By Jacob Raymer, Shingo Faculty Fellow
Some of the key objectives in a Lean transformation are to establish alignment, enable people, and build a culture of continuous improvement—the three dimensions of the Shingo Model. The Shingo Guiding Principles help us better understand what each of these dimensions should look like. But as I have worked with organizations in standing up systems to reinforce these key dimensions, I’ve learned that to be successful the goal needs to be slightly different. Of course, we want an aligned organization. But to be successful we need unity toward that alignment. Similarly, we want to enable a culture to improve. But to be successful we need people to have ownership of those improvements. And finally, as much as we want to build a culture of continuous improvement, we benefit more from creating focus. In other words, we benefit more from creating meaningful problem solving and meaningful improvements that are focused on what we are aligned to.
Just like tools and improvement events, we often have the tendency to treat these objectives like a check box. I have seen this happen to the three dimensions of the Shingo Model. We focus our energy on building systems for each of the dimensions individually, and we often forget that they are strategically connected. Just like there is a relationship between tools and systems or systems and principles, there is also a relationship between the three Shingo Model dimensions. These relationships are profound, and they shape our thinking about how to be more successful in our efforts to become a Lean organization.
Consider the relationship between these dimensions:
ALIGN + ENABLE = UNITY
The best goal is difficult to achieve if people’s hearts aren’t connected to it.
ENABLE + IMPROVE = OWNERSHIP
We can never build a culture of improvement if management owns the improvements.
IMPROVE + ALIGN = FOCUS
The difference between improvement and meaningful improvement is having a defined goal.
An Example of Unity
When I joined Munson Healthcare as an executive, they had already spent three years establishing a True North scorecard across the organization that was centered on People, Patients, Quality, Safety, and Performance. They knew that creating a Lean culture would help them achieve their metrics and goals more effectively. No matter what hospital I visited in the Munson Healthcare System, everyone could identify what True North meant and what metrics they were focusing on in their area.
Every six months we would have an Alignment Summit where 400+ of our leaders would come together. We decided to take a risk and ask the group to vote on two questions. First, how aligned do I feel we are as an organization? And second, how unified do I feel we are as an organization? We used remote clickers to vote, and the data was immediately shared on the main screen. We knew it was risky to ask these two questions. Some leaders thought it would expose too much vulnerability. As we observed the data, we were pleased to see that on a scale of 1 to 5, we were a 4 on the first question. The three years had paid off. Everyone knew the direction we were aligned to and the metrics and goals we were trying to achieve with our True North scorecard.
The second question didn’t score as high. We were a 2.8 on unity. What was going on? As we asked more questions to understand, it became apparent that we lacked a clear purpose and passion that resonated with the frontline as to why the metrics were important. Because there was no clear purpose, we had competing silos. We don’t get out of bed every morning excited to come to work to focus on reducing length of stay (LOS). Our metrics were all important, but our hearts weren’t connected to them.
Immediately after the summit, we started a campaign called “What Gets You Excited to Get Out of Bed and Come to Work?” We sent a request to all the employees asking them to share in three to five words what gets them excited to come to work. Of course, we were nervous to ask the question. This could become an ideal platform to vent frustration. We received more than 900 responses, and not a single one was negative. The CEO and I were a little skeptical, so we reviewed all 900 responses again. There were no disparaging remarks. This campaign led us to identify the Munson Healthcare Purpose in three words: “We Improve Lives.”
We weren’t sure how long it would take to spread our purpose to the entire organization. Would it take three years like it had taken True North? We were surprised. Within the first week we saw frontline teams put “We Improve Lives” on top of their huddle boards. Radiology quickly put up a sign that read, “We have improved 42 lives today.” The sign was written on a board that could be changed every day to help them show the impact they were having. Other departments copied Radiology and within three months more than 10,000 people not only had the purpose memorized but were showing how they improve lives. Meetings now began with a purpose story. It was amazing the unity people had around those three simple words.
For the past seven years, we have continued to ask those two questions in our Alignment Summit, even throughout the pandemic. The scores of the two questions have consistently moved positively every year. Our key learning was that we could have the perfect scorecard, the perfect strategies, all aligned and cascaded from top to bottom, but by involving people and getting their hearts in the game we dramatically increased their engagement and unity. That was the key to successful alignment.
Click the webinar or podcasts icons below to learn about the remaining two relationships—ownership and focus—and how these success factors are key in establishing a Lean culture.
“Unity of purpose [has] a positive powerful
effect by creating meaningful work for
individuals and a mission and sense of
direction for the organization as a whole.”
—Daniel R. Denison and Aneil K. Mishra (Organizational Science, “Toward a Theory of Organizational Culture and Effectiveness,” April 1995.)
