecting data (especially when done manually) can be tedious and viewed by some as a ‘pain in the backside’. This is understandable to a degree but imagine a situation where after spending 6 weeks collecting data we find out that it is inaccurate, it can’t be used and is in effect a waste of time. This issue can be due to the fact that we put no thought or effort into how we defined the metric in question.

E.g., a Food Processing Company was trying to baseline the Cleaning in Place (CIP) Process. In order to understand if here a difference in the CIP time by shift, product type, CIP types, etc. they set about collecting data over a 6 week timeline to answer some of these questions.

When the Project Team examined the data after the 6 weeks, they found there were some major differences by shift and the other aforementioned factors. Importantly though, this was not due to a difference in performance but by how the Metric was being measured.

• Shift A was interpreting the CIP time as ‘from the time the equipment was stopped until it was started again with the CIP complete’
• Shift B was interpreting the CIP time as ‘from the time the equipment was stopped until an acceptable micro test result for the CIP was back from the Lab allowing the equipment to be restarted’.
• Shift C had another interpretation altogether

Unfortunately, it was then back to the proverbial drawing board!

The morale of the story is to agree on a very specific Operational Definition for a metric, include it on the Data Collection Sheet and even go as far as to give the Data Collectors a fictional pre-completed data collection form to use as a guideline.

 

Submitted by Éamon Ó Béarra, SQT Lean Six Sigma tutor

 

In order to evaluate and compare Lean Six Sigma course offerings it is important to understand the various certification options associated with them. Whilst course curriculums may appear similar, the requirements for certification can often vary dramatically.

CLASSIFICATION OF CERTIFICATION

There are three general classifications of programmes in terms of certification:

1. Non-Certified Courses
2. Academically Certified Courses
3. Professionally Certified Courses

 

1. Non-Certified Courses

Non-certified courses do not carry national recognition, however, there are advantages if gaining a qualification is not a key motivation for completing the training programme. For example:

• The course can be tailored around a client’s specific training needs which may result in the removal of certain elements of a prescribed curriculum or body of knowledge (BOK) related to a specific belt
• There is no assessment requirement. However, if a learner is motivated to complete additional self-study they could achieve professional certification by successfully completing relevant examination(s) from one of the professional accreditation bodies such as the ASQ (American Society for Quality) or IASSC (International Association for Six Sigma Certification).
• Another advantage of non-certified training is that team based projects may be used as a means of assessment, this is generally not acceptable in academically or professionally certified training courses.

 

 

2. Academically Certified Training Courses

Many academic institutions such as technical colleges and universities provide certified Lean Six Sigma programmes within their post-graduate or life-long learning course offerings. The advantage of pursuing such programmes is that they have been validated against prescribed award standards and have undergone a significant element of peer review and oversight by the external awarding body.

The Bologna Process has ensured comparability in the standards and quality of higher education qualifications across European countries. For example, in Ireland, the National Framework of Qualifications (NFQ) has been designed for the development, recognition and award of qualifications based on standards of knowledge, skill and competence acquired by learners. The Framework consists of 10 levels, from basic learning (level 1) to Doctoral awards (level 10). SQT have agreed Quality Assurance Procedures with QQI, the national agency responsible for the external quality assurance of further and higher education and training and validates programmes and makes awards for certain providers in these sectors. SQT Offers QQI Certified Special Purpose Awards at Levels 6, 7 and 8 on the National Framework of Qualifications.

Another major advantage of perusing an academically certified programme (particularly those utilising real projects in the learner assessment) is that there is a deadline for project completion. Sponsoring companies can therefore expect significant benefits to be accrued by the learners in the short term during the course of the delivery and assessment period alone.

There are two main arguments against academic certifications. The first is that academic training providers may be far removed from industry and may tend to focus too much on theory rather than giving practical insight and guidance to learners. Against this argument there are some academically certified training courses which are delivered by private training organisations, such as SQT Training, which have trainers that are in fact current industry Lean Six Sigma experts. The other argument often used against academic certification is that the assessment is purely based on the learners’ knowledge of the theory rather than competency in its application.  In reality this argument doesn’t hold true in many cases as many QQI (formerly HETAC) accredited programmes use real project submissions in the assessment of the leaners. Project management, leadership and change management skills are also assessed. For example, the assessment of SQT’s QQI Certified Green Belt programme is based on the successful delivery of a real work project through all stages of the DMAIC methodology while correctly selecting and applying tools appropriate to the project. Therefore, while academically certified, the actual course delivery has a very practical focus.

