A Business Technology Place

Creating culture with remote teams

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“What are ways you are building a ‘lean culture’ with remote team members?” I posted this question on Twitter and a LinkedIn group because during the 25 years of my professional career, I’ve seen working from home (telecommuting as we used to call it) go from a special once-per-week privilege to a common status of working from home multiple times a week.  A growing number of workers are also now considered full-time remote. Some factors contributing to this change: 1)The technology for connecting employees to the company network is ubiquitous. 2) Companies realized they can recruit workers regardless of location and expand their talent pool. 3) Commute time is a factor affecting employment decisions. In our knowledge economy and bit-driven world, location is irrelevant for completing work and contributing to mission of the team for many of us. But how do we create and maintain a group/company culture when workers

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Overcoming audit excuses

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I don’t have enough time to perform audits. It was 9am Tuesday morning. I assigned the weekly visual management board audit to a staff manager and I could hear the unsaid words looking in their eyes. It was 10am on a Thursday morning. I asked the process improvement manager, “Why do we need to audit ourselves weekly?” I was questioning both the value and frequency of self-audits. Then my view changed…. I’ve found peace with internal audits. Let’s be honest. Audit is kin to four-letter words in our current work culture. I’ve observed rolling eyes, sighs, and bad behavior when the word is spoken. You probably have too. But here’s a game changer; audits done the right way are beneficial. They can be more than checking a box. They can help make us better. To get the most out of audits, I had to first understand the primary purpose of

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Creating a metric – value add or mission?

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Question: Should metrics on a visual management board or report be something that measures progress on only value-add activities? Or is it OK to track metrics on items that may be essential non-value added, but directly support the mission of the organization? I started wrestling with this question while trying to frame a new metric that at its core supports the mission of our department.  I started second guessing my metric thinking it was good for the group but not necessarily something a customer would call value-add. Is the question even valid? For Lean practitioners, can the mission of an organization/department be separate from value-add activities? A quick analysis: Value is the starting point of Lean thinking and is defined by the customer. An activity is value-added if a customer is willing to pay for it. The mission of the organization states why it exists, what it does and for

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Write your story

Posted on by Posted in Ideas, Lean Principles Leave a comment

How much of your story is the result of past dreams and aspirations? In a professional sense, the answer is a measurement of setting and achieving goals. But from a personal standpoint the answer includes influences from friends, parents, and social factors. Jim Collins defined Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGS) in his classic book Built to Last. The BHAGs are long horizon visionary goals for a business. They provide a guide for setting direction and determining what to do and what not to do. In the fall of 1989, I filled out a form in college declaring my major course of study. I was influenced by a number of things to do this, including a Christmas gift (Apple IIC) and a high school teacher. It was my first BHAG and the moment was the beginning of a dream and now part of my story. But there have been other long

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Straight Talk for Documenting Standard Work

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Creating documentation is arguably the most dreaded task for working professionals. Not many people like to document why a program or procedure exist or how the pieces of a program fit together to make a working application. For those who do create documentation of procedures, standards, or architecture, maintaining the document becomes another challenge. It’s a conundrum; we don’t like to write and maintain documentation for processes and procedures, but we want to reference the documentation if we are unsure how to perform an operation. But it shouldn’t be this way. When we understand and appreciate the value of documentation then we’ll see the effort to create it is not wasted and provides value to everyone. In the context of operational work, we like to use documentation to define standard operating procedures (SOPs). Gemba Academy defines Standard Work as “setting a standard and bringing conditions in conformance with the standard.”

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