A Culture of Rapid Improvement: Creating and Sustaining an Engaged Workforce Book

Foreword   H. Eugene McBrayer     xv
Preface     xxi
Acknowledgments     xxv
About the Author     xxvii
Industrial Culture: The Human Side of Change     1
Improve the Performance of Your Business by Creating a New Industrial Culture     2
The Importance of a Culture of Rapid Improvement     4
How Your Culture Affects the Potential for Improvement     6
How Culture Is Influenced by Strategy     7
A Simple Model of Culture     8
Values     8
Beliefs     8
Behavior     9
Rituals     9
How to Use This Simple Model of Culture     10
Designing a Corporate Culture     11
Elements of a Culture of Rapid Improvement: An Overview of How This Book Is Organized     11
Summary of Chapter 1     12
Establish the Values and Beliefs of Your New Culture     15
Strategy: The Values and Beliefs of an Industrial Culture     19
Establishing Strategic Goals for Your Organization     20
Establishing Your Organization's Tactical Goals     21
Setting Strategic Goals Is the Responsibility of the Senior Leader     22
A Process for Establishing Strategic Goals     23
Look Outside Your Organization     23
Evaluate Your Customers and Competitors     24
Consider the Owners of Your Business     24
Do Not Forget to Consider Your Employees     25
Assess the Needs of Your Organization's Community     26
Next, Look Inside Your Organization     27
Analyze the Gap between Your Current Capabilities and Your Future Requirements     28
Write Your Goals     29
Strategic Goals Have a Simple, Memorable Statement of the Gap You Are Closing     30
Strategic Goals Have a Directionally Correct Statement of Future Needs     30
Strategic Goals Have a Credible Description of Current Capabilities     31
Strategic Goals Have a Few Objective Measures That Define Progress     31
Strategic Goals Have Interim Tactical Performance Targets to Be Achieved     32
Present Your Goals to Your Organization     32
Conclusion     36
Summary of Chapter 2     37
Making Your Cultural Values Personal     39
A Three-Level View for Translating Goals into Actions     43
The CEO's Three-Level View     45
The Division Managers' Three-Level View     45
Individual Department Managers' Three-Level View     48
A Case Study of the Three-Level View of Translating Goals to Actions     48
Keeping the Whole Team on Board     52
Refreshing Your Goals     52
A Final Word on Translating Strategic Goals into Tactical Goals and Tactical Actions     54
Summary of Chapter 3     55
Quality Stations: The Rituals of Your Culture     57
Rituals at Work     57
Using Quality Stations to Implement the Four Rituals of Improvement     59
Quality Stations Help Show Tactical Goals     59
Quality Stations Show Activities in Progress     60
Quality Stations Show Projects Completed and Measure and Communicate Results     60
Quality Stations Show Ideas for the Future     60
Details on the Four Rituals of Improvement     60
Show the Tactical Goals of the Team     61
Show the Projects in Progress     62
Measure and Communicate Results     62
Make Ideas for the Future Visible     63
Culturally Appropriate Small-Team Leadership     65
Communications at the Quality Stations     67
Appearance of a Quality Station     68
The Work of a Quality Station     73
Management Quality Stations     74
A Final Word on Quality Stations      75
Summary of Chapter 4     75
Engaging People in Your New Culture     77
The Objective Elements of Engaging People     81
Creating a Framework That Engages People to Help     84
People Need Goals to Achieve     85
People Need New Skills to Do New Things     86
Root Cause Analysis     89
People Need Time to Work on Improvement     90
People Need Access to Resources     93
Providing Funds     95
Small-Event Improvements     95
People Need a Structure for Action     96
Summary of Chapter 5     97
The Subjective Elements That Disrupt Engagement of People     99
What if Improvement Does Not Happen?     100
The Subjective Elements That Disrupt Engagement     101
Some Teams Do Not Trust Management     101
Some Teams Have Disruptive Members     105
Intentionally Disruptive Team Members     106
Direct Relationships with Management     106
Intentionally Disruptive Individuals     107
Unintentionally Disruptive Team Members     108
Summary of Chapter 6     110
The Social Design of Your New Culture     111
Understanding the Theory of Industrial Culture     115
Personalities and Personal Cultures at Work     116
Each Business Has a Culture That Defines the Workplace     117
Social Cultures at Work     119
Three Typical Responses to a Dominant Culture     120
People of Different Cultures Will Appear to Fit the Dominant Culture at Work     121
People of Different Cultures Will Adopt a Neutral Behavior while at Work     122
People of Different Cultures Will Resist the Dominant Culture at Work     122
What to Do about These Three Responses to Your Dominant Work Culture     123
Situational Cultures     124
Summary of Chapter 7     125
The Social Design of a New Culture     127
Social Design in Industry     128
Precision and Timeliness     129
How to Handle Routine Work     131
How to Handle Nonroutine Work     132
When to Begin     133
Collaboration and Teamwork     134
Communicating about Differences within a Team     136
Different Expressions of the Same Family Values     139
Different Interpretations and Assumptions of a Simple Task: Getting the Mail     141
How to Handle Aberrant Behavior     142
Inclusion and Contribution     142
Summary of Chapter 8     144
Valuing Individuals     147