 

A Word of Caution…..

If you are considering perusing academic certification be sure to do the following:

1. Compare the training curriculum against the ASQ body of knowledge to ensure that no shortcuts have been taken
2. Check to see what level of recent practical experience the tutor(s) have
3. Establish if there is a project requirement as part of the assessment
4. Understand what level the programme has been validated at and the number of credits allocated (Further information relating to levels and credits are available here)

 

3. Professionally Certified Training Courses

Prior to 2010 there was only one accepted source of professional certification for Lean Six Sigma practitioners, namely ASQ (American Society for Quality). The ASQ has been at the forefront of professional certification for quality practitioners for over 65 years. It has worldwide recognition and charters all over the globe. Former chairs of the ASQ include some of the who’s who of quality gurus of the past century, including Armand Feigenbaum and Philip Crosby.  Since the emergence of Six Sigma as a global phenomenon in the late nineties, ASQ has been to the forefront in identifying a standardised body of knowledge (BOK) for Six Sigma belts.  In 2010 a new organisation, namely IASSC (International Association of Six Sigma Certification) emerged as an independent third-party certification body.  Both the ASQ and the IASSC rely on knowledge assessments (exams) to determine if learners demonstrate the capacity to be professionally certified.

 

The two main ASQ exams are the CSSGB (Green Belt) and the CSSBB (Black Belt) exams.  While project based assessment is not included in either of these certifications, the CSSBB does require that a project has been successfully completed, with an affidavit to that effect. It is widely held that the CSSBB is a very challenging exam due to the statistical requirements of Six Sigma. IASSC on the other hand do not require the submission of any project or affidavits, and while the exam format and BOK are almost identical to the ASQ, the IASSC exam is likely to have less statistical and more lean content.

 

Both the ASQ and IASSC offer certification options to suitable training providers on a fee basis. The ASQ do so in a partnership model to ensure the training is consistent across providers (there are a small number of ASQ partners).  IASSC remain an independent certification body and therefore do not provide training.  Both the ASQ and IASSC exams are open to any applicant regardless of the source of training.

 

In Summary…

When evaluating a Lean Six Sigma Programme it is wise to remember the following:

 

1. Academically certified programmes have undergone a significant level of independent review and oversight by an external awarding body, however, there is still much variance in courses offered. It is vitally important to examine the curriculum, understand the level of the qualification and associated credits, establish the practical experience held by the tutor(s), and finally whether the practical work (in most cases a project) actually forms part of the assessment.
2. There may be valid reasons to opt for an uncertified programme, this is particularly the case where team based projects and significant customisation is required by the company seeking the training. Large corporations such as Honeywell and GE self-certify according to their own requirements.
3. Professional bodies such as the ASQ provide the best source for what a ‘belt’ should know (body of knowledge), the exams are open to all learners but a successful result will not verify if the learner has the ability to be a good Green or Black Belt, as no practical work is examined. The professional body IASSC is relatively new and is therefore a little too early to compare with ASQ. Certification for both bodies is exam based only.

 

Having delivered all three types of programmes described here it is SQT’s experience that the best option both for personal development and company delivery is to choose an academic certification which assesses learner capability via project delivery. This will ensure a win/win for the learner and his/her organisation.

Are Your IT Project Managers Costing Your Organisation Millions?

We believe that the current view of best practice in IT Project Management is flawed.  As a consequence, failing to rectify the situation can add millions to an organisations cost base. There is a myriad of things that can go wrong when replacing a core system. However, if the training, tools, practices and disciplines that are deemed best practice for project managers [PM’s] are fundamentally flawed and failing organisations, then the situation is greatly and dangerously exacerbated.

The key to successful IT Project Implementation, is to develop a dynamic system of processes and practices that can quickly and effectively respond to constantly emerging risks.  Some experienced PM’s break the ‘rule book’ and intuitively intervene in the delivery of a project in a way that prevents disaster.  Such PM’s are the treasured few. For the most part the moves they make and the actions they take are instinctive; ask them to give their thinking for why and when they intervened and they will struggle to explain themselves.

In this article we describe and codify some of these ‘intuitive’ interventions and explain the rationale for their use.  Our aim is to show that there is an alternative way to manage large enterprise wide IT implementations and in the process, save organisation millions of dollars of cost and substantially reduce project risk.

