Continual Impact News

Building Stronger Supervisors and Team Leaders: Training Within Industry Training

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:46:11 GMT

Building Stronger Supervisors and Team Leaders: Training Within Industry Training

Helping supervisors gain the skills, confidence, and tools to lead people, improve work, and deliver results.

This very practical, results‑driven training builds the capabilities of new and emerging leaders to lead teams to higher performance. Our approach blends Training Within Industry training with new learnings, hands‑on applications, and proven improvement methods.

Goal of Training: Increase the knowledge, skills, and confidence of supervisors and team leaders through training and immediate job-related application.

Benefits of Training:

Clear, structured job aids and methods that are easy to learn and apply.
Hands‑on practice that creates immediate and visible benefits.
A shift from managing tasks to leading people.
A better work environment, engagement, communication, and ownership.
Teams working more safely, efficiently, and confidently.

Agenda:

JOB INSTRUCTIONS (JI)

Participants learn how to break down jobs, prepare training plans, and deliver instruction that accelerates learning and reduces errors.

Learning Modules:

Current supervisor performance and gaps
Building role profiles
Active listening & communicating
Teaching others
Assigning tasks; Managing and prioritizing my time
Providing feedback & escalation when performance is below expectations

Hours: 12

Outcomes: Faster onboarding, less turnover, fewer errors, stronger standard work, reduced variations.

JOB METHODS (JM)

A systematic approach to improving how work is done. Participants learn to analyze tasks and redesign methods to increase productivity without sacrificing qual ity or time.

Learning Modules:

Creating system-wide focus
Mapping work processes to understand, get aligned, and improve
Documenting standard work instructions (aka standard operating procedures)

Hours: 8

Outcomes: Higher efficiency, simplified workflows, measurable performance gains.

JOB RELATIONS (JR)

Participants learn how to build stronger and more productive workplace relationships. JR equips leaders with skills to create an environment where people fee l respected, engaged, and able to perform at their best.

Learning Modules:

Foundations of good relations
The importance and potential of people
Team model; Evaluating my team
Motivating & engaging people
Decision Making; Change / Communication
Mitigating problematic behaviors
Establishing and leading team huddles

Hours: 14

Outcomes: Improved morale, higher engagement, reduced conflict, better team performance.

JOB PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT (PD) / PROBLEM SOLVING (PS)

This module equips participants with practical problem-solving skills to identify, analyze, and resolve workplace challen ges and wastes effectively. Participants learn structured approaches to greater focus, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement.

Learning Modules:

Getting focused with a goal statement
Identifying and using performance measures
Solving problems and improving work processes
Effective implementation
Lessons Learned

Hours: 8

Outcomes: Enhanced problem-solving capability, faster issue resolution, and sustained operational improvements.

*The Training Within Industry ( TWI ) service was created by the United States Department of War, running from 1940 to 1945 within the War Manpower Commission. The purpose was to provide consulting services to war-related industries whose personnel were being conscripted into the US Army at the same time the War Department was issuing orders for additional material. It was apparent that the shortage of trained and skilled personnel at precisely the time they were needed most would impose a hardship on those industries, and that only improved methods of job training would address the shortfall. By the end of World War II, over 1.6 million workers in over 16,500 plants had received a certification. The program continued post-war in Europe and Asia, where it aided reconstruction. It is most notable in the business world for inspiring the concept of kaizen in Japan. In addition, the program became the foundation of the Toyota Production System and the DoD resourced open source Management System (3.1).

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Building Stronger Supervisors to Build Stronger Teams

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 21:32:33 GMT

Building Stronger Supervisors to Build Stronger Teams

Supervisors—those who influence or direct the work of others—are essential to an organization’s performance. They help every team member make the fullest use of their skills to achieve extraordinary results, team by team. They are also the bridge between other leaders and their team members. This is a tough position; that's why this newsletter is dedicated to Supervisors and to setting them up for success.

A Supervisor's Purpose: Continually improve the performance of the team by providing leadership in the areas of people, processes and information.

Performance is expected, whether a working supervisor or fulltime supervisor. Supervisor outcomes and results consist of 4 major outputs:

 Core Supervisdor Responsibilities

To achieve these outcomes, supervisors take on a wide range of responsibilities. Yes, responsibilities and expectations are high.

Being a supervisor is a big role—and a challenging one. This can be a big lift, especially for new and emerging supervisors. To help - we end today with the knowledge, skills, competencies that future leaders need to succeed.

How We Can Help Supervisors Build Capability

Supervisors benefit from development in these areas:

Technical Knowledge
Opportunities to learn more
Provide mentoring
Leadership
Active listening & communicating skills (Working with Others)
Identifying Gaps between current and target conditions; Setting goals & measures
Understanding effective teams and how to build them
Developing people
Engaging, motivating, and developing team members
Providing feedback and recognition
Managing and improving processes
Clarifying roles, responsibilities, and expectations.
Seeing and eliminating waste to identify root causes and solve problems
Creating reliable, improved processes and outcomes
Teaching new processes and standardized work instructions
Measuring performance to celebrate and identify continuous improvement, learn, and adapt

We've been in these role ourselves and have learned a lot about what works and what doesn't. We are here to help.

Join International Ideas Month

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 21:14:10 GMT

Join International Ideas Month

Ahhhhh....For many of us, we've almost made it to warmth and sun. With hints of green, snowdrops, and budding branches, this is the time for new growth. It is fitting that it is also International Ideas Month, a time to raise and gather ideas for growth indoors and outdoors.

International Ideas Month was established to celebrate human ingenuity and encourage people to share and develop their thoughts. It recognizes the importance of creativity in shaping industries, cultures, and advancements throughout history. The observance promotes the power of ideas and how they can lead to meaningful change in society. https://www.twinkl.com/event/international-ideas-month-usa-2026

The Goal: To encourage people to stop dismissing their ideas and, instead, to nurture, share, and act on them to foster, innovation and positive change.

In high-performing organizations, ideas are the sun, rain, and fertilizer of growth. So let's use this month to increase ideas and establish daily/week idea routines. Here are a few ways to join in:

Idea 1: Gift everyone a way to capture ideas.

Ideas can come to mind anytime and disappear just as quickly. Provide everyone an easy way to capture ideas (e.g.; a pack of post-its, a notebook, team huddle boards , or virtual idea board files/software).

Encourage capturing all ideas, without filtering. A 'bad' idea can fertilize a better idea. If identifying ideas is difficult, start by capturing problems - wastes, challenges, hurdles, obstacles, mishaps, pain points, burdens, issues, troubles, and struggles. Ideas grow from solving problems .

Idea 2: Convene to discuss and evaluate ideas.

Provide opportunities for everyone to engage in sharing and building on ideas. Use active listening and communication skills to support fruitful discussions. No "That's a bad idea." or "That won't work."

When evaluating ideas, lock in buy-in by answering:

What level of impact will it have on solving a problem compared to other ideas?
Do we have the resources to try it?

We are here to provide support with problem-solving training, coaching, and assistance.

Idea 3: Try out the idea + Implement it.

If the idea makes life better, give it a try. If the idea involves others, test it to validate the idea's value and build confidence an d buy-in.

Trying and implementing one good idea is better than talking about several. As Aristotle said, Success breeds success".

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains it original dimension. –Oliver Wendell Holmes

Improvement Creates Fun, Satisfaction, and Results!

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:55:05 GMT

Improvement Creates Fun, Satisfaction, and Results!

Goal: To learn how creating good change not only drives results but also increases job satisfaction.

By: (agenda)

What this looks like
Creating the environment

1.Set Focus, Expectations, & Measures

2.Listen

3.Solve Problems

4.Eliminate Barriers

5. Provide Feedback

Return on Investment (ROI) - Prioritization technique

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:16:42 GMT

Prioritize Impact with a Return on Investment

There is so much we would like to accomplish. Time and resources are often limited. A simple return on investment (ROI) calculation aids in prioritization, ensuring we are using our time, team members, and equipment to create the biggest impact and results.

BENEFITS OF A RETURN ON INVESTMENTS CALCULATION

Decide if change/improvement is worthy.
Gain support (leaders, team members, stakeholders).
Create engagement and commitment to the change.
Communicate and celebrate success.
Refine/validate goal & targets.

CALCULATING A RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI)

ROI is a measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment. Return on Investment is Total Benefit / Total Cost.

Total benefits include both hard (reduced costs, more customers, increased revenue) and soft (more capacity, better productivity, freed up labor time, and other benefits to be realized with a future change).

Total costs include purchases, expenses, capital, or additional labor to create the benefits.

Aim for a ROI calculations >=1, on a one-year look-ahead is good. consider mult-year look-aheads for capital investments. See example -

WHEN TO CALCULATE A RETURN ON INVESTMENT

Strategic and Annual project planning
Validating a change or any improvement activity
In a Project to select, validate, and celebrate gained improvements.

DEPARTING TIPS

Use ROI to say YES / NO to changes. If the ROI is not >=1, return to the team's prioritization to look for additional benefits or other changes.
Some projects with low ROI are enabling. These may be needed to accelerate or achieve future benefits, customer impact.
Gain the skills and templates:
Mini training (#24)
Green Belt / Project leader training
Annual improvement planning
Strategic planning
1-1 coaching / technical assistance

Core Competencies - A Competitive Advantage

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 15:03:51 GMT

Building our people's competencies is one of our greatest competitive advantages.

Core competencies are the knowledge, skills, abilities, and technologies that people need to successfully fulfill their role/position. Strategies, tools, and technology help, but they don’t create lasting performance on their own. People do. When we invest in building skills and confidence in our workforce, we unlock better results, stronger teams, and a culture of improvement.

Everyone is unique, and every role requires specific capabilities. The good news: there is common set of core skills that benefit everyone, regardless of position. When time or workforce development budgets are limited, these skills are a great place to start.

Below are the nine core skills that elevate individuals, teams, and organizations.

1. WORKING WITH OTHERS COMMUNICATION

Build skills in active listening, clarifying, & confirming what is heard before interrupting with an opinion, offering constructive feedback, & hitchhiking so conversations are a win‑win.

RESULTS: Teams report a 10- 20% increase in productivity. More on this skills

2. GOAL SETTING

Build skills in writing effective goal statements to help individuals, teams define what they aim to achieve in discussions, meetings, & projects.

RESULTS: Clarity, focus, streamlined work, speed to completion & results. No goal, no meeting! More on this skill + A Goal setting guide

3. MEASURING PERFORMANCE

Build skills in identifying meaningful measures, pulling data, visualizing, & using measures to guide performance, improvements, projects, teams. People like to know how they’re doing; measures answer: Are we working on the right things? How close are we to our goals? What can we celebrate? What should we improve / do next?

RESULTS: Measures provide the feedback needed to acknowledge, celebrate, learn, and continue growing. More on this skill + Webinar on this skill

4. DATA-BASED PROBLEM SOLVING & DECISION MAKING

High‑performing teams rely on data—not brainstorming—to evaluate situations. Build the skills to identify issues and wastes, prioritize them, & use root cause analysis to find solutions that prevent recurrence.

RESULTS: More problems solved. Less recurring problems. Strengthened decision quality. Speed to changes. More on Problem Solving + Problem solving blog + Webinar on Decision Making

5. VALUE & WASTE DETECTION

Build skills in seeing value & waste in process & the environment. Once waste is visible, it becomes difficult to ignore, & leads to “How can we make this better or create more value?”

RESULTS: More focus on increasing what the customer values. More ideas, innovation, and opportunties to improve performance. Less personal attacks. Find the value and waste , use improvement methods to systematically increase value & eliminate waste

6. ACTION PLANNING

Build consistent 'what next' thinking, acting, & communicating skills. Conversations include - What to do? By whom? By when? What does the output look like? Build this skill into discussions, meetings, & projects plans.

RESULTS: Accountability, clarity, ownership, actions completed. Speed to change / improvement.

7. TEACHING & COACHING OTHERS

Build skills in effectively sharing & transferring knowledge from peers, supervisors, and trainers. Adults learn best by hands-on doing. Adopt the adult learning principles of tell, show, do, & be there to provide constructive feedback.

RESULTS: Onboarding speed. consistent knowledge, skills, abilities locked in, and more confidence to perform. More on teaching skill + Webinar on coaching

8. LEARNING FROM PERFORMANCE

Build the skills to capture & apply learnings to avoid repeating the same situations. Reflect with - How did we do? What was good or bad? What did we learn? What will we do differently next time? This can take a few minutes after a discussion, a meeting, during a project, or following an event.

RESULTS: Save time, resources, frustrations and preserve benefits and institutional knowledge gained. More on this skill

9. OPERATIONALIZE SOLUTIONS & CONTINUALLY
The final skill is finishing strong—making changes stick. This means embedding changes into daily work by documenting the change, teaching others, measuring performance, providing ongoing feedback & coaching.
RESULTS: Good use of resources, benefits realized, a can-do mentality, & sustainable improvement becomes part of the culture. Webinar on this skill

When we invest in people, we invest in performance. These nine skills create a consistent path to a stronger, more capable, higher-performing workforce. The results of these skills are clear: better results/outcomes, better teamwork, and a workplace where improvement is not just possible—it’s unstoppable.

Wastes and Value - Why They are Important to Performance

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 18:37:30 GMT

WASTES and VALUE - Why They are Important to Performance?

Value and wastes are a crucial part of improving performance. Wastes consume our time and resources without bringing value. Join in to gain more concepts and approaches to use Waste and Value.

By: (agenda) a. What they are: Value, Waste and its 9 categories, b. Why they are important. c. How to use them for more improvement, d. Examples of successful waste reduction and value addition.

Overcoming Speed Bumps on the Journey to a Culture of Improvement

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 18:11:45 GMT

Overcoming Speed Bumps on the Journey to a Culture of Improvement

We all experience speed bumps that slow progress toward a culture of improvement. A high-performing culture is a journey that spans years. Building a high-performing culture of improvement takes time, dedication, reinforcement, and the ability to overcome speed bumps that slow meeting and exceeding desired results. See some culture of improvement characteristics:

The Speed Bumps

These speed bumps aren’t just when implementing improvements and changes; they often appear earlier in the journey, in the way we identify gaps, set priorities, and analyze root causes. Recognizing and addressing the obstacles early makes the journey smoother. See steps in below image.