Five Elements of Valuing Individuals     147
Develop Corporate Awareness That Individuals Are Different and Valuable     149
Recognize That Many Personal Qualities Are a Mixed Blessing     152
Provide Emotional and Social Support during Cultural Changes     154
Dealing with "Heritage" Issues     155
Establish Affinity Groups     156
Facilitate Meetings of Affinity Groups     157
Unexpected Affinity Groups     157
Establish a Group of "Diversity Pioneers"     158
Establish New Policies and Practices for Your New Culture     158
Enforcement of Your New Culture's Policies and Practices     160
Celebration of Your Cultural Change     161
Summary of Chapter 9     163
Managing Emotion at Work     165
Exploring Emotions at Work     166
Listen to What Your People Tell You about Their Feelings about Work     169
Everything Is Not Good When Real Change Is Happening     170
Interpreting the Emotions of Change     171
If You Cannot Interpret Emotions at Work, Find Someone Who Can     174
Interpreting Emotions Is Key to Implementing Successful Change     175
Summary of Chapter 10     176
Managing and Sustaining Cultural Change     179
How Communication Reflects Your Culture     181
Three Types of Messages from Management     183
Delivering News     183
Making Statements of Belief and Support     185
Giving Instructions for Action     187
Organizational Implications of Communication: The Role of Senior Management     189
The Role of Middle Managers in Communicating     191
People Do Not Get Your Message     192
Middle Managers Are Disenfranchised     192
Manage and Measure the Communication     194
Summary of Chapter 11     197
Measuring the Performance of Small Events     199
Principles of Measuring Small-Event and Autonomous Improvement     200
Measuring How Engaged Your People Are in Improving Your Business     202
Using Bulk Measurements to Ensure You Are All Working toward the Same Goal     204
Measuring Visible Results Reinforces an Intuitive Understanding of Performance     206
Make Sure Your Measures Are Consistent and Credible to the People Being Measured     208
Make Your Measurements Direct and Exact     208
Keep Your System Fair and Accurate     209
Create a Subject Matter Expert for Measurement     210
Other Interesting Measurements     211
Useful and Nearly Objective Assessment of Subjective Data     211
Use Bulk Measures When Individual Data Are Not Available     212
Look for Useful Trends in Meaningless Data     213
Defend Your Measures     215
Summary of Chapter 12     216
Managing the Competence of Your Employees, Especially in Business-Critical Roles     219
Early Assessments of Individual Employee Competence     220
Recognizing the Importance of Critical Positions to the Overall Performance of the Organization     222
The Basis of Data Gathering to Assess Employee Competence     223
Measure the Percentage of Critical Positions Occupied by Highly Competent People     223
Measure the Overall Performance of the Organization     224
The Process of Data Gathering to Assess Employee Competence     225
Identify the Critical Positions in Your Organization     225
Assess the Individuals Working in Your Critical Positions     226
Correlating Personal Competence with Organizational Performance     226
Management Lessons from Competence Assessment     227
Focus Your First Personnel Development Actions on Critical Positions     227
Begin Promptly     228
Spread the Word about Competence Management     230
Recognize That Not All Managers Need to Be Highly Competent     231
Many Critical Positions Are Underappreciated     231
Lessons to be Learned from the Exceptions     233
Summary of Chapter 13     234
Getting Started in Your Organization     237
Phase I: The First Six Months     239
Create Strategic Goals For Your Business     239
Give Your People New Capabilities or Tools to Practice Improvement     240
Single Minutes Exchange of Dies     242
Total Productive Maintenance     242
Reliability Engineering     243
Value-Stream Mapping     243
Establish the Basis for a New Social Culture That Is More Inclusive and More Autonomous     243
Conduct Your First Pilot Project     246
Sustain Your Gains     249
Summary of Chapter 14     250
Phase II: The Second Six Months     251
Complete the Process of Deploying and Translating Your Goals     252
Initiate a Second Round of Pilot Projects     253
Take Formal Steps to Include Individuals in Your Culture Change      254
Implement New Tools and Methods in Your New Pilot Projects     256
Use Quality Stations     257
Sustain Your Gains in Communication and Performance     258
Summary of Chapter 15     259
Phase III: The Third Six Months     261
Create Quality Stations That Small Teams Will Use to Advance Your Goals     262
Establish Pilot Projects on the Front Line     264
Select New Tools That Support Autonomous Action     265
Create Affinity Groups to Ensure Inclusion of All Individuals     266
Sustain Your Gains by Establishing New Formal Practices     267
Summary of Chapter 16     268
Phase IV: The Fourth Six Months     271
Ensure That the Goals You Are Implementing Are the Goals You Deployed     271
Select Only Projects That Improve Performance     272
Train People to Use the Specific Tools That Will Meet Your Goals     273
Make Sure All Individuals Are Included in Your Culture Change     273
Communicate Your Belief and Support of Your Culture Change     275
Sustain Your Gains into Year Three and Beyond     275
Looking toward the Future     276
Beginning the Third Year     277
Summary of Chapter 17     278
Index      279