DailyKaizen

Tomorrow is a big day for the organization and a major milestone for our Lean journey.  For the first time we are going to begin the process of putting in place a cross-functional management system through Value Stream mapping.  Our Executive team has identified our six “enterprise level” value streams and we will begin to map and transform two of them tomorrow by kicking off a cross-functional team.  The goal is to have future states designed by the time we enter our strategy deployment process this October and the entire organization re-aligned around Value Streams by January 2010.

As many of you know Toyota and many other Lean organizations have three management systems:  Management by Policy that focuses the organization’s improvement resources on the vital few breakthroughs; the Daily Management system which is the foundation of standard work and continuous improvement; Finally, the Cross-Functional management system which aligns an organization through the translation of customer requirements into process standards.  Last year was all about putting in place a Management by Policy system and the year prior was about learning how to put in a Daily Management system.  While we still have a lot to learn and a lot of work to do in continuing to advance this work it is also time for us to take the next step by focusing on how to align and improve our processes through cross-functional management. 

For several years now we have used the tools of Value Stream mapping to transform large sub processes of our business like claims processing, pharmacy, laboratory, Primary Care, Information Services, etc.  Yet, our efforts have never taken on a management system focus to fundamentally redesign our organization to support value creation.  That will change moving forward.  Since as an organization we are both the financing and delivery of care we have a real unique opportunity in healthcare to use cross-functional management to design products that truly drive value for the members we serve.  Our incentive, unlike in most healthcare delivery organizations is to keep people healthy.  By using cross-functional management I believe we can create far more value then any insurer or delivery system could do on their own. 

Like with all of our other management system work a focus on creating a cross-functional management system will not be easy.  It means a lot of peoples jobs will need to change as we realign around our value streams.  Current structures and decision making paths will shift and mid-management will be strained to navigate the ambiguity of change.  Success is dependent on capable, active, and available leadership.   There will be bumps and we will make mistakes.  Yet, if we stay the course and focus on the customer it is a change we can make.  The reward it to great to not.  I have no doubt we could be the best healthcare organization in the country, by all standards if we execute.

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