Running a business is basically the same, whether big or small, whether product / service / or information. You have a process with inputs and outputs. Multiple processes are linked through a value stream if you will. The value stream extends from the raw material suppliers like mining iron or growing cotton, to the end user of this product / service / or information. The question that needs to be asked is, “how aligned to True North is your value stream to the customer?”
How smooth we communicate those hand offs from inputs, through the process, to outputs converted to inputs to the next process, is what Lean manufacturing is all about. It does not matter what size, color, religion, or political view your product / service / or information is. What matters is how you communicate the inputs you need, so you can process, and provide the correct output to the customer. You tell you suppliers what you want, when you want it, how much of it you want, and at what price. You process the input by adding value. The product / service / or information is transformed to the output to the customer. This can be one process, several processes, and with as many inputs and outputs as needed.
What is the point here? The point is, no matter how you look at business, you are satisfying the needs, wants, and desires of the customer through a thought out process that has inputs and outputs. Do you have an established process? Have you defined the output requirement to the customer (internal or external)? Have you defined the inputs to the process that will give you the needed output?
I know if I were to provide the product / service / or information just by myself, that I could provide the correct output from my process(s) given the correct inputs, and in the correct sequence of events that need to take place in the process, with less waste than an entire company would. Problem being, it would take me forever compared to an entire company. So our need is to take that single person value stream thought and convert it to a multi-person task through the value stream. Making sure we well define the process, outputs, and inputs.
Realize I have steered you to the thought of process, outputs, and inputs. This is typical Six Sigma practice: knowing what your process is capable of, then what is the process to output to satisfy the customer, and finally what inputs do you need to do that. What breaks that mold is when a process does not exist to provide the product / service / or information. Then you would start with the output and work backward through the concurrent design of process and inputs.
The concept is simple. Having everyone buy into the execution seems to be what creates the storm. The silo mentality of “I need this first before I will let you do that”, which typically does not fully align to True North to satisfy the customer, gets in the way of our performance. This causes gusts of delays. This causes the missed “pitch” or “lead” if you will, making someone think that they can squeeze in a different project while they wait. This intern begins the roller coaster of more unintended missed pitches in the process, turning the process into a hurricane. Hence my leading paragraph into these blogs that we need take the risk of peeling back the layers of work around and to do it right the first time.
Is it a bad thing if someone waits? Can you not visually see them waiting? Would you not ask yourself “why are they waiting?” and do something about the process? It seems like waiting is a good thing if you can see problems as they occur. The trick now becomes managing solutions to those problems as quick as possible, incrementally correcting the system and its processes. If the person instead of waiting filled in the time with another project, you would have never known you had a problem until it was too late. It is the worker that is being driven by old school supervision, creating an environment that “if I look busy I won’t get yelled at”, or in the supervisor’s case “if they look busy everything must be working fine.”
Whether to weather the storm, or stop and peel back the layers of work around, seems to be the decision. Storms within your process, or incoming to the process, will create waste with a great potential of defects or defective products / services / or information to the customer. As you allow the storm to take you away from True North, the competitor who can better steer True North will always make it there first, in a manner of speaking.
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