Our findings are based on interviews with Ennovate’s Directors in which we capture their experience of project managing dozens of separate IT implementations across Europe and Ennovate’s experience of providing a project recovery and client-side advisory service for enterprise-wide system integration.

Ennovate’s approach to IT Project Management is to:

1. Develop a single page project view of the Project that is simple and easy for all to understand and to avoid the tendency to manage the implementation at task level.
2. Create short and real milestones every 6-8 weeks. We believe that this is essential to achieving high levels of productivity.
3. Set-up a project ownership structure with single owners and develop a direct style of meeting practice that focuses on owners’ reporting exceptions.  Ennovate’s approach to IT Project Implementation is to use these meetings to design real-time corrective interventions.
4. Design and implement early prototyping by getting business stakeholders to own usability designs and gain their early participation in prototyping.  Ennovate’s aim here is to move the technical team out of a mindset of perfect build and test and into one of learning together
5. Encourage project conflict. If managed well and all stakeholders are made to focus on the project goals, encouraging project conflict is a powerful method of keeping the project real and promoting the necessary pragmatic trade-offs.
6. Avoid the natural desire to over-specify and resist complexity.  Both users and technical staff  need to be managed away from this inherent tendency.
7. Facilitate changing scope by ensuring project goals remain alive in the project yet promote pragmatic negotiation of scope as part of the project delivery.

In summary, we advocate promoting a candid style of project management. This is one that seeks commitments and clarity at every opportunity and does not tolerate behaviour that deflects from the projects overall goals. A sharp focus on the projects final outcome is maintained and individuals are coached and mentored to take personal accountability and pride in their contribution.