Where are our Speed Bumps

In Step 0, if leaders or team members do not believe they have a gap or need to improve - the journey cannot begin.
If in Step 1 we brainstorm fun and personal problems to address we will likely miss focusing on the more impactful gaps that will significantly advance our needed outcomes. In other words, we'll be a few miles ahead, tired and out of gas. System-wide process gap identification & prioritization
Step 2 is like topping off the oil when it gets low rather than addressing the root of the oil problem. Oh, the power of a deep root cause analysis ! If we're not achieving our needed results use the 5 Whys to get a deeper understanding to identify better strategies to address gaps / problems.
With speed bumps in Steps 0-1-2-3 resolved 4. Implementation will have less obstacles and more support and resources. Additionally, continual improvement and change methods are the sweet treats and caffeine boosters along the journey because they help solve problems/close gaps faster, easier, and better results.
Measuring the journey to a culture of improvement provides us feedback, additional gaps to address (prepare for the next year's journey), and provide celebration opportunities! Measures often include - People : Turnover, Engagement (# Improvement ideas and projects, participation), Productivity. Process : Utilization of processes and systems, Capacity. Performance : Strategic (long-term) and annual (short-term) outcomes are achieved/exceeded, More & happier customers.

Overcoming these Speed Bumps

So many successful strategies exist to address and remove these speed bumps before or when they arise. As we attempt to share helpful, simple, and practical strategies it looks more like a book with many chapters than a blog. Here are some prior blogs/webinars with strategies: How to support & destroy high performance , High-performing work that is fun , Leading high performing teams & organization . When you’re ready to remove, go around, or smooth out the speed bumps, we’re here with proven strategies and hands-on support.

Creating More Change Buy-In & Engagement: Turning Resistance into Results

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 21:27:47 GMT

Creating More Change Buy-In & Engagement: Turning Resistance into Results

Change is inevitable, buy-in and engagement are not. No matter the size, scope, or level of the organization, the real challenge is inspiring people to engage and buy into change.

Why Buy-in to Change and Engagement Matters

When leaders create buy-in, the benefits cascade throughout the organization—professionally and personally. Teams and Leaders achieve goals more effectively, individuals feel valued, and customers are happier with services and products. In short, engagement creates a win-win-win-win for everyone involved. See some of the benefits others have gained:

Strategies to Create More Change Buy-in and Engagement

1. Increase Leadership Buy-In

Leaders are more likely to be motivated and support change when they see how it aligns with their goals. Leaders want to stay relevant, achieve goals efficiently and effectively, and be seen as innovators—not followers. Keep in mind, our uniqueness. Our uniqueness does lead to different buy-in approaches; some leaders are extrinsically motivated (reputation, recognition, avoiding negative outcomes) where others are intrinsically motivated (personal growth, helping others, satisfaction in a job well done). Framing change as a way to enhance organizational performance and personal leadership impact is key.

2. Understand the Change and the Impact of the Change

Understanding who supports change—and who doesn’t—is essential. A stakeholder analysis framework ( link to more and image below ) helps a. to identify both individual or group support levels and impact, b. uncover concerns and needs, and c. most importantly to develop influence strategies that meet people where they are. For example, a leadership team with low support of the change but high impact on the change may need real-world examples and how this impacts their role and helps support the accomplish their goals.

3. Get Everyone Bought-In and Engaged

With strategy 1 and 2 in place change buy-in and engagement can begin. Buy-in and engagement are developed when people feel respected, heard, connected, empowered, supported, and given opportunities. Opportunities to gain this can include:

Establishing clear roles, expectations, and how to contribute pain points and ideas to improve.

Helping people see the purpose beyond the task and how they impact the mission, vision, values.

Enabling data-driven decision-making at team and individual work levels.

Skill-building and developmental assignments to learn and grow more.

Providing timely and meaningful feedback along with recognition and celebration.

Participating in important improvement projects (team, cross-functional, and system-wide problem-solving).

Providing time to teach, coach, mentor, and develop team members.

 Where to look for Engagement: Try out these bingo cards, to identify behaviors. What card is filled first? What opportunities are needed?

Recognizing these behaviors helps leaders respond with targeted support and opportunities. Leaders that role model their commitment, understanding, and provide opportunities and places for people to succeed will gain more buy-in. When engagement is high, everyone benefits! To explore how Continual Impact can help create more buy-in and engagement connect with us.

Performance below Expectations Webinar

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 20:13:55 GMT

Access to training materials, template, and practice:
1 . Mini training module

2. Supervisor skill development

3. Leading a culture of improvement

Performance below Expectations Webinar

Ugh! A team member's performance is not what is expected or needed. Join in to learn the 5-step process to do some problem solving, improve relations, and together identify corrective actions to improve performance.

Goal -

TO: Increase my knowledge and skills to help my team members when performance does not occur as needed or expected.

BY: Team member problem solving process and guide

SO THAT: I can improve communications, relations, personal and team performance.

The Improvement Infrastructure

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 20:36:18 GMT

Change is accelerating, and with it comes both opportunity and challenge. Improvement is part of every organization, team, and individual conversation—but the question is: do we have the right infrastructure to make change faster, easier, and better? Let's explore what “improvement infrastructure” really means, why it matters, and how it works in practice.

WHAT IS IMPROVEMENT

Improvement is the ongoing pursuit of helping people achieve better outcomes - often beyond historical norms and beyond what is thought possible. Improvement has many names - Continual Improvement, Continual Quality Improvement, Process Improvement, Continuous Improvement, Performance Improvement, Quality Improvement, Lean, Six Sigma. Call it what you'd like, as long as the improvement infrastructure supports and guides higher performance. An improvement infrastructure includes these 6 elements:

WHY IS CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT IMPORTANT

Good improvement will always create win-wins for all customers, team members, funders, and community (no trade offs). With leadership and focus it engages those that do the work in improving their work and outcomes. Read some testimonials . See image here with some benefits of creating extraordinary results:

HOW CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT WORKS

Improvement and higher performance becomes exciting, fun, easier, and more impactful when organizations adopt and lead with all six foundational elements. The good news, this is not complex, applicable for any team from 2 - 20,000 members, quite enjoyable and satisfying!

PEOPLE - Engage hearts and minds; equip them to solve organization challenges and create good change. A learning: this may be the most important element. Without our people - who do the work, know the work, and implement changes - how can you progress?! People development ideas Core Skills
LEADERS - Providing support with processes, systems, structure, expectations, and create the ‘we can’t fix a problem if we don’t talk about it’ environment. Supporting performance ideas
Providing FOCUS on our value-add to identify data-driven priority gaps and align resources to achieve goals and accelerate performance results. Focus & alignment ideas
Use proven, data-driven METHODS to solve problems faster and better.
When researching improvement, methods may be in the forefront. There are methods for everyone (foundational) and methods for those facilitating improvements, aka CI Champions (advanced).
Identifying waste will lead to the improvement method(s) that will solve the problem most effectively and efficiently.
A learning: using methods or one element alone will not ensure improvement success.
Continually LEARNING from everyone, everywhere to improve more.
IMPLEMENTING what is prioritized with measures, standardized work, training, coaching, and feedback systems.

More on these 6 elements - Tarot Cards (have fun exploring the six elements, each card reveals insights for building your infrastructure. or Organization assessment webinar to self-assess current infrastructure. There are many more technical and social aspects to improvement, let us know if interested in going deeper. A good resource - Lean Champion Resource Guide .

By building a strong improvement infrastructure and empowering teams to improve one process at a time, teams can continually achieve extraordinary results. See 1 example here -

Using Performance Measures

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 19:07:18 GMT

Using Performance Measures

Performance measurement isn’t just about numbers—it’s about change. Performance measures aid organizations to stay focused on the mission / vision, goals, plus when / where to change and improve. When done well, performance measures becomes a shared language of progress that helps guide everyone toward higher performance.

Much time and resources are spent measuring performance. Today we explore this requested topic.

First, performance measures are important to use. They provide:

Status: A clear snapshot of status and progress toward goals.
Answers: Insight into what’s working, what’s not, and why.
Motivation: Feedback to continually strive toward the desired performance.
Guidance: Direction for improvement, innovation, and strategic alignment.

Without measures individuals may not know if they are working on the right items and doing them well, teams don't know if their performance is meeting expectations, and organizations don't know if they are meeting / delighting customer and community wants and needs. Performance measures enables the shift from "I THINK we're good" to "I KNOW we're good".

OK, we've established performance measures are important to USE. Let's explore Creating and Gathering performance measures.

Creating performance measures may be the most challenging. The desire is to create measures that are truly meaningful. This is where hoshin kanri (interlocking of goals and measures) provides the structure to begin at the organization level and methodically working through departments, teams, and individuals. Establishing the linkage, line of sight, throughout the organization helps to clarify what and how to measure. See image of hoshin kanri approach here -

With organization strategies established, departments and teams can use these strategies to create meaningful goals measures of their performance, that support the achievement of the organization's strategies.

What to measure? The simple answer is a 3-5, no more than 8 measures with a focus on answering what is our goals and how will we know if we're achieving our goals?

Quality: How effective are we? (Value excellence, process reliability)
Cost: How efficient are we? (resource and budget utilization)
Delivery: How do we provide services/products? (process times, output volumes)
Flexibility: How adaptable are we? (Shift resources to meet changes in customer needs. Advancing the knowledge, skills, and capabilities of individuals/teams.)

Measures can also be found in work processes, in external vs. internal views, organization elevation, and areas of focus.

Each measures include what it is, how to measure, current performance, and target so that users of the measures know where we are and where we want to go.

TIP: Test measures before gathering and using performance data.

The last step in creating measures is to test them from varied perspectives can save time and resources. Is the measure: 1. Specific and interpretable? 2. Relevant and timely (back to hoshin kanri & interlocking goals and measures)?, 3. Statistically reliable and valid?, 4. Have no negative consequences? 5. Accepted and trusted by those being measured? 6. Have available data to measure? 7. Low waste/cost/time to measure?

A Gathering performance measures learning: The frequency of performance measures varies with the organization level. Team and individual measures provided daily, weekly, monthly help keep the focus. Department measures are typically monthly, quarterly to support the progress of teams and individuals. Organization measures can be quarterly - annually to know the organization's performance progress.

In conclusion:

Performance measures are very important!
When creating measures
Consider beginning with the organization's long term strategies and work through the organization structure to identify meaningful performance measures that support the long term strategies with daily activities. With the strategies, ask each department, team, individual these 2 questions - What are our goals to support the strategies? How we will know if we've achieved these goals?
Find the vital few performance measures; beginning with quality, cost, deliver, and flexibility may help.
USE the performance measures! Keep them visible! (team huddles, dashboard / scoreboards). Use them to identify areas of growth, improvement, and good changes. (So much more on this topic! Including use of data in strategic, annual planning, team planning, individual workforce development planning) to identify projects and changes to close the biggest gaps.

Organization Assessment Tools Webinar

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 18:30:57 GMT

Organization Assessment Tools Webinar

Organization assessments help identify our strengths and weakness to address (aka improve). There are many assessments in the toolkit, as shown below. This webinar focuses on 4 of the asssessment tools

1.Organization Culture Evaluation

2.Organization Culture of Quality Self-Assessment Diagnostic

3.Team Assessment

4.Meeting Power Scale

A Meeting's Magic Dust

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 16:14:51 GMT

Much of our time is spent in meetings. How many meetings are truly valuable and worth our precious time? Let's explore meetings and the magic dust to create focused and value-added meetings.

Meetings - THE GOOD

Meetings provide designated time for collaboration, problem-solving, and making decisions.
Better trust, relationships, alignment, and agreement on actions.
Clear goals, agendas, responsibilities, and expectations aid organization progress, innovation, and outcomes.

Meetings - THE BAD

Vague agendas with unclear purpose or expected outcomes.
Energy draining, with disengaged or passive contribution.
Meetings go rouge and off topic.
Lack of follow up actions, progress and ownership.

Meetings - THE UGLY

Meeting "because it is on the calendar" with no real necessity or value.
Dominated, 1-way discussions.
Confusions, frustration, & more questions than decisions or actions.
Erodes trust in leadership and the objectives.

A well-defined goal statement converts a meeting from a time-consuming obligation into value creation. A goal statement provides a meeting's objective/purpose, with a set approach or agenda to align participants, stay focused, and meet the objective. We seek to hear "That meeting was worth my time." "That meeting was valuable." "Yes, let's keep this meeting!."

Learning from successful and unsuccessful meetings have led to the importance of defining and including these 6 components in a goal statement:

An example: Team Huddle Meeting

The Goal is TO: Conduct our routine team huddle.

FOR: Our team members

SO THAT: Together, we advance our team's performance.

STANDARDS:

- Meeting time, 15 minute (target)

-Everyone participates, >12 items raised per team member per quarter (target)

CONDITIONS: We agree on changes that will help. Someone takes ownership of testing and implementing the changes.

BY (Agenda):

1. Review team performance measures' trends.

2. Share current pain points/problems/wastes, questions, successes.

3. Discuss how to solve the problems, identify actions, ownership, and timing.

4. Review progress of previously identified actions.

5. Celebrate team successes.

In conclusion: Ask for meeting goal statements! Adopt a goal statement template for consistency! Use a goal statement for all meetings (team, 1-1, project, etc.)! A fun result - if a goal statement cannot be defined, the meeting is likely not needed!

 No Goal Statement = No Meeting!

We freed up another 176 hours +

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 18:02:43 GMT

"We freed up another 176 hours,
+ Improved working relationships,
+ Created a better customer experience."

Yes, this statement is real. It is the result of applying continual improvement team-based, problem-solving. Wouldn't we all like to free up team time to work on more important / value-adding activities?!

Today let's explore the benefits of continual improvement and who gains these benefits.

WHAT is Continual Improvement: It is helping people make things better

(continually eliminating waste/bringing more value to customers) at a rate greater than before.

HOW Continual Improvement works: Using people-culture approaches and improvement methods to guide effective and efficient problem solving and provide benefits for customers, team members, society and the shareholders or funding sources (achieving a win–win for all stakeholders). It is the best of Continuous Improvement, Quality Improvement, Performance Improvement, Lean, Six Sigma. Link to more CI methods

WHY is Continual Improvement needed: To create thriving and sustainable success for the organization, teams, individuals, and all stakeholders (invested/impacted partners). More success stories

Continual Improvement = EVERYONE Wins

Let's review some continual improvement successes to learn what is possible and how others freed up team time to work on more important / value-adding activities.

Let's explore those who benefit from these successes and what is in it for them:

We hope the improvements and results others have achieved inspires you to prioritize continual improvement and create even more win-win changes and results. Interested in more improvement? LET'S TALK!

BETTER OUTCOMES - HOW TO GET THEM FASTER & EASIER

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 01:41:38 GMT

BETTER OUTCOMES - HOW TO GET THEM FASTER & EASIER

GOAL: To gain the tried and proven approach to gain more results.

SO THAT: Outcomes are achieved faster, easier, and often above expectations.

BY: Logic Model of Outcomes, Process gaps/wastes, improvement methods and achieving results.

