DailyKaizen

We are not just shy of six months into our first year of our enterprise wide Lean journey and I am working with a small team to prepare for our mid-year review.  The purpose of the mid-year review is to step back and do a check/adjust against the content of our strategy A3 (Plan vs. Actual) as well as to conduct a check/adjust on the effectiveness of the management system we are working hard to put in place.   As a payoff, we hope to make adjustments to our strategies and the management system that will lead to improved business results as well as to begin to lay the ground work for the next iteration of strategy deployment that begins in the fall. 

 This preparation work I have been doing has given me an interesting opportunity to reflect on what we have done, on where we are, and where we still need to go.  Looking back in many ways it feels like things are going so slowly.  There is just so much we need to do better, faster and with less resources.  Yet,  as I think about where we were just a year ago and where we are now it puts things in perspective.  Just a year ago there was only a small group of leaders that were living and breathing Lean, and most of them were in the Model Line.  Now, everywhere I go in the organization I talk with leaders that are excited, and deeply immersed in Lean transformational efforts.  We are beginning to speak the same language and have a common view of both where we need to go and the means by which we need to get there.  With this critical mass forming, so also has formed a deeper understanding of what problems need to be solved in the near term to allow us to successfully navigate the next steps on our Lean journey.  

So back to the Mid-year review.  Because of the progress we have made over the last six months I predict some very interesting discussions and decisions that will need to be made as we begin to look forward to this fall when we begin our second cycle of strategy deployment.  First, our senior leadership team will need to wrestle with how we will begin to define and transform the organization around value streams.  For many years we have talked about the need to break down our organizations silos and for the first time I believe we are ready to take bold steps in that direction.  Second, our senior leadership is starting to move toward viewing operational excellence as the overall strategy of the organization.  This should have huge implications for our current strategies as well as the next round of strategies for 2009.  Lastly, our senior leadership team needs to figure out how to adjust the management system away from its current over-emphasis on our budgeting system for control.  Currently, our budgeting system drives waste and the wrong incentives and until it is changed we will be keep looking in the rear view mirror as opposed to whats coming towards us in the future.   

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