1. Develop a Single Page Project View 
   Large IT projects have a typical pattern starting with business requirements and then going through technical design, build and configure, various iterations of testing, migration and ending with user acceptance.   Each phase involves tasks and assigning task ownership.  Typically, reporting focuses on progress at task level with some level of interpretation during the aggregation process required for summary reporting.  This approach, deemed best practice by project management authorities, does not take care of the problems with interpretation and aggregation, nor does it lend itself to keeping a simple coherent view of the project that all project members can understand and relate to.Our approach, based upon Commitment-based Management is different. We focus on building a top down, single page view of the project.  First we develop a unifying project goal and maintain this throughout the project.  We work with the project team to design their promises and help them relate to and understand how they contribute towards the project goal.  This results in a simplified programme structure with clear accountability and commitment to the projects success.  Reporting focuses on how the team are doing against managing their promises and the actions required to keep, renegotiate or support each other in delivering upon such promises.  In doing so, the project is focused on the future, maintains simplicity and unity to the overall project goal.  Another outcome is that the project reporting requirements are simplified and the work of the project office moves from simply reporting and interpreting progress to value adding activities such as supporting the team in managing the delivery of their commitments.
2. Real Milestones every 6-8 Weeks 
   Projects with a six-month-plus duration and a large and diverse range of interested parties, have a difficult time maintaining the momentum and energy of all involved.  This can mean milestones are fudged resulting in the erosion of trust between the project team and their stakeholders.Our approach builds upon a project team that understands the overall project goal and how its promises are part of that goal. Ennovate then design and plan 6-8 week milestone deliverables.  In addition, we introduce an operational meeting practice that focuses on the commitments pending and actions required to safe-guard them or re-negotiate them.  In doing this, the project team focus on outcomes required from each milestone and maintain high energy levels and conviction.
3. Promote an honest and straight talking meeting practice
   In our experience all projects have a tendency to slide into working in silos.  When teams operate in silos they move away from having a clear goal of the greater project good and look to focus on their own deliverables.  The sum of their deliverables inevitably falls short of the required overall project goal.  The team fragments, with each deliverable competing for limited resources.  Project managers and leaders can fall into the trap of refereeing or making priority calls based on the strongest personality’s representation.  Furthermore, this tendency, when it extends to the business community, creates additional work. Users begin to focus predominately on their own needs and end up specifying nice-to-have requirements in the name of future proofing.  This leads to unnecessary workload and unnecessary development effort which results in spiralling implementation risk.In Ennovate’s experience, the typical response to this situation is a generic cry for charismatic leadership.  This is helpful, but does not ensure success in preventing silos from emerging.Our approach is to get the project team to maintain focus on the overall project goal.  Our operational meeting practice provides a process of renegotiating commitments / promises and is a practical way of ensuring that the team is in regular dialogue on the projects goals, the interdependency of their promise on others and vice versa.
4. Encourage Business Stakeholders prototyping as early as possible
   IT Projects based upon the traditional project management frameworks, are designed and implemented in a way, where the requirements are handed-off to project technical team members and little is heard from the development team until they are ready for the users to re-engage at acceptance phase.  This approach generates a number of risks, one of which is that the business moves on and the original requirements are no longer relevant. Business users compensate for this situation by putting forward extensive and very often, unnecessary requirements, while technology delivery teams build completly over-engineered solutions. The consequence is additional time and risk introduced into the project with the likelihood that the business community begins to lose interest in the project.  The challenge here is how do you maintain business community commitment and prevent this from happening?Ennovate’s approach is to bring the business into the project. We introduce a dynamic change management practice through the design and build phase and maintain a practical perspective on requirements and changing business needs.  In addition, we look to push through an end-to-end transaction early in the project cycle.  This sharpens the overall project deliverables and gets the business community meaningfully engaged earlier in the process.  This also gets the users and core project team focused on real issues that can be resolved pragmatically.
5. Promote Project Conflict Projects tend to be a microcosm of the organisational structure and represent the organisational culture in a magnified way.  When things go wrong, which is inevitable, the success in managing such conflict will be critical for getting the project delivered against its goals and time commitments.Some see conflict as a bad thing, Ennovate do not.  Healthy teams bring disagreements and conflict out into the open and deal with it.  Our style of working is to encourage openness and candour to get conflict out early and deal with it.  Our project teams are trained to deal with conflict and listen to the breakdowns in order to design constructive exchanges that help re-align the team to their stated goals.  In fact, regularly encouraging disputes to occur and resolving them, quickly adds to the team morale and their sense of creating a real difference.
6. Resist Complexity 
   Managing scope, budget and timelines is a mandatory competency for all project leaders and managers.  However, the training project managers receive and the commonly held best practice for project risk management, is to eliminate and minimise scope creep.  In our experience, this has the opposite effect on managing scope, budget and timelines.  For instance, when a project manager receives a new requirement or change request, the project managers natural instincts are to encourage the functional designer to over specify, conservatively estimate effort and scope and negotiate to eliminate as many changes as possible.   The result of this situation is extra redundancy in scope,  an unwillingness to accept change and an emerging distrust between the users and the project team.We see budget, timelines and scope as a series of commitments that need to be negotiated and managed throughout the project.  Our focus on managing these commitments are forward looking.  By getting the users to work with the project team and make commitments by giving them a forum to discuss in the various meeting practices, we keep the project alive to the concerns of the customers. This approach minimises wasteful, non-value add activities that have a tendency to creep into projects based on the emergence of distrust between the various stakeholder communities. The result is a project implementation that delivers the business benefits at the minimum effort and cost.
7. Promote Pragmatic Negotiations and Scope Changes
   The success in all projects boils down to the team’s effectiveness in managing change.  The commonly held view in project management is to get buy-in from all parties and negotiate change through a series of change control practices that escalate upwards to a steering group based on the impact on project scope, budget and timeline.  As mentioned above, project managers are risk adverse by nature and see change as a potential threat to the project’s success.  In fact, some even get territorial and fanatical about maintaining the status quo, i.e. make a strong case for minimising change.Ennovates view is different. Our team is trained to see that changes are necessary to a projects success and introduce ways of managing change through negotiation with all stakeholders, building trust in the process.  When this happens, change becomes part of the mind-set of the project team. Only changes that are required by the business will be proposed, the opportunity to remove requirements that are no longer necessary will exist and costs associated with managing change will be minimised.  In fact, pragmatic trade-offs that swap one requirement for another is key to successful implementations and results in reduced effort and cost.  Such change management practices will help ensure that the project delivers upon its commitments in an effective and efficient manner.

In summary, do not be afraid to ask any system integration partner to tell you about their success rate and do be prepared to probe behind their answers.  The truth may surprise you, provided you get to it! What the project management industry does not tell you is that replacing a core system never goes to plan, will cost more than your most generous estimates and demolish any contingency you might have, causing huge business disruption in the process. Ennovate’s approach and experience tells us that we can dramatically reduce this risk.

