Cultivating The Right Culture

"Everyone resists change," and "Everyone buys in as long as it doesn't impact them," or "Why do we have to change?" or "We've always done it that way."

Cultivating The Right Culture It is true that most of us feel the technical aspect of implementing lean is easier, or at least more straightforward, than the human or cultural aspects of making these changes.

We often hear the comments, "Everyone resists change, Everyone buys in as long as it doesn't impact them personally, Why do we have to change?, and We've always done it that way." Change in how we do things is difficult enough to accept and learn, but changing our attitudes and behaviours is even more challenging.

Virtually every organization working on its lean journey stubs its toe on the human element at one point or another. Most of us have never been faced with the unenviable task of trying to change a culture in a company. But when you begin to use lean to transform your company, it quickly becomes obvious that in order to sustain the lean changes, you are going to need the culture to be supportive. Lean requires technical change to your processes and the "right" attitudes and behaviours to reinforce the continuation of those new processes.

Typically, to transform the processes you use a tool called Value Stream Mapping. From this exercise you develop a "current state" and a "future state." The implementation plan is then detailed so that you know what tool to use, where and when to apply the tool in order to properly remove the "waste."
Cultural Value Stream Mapping Once you start the implementation, you will find that the culture is not always supportive of your efforts to remove waste in the system. In fact, the culture can impede your progress to the point of total frustration. The answer to this frustration is to use a tool called Cultural Value Stream Mapping (CVSM). You map the current cultural state and identify the elements of waste, the lead-time and the customer demand similar to the technical mapping process. Once you have completed this current cultural value stream map, you will be able to work with your group to develop a realistic cultural future state plan, which looks ahead six months and has all the responsibilities and activities required to accomplish the cultural future state.

The cultural future state is focused on the customer requirements in the same way the technical future state does, but it looks at behaviours, decision-making and the flow of information through the system that may impede or lessen the impact of the lean processes you are putting in place. One subtle difference is that you are now dealing with the corporate values and attitudes that drive the thinking and emotions within a company. These are often the sources of resistance to the corporate lean direction. They influence individuals to make decisions for personal or departmental gain and satisfaction.
Organizational Culture What few organizations realize is that they are, in fact, facing the same problems of waste culturally that they see when they do their value stream work on the plant or office operations. The waste can take the form of endless, pointless meetings; information hoarders; departments that function like fortresses or silos; conflict at the personal or departmental level; poor communication; time wasting gossip; and so much more.

Using Cultural Value Stream Mapping, everyone starts to focus their energies outside of the silo and on the customer and removal of culturally stimulated waste in the system.

The tools used to make the cultural change are, of necessity, different than the tools used to implement the technical side of lean. We are dealing with human "kaizens" and events that are needed to eliminate wastes. The tools themselves are some of the familiar behavioural, problem solving and innovation building practices used today in management and team building work. The critical difference is in how they are used, when they are applied, by whom, and in what context.

Every organization has its own unique culture and its own particular set of wastes. Part of the process in working with a lean consulting firm is to identify which tools should be used for each type of waste. Just as the wastes reflect the culture that created them, so too must the tools and methods match the future state culture being implemented.
Measures For Success Identifying and measuring culturally caused wastes is the key discipline framework to be used, just as with the production or office side of lean. Wastes are defined using the same terminology we use in identifying classic lean wastes. Setting tangible measures for success is the most critical building block for your cultural future state. People often get stuck believing that the so-called soft issues of an organization's health and productivity cannot be objectively measured. Wrong! Many of the culturally caused wastes are, in fact, quite easily quantified. Others that seem more nebulous and hard to pin down can be measured with qualitative tools such as surveys, interviews and focus groups. Real data becomes available to measure progress towards the future state and the customer rather than a silo focus.

As with lean in the operational or office environment, lean in an organization's cultural world is an ongoing commitment and a never-ending process of waste elimination. For organizations making this commitment, improvements are faster and more sustainable when both operational and cultural work is done in tandem.

Working to eliminate the wastes caused by your culture is the essential partner on your lean journey. This work will give you a huge advantage in building and sustaining lean improvements to your bottom line over the long term.