Enjoy the 30 minute webinar

Effective Goals and Measures

Thu, 15 May 2025 19:25:08 GMT

A best known way to be more focused and accomplish more begins with a well written goal statement with measures of success. This course is part of Continuous Improvement Yellow Belt , Green Belt , aka CI Project Leader, Supervisor Skill Development , and most improvement methods .

Goal:

To develop additional knowledge and skills in establishing and using good goal statements along with measures of success for meetings, projects, plans, team charters, or problem solving.

Benefits:

Discussions are more focused.
Increased alignment, buy-in, and commitment.
More is accomplished, in less time.
Decisions are clearer.
More productive meetings & projects.

Agenda:

4 hours of training and templates, with application.

Goal Setting

When, where, and how to set a goal.
Writing a good goal statement, all components.
Practice; give & receive feedback on goal statements.

Measurement

Identifying
Selecting
Defining
Visualizing
Using measures

Using Data to Drive Decisions

Tue, 13 May 2025 21:04:28 GMT

Using Data to Drive Decisions

Reliable and trust worthy data helps make decision making faster, easier, and with more agreement. Data exists to help at all levels from individual - team - organization performance. Let's explore organizational level data; what data is around us and how to use it drive decisions. Listening to our voices to gather data; voices of the Customer, Organization, Processes, Our People, and Learnings provides a wealth of focused data.

1. Gather CUSTOMER data here:

Log, trend, and routinely use take on CUSTOMER Data-Driven themes
Requests / Wishes / Complaints
Service / Product performance (defects, errors, "I wish xxx was offered also.")
Experience performance (long wait times, complicated processes, poor relations)
# of population or area not serviced (growth opportunity)

2. PEOPLE Data and Decisions

Collect data from these “listening posts” (right image)
Perform analysis of data and affinity analysis of comments
Identify key themes
Make decisions
Take actions
Measure impact of actions on People performance.

3. ORGANIZATION Data to Identify Priority Decisions

Existing work has identified key decisions and needed outcomes; confirm, communicate, and use these to align resources.

4. PROCESS Data + Maps to Identify Actions and Decisions

Process maps are a fairly quick and effective way to identify process data and decide what priority gaps to address. See data, below, identified in process maps. More on process mapping . Recent blogs/webinars on this topic .

Creating More Change Buy-in & Engagement Webinar

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 18:57:46 GMT

GOAL: To gain more ideas to create more change buy-in and engagement.

AGENDA: sharing best known strategies to

1. Increase leadership buy-in for teams to spend time improving performance.

2. Get team members excited/engaged.

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Why Now is the Best Time for Continuous Improvement

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 16:55:09 GMT

Why Now is the Best Time for Continuous Improvement

The future is uncertain—tomorrow, next month, or next year could bring changes we can’t fully predict. What we do know is that our team members are struggling to stay focused amidst challenges and anxieties. Change is inevitable, even if we don’t always know the specifics of when, how, or whom it will impact. Rather than wait, let’s act now. Let’s refocus the team on meaningful and value-driven opportunities to help them emerge stronger from these turbulent times.

It may seem counterintuitive, but this unsettled environment is a golden opportunity to lead the innovation and improvement of processes and systems, and strengthen teams impact. By seizing this moment, we can position teams to thrive and sustain.

Re-Focus Today

If you know us @ Continual Impact , we champion focus—whether it’s aligning resources to close priority gaps, setting strategic and annual goals, or clarifying objectives with specific goals. Without focus, there is often confusion, missed opportunities, and wasted effort on the way to the team's vision. Today, our call for focus has a different emphasis. In the midst of significant change, it’s about focusing on what truly matters now, not in 1, 3, or 5 years. This is your moment to get re-focused and emerge stronger.

Aligning Teams Around Value

Every team, individuals, and organizations exists to provide value through services or products, whether paid or free. Value is defined by the customer. When teams concentrate on delivering and increasing that value, they feel a deeper sense of purpose and struggle less with uncertainty because they know their work matters. By following the path of value, teams delight customers and create a more sustainable team and organization.

Focusing on Providing More Value

Share the Value: Identify the value teams are providing and communicate this with all stakeholders—team members, leaders, customers, and funders. Take it further by sharing measures of success, such as quality, volume, and customer experience metrics.

Identify Pain Points: Use these values and performance measures to uncover activities that consume resources but don’t contribute to creating value, aka Pain Points. Engage the team in identifying these pain points like frustrations, recurring errors, wastes and process performance problems. As the ones closest to the work, team members are uniquely positioned to help identify and provide ideas to resolve these barriers.

Seek Help: Continuous improvement and process improvement methods exist for this purpose. Empirical evidence shows these methods help teams address pain points faster, easier, and with better results.

Strengthening Through Courage and Action

With courage, determination, and a collaborative focus on increasing value while removing barriers, teams can navigate these challenges and emerge stronger than before.

We are here to listen and provide ideas and assistance. please do not hesitate to reach out. --LINK--

Efficiency is successful if

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 19:47:33 GMT

Many of us are hearing and experiencing a lot of recent changes occurring under the term EFFICIENCY. Efficiency is defined as the ability to achieve a desired outcome with minimal resources, effort, or waste.

Let's explore what activities help to create good Efficiency.

As we reflect on our learnings from past successes and failures, these activities continue to bubble up when striving to increase the team's efficiencies:

1. The idiom, "don't throw the baby out with the bath water", applies when seeking more efficiency. Before jumping into changes, identify the work processes, systems, and structural VALUE ADDING activities. There are activities that the end customer values (desired outcomes that helps them solve a problem or advance their efforts, at a good cost) AND helps ensure good quality (1st time complete & correct). More on finding value.

2. With value identified, challenge all other activities. These non-value activities are referred to as efficiency WASTE . Waste is an activity, system design, and structural set up that does not bring value. Some wastes can be easier to identify and change, e.g., data entry errors, searching for information, or 5 approval signatures. Things in place because of rules, regulations, policies, or "because we've always done it this way" does not make the thing valuable. Understanding and challenging some waste may take more data. More on challenging waste.

3. People continue to be the ��️. Involve customers and doers of the work to identify work processes, systems, and structure value, wastes, suggested changes / improvements to gain real, practical changes that will stick and create the needed efficiency. This also significantly improves excitement and buy-in to the agreed upon changes. More on engaging people in improving efficiency.

4. Implementing changes to improve efficiency has proven challenging for some. The root of the challenges may be found in the above 3 activities. Additional steps to help effectively implement efficiency changes include a. document instructions on how to work in this new way, b. teach everyone, c. measure the changes, d. be there to provide coaching and assistance, and e. celebrate progress and efficiency gains. More on effective implementation of change.

Flow Method Introduction webinar

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 19:45:26 GMT

Flow CI Method Introduction webinar

Watch to gain an introduction of the Flow method (advanced improvement method) so that I can see improvement opportunities where using the advanced continuous improvement method, Flow, can increase my team's capacity and speed..

Agenda:

What is Flow
Where to use the Flow method
Flow concepts
How to apply Flow
Benefits of using the Flow method to create big improvements

If we are not learning/adapting, we are at the risk of being left behind.

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 15:14:24 GMT

"I think things are good." or "We've been doing it this way for years; it is good for us." This is what we hear. Which leads to: Are we really good? Is there a need to change / improve?

If we are not learning/adapting, we are at the risk of being left behind.

2025 is the year of the Wood Snake. When reading about this zodiac, it highlights and symbolizes growth, renewal, adaptability, and encouraging people to reflect on their paths, embrace change, and seek personal growth.

In our world of helping others improve performance (teaching, coaching, facilitating), we can relate to this. So often we hear organizations, teams, and individuals accept what is not so good. "It is out of our control" or "This is not worth our time". One manager's process was selected as a continuous improvement Kaizen demonstration project . The manager resisted during the preparation and during the project launch. On day 2 the team mapped out and shared their true work processes, challenges, ideas, and improvement opportunities. The manager was stunned; they didn't know what they didn't know. Plus the desired improvements were in the team's control! It was very enlightening for the manager and the team. This joint learning resulted in personal growth, better than expected improvements (time & quality), and it instilled the desire to be part of the changes that were a win-win for them and their customers.

What to do in 2025 to grow, renew, and adapt?

1. Challenge everything!

Take on the value-waste challenge
Identify and agree on the value we bring (as a team or individual).
Look at all other activities and tasks as wasteful. If it is not value it is waste that consumes our precious time and resources without bringing value.
Seek and adopt ways to decrease these wastes. This will result in less time to perform a task, better quality, and happier team & customers. Note, improvement methods can help you achieve this faster, easier, and with bigger results.

2. Go for big win-win change!

Look across the system to identify big gaps and pain points.
Convene cross-system teams to close these gaps together.
And, please, set a big goal! How about a 50% reduction in errors vs. a 5% target? A lofty goal can encourage the team to think differently and bring more innovative improvements.
Again, tried and true improvement & change methods can help you achieve this faster, easier, and with bigger results.

3. Embrace changes and help others!

Help others �� see gaps in the way work is current done. Help others ��see what a new way of working looks like so they want to leave the current way and try a new approach.
Relate the personal impact of the change. Communicate the WIIFM - What is in it for me.
Provide the time and information needed to understand and embrace the change. Keep in mind everyone's perspectives are unique; therefore changes are embraced at different times and for different reasons.
Use the change process as a guide.

4. Celebrate and continue!

Building on successes and learnings from these 3 steps, continue on the path to higher performance (hopefully with only wooden toy snakes)!

Nonconformance Event Management Process

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 18:21:18 GMT

Nonconformance Management Process Training

Utiliizing a Nonconformance Management Process is part of the organization's QUALITY MANAGEMENT.

A Nonconformance is any occurrance when something does meet expectations, standards, or requirements OR the potential exists to compromise safety, quality, or deviation from what is required. The nonconformance management process provides a structured approach to identify why the nonconformance occurred and the actions to eliminate the progress from reoccurring.

GOAL: To increase the knowledge, skills, and confidence to guide nonconformance identification, management, elimination, & documentation.

BENEFITS of training:

Identify themes and trends to address prioirty error.
Eliminate problems.
Prevent recurrences!
Maintain accreditiations.
Happier customers. Happier team members.
Create a better work environment and processes.
Increase sharing and learning across the team.
Have some fun solving problems.
More buy-in to changes.

Agenda (1-hour introduction):

What is Nonconformance Management
Why is this Important
The Life of a Nonconformance
A process to follow when team members do not perform as needed or expected.

Agenda (8-hour training with immediate application):

Note: Each participant brings a nonconformance to the session to work through and leave with actions to implement.

Process overview and terminology
Identifying a nonconformance.
Evaluating the nonconformance risks
Performing root cause analysis
Identifying actions & prioritizing their power/impact
Effective implementation of actions

Helping Others Embrace Change

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 20:15:07 GMT

Helping Others Embrace Change

Sharing the process, tips, and techniques to help others prepare for & embrace changes during this webinar.

Techniques to Understand the Impact & Prepare for Change. Many exist however there are some simple and powerful ones:

Transition curve (showcased during this webinar)
Stakeholder Analysis (showcased during this webinar)
Cause and Effect; 5 Whys (showcased during this webinar)
Vision; Vision to Actions
Force Field
Threat vs. Opportunity Matrix
Diagnostic Tools
Team assessments
Systems and structures analysis
Employee engagement assessments
Communications
Communication strategy plans
Structures for individual communications (ROAMMM)
Elevator Speeches

Top Gifts of Knowledge (Idea-Generating Blogs & Webinars)

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 18:49:21 GMT

During this season of giving, please enjoy the top gifts of knowledge (idea-generating blogs & webinars),

as rated by you!

Advancing People Skills & Relations

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 16:18:05 GMT

Advancing People Skills & Relations

As requested, this month stays focused on building more leadership skills. As a leader (one who guides or influences the work of others), people skills and relationships are critical to team performance and engagement. Good relations prevent problems from occurring and recurring!

The Benefits of Better Relations

Get These Benefits by Using These 6 Leadership Principles*:

1) TREAT PEOPLE AS INDIVIDUALS.

They are different and it affects them on the job.
With consistent applications of team and organzation policies.

2) BE DECENT.

Treat each member fairly.
With the respect and dignity that everyone deserves.

3) LET EACH TEAM MEMBER KNOW HOW THEY ARE DOING.

What is expected vs. performance.
Together, identify ways to help them improve.

4) GIVE CREDIT WHEN DUE.
Look for extra or unusual performance.
Tell the person while it's “hot”.

5) TELL TEAM MEMBERS IN ADVANCE ABOUT CHANGES THAT WILL AFFECT THEM.

Tell them both what and why, if possible.
Work with them to accept the change.

6) MAKE THE BEST USE OF EACH TEAM MEMBER'S ABILITY.

Look for abilities not now being used. Provide growth opportunities.
Never stand in a person's way.
Good relations with each team member come from an environment with clear responsibilities, transferring knowledge / skills / abilities, and creating the setting.

A few Behaviors, Actions, & the Environment to Help Build Relations are listed below.

Please share what you are doing to build better relations.

*These principles of good people relations, still relevant today, became a popular training component in the US government's "Training with Industries" 1941-1945 supervisor training program. Continual Impact and others continue to improve, teach, and utilize these impactful people concepts.

Writing a Great Goal

Mon, 04 Nov 2024 15:06:24 GMT

The Importance of Setting Goals and How They Can Be Improved…

Why Care About Goals?

Studies of truly great improving organizations, ones that have a culture of improvement, typically have several characteristics. One of these characteristics is Focus . By focus, we mean that they have an understanding of their mission and do a good job of identifying strategies in the priority areas of the organization to improve. They are clear at the leadership, management, and individual contributor level as to the actions required to implement their strategies and each individual in the organization understands their role in implementing the actions very real and daily basis.

Take, for example, a Franklin Covey and Harris Interactive poll of over 10,000 U.S. workers which found only:

37% say they understand the reason for their organization’s strategic direction
15% of workers could actually identify their organization’s top three goals
22% of workers are enthusiastic about the goals they set with their work teams
48% of workers say the goals of their work team are translated into their individual work goals  38% of workers say their work team planning results in clear assignments for individuals
38% of workers say that their work team systems and processes are aligned to help the team achieve its goals

How can an organization achieve a culture of improvement and utilize its most precious resource, it’s people, without an understanding of the organizational direction and actions needed in which to accomplish the culture?

This is Where Goal Setting is Critically Important.

Goals can effectively help focus the organization, a project or task. They can be used in establishing the mission of an organization, chartering a team, making decisions, conducting a meeting, problem-solving, or in setting personal objectives. Effective goals have a significant positive impact on the effectiveness and efficiency of any team, project, or task.