Submitted by Ian Duncan, Ennovate, SQT Strategic Change Management tutor

How To Avoid Change Failure | Mind The Gap From Change Design To Execution

In this article, we discuss the challenges, traps and blind spots facing change and transformation leaders and map out the five things all change programmes need to do to avoid failure.  Our advice is applicable to all change programmes irrespective of size and scale, namely:

1. Change the composition of the change team at the execution stage.
2. Assess the change members belief and passion for the change goals.
3. Introduce new management practices.
4. Recognise and reward the right behaviours.
5. Be guided by the vision and ideals when making change adjustments.

Transitioning from the design to execution phase is fraught with risk.   To start with, if you have created a comprehensive transformation strategy, it will include a strong and compelling vision, end state design, detailed plans and roadmaps and a solid project governance structure. You and your team will be feeling good and will probably have generated the essential momentum and demand for the next phase.  However, if you have not achieved these design outcomes, then you do need to revisit the situation and invest in getting the set-up conditions re-configured and properly rooted.

The next stage requires two significant steps. First, successfully on-boarding colleagues beyond the core project team and second, driving actions and getting relevant things done.  This is where a transformation programme gets a reality check.  We outline below, five key recommendations that address the issues that arise, in moving beyond the transformation design phase.

1. Change the composition of the Change Team. This may seem foolhardy, particularly if the design phase was a major success.  This counter-intuitive approach reflects the fact that many of the skills and competencies required to design a change programme, are no longer required once you move into execution.  In fact, one of the biggest risks is to continue to over invest in the analytical capability of the team and then expect that this team can and will deliver the change.  Change at the implementation stage, is about investing in the emotional management of change. It quickly becomes about doing and not about thinking.  Whilst it may appear easier or simply about getting lower level people involved, it is one of the most difficult aspects of change.  Bringing on-board pragmatic doers, and key influencers from the mid-levels within the organisation, requires discipline and skill. It needs good listening skills and the ability to coach and mentor. The change leader needs to win the hearts and minds of the extended team and transfer the passion that the leadership team possess for the change programme objectives, to the wider team and employee groupings.
2. Assess the change members belief and passion for the change goals. It is one thing to have the ability to design great change programmes, but what if the passion and commitment is not there for the implementation?  Some team members are more comfortable planning and designing.  Furthermore, they may see themselves as managers who do not have to rollup their sleeves and get stuck in.  Keeping such team members engaged is a mistake.  Transitioning into delivering requires the leaders and members of the change team to walk the walk.  If they do not feel passionate about the programme goals, vision and destination for the change programme, they will not be able to bring along the wider team.  Recognising this challenge and addressing it now, is important.  Either the team needs to develop conviction for the programme or accept they need to move on.  Most hired consultants don’t invest in the required passion, and therefore, most organisations simply don’t get this from their external partners.  As organisations move from planning to execution, it will prove timely to replace resources and invest in injecting passion, conviction and belief into the team.  We strongly advocate using diagnostic listening and Commitment-based Management as the basis for assessing and injecting passion into the team.
3. Introduce new management practices. Once a change programme moves into the delivery phase, it requires a change to the project pattern and short-term rhythm and focus.  There is a requirement to shift the programme into getting things done.  The governance structures need to be reinvigorated.  The types of meetings, their frequency, content and structure, need to reflect a focus on getting things done and short-term outcomes.  Introduce high levels of personal accountability to deliver short-term action based results and track these actions through to completion.  Focus meetings on exceptional reporting. Do not tolerate those who deflect energy and determination to achieve the programme objectives or who are not forthright in coming forward and declaring a lack of progress.
4. Recognise and reward the right behaviours.  Stay attuned with the progress of the programme and reward team members that get things done.  Knowing what needs to be done, should be replaced by doing what needs to be done.  Introduce real-time training and learning.  Do not punish those that are trying but failing. These team members need to be managed carefully to see if they can become competent or, if not, they need to be sympathetically and carefully moved off the programme.  By adopting this approach, change and transformation leaders will demonstrate they are ‘walking the walk’ and stand as exemplars for the behaviours of the change team.
5. Be guided by the vision and ideals when making change adjustments. Implementing change requires hard work to change people’s mind-set and perceptions.  There are winners, losers,  resistor’s and advocates.  Successful change implementation works through the impact on individuals.  Individuals transition through several psychological stages when changing.  Therefore, even well constructed plans can never predict with accuracy, the human aspect of change.  The practical question remains, when is it okay to adjust the plan and revise the end destinations?  There is no black and white answer, however, leaders should ask themselves, ’does such an adjustment undermine the overall vision or ideals that underpin the rationale for the programme?’ If the answer is yes, then the adjustments need to be re-examined and changed.

