DailyKaizen

This morning I came in early and spent an hour talking with the team that was impacted by the RPIW two weeks ago.   My intention was to just do a quick walk by to see if the visual system was up to date, which it was, but ended up being pulled aside by a group of the staff that were working on their newly streamlined administrative tasks.   I sat down and informally began to ask them questions about their work.  I was a little nervous, because only one of them had participated in the RPIW and often those that don’t participate take some time to accept the changes.   

To my delight this was not the case.  Each one talked about how anxious they were going into the event.  How they all assumed that “management” was looking for ways to lay them off, but now that time has passed and they are all employed their fear seems to have turned to energy.  As I sat I was able to hear a series of stories about how much easier the work had become.  There had been bumps, but all of them agreed that they like the new way of doing things much better.  They wanted to know when the next RPIW was taking place, because they all wanted to keep driving forward with the improvements.   Several of them shared with me their ideas for improvement and asked who they should bring them to.  What was most impressive to me was how in just a two week time period this group of individuals was working and acting as a high performing team.  Before the RPIW the culture of the work group was very much focused on individual performance where most staff worked with very little contact with those that worked to either side of them.

As I walked away from the team I had a renewed sense of opptimism. Great things start small.  Months ago I wrote a post that discussed how our goal in the Model Line is to turn all 700 staff into improvement agents.  I would say we just took our first small step, but it sure is a big one!

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