Good goal setting enables success by eliminating confusion and wandering. They enable team members’ participation. Bad goals can point in the wrong direction and ensure failure.

People and teams with goals can accomplish almost anything given time and resources…

What is A Goal Statement?

A good goal statement is a basic starting point for a team or individual to plan their work and identify whether it is successful or not- they are fundamental for success. A goal statement, properly detailed and documented defines completely the desired result. It describes the purpose, outcome or activity that must be accomplished. Organizations havee used a form of goal statement known as an “Aim statement”, as a starting point for its improvement cycle (plan, do, study, act) and improvement projects for a number of years. Different formats exist with various prompting questions and comprehensiveness of content. They have generally prompted the users to investigate 1) what is it we seek to accomplish?, 2) Who is the target team/population?, 3) How will we know that an improvement has been made (or what is the specific measure we seek to achieve)? and 4) What changes can we make that will result in improvement?

What are the Components of a Complete Goal Statement?

Consider that each useful goal statement should include the following six components:

The result to be achieved; “TO”
Who is benefiting from the goal; “FOR”
The approach, or process to be used in order to produce a result; “BY”
A list of benefits to be produced for each benefiting party; “SO THAT”
Constraints that are placed upon the project while achieving the goal; “CONDITIONS”
The success criteria or measures that define success; “STANDARDS”

How about an example?

Below is a potential goal statement for project to improve food inspection. Does it address the components of a good goal statement and explain the opportunity the team is addressing? Any questions, concerns, or suggestions for the team’s goal?

Think about the goal/Aim statements created. Do they address all of the items covered in the example? Take advantage of learning from others? What will you improve for the next one?

How to Create a Goal/Aim Statement?

Getting Ready Tasks:

It often helps to first understand what prompted the opportunity. How is this goal linked to the organization strategy or a larger goal? If it is not clear that this linkage exists, then exercise caution before starting the goal statement because it may indicate that there is not support for the effort or it may not directly align with the larger purpose.

It also helps to have a simple “picture” of the gap between the current state of the area you are addressing and what we want it to look like in the future. Think of it as understanding where we are now (current state), where we want to ultimately go (Vision) and which part of the gap the goal is addressing (Target state). There could be many improvements along the path to the Vision and it is important to know how big a step the goal represents along the path.

Describing the gap can often be done by describing in simple terms how the current process or opportunity appears to key stakeholders today and then describing how we want it to look like after the improvement activity. Note this is not a list of solutions or things to do; it is simply a “picture” of the difference between the before and after improvement.

Doing Tasks:

Draft the goal statement (six components) using the above guidance and attached template. Once drafted, test the goal statement:

Goal statements for an improvement project state the problem we're addressing in the TO section. The BY section includes the approach to be used (e.g. the improvement process (PDSA) or kaizen) and does not include potential solutions.
The FOR section contains the direct beneficiaries; make sure accomplishing the goal and achieving benefits (SO THAT) would be acknowledged by the beneficiaries as a benefit
TIP: Achieving the TO should create the SO THAT; if it does not, STOP and rethink.
TIP: If the TO and SO THAT have the same content, STOP and rethink- the first creates the second.
STANDARDS should have what, how and a target; make sure they can be practically measured and used to judge the goal.
CONDITIONS are limitations, or a must do, not a potential solution. If there are potential solutions to consider, hold onto them until the problem solving phase.
TIP: Include the time for completion as a STANDARD or a CONDITION.
TIP: Make sure that the goal statement is effectively aligned or interlocked with higher level strategies or lower level tactics. (See “Hoshin Kanri” or Hoshin planning; a powerful planning process often used during annual improvement planning to create alignment from strategic objectives to local objections and actions.) The WHAT (TO statement) and HOW (BY statement) of the different levels of goal statements should align. See example below.

Follow-up Tasks:

Document, communicate and start to use the goal statement during each phase of the improvement process.

Use the goal for communications to key stakeholders so they understand the project, and can participate effectively.
Use the goal during mapping and data collection efforts e.g. if the goal is to reduce cycle time, then data collection efforts should include identifying significant locations where the process stops. (make sure data is consistent with goal)
Use the goal to guide cause and effect analysis and prioritization of issues and solutions; high priority issues and solutions should have a high impact on goal
Use the measures in the goal statement to guide what to test and how to test the changes.
Use the TO in the goal statement as the starting point for extracting lessons learned; always close back to the goal when assessing whether the project exceeded, met or under delivered.
Start with goal statement and results of improvement for setting ongoing performance expectations and new improvement targets

Summary

Goal setting is a key method to help establish focus and increase the probability of success in an improvement project. Comprehensive goals help to align projects with organization strategies, gather support from leadership and engage team members, improve problem solving and communicate with stakeholders. Goal statements can also be powerful in helping to charter teams, make decisions, and run more effective meetings.

Enjoy the focus and happy improving!

Leading High-Performing Teams & Organization webinar

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:28:48 GMT

This webinar seeks to provide ideas/approaches to improve personal leadership skills and abilities and advance a culture of high performance.

Agenda:

- What is high-performance.

- Impact of a leader

- Team elements to nurture high-performance

People, 2. Leadership, 3. Focus, 4. Learning, 5. Implementation, 6. Methods

- Techniques and approaches to achieve high-performance.

Active Listening & Communicating

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 20:09:53 GMT

Conversations include getting and giving information; where all parties end the conversation feeling good, a win-win. Too often conversations are not win-win, instead we experience:

Not listening to or considering one another’s ideas.
Not using each others' thoughts to build better solutions.
Receiving or providing feedback that alienates the person.
Hijacking other's ideas.

Let's explore these giving and getting communication skills to create more win-win conversations -

Working With Others Active Listening & Communication Skills

Why Building These Skills is Worth Your Time

Data has shown a 10-20% team productivity increase.

More positive working relationship with peers.

Decrease the waste of rework because we did not truly understand each other.

Gain skills that enable participants to participate in teams more effectively.

Better ideas, problem solving, and solutions.

Getting Another's Point of View

1. Clarifying: Asking open ended questions to uncover the elements of what someone is thinking so that you have the complete understanding of their viewpoint. Use clarifying questions when you don't understand what the person is thinking or why he or she is sharing it with you. A tip: clarifying also helps the person sharing to better understand too.

2. Confirming: Saying in fresh terms what you understand the person has said to you. This allows you to verify that you heard the person correctly and shows the person that you understand what he or she has said. Using confirming statements to gain mutual understanding.

Giving Your View (When you have concerns &/or ideas to share)

3. Constructive Feedback: When you have a concern about something someone has shared even after you have confirmed your understanding of it. This can address concerns and build to solutions that integrate the best in one another's thinking. A tip: Always begin with recognizing the value in the idea before expressing a concern and offer a suggestion for improvement.

4. Hitchhiking: When you hear an idea and a thought pops into your mind about how to move the idea ahead or broaden its impact. This allows you to add value to other people's ideas in a way that sustains collaboration, without "hijacking" the idea. A tip: When hitchhiking on someone's thought, acknowledge them and the connection and check back with them after giving your thoughts to confirm this is a good addition.

These Working with Others skills originated from Vital Enterprises, Raphael Vitalo, James Byron, & Patricia Bierley.

Gain these skills:

Working with Others Training

Learn these skills in CI Yellow Belt

Learn these skills in Supervisor Skill Development

Making Good Decisions - The Approach & Types

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 18:48:34 GMT

It's estimated that the average adult makes more than 35,000 decisions per day. How is my decision making? How is my team's decision making? What is my Quality? Speed? Impact?

Decision Making = An Important Part of Problem Solving

Decision making is one of effective leaders' skills. Let's explore the decision making process and decision making types.

Good Decisions Don't Just Happen. Good Decision Making Relies on This Information-Based Process:

Step 1, Define the decision, helps to define and confirm the exact decision to be made. This step is important to decrease decision making ambiguity and mis-alignment. Answer these questions to define the decision and criteria: What is the decision? Why do we need a decision? How important is it? How much energy is it worth? What is the benefit of the decision: its impact and the expected result?Are there conditions, requirements, scope, impacts, relationships? When does the decision need to be made? Who is accountable for the decision?

Step 2, Determine the decision type , commensurate to the decision's speed, complexity, quality, and sensitivity. See the table for the 4 most common decision making types, below. Tip: Consensus is particularly effective when making improvement or change decisions and supporting the decision.

Step 3, Involve data and people, to eliminate gaps, legitimatize the decision, and build commitment and ownership.

Step 4, Make the decision , with the needed definition, data, and incorporated input. With decision criteria/definition and information - decisions are often clear and obvious. Less debates, more "Why were we debating this??"

Step 5, Communicate and implement , is the time to inform others of the decision and take the actions to gain the benefits from the decision.

For leadership bonus points , keep this decision making quality checklist handy to guide good decision making:

Reducing Human Error with the Mistake Proofing (Poka-Yoke) Improvement Method Webinar

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 19:22:12 GMT

Enjoy this webinar to gain a better understanding of the Poka-Yoke improvement method, including The WHAT, WHY and HOW to Get Started.

Poka Yoke - Fun to say; what does it mean?

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 19:54:43 GMT

Poka Yoke is an improvement method for decreasing human errors (Mistake Proofing) in processes, systems, and equipment.

"Ugh! I'm only human; I make mistakes. These cannot be prevented." We have heard this before. Is this acceptable? Let's challenge this human error paradigm to help get things correct and complete the first time!

Through our day, mistakes occur; from Selecting the wrong items, Omitting information, Providing wrong information, and of course, the Mises: Mis-reading, Mis-measuring, Mis-adjusting, Mis-aligning. These mistakes are small yet can have a large impact.

According to PacketLabs, top cybersecurity breaches result from human error : email misdelivery, poor password hygiene, indequate/imcomplete data patching, & poor access control.
The National Academy of Medicine "To Err Is Human" report estimated that between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die every year due to preventable adverse events.

Eliminate Human Errors with the Mistake Proofing (aka PokaYoke) Improvement Method

The Mistake Proofing method, a step by step improvement method helps a team redesign a process/product so errors CANNOT OCCUR. This includes:

A Mistake Proofing (or Poka Yoke) Device

Devices help redesign a process or piece of equipment so that it CANNOT be performed incorrectly. Consider all the devices for providing a credit card, or providing info with drop down options, or parts that only fit together one way. Here is another device we take for granted:

Error: Electrical plug oriented backwards.

Defect: Reversed electrical polarity.

Device: Make plug spades different width so reversed plug provides immediate feedback before inserting plug into outlet.

The Benefits of Eliminating Human Error: Some of our customer's error elimination successes:

More Focus: System-Wide Thinking

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 17:34:39 GMT

What is System-Wide Thinking?

System-wide is a big picture view of a process or organization/team. System-wide thinking begins with a goal or vision in mind. Next is a high level visual representation of the system from beginning to end. These high level visual representations are often called Value Stream Maps, SIPOCs (Supplier, input, processes, output, customers), and Extended Value Steam Maps.

Why use System-wide thinking?

There is much to be gained from system-wide thinking, this includes increased collaboration, role understanding/appreciation, accountability, and creating transformational opportunties. Another benefit is the ease and effectiveness of seeing needed opportunties and change.

How to use System-Wide Thinking?

1. Establish a goal.

2. Capture what supplies and starts.

3. Capture what is the final outcome / desired result.

4. Capture what are the big steps or components needed to move from the start to the end. Including what is done, by whom, information and technology that binds the activities together, and data: time, quality.

5. Take a step back to look at the entire map - where are the biggest gaps? areas of improvement/change?

6. Prioritize efforts and actions toward closing the biggest gap(s) vs. trying to do everything at the same time.

We hope you enjoy some needed focus with big-picture / system-wide thinking. Interested in more?

One cannot climb the 7,573 feet of El Capitan in Yosemite without system-wide thinking and acting. The system includes weather conditions, terrain, gear, and the climbers overall health and athleticism. All of these are needed for a successful climb. Great gear with an unfit body will not work. Poor weather and great gear presents challenges too. As a leader or supervisor of a team this big - picture / system-wide thinking can help you climb your mountain, get focused, and work on the priority details!

5S Advanced improvement method webinar

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 17:00:43 GMT

5S - Visual Controls Advanced Improvement Method Webinar

Goal: To gain more 5S understanding, examples, and excitement to try the improvement method.

Agenda: 1. What is 5S 2. Benefits of applying 5S 3. 5S method 4. Questions/ answers

Benefits: Continue to learn more about applying 5S in the workplace. Achieve application benefits and team engagement.

Quality Check: Does my Team Have the CORE SKILLS for High Performance?

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 19:45:51 GMT

Organizations aim to equip everyone with the necessary knowledge and skills for success in their roles. This encompasses both the technical expertise, improvement, and collaborative skills essential for high performance.

Let's explore these core improvement and collaborative skills needed by everyone, regardless of position, to perform roles and accomplish responsibilities.

#1. WORKING WITH OTHERS COMMUNICATION

The essential skill when working with others requres active listening and communication. This includes 'getting' communication skills of actively listening and clarifying and confirming what is heard before provide an opinion. Next is 'giving' communication skills; providing constructive feedback where both leave the conversation with a win-win. The communication skill, particularly valuable when improving and innovating is hitchhiking . Hitchhiking is building upon others ideas vs. hijacking others ideas. More on this skill

#2 GOAL SETTING

Setting goals helps to bring clarity, drive focus, and streamline tasks for quicker and smoother completion. Goals play a crucial role in the daily routines of individuals and teams, guiding them to determine what they aim to achieve today, in meetings, projects, and even in the long term, such as in 3 years. More on this skill + A Goal setting guide

#3 MEASURE PERFORMANCE

Individually and collectively it is nice to know how we're doing. Are we working on important things? How close are we to our goals and targets? Measures provide this feedback. Feedback for acknowledgement, celebration, and areas of improvement. More on this skill Webinar on this skill

#4 DATA-BASED PROBLEM SOLVING & DECISION MAKING

High-performing teams excel with this skill. Data is used to evaluate situations. All issues, wastes impacting the situation are evaluated, prioritized; followed by some root cause analysis to identify solutions that prevent the situation from recurring. Problem solving blog + More on Problem Solving + Webinar on Decision Making

#5 VALUE & WASTE DETECTION

Being able to see value and waste in the day, in work processes, and the environment is the beginning of good change. Once waste is seen, it can be difficult to unsee and will lead to how can we change this/make it better? Find the value and waste , use improvement methods to systematically increase value & eliminate waste .