Submitted by Ian Duncan, Ennovate, SQT Strategic Change Management tutor

Question:
How Do You Improve Strategy Execution Capability?

Answer:
Improve The Quality Of Your Meeting Practices; Eight Ways To Improve Quality Of Your Meetings

Our claim that the quality of an organisation’s meeting practices is a lead indicator of the leadership’s ability to execute strategy.  Put differently, organisations that improve their meeting and coordination practices, greatly increase the likelihood of delivering on their strategic objectives.

Ask any manager why they attend meetings and you will be surprised to hear just how many managers attend them without any understanding of their role in the meeting. It is common for meeting attendees to have little idea if their participation will deliver on their expectations and in addition, what they will take away in terms of actionable deliverables.  Clearly, meetings like these are contributing little towards the attainment of organisational goals. Further, ask most people what motivates them to attend meetings and you will learn that many people are driven by a need to be seen to attend, to know what is going on and a concern not to miss out on some knowledge that their peers have acquired.  Such a meeting culture as this is depressingly uninspiring.  However, allowing it to continue is not an individual failing but an organisational malpractice that requires leadership and courage to rectify.  A failure to put in place strong and appropriate meeting practices can end up costing an organisation literally millions.

In writing this article we conducted some research. This revealed a good understanding of the efficiencies to be gained through benchmarking and workflow analysis. However, the research also revealed a distinct lack of management literature and quantitative evidence regarding organisational waste due to poorly designed and ineffectual meeting practices.

There is a basic lack of understanding concerning the organisational cost incurred through weak coordination, poor cross-functional alignment and badly conceived and run meetings.

Well-run meetings are an important aspect of work place coordination and are vital to drive forward organisational strategy.  If done well, they connect executive teams, managers and employees to the organisational mission. They create meaning and purpose for individuals and bind them to organisational objectives.  Crucially, they also create understanding, can be highly motivational and generate the ‘corporate energy’ that drives organisations forward towards delivering on their strategic goals.

We believe that the quality of an organisations meeting practices is an effective barometer of an organisation’s leadership capability. Thus, the quality of an organisation’s meeting practices is a bi-product of its leadership quality.

Where organisations build their capability to run effective meetings effectively, they dramatically improve their ability to execute strategy.  Using a discipline called Commitment-based Management to design and manage meeting practices, is a very effective way to build management capability and dramatically improve the effectiveness of an organisations meetings.

We consider that there are eight conditions necessary to set-up an effective meeting practice and create high performing teams. They are as follows:

1. Get the right attendance: Every person attending has clear responsibility and authority to make decisions. In practice that means no one in the room should have to seek authority from others not attending and no one in the room is there without clarity of purpose.
2. Clarify the Goal and outcomes required: Ensure there is a clear articulation of the goals and purpose of the meeting and circulate this to attendees in advance and ensure people understand the meeting context.
3. Promote conflict:  It is healthy to publically debate the right things to do and meetings are a perfect forum for these discussions.  Without robust debate, individuals may not commit themselves to the outcomes sought. This results in passive resistance and non-effective actions and follow through.
4. Seek individual commitment:  Each request for action is personal to an individual. By asking them to directly take responsibility for an outcome you are making them personally accountable for its delivery.
5. Openly discuss what individuals need to be successful: In delivering on actions, if an individual is unclear what is required of them, suggest they reconsider the original request and come back with a formed view of what conditions need to be in place for them to be successful.
6. Hold individuals accountable for their commitments: When a commitment is due to be delivered on, ensure it is accepted as being complete, and that the requestor to declares their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the result.
7. Only discuss exceptions and the future action required to deliver on the original commitment:  Do not waste valuable meeting time on reporting progress but instead, save that for a written report, circulated to meeting attendees for review prior to the meeting. Instead, focus on areas that are not achieving the right outcomes in relation to the commitments made.
8. Be supportive and encourage people to take on commitments: Praise success and do not punish the holders of under or non delivered commitments. Instead, focus on how to avoid the situation reoccurring in the future. Use one-to-one check-ins to unearth problematic commitment holders.

