by Lee Fried, on 01 Jul 2007 08:17 am
The Journey
Quote of the Week
This weeks quote comes from the Rapid Process Improvement Workshop (RPIW) that I attended on Friday. It was the largest and most complex kaizen that we have ever run, with more then 35 people attending for five full days with the final outcome of a completely different job for more then eighty employees. It was an exciting, yet very difficult week for the team. Attending the workshop was a full spectrum of employees from a Senior Vice President to a front-line administrative processor and everything in-between.
The week was challenging, because the change was so vast. Employees, especially on the front-line are not used to change, especially this far and fast. Many people in the room had been with the organization more then twenty years with the average tenure probably around fifteen. This meant that many of the processes that the team was redesigning were built by the people on the team. Throughout the week there was an strong undercurrent of excitement for the future running through the team, but often it was necessary for us to stop and pay tribute to the past. I was impressed by how open and honest team members were to voicing their concerns and their feeling toward the change. In my short tenure in the organization (two years) it was the most forthcoming I have seen any team. I think it was a good demonstration on just how far the culture had come.
During the last day of the event each team member went around and said what their one hope and one fear was for the future. Almost everyone said they hoped the transformation would continue and the organization would maintain its course, and their fear was the organization would not. This fear was driven mainly because of many other attempts for change that the organization had led, but that ended up in the “flavor of the month” club. The quote below came from a team member in response to this exercise and I think it left a last impression on the group.
“The past is not bad, it is just gone.”–L. Sterling
PS–Happy Fourth of July to everyone. I will be taking the week off from the blog, but will be back on the 9th of July with new content.