#6. LEARNING FROM PEFORMANCE

Avoid repeating the same situations over by pausing to reflect a. How did we do? b. What was good / bad? c. What did we learn? d. What we will do differently to lock in the good and prevent the bad? This can be 3 minutes after a discussion, a meeting, throughout a project, and following an event or activity. More on this skill

#7 TEACHING & COACHING OTHERS

Adults excel in learning by actively engaging in tasks. When teaching and coaching others use the 4 adult learning principles: Tell the purpose and reasons, Show the learner so they see what good looks like, Have the learner Do the activity, and be there with constructive Feedback and Coaching to boost confidence and lock in the knowledge. More on teaching skill + Webinar on coaching

#8 ACTION PLANNING

When high-performing teams decide to take action, the actions include What to do, Who will do it, When will it be done, and What does the output look like. These action planning steps foster more team committment and accountability.

#9 OPERATIONALIZE SOLUTIONS & CONTINUALLY IMPROVE

This last core skill means finish what is started, finish strong, and make changes sticky. This involves embedding changes into daily work (not as a special, one off) by documenting the change, teach others, measure performance, provide feedback and coaching. Webinar on this skill

Reference: Lean Champion Resource Guide

HOW TO GAIN THESE CORE SKILLS

Performance Measurement

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 13:24:32 GMT

Effective performance measures can help individuals, teams, and leaders gain further insights to solve problems, guide actions to achieve more, and make better decisions. Performance measures that are interlocked provide alignment and focus for all program & division members, see image.

Goal of Performance Measurement training & implementation:

To increase the creation and use of performance measures.

Benefits:

More alignment, buy-in, and focus on what performance is critical to the organization units’ members and customers served.
Performance measures and data are used in decision-making.
All team members can identify with top goals and performance measures.
Top goals and measures are interlocked with team and individual performance.
Divisions and programs can use measures to more effectively communication and celebrate progress.
Better use of performance measurement system.

Agenda:

Training: 4-6 hours of education and immediate application per team or organization level.

Application and Coaching: Provided during identification, creation, and implementation.

Approach:

Understand current scope, measures, and performance measures system(s).
Training & Application
What and Why of performance measures (PM).
PM process (step by step how to)
Identifying PMs
Selecting PMs (including what to stop measuring)
Defining PMs
Represent/Chart PMs
How to use PMs

Example: Customer Service measures

5 WHYs: Only Part of Problem Solving

Thu, 16 May 2024 16:18:51 GMT

5 WHYs: Only Part of the Story & Process

When discussing problems or in an improvement project, if you are using the 5 Whys for deeper problem solving -- CONGRATULATIONS!!

5 Whys is something everyone can do (even during daily conversations). The purpose of today's blog is to go a bit deeper into solving problems and why 5 Whys is only part of the the problem-solving process. 5 Whys is the peanut butter in the sandwich.

THE FULL STORY & PROCESS

Truly getting to the root of a problem to find powerful solutions that eliminate or prevent the problem from recurring involves 5 STEPS of Cause and Effect Analysis*.

1. Define the goal of the problem to be solved.

2. Establish categories and identify issues that impact the problem.

3. Prioritize & select key issues.

4. Perform root cause analysis (5 Whys) for selected issues to identify potential solutions.

5. Prioritize & select proposed solutions.

*Cause & effective analysis also known as fishbone, Ishikawa diagram, CEDAC, APOLLO.

New Paragraph

TIPS TO STRENGTHEN PROBLEM SOLVING

1. GOAL
a. Begin with a goal.

b. Include in the goal both the aim/objective and the measure to know if the aim is achieved.

2. CATEGORIES

a. Use several categories to broaden the identification of issues. See image.

3. ISSUES

a. Stick to the facts only. If a team member says "I think..." note it and gather data to confirm.

b. All issues identified are not worth addressing. Prioritize the issues to select the 1-5 issues that impact the goal the most and happen most often.

4. THE 5 WHYS ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS

a. Ask 5 Whys on the high priority issue(s), not the goal.

b. The # of whys is not magical. Generally teams will uncover roots and new solutions around 5 Whys; sometimes 2 or 8 whys are needed.

c. When the team is done answering why, ask one more why to challenge paradigms, knowns, & unknowns.

5. SOLUTIONS

a. This is the time for brainstorming. Using the root causes diagrams to see all potential solutions; putting silly ideas on the table provides team members ideas to build upon.

b. Again, all solutions are not good. Prioritize the solutions that have the highest impact on achieving the goal and are quick, easy, and low cost.

c. Check back to the goal. Will these goals produce the desired goal and measures?

Gain Ideas & Approaches to Building More Team Member Engagement Webinar

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 20:55:14 GMT

Gain ideas & approaches to building more team member engagement Webinar

GOAL: Gain ideas & approaches to building more team member engagement.

By (agenda): What impacts engagement. How to increase engagement.

BENEFITS: I get excited to implement more team member engagement ideas. Implemented engagement ideas increase teamwork, communication, productivity, with decreased stress & frustration.

Access Engagement Resources

Build Leader & Supervisor skills
Teach & Use core skills, including active communication (Working with Others)
Create standard work processes & performance measures
Establish team huddles
Provide engagement opportunities (participate or lead problem-solving, changes)
Provide focus & direction with strategic & annual plans + projects

Engaging All Team Members

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 17:12:35 GMT

ENGAGING ALL TEAM MEMBERS

ENGAGEMENT builds retention, pride, ownership, and better results for everyone. Engagment helps everyone achieve individual and team potential = High performance. Engagement is critical to long-term success.

WHAT IS ENGAGEMENT?

Positive behavior or a positive state of mind at work that leads to positive work-related outcomes. Employees with high levels of work engagement are energetic and dedicated to their work and immersed to their work.
Commitment to helping the organization achieve its goals. It's demonstrated by how employees think, feel, and act, as well as the emotional connection employees, feel towards their organization, their work, and their team.

IF ENGAGEMENT IS IMPORTANT AND IMPACTFUL TO EVERYONE'S PERFORMANCE, WHY IS IT STILL A BIG GAP?

In the trend line below, Gallup, states that employee engagement has reached a record high of 23%. SERIOUSLY! If only 23% of team members are engaged in meaningful, impactful work what are the other 77% of team members doing?

HOW TO MEASURE ENGAGEMENT, see the visual below

Turn over and complaints can be a measure of engagement. Going deeper other engagement measures appear, including active listening & communicating, comfort in raising and solving problems, or the # of errors and rework.

The Powers & Glasser categories (Survival, Belonging, Power, Fun, & Creativity) provide engagement guidance and a way to self-assess. As a leader, are you providing these for everyone? As a team member, do you have all 5 categories satisfied?

These categories, below, are applicable to all and can be a launching point to determining how to provide these for all team members. Our personal experience in leading & participating in improvement activites has confirmed these categories. To go deeper and gain more ideas and successful actions to increase engagement join this month's webinar:

Impact of Focus and Alignment

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 14:22:44 GMT

“5 Gifts to Get in a Groove”, Link , highlighted improvement strategies for this year. Let's unwrap some of those packages and the impact your journey to higher performance.

FOCUS AND ALIGNMENT

People are the driving force behind successful organizations. Yet, the brilliance of everyone's creativity, innovation, ideas, energy, and initiative may go to waste without a clear direction or goals.

To enhance the impact and productivity of the organization, consider how improvement opportunties are identified and pursued.

Consider how well the annual improvement planning process effectively identifies what is most important this year (e.g., customer satisfaction, capacity increase, quality, speed, or a new service or product), where to improve, how is it measured, who is accountable, and resources that will be committed.
Looking to improve your planning process? “Hoshin Kanri” approach is a powerful approach that aligns goals and activities across all levels of the organization, from strategic to annual to team and individual team members’ plans. This interconnectedness ensures that all team members are actively contributing to the organization’s vision and goals.
An evaluation of the plan's communication and performance tracking system can provide valuable insights. Is the plan effectively communicated to all stakeholders? Are the primary objectives clearly defined? Do teams and individuals understand their role in the plan? Progress should be visually represented and shared regularly for continuous improvement. If these aspects are in place, you are on the right track!

THE POWER OF WORK PROCESS (BIG and LITTLE)

Most tasks, whether ongoing or new initiatives, involve a work process. To uncover areas for improvement, it's extremely helpful to engage the team in observing, measuring, discussing, and assessing their collaborative workflow. Embrace the power of process thinking!

To kickstart process thinking, begin by examining the comprehensive end-to-end processes, spanning across organizational boundaries. These processes could involve delivering services, crafting products, or facilitating functions like staff development and procurement. Utilizing value stream mapping can offer a holistic view, enhance understanding of information and material flow, address team needs, validate deliverables, and pinpoint areas for enhancement in your annual improvement initiatives.
After pinpointing areas for improvement, leverage detailed work process maps (also known as swim lane map s) in your improvement projects to uncover issues, streamline processes, gather data, prioritize opportunities, and solve problems .
A “special process gift”: Working with the team to simply map the detailed process and create standardized work for the detailed tasks will often improve productivity (and accelerate team member on-boarding) quickly and significantly by enabling all team members to perform work in the best known way of performing the process.

IMPROVE (EVERYWHERE & EVERYDAY)

How about creating a culture and environment where everyone is engaged in improving themselves and their work everyday? A place where all levels and areas of the organization are actively engaged in improvement; where problems are recognized as valuable opportunities (“gold”); where everyone has a core set of collaboration and improvement skills and collectively focus on the “right stuff”.

Some of the "right stuff":

Build improvement knowledge and skills continuously.
Establish a core set of improvement skills for everyone and advanced skills for improvement champions and project leaders .
Provide on-going, role-based continual improvement education , with immediate application and coaching, to create improvements and generate excitement to improve more.
Leverage the learnings with Communities of Practice that share improvements.
Check on the health of your performance measurement system
Data and information are powerfully helpful to guide improvements, help decision making and celebrate accomplishment.
Review your measurement dashboard to see if a) selected measures add value, b) measures are defined and operationalized, c) measures and data are used during annual planning, team problem solving (“huddles”) and improvement projects, and d) measures are communicated broadly, clearly, and visually so that everyone has an understanding of performance.
Get improvement efforts off to a good start. Craft concise goal statements to guarantee that team members have a comprehensive understanding of the objective, who benefits, what are the benefits, measures, conditions, and the approach.
Whether it is a a personal, work team or organization wide improvement, good information-based problem solving (e.g., PDSA) is a powerful approach to guide problem solving and successful implementation. Make it part of “the way we do things here”.

5 Gifts to Get in a Groove

Wed, 03 Jan 2024 20:46:04 GMT

Happy New Year and welcome to 2024! We hope that you had some wonderful holiday time. As we embark on a new year, the spirit of generosity continues to thrive. To assist you in getting back into the swing of things, we present you with 5 gifts to tap into 2024's unlimited potential.

1. FOCUS

Take the time to identify and write down your top 1-5 goals for the next 12 months, both personally and professionally. Be specific with 3-5 actionable steps to achieve these priorities. See High-performing office program for assistance.

2. ALIGNMENT

Share these areas of focus with team members and partners to gain alignment, commitment, and a clear understanding of responsibilities. Team members aligned to a goal are often unstoppable. See High-performing office program for assistance.

3. IMPROVE

What areas need improvement in order to accomplish these high priorities? Strive to leave things better than you found them and continuously seek ways to improve your processes, outcomes, and personal capacity. See more on process improvement.

4. COMMUNICATE

Keep everyone informed by regularly sharing updates and gathering input. Evaluate progress along the way, extract lessons learned, and adapt based on what is learned. Learning and sharing are powerful improvement accelerators. See more on change & communication.

5. CELEBRATE

Routinely take time to acknowledge everyone's efforts and accomplishments. Celebrate the milestones and successes together.

Kaizen-Rapid Process Improvement Webinar

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 18:43:15 GMT

Kaizen-Rapid Process Improvement Webinar

GOAL: To gain a better understanding of how to increase process speed, capacity, and outcomes now by utilizing the improvement method, KAIZEN .

SO THAT: You can continue growing your continual quality improvement knowledge and impact.

BY: Kaizen – What it is, Benefits it can create, The approach

High Performing Office Program

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 19:29:10 GMT

Join others striving for high performance through training and Continual Impact coaching that creates immediate application benefits. COME LEARN AND IMMEDIATELY APPLY HIGH-PERFORMING SKILLS, IMPROVEMENT METHODS, AND JOB AIDS TO ADVANCE YOUR SKILLS AND YOUR ORGANIZATION-WIDE PERFORMANCE.

Take a look at the six phases outlined on the right.

Self-evaluate your organization's performance. What are your gaps and challenges?

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PHKJ6WD

A tiny glimpse into what is possible:

PHASE 1: HIGH PERFORMANCE FOCUS, FINDING THE PRIORITY GAPS & CHALLENGES

To achieve higher performance, it is essential to maintain focus. During this phase, you will gain valuable insights and promptly implement a data-driven approach (analyzing customer, organization, process, and team member data) to identify the most significant gaps and challenges. This is followed by effectively cascading and engaging team members in addressing the identified priorities. Expected outcomes and benefits:

PHASE 2: ESTABLISH THE HIGH-PERFORMING INFRASTUCTURE

This phase focuses on establishing a strong, solid infrastructure. Learn and begin implementing a high-performing structure including roles, responsibilities, communication, performance measures, problem solving, team huddles, and standardized work instructions (SOPs). Expected outcomes and benefits:

PHASE 3: TRANSFORM A PRIORITY PROCESS

Gain the skills to lead a team through a rapid process improvement with the Kaizen method (including >25 improvement/change job aids/templates). Significant benefits can be realized within a few days-weeks. See expected outcomes and benefits:

Phases 4-6: Learn and immediately apply ADVANCED IMPROVEMENT METHODS

PHASE 4: 5S & VISUAL CONTROLS

Individuals often report that several hours per day are wasted in searching for materials, equipment, and information needed to do their job! In this phase, you will learn the 5S methods and skills to decrease searching and getting ready wastes, improve productivity, and create an environment that is safe, visual and supports work processes. The training encompasses both physical and virtual work environments.

PHASE 5: MISTAKE PROOFING (AKA POKA YOKE)

Creating a high-performing environment where human errors and defects are not accepted; instead errors and defects are identified, and work processes redesigned to control and minimize the occurrence and effects of human error. This phase provides the knowledge and skills to effectively and efficiently facilitate the systematic Mistake Proofing approach to prevent defects associated with “human error” and avoid the costs resulting from those defects.

PHASE 6: PROCESS FLOW, BALANCED WORK & KANBANS

Accelerate the speed and improve the quality a process or product by eliminating wait times, rework times, and other delays. Significant process improvement can be achieved with the application of 1. Flow one unit at a time (or minimum batch size), 2. Create balanced resources and workflow rate; 3. Implement kanbans and visual controls to pull products or information.

Cornucopia of Improvement Methods

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 16:22:34 GMT

Gain knowledge about advanced improvement method(s) and their uses so that you can use the power of improvement methods to solve problems more effectively and efficiently.