In reality the conditions will not be easy to achieve. Ennovate adopts a pragmatic and flexible approach. This tailors adherence to the eight conditions, to the length and difficulty of the journey the client organisation needs to undertake to create the conditions for an effective meeting practice.

Changes to practices in the workplace require individuals to change their behaviour.  Whether it is a conscious decision or not, all individuals make trade-offs when deciding to change their behaviour.  For the individual, the benefit of a change in behaviour needs to outweigh the opportunity cost of giving up a behaviour that has benefited them in the past. To achieve a successful execution of strategy, a key requirement for leaders, is to tie together the personal benefits of individual changes in behaviour with the organisational benefits.  This essential alignment of personal benefit to organisational benefit requires one-to-one coaching between the meeting leader and the individual attendees.

Engaging in working to build this alignment is the foundation of effective meetings and is inextricably tied to the effectiveness of commitments made within those meetings.  Creating a purpose and meaning that explicitly links an individual’s actions to the attainment of an organisational objective, may be all it takes to drive a fundamental improvement in strategy execution.

Submitted by Ian Duncan, Ennovate, SQT Strategic Change Management tutor

We are delighted to announce that one of our recent Lean Six Sigma Green Belts, Sean Paul Teeling of the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital had his project shortlisted in the Best Hospital Project category of the twelfth annual Irish Healthcare Awards in Dublin last Thursday night – congratulations to Sean Paul on a great project, for which he received a well-deserved commendation.

Hospitals are starting to embrace the concept of Lean Six Sigma as they can see the benefits of these tools and techniques in helping them to improve patient care and system efficiencies in a healthcare system that is being asked to manage increasing demands on processes, people and budgets.

I recently attended the Mater Lean Symposium which was a most inspiring day and showed the tremendous work being carried by lots of hard working staff to drive change and improve process within the impressive new Adult Hospital.  The day positively merged months of green belt training with the presentation of a number of successful Lean Six Sigma projects completed by hospital staff.  These projects showed that real tangible change is possible with the right people, tools, training and hospital support.

Some of the ways that Lean Six Sigma can help within a Hospital;

1. Reduce the length of time a patient spends waiting for an appointment, a scan, a treatment or a bed.
2. Increase the throughput of patients utilising key resources, for example expensive equipment and tests, so diagnosis can be speeded up
3. Reduce unnecessary waste of resources – food, paper, supplies, cleaning, transport, beds, expertise.
4. Streamline communications between departments and functions so that patients get to where they need to be faster i.e. to theatre, out-patients, consultants, or more importantly, home.
5. Clear Sign-posting… how many times are hospital staff interrupted to answer a simple question??

Ireland is at a critical junction on our Healthcare Journey, wouldn’t it be great if we could empower people with the right tools, techniques and support to make this journey safe, cost-effective and sustainable for the long-haul?.

The opportunities are endless.

Lean Tutor required with experience in the Manufacturing Sector. Lean experience in the Services sector and a qualification as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt would be advantageous.

Please contact Éamon O’Bearra on 087 267 0480 or email eamonobearra@asst.ie

Lean Six Sigma Projects involve implementing solutions which to a greater or lesser degree involve people. Resistance to Change is part of human nature with some people more accepting of the need for change and the continuous challenging of the status quo than others.

So how do we convince people to come on board the Lean Six Sigma Journey and go along with our Project Objectives in the Define Phase and the New Process in the Improve Phase of the DMAIC Methodology? Easier said than done, Grasshopper!

Well one technique used is known as the 3Ds – Data, Demonstration, and Demand.

Data

Some people are convinced by Data – this would involve showing them a credible business case and baseline data in the Define Phase e.g. our current process is not capable and has an defect rate of 4.5% (158/3500 units) for Q4 of 2012. The cost of this is €56,000 if annualised.

Demonstration

Other people fall into the doubting Thomas category and have to see to believe – in this case we use Demonstration and could simply let the physical defects accumulate for a lengthy time in the quarantine cage and let people see with their own eyes the magnitude of the problem.

Demand

Demand normally comes from the customer or marketplace but could also come from the Regulatory Body or Corporate Management – this could be a memo saying that unless the process performance improves there is a risk that we might lose the contract or we might not get the new business or we might get fined or have our operations suspended.

Irrespective of which or all of the 3Ds you use, Change Management is all about the People and convincing them to do something different on a Monday morning versus what they were doing the previous Monday!!

(Note: DMAIC is Define Measure Analyse Improve Control)