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

Industrial Culture: The Human Side of Change  
Improve the Performance of Your Business by Creating a New Industrial Culture  
The Importance of a Culture of Rapid Improvement  
How Your Culture Affects the Potential for Improvement  
How Culture Is Influenced by Strategy  
A Simple Model of Culture  
Element 1: Values  
Element 2: Beliefs  
Element 3: Behavior  
Element 4: Rituals  
How to Use This Simple Model of Culture  
Designing a Corporate Culture  
Elements of a Culture of Rapid Improvement: An Overview of How This Book Is Organized  
Summary  
Section I: Establish the Values and Beliefs of Your New Culture  
Strategy: The Values and Beliefs of an Industrial Culture  
Establishing Strategic Goals for Your Organization  
Establishing Your Organization’s Tactical Goals  
Setting Strategic Goals Is the Responsibility of the Senior Leader  
A Process for Establishing Strategic Goals  
Look Outside Your Organization  
Evaluate Your Customers and Competitors  
Consider the Owners of Your Business  
Do Not Forget to Consider Your Employees  
Assess the Needs of Your Organization’s Community  
Next, Look Inside Your Organization  
Analyze the Gap between Your Current Capabilities and Your Future Requirements  
Write Your Goals  
1. Strategic Goals Have a Simple, Memorable Statement of the Gap You Are Closing  
2. Strategic Goals Have a Directionally Correct Statement of Future Needs  
3. Strategic Goals Have a Credible Description of Current Capabilities  
4. Strategic Goals Have a Few Objective Measures That Define Progress  
5. Strategic Goals Have Interim Tactical Performance  
Targets to Be Achieved  
Present Your Goals to Your Organization  
Conclusion  
Summary  
3 Making Your Cultural Values Personal  
A Three-Level View for Translating Goals into Actions  
The CEO’s Three-Level View  
The Division Managers’ Three-Level View  
Individual Department Managers’ Three-Level View  
A Case Study of the Three-Level View of Translating Goals to Actions  
Keeping the Whole Team on Board  
Refreshing Your Goals  
A Final Word on Translating Strategic Goals into Tactical Goals and Tactical Actions  
Summary  
Quality Stations: The Rituals of Your Culture  
Rituals at Work  
Using Quality Stations to Implement the Four Rituals of Improvement  
Ritual 1: Quality Stations Help Show Tactical Goals  
Ritual 2: Quality Stations Show Activities in Progress  
Ritual 3: Quality Stations Show Projects Completed and Measure and Communicate Results  
Ritual 4: Quality Stations Show Ideas for the Future   
 Details on the Four Rituals of Improvement  
Ritual 1: Show the Tactical Goals of the Team  
Ritual 2: Show the Projects in Progress  
Ritual 3: Measure and Communicate Results  
Ritual 4: Make Ideas for the Future Visible  
Culturally Appropriate Small-Team Leadership  
Communications at the Quality Stations  
Appearance of a Quality Station  
The Work of a Quality Station  
Management Quality Stations  
A Final Word on Quality Stations  
Summary  
Section II: Engaging People in Your New Culture  
The Objective Elements of Engaging People  
Creating a Framework That Engages People to Help  
Element 1: People Need Goals to Achieve  
Element 2: People Need New Skills to Do New Things  
Root Cause Analysis  
Element 3: People Need Time to Work on Improvement  
Element 4: People Need Access to Resources  
Providing Funds  
Small-Event Improvements  
Element 5: People Need a Structure for Action  
Summary  
The Subjective Elements That Disrupt Engagement of People  
What if Improvement Does Not Happen?  