During this webinar we explored the advanced improvement methods to help you solve bigger challenges, faster, easier, and with biggest outcomes. Begin with this logic model.

Determine desired outcomes
Identify specific wastes
Identify the best improvement method

These are the most commonly used advanced improvement methods to help teams create bigger, transformational changes.

More on Kaizen , 5S , Mistake Proofing (Poka Yoke) , and Flow .

See more advanced improvement methods, below.

Note, these all follow the plan-do-study-act (improvement cycle) approach using foundational improvement methods, including goal setting, process mapping, change management, and effective implementation.

People Development Ideas

Tue, 07 Nov 2023 18:00:19 GMT

Who doesn't want today to be better than yesterday? Or 2024 to be better than 2023? As you firm up 2024 plans, consider your teams and organization current performance and how high you want to reach in this new year.

Unlocking higher performance begins with your team members. Performance is visible when people are aligned, teamed, capable, energized, with innovative efforts openly shared.

This results in:

Achieving or exceeding goals and targets
Win-win relationships and interactions for all stakeholders: customers, team, funders and society
Sustained benefits over time and over changing circumstances (no back sliding or rework)

If People are #1 to high performance, consider your organization's success in People processes.

Where is your focus? How are you continually trying to improve your teams and organization performance?

Please share (1 question survey)

How to Destroy High Performance and How to Support it

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 19:30:28 GMT

The goal was to share learnings around how performance can be destroyed and how to support it so that you can be more successful on your continual improvement journey!

High Performance support:

People:

Engagement surveys In Strategic and Annual Planning

People development value stream created in Process Mapping

Team member problem solving template in Leadership Education and Supervisor Skill Development

Leaders:

Supervisor/Leader training in Leadership Education and Supervisor Skill Development

ROI template in Project leader/CQI Green Belt and as an individual module

Event participation

Team charters/surveys

Focus:

Goal statement in in Leadership Education , Supervisor Skill Development , CQI Yellow Belt , Project leader/CQI Green Belt , and Guidance

Measurement selection/definition/tracking templates in CQI Yellow Belt , Project leader/CQI Green Belt , and as an individual module

Hoshin kanri planning process In Strategic and Annual Planning

Change management and communication tools in Helping others prepare for and embrace change

Learning:

SRLD in Project leader/CQI Green Belt , as an individual module

Communities of practice more

Tell/Show/Do/Recycle more

Evidenced Based Intervention process

Methods:

Foundational training for everyone in Training

Advanced methods for CI Champions, e.g., Kaizen, 5S, Mistake Proofing in Training

Application:

5 step implementation process in Project leader/CQI Green Belt ,

Process maps/std work templates in Process Standardized work , and Project leader/CQI Green Belt ,

Process owner’s role profiles

Team huddles in Team Huddle set up and Project leader/CQI Green Belt ,

4 Ways to Decrease Variation

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 18:51:53 GMT

4 Ways to Decrease Variation

The iconic chocolate wrapping episode from the television show, I Love Lucy, serves as a fun example of process variation. Have you ever noticed how people, on the same team, provide different responses? When you find yourself receiving inconsistent answers and results, it is a clear indication of process variation.

PROCESS VARIATION occurs when a process fails to deliver uniform and consistent outcomes, both across different team members and over time.

To elevate your team's peformance where everyone works to the best known method, here are four effective strategies to decrease process variation:

1. Impleme nt standardized work instructions to ensure consistency and uniformity.

Providing team members clear and concise instructions to follow will eliminate guess work and having-to-make-up-something frustrations. Standard work instructions include process maps, standard operating procedures, forms, templates, and completed examples. See this picture of 5 team member's performance before and after the implementation of standardized work. Learn more @ standardized work

2. Integra te Mistake Proofing into processes and systems, also known as Poka Yoke, to minimize errors.

Utilize the advanced improvement method of Mistake Proofing to eliminate human error. Successful mistake proofing devices reduce the frequency of errors and can even make it impossible to do a task wrong. Devices include drop down boxes, visual coloring, forms with restricted data entry, templates, and floor/wall markings. Learn more @ Mistake Proofing

3. Provide training using adult learning principles to enhance comprehension and performance.

Achieving consistent performance relies on effective teaching. We all have individual learning styles; utilizing the tell-show-do-provide feedback training approach ensures that all team members have what they need to consistently perform at their best. Learn more @ effective teaching

4. Foster collaboration and communication with team huddles.

Huddles provide team members the time and space to understand their variations, its impact on their collective performance, and how to, together, solve the problems causing variation. Learn more @ team huddles

By incorporating these methods, you can effectively reduce process variation and achieve greater efficiency and reliability.

What Do Your Customers Really Want & Need? Webinar

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 16:50:50 GMT

What Do Your Customers Really Want & Need? Webinar

The goal is for you to learn how to identify what customers really WANT and NEED to prioritize customer-facing improvements. Welcome to another improvement method: Quality Function Deployment / House of Quality!

Driving change and improvements based on your customer’s wants and needs will bring the greatest impact for everyone!

House of Quality evaluations provide customer focus when:

Creating strategic Plan
Creating annual improvement planning
Prioritizing community improvement plans (CHIP)
Guiding customer experience improvement projects
Creating or redesigning products/services customers utilize.

Customer's Success Stories

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 16:19:46 GMT

Can you believe it's already September? Welcome to the start of fall. Just as our trees begin to share their beautiful colors, let's also share some improvement beauty. In addition to successes in services and production processes, high-performing organization create beautiful results in their office/admin. processes such as procurement, human resources, customer contact, and project/program management.

We are excited to showcase some of our customers' remarkable successes, aiming to ignite your inspiration and drive to create improvements beyond what you think in possible!

1. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SUCCESS STORY

Benefits:

Gap: Custo mers were frustrated with the long time waiting to get their questions answered.

Objective: Improve customer response time and quality.

Process Improvements:

Quick contact sheet of Subject Matter Experts information.
Standardized work (Reference Guide) for answering phone requests.
“Warm transfer” protocol.
Internal service level agreements for returning customer calls.
Updated website with key self-service information.
A clarified and simplified phone tree.

2. TEAM MEMBER ON-BOARDING SUCCESS STORY

Gap: 60% of new employees left within 6 months.

Objective: Decrease new employee turnover.

Process Improvements:

Improved and standardized on-boarding process for the 1st six months.
HR, IT, Payroll, Supervisor, and New employee checklists.
Workplace ready for new employees, including logistics and social interactions with team members.
On-boarding buddy and mentor roles established to support new employee's development.

3. PROCURING MATERIALS SUCCESS STORY

Objective: Improve the supply ordering process time and accuracy.

Process Improvements:

Re-sequenced and redesigned the process to eliminate unnecessary steps, recycle loops, wait time and other wastes.
Key job aids were developed.
Increased use of P-cards for frequent buyers.
Provided budget visibility and codes.
1 standard order form.
1 SharePoint site for all data.
5S'd the storage room & vendor catalog data.
Established a kanban ordering system to decrease inventory and standardize ordering.

4. IMPROVE PROJECT SETUP WORK PROCESS SUCCESS STORY

Objective: Decrease process cycle time.

Process Improvements:

A standardized process with roles and responsibilities.
Electronic review/approvals. Less approvers.
Mistake-proofed (poka yoke) templates for submittal.
Clarity of requirements, definitions, roles, and responsibilities.
1 Repository for all documentation.
Eliminated non-value-added work and frustration.

Mini Training and Practice Modules

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 14:08:05 GMT

Mini Training and Practice Modules

Training, with immediate practice applying the education can be an effective way to learn and gain new or refresh skills. These 2-hour education and practice modules, listed below, are available to help you gain more knowledge and skills and continually improve performance. Contact us to explore what training and practice modules best help you close gaps.

The Goal is TO: Expand and reinforce improvement training knowledge, skills, materials, and impact.
Team Benefits: Accelerate & improve performance of your team. Achieve goals faster, easier, and with better results. Continual return on your training investment. Tackle bigger problems with confidence.

Organization Benefits: Better focus. More energy, excitement, and activities to continually improve. Increase use of creativity and skills of team members. Have some fun that leads to pride of accomplishment. Solve problems faster, easier, and with better results.

Personal Benefits: Professional skill development. More knowledge, skills, & confidence that can be applied over & over. Lead improvement faster, easier, and with better quality. Grow your capacity, performance improvement confidence, and impact.

CONDITIONS: (What requirements or limitations exist?)

Education modules are provided in 90-120 minute sessions.
Training includes interactive, engaging activities.

STANDARDS: (How will you measure success?)

Benefit to you on 1-9 scale >7 average (greatly benefited)
Increase in knowledge (pre-post survey) >25% knowledge increase

What You Get: Live training, application coaching, materials (training slides, activities, templates, and examples) are provided for your internal use.

PEOPLE: Education & Practice Session Options

1. Working-With-Others Communication Skills

Understand and immediately begin using 4 active listening and communication techniques (verbal and written) to create a more positive working relationship with others, improve problem solving, and increased productivity through better understanding of each other. Also part of Yellow Belt , Leading an Improvement Culture , and Supervisor Skill Development trainings.

2. Leading team huddles

Learn about team huddles to bring team performance measures and improvement into daily work. Appreciate the benefits huddles can bring. Learn how huddles are conducted and participate in a team huddle. Also part of Green Belt and Supervisor Skill Development trainings.

3. Helping others Embrace Change – Stakeholder Analysis

Develop additional knowledge and skills in helping others accept, manage, and embrace changes. Understand and practice using a stakeholder analysis to evaluate each stakeholder’s change influence and acceptance to develop actions to help stakeholder embrace the change. Also part of Green Belt and Supervisor Skill Development trainings.

4. Helping others Embrace Change – Communication Planning

Develop additional knowledge and skills in helping others accept, manage, and embrace changes. Understand and practice using a communication plan to identify and manage communications regarding an upcoming or in-progress change. Also part of Green Belt and Supervisor Skill Development trainings.

5. Helping others Embrace Change – Writing Effective Communications

Develop additional knowledge and skills in helping others accept, manage, and embrace changes. Understand and practice using a technique to create communications that effectively share information that is clear, concise, answers questions, and invokes desired results and actions. Also part of Green Belt and Supervisor Skill Development trainings.

6. Addressing Problematic Behaviors

Develop additional knowledge and skills and techniques to identify and resolve resistance and problematic behaviors. Practice techniques to mitigate these behaviors will building better relations. Also part of Green Belt and Supervisor Skill Development trainings.

7. Effective & Efficient Decision Making

Understand and learn the impacts of using the decision making process and 4 decision-making types. Practice using the process in different scenarios to build skills in selecting the decision-making type and making the best decisions! Also part of Leading an Improvement Culture , and Supervisor Skill Development trainings.

8. Performance below Expectations

A team member's performance is not what is expected or needed is a personal/team improvement opportunity. Join in to learn the 5-step process to do some problem solving, improve communication, and together identify corrective actions to improve performance. Also part of Leading an Improvement Culture , and Supervisor Skill Development trainings.

FOUNDATIONAL IMPROVEMENT CONCEPTS AND METHODS: Education & Practice Session Options

9. Getting Focused with a Good Goal Statement

Understand when, where, and how to set a goal. Understand how to write a good goal statement, all components. Practice; give & receive feedback on goal statements. Also part of Yellow Belt , Green Belt , Leading an Improvement Culture , Supervisor Skill Development , and all advanced improvement trainings .

10. Process Performance Measures

Understand how to identify and select measures. Understand what is needed to define a measure and why it is important. Understand how to communicate and use measures to improve performance. Also part of Yellow Belt , Green Belt , Leading an Improvement Culture , Supervisor Skill Development , and advanced improvement trainings .

11. Value and Waste – Helping Others See It and What to Do with It

Understand value and forms of waste. Understand where and how to identify value and waste. Practice seeing it! Identify actions to begin decreasing waste and increasing value. Also part of White Belt , Yellow Belt , Green Belt , Leading an Improvement Culture , Supervisor Skill Development , and advanced improvement trainings .

12. Value/Waste Analysis

Understand how to evaluate process value and waste. How to analyze value/waste % of time and quality. Practice identifying where to begin improving. How to quantify the improvement impact. Also part of Yellow Belt , Green Belt , Leading an Improvement Culture , Supervisor Skill Development , and advanced improvement trainings .

13. So many issues and wastes AND so many different improvement methods and techniques. Where do I begin?

Understand the potential and applicability of improvement methods. Learn how to select and target the best improvement method for the opportunity to most effectively and efficiently solve different problems.

14. Process Mapping – Value Stream Mapping to see and focus on the overall process

Understand what, where, and why of value stream mapping so teams/departments/divisions/organizations can focus on the priority improvement areas. Understand and practice creating a value stream map. Also part of Green Belt , Leading an Improvement Culture , Supervisor Skill Development , and advanced improvement trainings .

15. Process Mapping – Sub Process Mapping to understand the detailed process

Understand what, where, and why of sub-process mapping so insights can be gained into improvement opportunities and enable standardized work. Understand and practice creating a process map and using the map to improve roles, responsibilities, decisions, handoffs, and performance. Also part of Yellow Belt , Green Belt , Creating standard procedures , Supervisor Skill Development , and advanced improvement trainings .

16. Problem Solving Overview

Gain a refresher and practice the 5-steps of problem solving including what, when, and how of problem solving; how to use and prioritize data and information to understand the problem; how to perform a 5 Whys; and techniques to identify and prioritize solutions that prevent problems from recurring. Also part of Yellow Belt , Green Belt , Leading an Improvement Culture , Supervisor Skill Development , and advanced improvement trainings .

17. Creating Standardized Work Procedures (aka standard operating procedures)

Understand and practice the techniques (process maps, standard operatring procedures, implementation steps) to document a current, best known work process for members to follow in a standardized & consistent manner. Also part of Green Belt , Creating standard procedures , Supervisor Skill Development , and advanced improvement trainings .

18. Implementing Improvements so They Stick

Understand and practice the purposeful and practical 5 processes to fully implement improvements so that the change sticks. Also part of Yellow Belt , Green Belt , Creating standard procedures , Supervisor Skill Development , and advanced improvement trainings .

19. Learn from the past, change the present, create the future!

Understand and practice the 4-Step lessons learned method of analyzing performance to identify and leverage gained learnings. Identify data-based reasons for performance (both good and bad). Extract learnings. Practice creating proactive and preventative actions to lock in the good and prevent repeating undesirable outcomes. Also part of Yellow Belt , Green Belt , Creating standard procedures , Supervisor Skill Development , Strategic & Annual Planning , and advanced improvement trainings .

20. Strategic & Annual Planning Process Overview

Understand the process and use of data to create a 3-5-year strategic plan. Understand the process to create an Annual plan. Understand how to cascade plans throughout the organization, team, and individuals to improve priorities, alignment, and results. More indepth @ full training / facilitation .

USING DATA: Education & Practice Session Options

20. Assessing your Organization’s culture

Understand what and why of creating an organization culture of improvement using a self-assessment test. Begin evaluating the 6 cultural elements. Understand how and where to utilize the assessment results to purposely build the desired culture. Also part of Leading in an Improvement Culture , and Strategic & Annual Planning .

21. What are our Customers saying and what do we do about it?

Understand where and how to obtain customer data and information. Understand and practice how to analyze data using the Quality Function Deployment technique to draw conclusions and priority areas of improvement. Also part of Leading in an Improvement Culture , Strategic & Annual Planning , and advanced improvement trainings .

22. What are your Employees saying and what do we do about?

Understand where and how to obtain employee data and information. Understand and practice evaluation techniques to draw conclusions and priority areas of improvement. Also part of Supervisor Skill Development , and Strategic & Annual Planning .

23. Basic Statistics - Two 2-hour sessions

Understand statistic concepts and terminology. How and where to gather data. Gain the templates to represent data and practice evaluations to draw conclusions. Also part of Green Belt , and advanced improvement trainings .

24. Is this Project Worth Our Time?

Understand and practice how to evaluate a project or upcoming change’s Return on Investment. Use the template to practice identifying costs, benefits, and decisions. Also part of Green Belt , Strategic & Annual Planning , and advanced improvement trainings .

Connecting Work Silos

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 16:54:50 GMT

Connecting Work Silos Webinar

This webinar will help you gain ideas and excitement to improve the flow of work across silos, other teams, and functions.

Agenda:

1. Approaches to bridge silos.

2. Learn from others’ successes.

High-Performing Leader Standard Work

Wed, 16 Aug 2023 12:24:47 GMT

High-Performing Leader Standard Work

Are you living your best work life? A best high-performing work life does not simply happen; it involves following routines (aka standard work). This month we highlight high-performing leader* standard work.

*Leader: Someone who directs and/or influences the work of others, regardless of title.

How do you spend your day?

Prior to learning and applying leader standard work many leaders report spending more time fixing things with insufficient time with team members. If your team members are critical to success, why do we put off coaching and people development time?

How do you WANT to spend your day?

Leaders seeking high-performance put their team members first; leader standard work helps leaders find time for this, resulting in improved team relations and output plus overall organization performance and results. Leader standard work = a set of standard behaviors and actions applied routinely, as part of daily work. These standard behaviors and actions provide the daily structure to lead others to high-performance.

Some standard work found in high-performing leaders:

COACHING & DEVELOPMENT
A majority of leader's time is spent helping their team members grow. More time is spent meeting the team where they are. Gemba walks are used to truly understand the needs and providing real time feedback, communication, and assistance. Leaders ask, "How can I help you?" and "What do you need to be more successful?"
PROBLEM SOLVING, ELIMINATING BARRIERS
The coaching kata method is used to help team members learn to evaluate and solve problems rather than feeling responsible to solve everyone's problems. Leaders regularly ask, "What is holding you back? What are your barriers? What would you change or improve?" and proceed to hold themself accountable to eliminate the barriers.
SETTING FOCUS & PRIORITIES
Leader's time is spent reflecting on what has gone well, not so well, and how we can improve. Reflective learning and data (customer, employee, organization, & process) are used to guide decisions and priorities. Long-term and short-term priorities are written, shared, evaluated regularly, and cascaded into everyone's daily work (hoshin kanri).
EVALUATE PERFORMANCE & HOLD THEMSELVES + OTHERS ACCOUNTABLE
Scorecards with performance measures are visual and used by all team members. Leaders regularly review performance to better understand, provide coaching, feedback, re-direction, and set expectation of performance.

These four leader standard work and more can be learned in:

Role based Education & Development

Leadership Skill Development

Supervisor Skill Development

Benefits of leader standard work:

Ideas Around Us

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 15:42:43 GMT

Ideas Around Us

Wishing you a wonderful summertime; with a balance of work and special time with family and friends.

Regardless of where you are and what you are doing this summertime, pausing to look around can help you see life from different perspectives:

Value
Waste - Improvement opportunties
Innovation
Cool things to replicate
And recharge and gain excitement to accomplish your goals and purpose.

We look forward to hearing what you see and the ideas brought back to work!

It can be seeing how ocean water flows leading to ideas for flowing process information handoff more smoothly. OR Watching watermelon being sliced and gaining a new way to cut a sign, plastic, or sheet of metal. OR Learning customer engagement approaches from tour guides or local blueberry farm.

When ready to try implementing some new ideas, remember Chris and Pam @ Continual Impact are here to help you increase your success and impact. How we can help:

Making Improvement Visual webinar

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 19:26:39 GMT

Making Improvement Visual Webinar

Goal is to learn of the many visual ways to communicate performance while also involving others in problem-solving and changes.

Agenda: Why, Who, What, and How to visually communicate improvement activities.

A Getting Ready Story

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 21:14:05 GMT

A Getting Ready story

During improvement training, projects, and organization culture transformation, we teach and use value and forms of waste to help see our work lives differently and helps teams achieve performance above and beyond their expectations / beliefs. A recent birthday party highlighted value and waste are everywhere, not just at work.

Successful party planning, (just like project, clinic, production, and inventory) relys on preparation.

Waste #5: Getting Ready is the waste of poor preparation; aka plan and do what can be done prior and streamline all other activites. Rather than frantically rushing around an hour before the party and during the party, getting ready waste and activites were addressed in the days and weeks leading up to the party.

How to remove Getting Ready party waste:

Prebuild a guest list.
Create the menu checklist (in order of freshness/spoilage preparation).
Identify all actions and work the actions over time (with other errands).
Stage all party areas. Factoring in where guests will eat, play games, and gather to eliminate wastes of #1 moving (trashcans are nearby?), #3 searching (where are the forks?), #4 more than needed (100 plates, really?), and #6 not needed (why is my mail on the counter?). This is so like work planning!

The result

Perhaps you need to ask the guests and birthday girl! Value is from the customers' perspectives.

As the party provider, one hour before the party start time there was nothing left to do! Everything was in its place. We did have one waste, #6 things gone wrong, the speaker sync and volume. There is always room for improvement!

This link is to our value-waste challenge. If you give it a try, let us know your results. Lastly, helping others see waste is a great way to make improvement engaging, meanfully, and fun. Once waste is seen, many want to eliminate it; now you're into improvement.

Take the Waste & Value Challenge

Helping others see and eliminate wastes (Scroll to Continuous Improvement OPPORTUNITIES)

Quick Change (SMED) Training to eliminate process getting ready wastes

People – The Key to High Performance

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 13:19:45 GMT

People – The Key to High Performance

We are honored and excited to support the Naphsis Annual Meeting and the vital records and public health statistics community with Chris Bujak, Continual Impact partner, as the annual meeting keynote’s speaker.

The topic: People – The Key to High Performance will build enthusiasm and an understanding of strategies and techniques to improve Workforce Development and succession planning efforts. Chris will explore:

The importance of People to high performance, in any organization.
The current state data, including “The Great Resignation” and “The second thoughts”.
Factors that influence why People stay, leave, and engage.
How to improve retention and engagement using the “value stream” of people development.
Finding and planning improvements that make a difference.

We appreciate your community support.

Strengthening Your Organization's Foundation Webinar

Thu, 18 May 2023 17:42:50 GMT

Strengthening Your Organization's Foundation Webinar

The goal is to gain ideas to help strengthen the foundational elements that drive a culture of high performance so that you can increase your organizations value and performance on a sustainable basis.

BY: (agenda):

Understand elements of high-performance

Evaluate and prioritize strategies to strengthen foundational elements

Explore further

Supervisor Skill Development Success Story

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Fri, 05 May 2023 15:22:35 GMT

A recap of Building Supervisors, Team Leaders, and Emerging Leader's Skills

The Importance and Potential of People

Fri, 05 May 2023 12:38:08 GMT

The IMPORTANCE AND POTENTIAL OF PEOPLE

“People are the heart, head and muscle of the high performing organization—who they are determines whether it exists or fails to exist”. Vital Enterprises, The High Performing Learning Organization

What biases and history do you bring to a conversation? How might these biases and history impact how you see one another or how you see yourself? This month we share the Pygmalion and Galatea effects and their profound impact on performance.

The Pygmalion Effect:

Pygmalion – The mythical Greek sculptor who loved and believed in his sculpture so much that it came to life.

The perceptions and expectations from a parent, teacher, supervisor, influencer, or peer influence the behavior of another individual (subordinate, child or student). The individual notices and internalizes these expectations and starts to behave as expected (positive or negative).

The Galatea Effect:

Galatea – The sculpture Pygmalion brought to life.

An individual's opinion about their ability and self-expectations about performance largely determine their performance. If an employee thinks they can succeed, they will likely succeed.

Why are the Pygmalion and Galatea Effects still Relevant?

Goethe: “Treat a man as he appears to be, and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he already were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be.”

These effects occur when:

Interviewing and hiring someone. "They remind of someone I did not like in high school."
Assigning tasks/responsibilities. "I have a better personal relationship with Pat, I'll give Pat the work."
When evaluating performance. "My expectations were low and you did not go above or beyond." and "I only did what was expected." and "You are more capable than you think."
In collaborative problem-solving team environments. "They are always on their phone, they must not care." Therefore, they are ignored/overlooked; in reality they were taking notes on their phone.
Improving inequities. "Your current environment does not have to dictate your future environment."

Managers' expection of subordinates and the way they treat them help determine their performance and career progress. Subordinates, more often than not, appear to do what they believe they are expected to do. A unique characteristic of leaders, supervisors, teachers, coaches, and influencers is the ability to create high performance expectations that subordinates fulfill.

The Pygmalion and Galatea effects are learned and immediately applied in:

Collaborative Improvement Webinar

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 17:55:01 GMT

Collaborative Improvement

TO: Gain additional strategies to improve your collaborative improvement efforts.

SO THAT: You can take more impactful actions that expand your knowledge, skills, capabilities, and impact with your team and partners, customers, and other stakeholders critical to success.

BY: (agenda):

-What is collaborative Improvement.

-Why is so valuable.

-Strategies and example for identifying and conducting collaborative improvement.

Strategies to Help Increase your collaborative improvement impact

Human Errors Can be Reduced and, YES, Eliminated!

Wed, 12 Apr 2023 18:50:36 GMT

"I'm only human; I make mistakes. It cannot be prevented." We have heard this before. What was your response? Did you accept this answer? We are here to say - There is another option!

Human Errors Can be Reduced and, YES, Eliminated!

Through our day, mistakes occur; from Selecting the wrong items, Omitting information, Providing wrong information, and of course, the Mises: Mis-reading, mis-measuring, mis-adjusting, mis-aligning.

The Institute of Medicine study estimated that between 44,000 and 98,000 people die in hospitals each year due to mistakes, and that medical mistakes are the 8th top killer in the U.S., costing $8.8 billion a year.

The Big Benefits of Eliminating Human Error

Some of our customer's error elimination successes:

Improved quality - Incoming data defects decreased from 90% to 5% in 2 weeks + Outgoing defects decreased by 70% + Customer defects decreased from 288 to 2 parts per million.
Increased productivity - 15% and 30%.
Process cycle time decreased 65%.
Decreased repetitive task motions >200K / year.

With the average Mistake Proofing solution often costing < $100.

Using t he Mistake Proofing (aka PokaYoke) Improvement Method to Eliminate Human Error

The Mistake Proofing method, a step by step improvement method (following Plan-Do-Study-Act), helps a team redesign a process/product so errors cannot occur. This includes:

Product/process simplification.
Techniques to identify common conditions that cause errors.
Find observable errors AND where the error opportunity began.
Red flags and a power scale to evaluate the power of a solutions.
Implement "Devices" to eliminate the error opportunity.

A Mistake Proofing (or Poka Yoke) Device

Devices help you redesign a process so that it CANNOT be performed incorrectly. Consider all the devices in place shopping online, providing your credit card, or completing a form or application. Here is another device we take for granted:

Error: Electrical plug oriented backwards.

Defect: Reversed electrical polarity.

Device: Make plug spades different width so reversed plug provides immediate feedback before inserting plug into outlet.

Strengthening Your Workforce

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 18:07:46 GMT

Strengthening Your Workforce

Goal is

TO: Gain additional strategies to improve your Workforce Development efforts.

SO THAT: You can take more impactful actions that expand the knowledge, skills, capabilities, and impact of everyone on a path to high performance.

BY: (agenda): Exploring the steps, techniques and tips of building and deploying your plan to strengthen the workforce.

Supervisor's Impact

Fri, 17 Mar 2023 22:12:54 GMT

Supervisor's Impact on Their Team's Performance and ENGAGEMENT.

It is not easy: influencing and being responsible for the work of others, while performing your own work, all while meeting your boss's requirements. No doubts, there is a lot for supervisors to do. Their impact on their team, other teams, performance, culture, and ENGAGEMENT is higher than many acknowledge.

According to Gallup's bestselling book, It's the Manager, 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores is due to local managers.

WHAT DO WE NEED TO BE ENGAGED?

To be meaningful engaged in work, team members need:

Direction: A focus on the vision, mission + An understanding of the customer; what they need and what from you + Strategic, and annual goals with expections of performance + Access to data for performance feedback and improvement.

Knowledge and Skills: A core set of teaming skills (Active communication + Problem solving + Decision making + Settings goals with measures + Learning & Teaching others + Seeing value & waste + Taking action & effectively implement). Link to gaining these (Everyone).

Resources: Access to information + Materials + Systems + People to accomplish what is asked.

Support: Relationship based on trust & respect + knock down and eliminate barriers.

Supervisors are essential to team members' engagement and satisfication.

Another data set (>27,000) of participants concluded 86% of people's work satisfication relates to their manager relationship.

WHERE ARE THESE ENGAGEMENT NEEDS MET: WITH YOUR SUPERVISOR

Yes, a working supervisor already has many responsibilities on their shoulders including the engagement and success of their team members. The impact, personal satisfaction, and challenge make it worth the effort for many supervisors.

Additionally, supervisors also need direction, knowledge/skills, resources, and support (see above) to help their team. Pairing these four along with leadership behaviors set the path to collective high performance.

Have you considered investing in your Supervisors, Team Leaders, and emerging leaders to prepare for this very critical role of leading and guiding the work of others?

Link to Supervisor Skill Development

Engaging others for better outcomes webinar

Mon, 27 Feb 2023 13:36:30 GMT

Engaging Others for Better Outcomes Webinar

GOAL: Gain some approaches to building engagement and excitement for joint improvement so that you gain ideas to help enable the success of team members, leaders, and partners.