The Subjective Elements That Disrupt Engagement  
Element 1: Some Teams Do Not Trust Management  
Element 2: Some Teams Have Disruptive Members  
Intentionally Disruptive Team Members  
Direct Relationships with Management  
Intentionally Disruptive Individuals  
Unintentionally Disruptive Team Members  
Summary  
Section III: The Social Design of Your New Culture  
Understanding the Theory of Industrial Culture  
Personalities and Personal Cultures at Work  
Each Business Has a Culture That Defines the Workplace  
Social Cultures at Work  
Three Typical Responses to a Dominant Culture   
1. People of Different Cultures Will Appear to Fit the  
Dominant Culture at Work  
2. People of Different Cultures Will Adopt a Neutral Behavior while at Work  
3. People of Different Cultures Will Resist the Dominant   
Culture at Work  
What to Do about These Three Responses to Your Dominant Work Culture  
Situational Cultures  
Summary  
The Social Design of a New Culture  
Social Design in Industry  
Social Consideration 1: Precision and Timeliness  
How to Handle Routine Work  
How to Handle Nonroutine Work  
When to Begin  
Social Consideration 2: Collaboration and Teamwork  
Communicating about Differences within a Team  
Different Expressions of the Same Family Values  
Different Interpretations and Assumptions of a Simple Task: Getting the Mail  
How to Handle Aberrant Behavior  
Social Consideration 3: Inclusion and Contribution  
Summary  
Valuing Individuals  
Five Elements of Valuing Individuals  
Element 1: Develop Corporate Awareness That Individuals Are Different and Valuable  
Recognize That Many Personal Qualities Are a Mixed Blessing  
Element 2: Provide Emotional and Social Support during Cultural Changes  
Dealing with “Heritage” Issues  
Establish Affinity Groups  
Facilitate Meetings of Affinity Groups  
Unexpected Affinity Groups  
Establish a Group of “Diversity Pioneers”  
Element 3: Establish New Policies and Practices for Your New Culture  
Element 4: Enforcement of Your New Culture’s Policies and Practices  
Element 5: Celebration of Your Cultural Change  
Summary  
Managing Emotion at Work  
Exploring Emotions at Work  
Listen to What Your People Tell You about Their Feelings about Work  
Everything Is Not Good When Real Change Is Happening  
Interpreting the Emotions of Change  
If You Cannot Interpret Emotions at Work, Find Someone Who Can?  
Interpreting Emotions Is Key to Implementing Successful Change  
Summary  
SECTION IV: Managing and Sustaining Cultural Change  
How Communication Reflects Your Culture  
Three Types of Messages from Management  
1. Delivering News  
2. Making Statements of Belief and Support  
3. Giving Instructions for Action  
Organizational Implications of Communication: The Role of Senior Management  
The Role of Middle Managers in Communicating  
Problem 1: People Do Not Get Your Message  
Problem 2: Middle Managers Are Disenfranchised  
Manage and Measure the Communication  
Summary  
Measuring the Performance of Small Events  
Principles of Measuring Small-Event and Autonomous Improvement  
Measuring How Engaged Your People Are in Improving Your Business  
Using Bulk Measurements to Ensure You Are All Working toward the Same Goal  
Measuring Visible Results Reinforces an Intuitive Understanding of Performance  
Make Sure Your Measures Are Consistent and Credible to the People Being Measured  
Make Your Measurements Direct and Exact  
Keep Your System Fair and Accurate  
Create a Subject Matter Expert for Measurement  
Other Interesting Measurements  
Useful and Nearly Objective Assessment of Subjective Data  
Use Bulk Measures When Individual Data Are Not Available  
Look for Useful Trends in Meaningless Data  
Defend Your Measures  
Summary  
Managing the Competence of Your Employees, Especially in  
Business-Critical Roles  
Early Assessments of Individual Employee Competence  
Recognizing the Importance of Critical Positions to the Overall Performance of the Organization  
The Basis of Data Gathering to Assess Employee Competence  
Measure the Percentage of Critical Positions Occupied by Highly Competent People  
Measure the Overall Performance of the Organization  
The Process of Data Gathering to Assess Employee Competence  
Step 1: Identify the Critical Positions in Your Organization  
Step 2: Assess the Individuals Working in Your Critical Positions  
Correlating Personal Competence with Organizational Performance  
Management Lessons from Competence Assessment  
Focus Your First Personnel Development Actions on Critical Positions  
Begin Promptly  
Spread the Word about Competence Management  
Recognize That Not All Managers Need to Be Highly Competent  
Many Critical Positions Are Underappreciated  
Lessons to be Learned from the Exceptions  
Summary  
Section V: Getting Started in Your Organization  
Phase I: The First Six Months  
Create Strategic Goals For Your Business  
Give Your People New Capabilities or Tools to Practice Improvement  
Single Minutes Exchange of Dies  
Total Productive Maintenance  
Reliability Engineering  
Value-Stream Mapping  
Task 3: Establish the Basis for a New Social Culture That Is More Inclusive and More Autonomous  
Task 4: Conduct Your First Pilot Project  
Task 5: Sustain Your Gains  
Summary  
Phase II: The Second Six Months  
Complete the Process of Deploying and Translating Your Goals  
Initiate a Second Round of Pilot Projects  
Take Formal Steps to Include Individuals in Your Culture Change  
Implement New Tools and Methods in Your New Pilot Projects  
Use Quality Stations  
Sustain Your Gains in Communication and Performance  
Summary  
Phase III: The Third Six Months  
Create Quality Stations That Small Teams Will Use to Advance Your Goals  
Establish Pilot Projects on the Front Line  
Select New Tools That Support Autonomous Action  
Create Affinity Groups to Ensure Inclusion of All Individuals  
Sustain Your Gains by Establishing New Formal Practices  
Summary  
Phase IV: The Fourth Six Months