By (agenda):

What impacts engagement

How it can be advanced

Who plays a significant role

Kaizen: for engagement, ownership, and rapid results

Fri, 10 Feb 2023 13:47:49 GMT

Kaizen: The gift of engagement, ownership, and rapid results

Are you looking for that perfect Valentine's gift for your teams this year? In the box of improvement methods, Kaizen provides the sweetest team engagement, pride, ownership, innovation, and many transformational results (beyond what teams and leaders thought possible).

Have You Considered The Gift of Kaizen?

Kaizen comes in multiple flavors

1. Principles of Conduct, a guide for conducting life.

2. Companywide Management Program

3. Work Process Improvement Method

This is the most common use of Kaizen. A Kaizen event is a team-based approach, to improving work processes, processing through all phases of the improvement cycle effectively and rapidly. This is accomplished in a brief period, typically 5 days, with full benefits achieved within 1 day -3 months.

The Kaizen Gift

Interactive training (all participants bring a work process problem to begin resolving during training).
Access to ~40 improvement methods, job aids, and templates.
1-1 project coaching.
Co-leading the 1st Kaizen event (on-site) to solve a significant work process problem and achieve rapid benefits. This ensures the team achieves their goals, gets a return on the investment, and gains confidence to lead more Kaizen events.

The BENEFITS of Kaizen Events

OUTCOMES

Results (typical): >$50K savings/year; significant increases in work process time, quality, customer satisfaction and outcomes, productivity, and capacity.
Results sooner, within 0-3 months, and more than expected.

SKILLS & CAPACITY

Development of in-house knowledge and skills to continually, confidently, and independently lead teams through the Kaizen process to rapidly solve problems.
Use of data and measures to understand and create high-performance.
Demonstrate a CAN-DO change culture.

TEAM MEMBERS

Energy, excitement, ownership, and pride in improving work processes and team environment.
More capacity to perform other duties.
Timely decision making.
Involvement & excitement for more change and improvements.

The CHALLENGES

It is Ok for a team to take 6-12 months to solve problems and create results thinking.
"It's always been done this way" thinking. It is ok for a team to take 6-12 months to solve problems and create results.

What Others Have Achieved

After receiving this gift: 1 Kaizen event leader independently led 12 Kaizen events the following year.

More Kaizen events create more benefits! In addition, techniques learned within Kaizen training can be used broadly throughout the organization to create additional improvement, such as the following:

Team huddles that link performance measures with continually improving and keeping sticky the already improved processes.
Documented work processes and procedures.
Openly identify waste & value to eliminate wastes.
Use of data to understand where time-consuming waste, and frustration exist and how work is really done.
Use goal statements for meetings, annual goals, communicating, training,
Improve open communications and active listening to improve team productivity and decrease rework.
Use prioritization techniques for daily activities and decisions.
Stop problems from happening again and again; help individuals and teams get to the root causes of problems and identify better solutions.
Use the change management process and communication techniques to help others prepare for and embrace change.
Use adult learning principles and effective teaching methods.
Convert more learnings into actions; elevate everyone's knowledge to higher levels.

Equity and Improvement: A Data Based Union webinar

Sun, 15 Jan 2023 15:42:00 GMT

Equity and Improvement A data based union webinar

GOAL: To gain a better understanding of the union of equity and improvement.

So That: You gain ideas to help enable the success of everyone.

By (agenda):

Overview of equity and improvement intersections / compliments
What and Where
Why
How

Expanding the Improvement – Beyond PDSA

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 04:02:31 GMT

Expanding the improvement – beyond PDSA

Let's use this year to build upon PDSA to create good change faster, easier, and with better results.

We begin the year with a focus on the basic steps for making change and improvements: the PDSA improvement cycle.

The improvement cycle, originally known as the Shewhart Cycle (1940), was used for conducting an experiment . In 1950 Deming expanded it to illustrate its ongoing nature and terminology of Plan-Do-Check-Act. 35 years later Deming changed it to Plan-Do-Study-Act, to emphasize the importance of learning.

The PDSA improvement cycle has continued to evolve (1985-today) into generalized data/information-based problem solving by Deming, Toyota (“A3” problem solving), Six Sigma, and others.

PLAN : ◊ Frame the problem-gap & goal ◊ Understand the current process ◊ Collect and evaluate date ◊ Identify root causes and solutions ◊ Develop the Improvement hypothesis

DO : ◊ Develop the solutions ◊ Test potential solutions ◊ Measure results

STUDY : ◊ Analyze results and determine impact (Will the goal be reached?) ◊ Extract lessons learned to identify additional actions or tests

ACT : ◊ Effectively install the new solutions ◊ Measure outcomes ◊ Coach & continue improving

Abraham Maslow says, "If the only tool you have is hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail". PDSA is the backbone for many improvement tools and methods (tools that follow the improvement cycle) so let's build upon PDSA and expand your improvement toolkit. Advanced improvement methods use PDSA however are often tailored to specific types of problems or to eliminate specific forms of waste (regardless of your processes, industry, or team dynamics).

Here are some advanced improvements methods to learn-apply-advance your improvement impact:

5S + VISUAL CONTROLS – Decrease time searching for information, material, people, or equipment. Sort, Shine, Straighten, Standardize, Sustain, (+ Safety). Benefits included 35% productivity and 20% climate engagement.

KAIZEN – Don’t wait for results. Get improvements rapidly (5 days) with the team-based systematic problem-solving process that flows through all phases of the improvement cycle. It is one of the most versatile and impactful methods. Benefits included 70% decrease in labor hours (575 to 175 hours per item) along with less frustration and overtime; shorter cycle time; and more standardized, consistent, and quality product.

MISTAKE PROOFING - A systematic approach to reduce defects associated with “human error” and avoid the rework costs resulting from those defects. Benefits included 99.8% improvement in data entry accuracy.

SIX SIGMA - A disciplined, data-driven approach to reduce defects and variation in processes and products. With the high level of data analysis, the 4-steps are broken down into 5 steps: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. Benefits included reduced process variation.

STRATEGIC & ANNUAL PLANS - Yes, this also uses the PDSA cycle. Align long-term and short-term priorities, resources, and actions to achieve your organization’s goals using a data-based strategic and annual planning process. Benefits included more focus, alignment, more strategies accomplished, and bigger performance measure impact.

FLOW – Decrease WAIT time within and between steps by balancing work content, sequencing tasks to one unit at a time, and introducing visual controls between work steps. Benefits included 75% decrease in cycle time, 50% increase in process capacity, 95% on-time reliability, and 40% decrease in inventory.

INNOVATION PROCESS – A process to create innovative, transformative processes, products, or services with immediate and long-term impact and benefits. Within the process several additional analytical techniques are utilized, including quality function development, value stream mapping, failure mode effect analysis, and TRIZ. Benefits included increased customer loyalty and market growth.

QUICK CHANGE / SMED - Reducing the waste of getting ready to do work or perform value added tasks by assessing each task of a changeover process to distinguish what can be done externally to the process and what cannot. Work is then redesigned to eliminate tasks, move external ones out of the changeover process and streamline all remaining activities. Benefits included 94% decrease in changeover times (90 to 5 minutes).

VALUE ENGINEERING / DESIGN FOR EXCELLENCE - Improve and simplify designs or processes to provide the lowest cost solution to meet the functional needs of the customer and where every component and activity is challenged to bring value. Benefits included simplified process design, reduced costs, and increased customer satisfaction.

The performance of your organization relies on development and use of both basic and advanced skills. Your personal challenge is to keep on developing skills and bringing more value by creating even more impactful improvements ,

Coaching Others to Higher Performance

Thu, 15 Dec 2022 20:41:11 GMT

COACHING OTHERS TO HIGHER PERFORMANCE

Goal of this webinar: To share effective coaching methods & tips so that you gain ideas & excitement to help enable the success of others.

By (agenda) :

-Coaching skills

-The Coaching kata

-Human performance categories

These methods are taught in more detail:
- Supervisor Education

- Leadership Education

- Creating standard processes & procedu res

Blessed!

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 15:57:32 GMT

BLESSED! This holiday season has us, at Continual Impact, feeling very blessed. When we reflect on 2022, there is much for which to be grateful. Our purpose is to help others continually increase their impact, to help everyone we work with grow more knowledge, skills, and improve performance. We have been blessed this year thanks to you.

Here are a few 2022 blessings:

Thank you for the wonderful relationships and trusted partnerships this year. We hope you too are excited for the coming year and the many opportunities to increase your impact and results.

Effective from Day 1: Onboarding New Team Members

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 14:27:27 GMT

Effective from Day 1: Onboarding New Team Members

The pandemic highlighted the need to on-board new team members, in a different manner! Join the webinar for process improvements and tips to establish faster, easier, and better onboarding processes that delight your new team members (retention has already begun!).

Goal: To share team member ONBOARDING process improvements and tips so that you gain ideas to establish faster, easier, and better onboarding processes that delight your new team members.

By (agenda):

-The gap

-The process

-What others have done

-The Benefits & results

The Union of Equity and Continual Improvement

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 02:23:39 GMT

The Union of Equity and Continual Improvement

Resolving inequity is a tranformational change. It is complex, not easy, and impacts everyone (customers, team members, and our organization's stakeholders).

Equity, Equity, Equity - you can find lots of information regarding it. In all this information, what strategies have you found to help guide real, meaningful, and specific change to equity?

If you are reading this, you are on a good track to utilize an emprircally proven strategy, continual improvement, to create meaningful changes. Continual improvement's strategy is to help you achieve desired outcomes. The model, cycle, and methods provide the data-based guidance to solve problems of inequity. Improvement is not just for workflow or capacity problems, it is applicable to all problems - including inequity.

How can Continual Improvement (CI) help?

CI can help identify customers not receiving your services/offerings. Use customer data, extended value stream (system-wide) visualization to identify the root causes of inequity, what must change, and solutions. This can lead to answering: Who are customers not receiving services? Why not? What must change? How do we change work processes, social determinants, customer interactions, and/or modalities of service delivery?

Reducing inequity starts inside the organization . Use employee data and extended value stream (system-wide) visualization to identify the priority policies and work processes to improve. This can lead to changes in hiring, onboarding, individual coaching & mentoring, promotions, opportunities, and/or how work is performed.

CI's problem solving methods help find the root cause of a problem or an inequity. When problems are complex, treating the symptoms with an aspirin or bandaid will not eliminate the problem. Deep cause & effect analysis is needed along with implementation of the solutions , in a sustainable way.

There are more continual improvement and equity unions strategies. Would you like to talk further? Contact us.

Workforce Development for Health and Longevity

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 16:50:18 GMT

Workforce Development for Health and Longevity Webinar

Developing a workforce that thrives begins with finding and attracting candidates that are insync with your team and organization's purpose, vision, and philosophy (culture). It continues with engagement to build individuals' capacity and enable their success. Join this webinar to explore the value stream (system-wide thinking) that contributes to the growth, health, and longevity of your team.

Learn more via. this webinar

Investing in our team members' knowledge, skills, and engagement is criticial to our organization's on-going success

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 19:45:16 GMT

"Investing in our team members' knowledge, skills, and engagement is criticial to our organization's on-going success". A 2020-2022 learning from many organizations

Congratulations, if you are fortunate to find and secure funding to support developing your team members' skills. If you are still seeking resources to focus on workforce develop, consider investigating internal funding sources: training budgets, professional development budgets, accreditation budgets, reallocation of travel budgets, improvement project funds, and cross-department consolidation of unused budgets. Also, seek out external funding sources: community partners, WednetPA, non-profit organizations or philanthropist aligned with your organization, and state and federal organizations (including CDC, HRSA, Dept of Ag). Funding is available; we can help a bit with navigation.

Securing people development funds is the beginning. Now the fun can begin; increase your impact by effectively using funds to develop practical skills that stick and are used.

1. When establishing plans to make best use of people development funds, consider and select what is most important to improve each individual's capability. Understand your team's needs and individual's gaps.

2. Identify training and development opportunties to meet the needs and close gaps.

3. Train well through coaching of application.

In addition to training, knowledge and skills are developed by participating in experience building and step-out assignments.

If training is your best use of funds...

Please, please, please remember the adult learning principles from TWI (Training within Industries) to improve the impact on knowledge and skill development. We apply these principals in a 4 step approach:

TELL: Explain the key knowledge points and why they are important
SHOW: Show how it is done; provide examples
DO: Have the learner perform the process and apply the learning
RECYCLE: Observe the learner, provide feedback and help

Data shows that training is not complete when leaving the classroom. Pairing with coaching and technical assistance increases: learning �� expectations ��accountability ��a bigger and earlier impact �� and of course better use of your funding.

Preparing for Change - Webinar

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 21:27:47 GMT

Change can be difficult - whether big or small. Some upfront planning and evaluation helps. In this webinar we will explore some of the roots to resisting change and how to prepare to help others embrace change.

The Work Process and Technology Union

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 14:12:59 GMT

High performing teams need a strong union between work processes and technology.
Does your technology assist/aid you in delighting customers, performing your quickly, easily, and with high quality? Or, do you spend more time "feeding the system" and working to make the system run for you?

55% to 75% of all ERP projects fail to meet their objectives (estimate from Analyst firm Gartner).

Nike's ERP failure: Due to result of the improper handling of its ERP implementation, Nike lost sales of $100M dollars and saw an additional decrease of 20% of its share price.

Hershey’s suffered an ERP failure: the company was incapable of processing $100 million worth of Kiss and Jolly Rancher orders, even though it had most of the inventory in stock.

Creating the union:

1. Understand benefits case (goal and measureable benefits) of the union and the improved work process and outcomes. More on goals and measures.

2. Prepare for the change and impact on stakeholders and team members. More on managing change and the topic of this week's webinar.

3. Understand your work processes 1st, with detailed sub-process mapping . This will help the team and technlogy partners understand the process steps that utilize and do not utilize technology. Process mapping also helps define the gaps that the technology can close. (This is technology's value-add: better enabling the work processes). More on sub-process mapping.

4. Collect process data (time, quality, & volume) to guide decisions and mistake proofing improvements. Mistake proofing is designing processes and technology so that a mistake CANNOT occur . More on mistake proofing . This can result in a union that produces outputs that are 1st time correct and complete.

5. Effectively implement, together . Documented standard work instructions (more on std. work) , training, and with coaching to continually improve helps to put the improved process and technology into the capable hands of the process team.

The union of work processes and technology is extremely powerful! Even more powerful when using these focusing, engaging, and data-driven steps. We wish you great success for you, your customers, team members, and budget!

ECRS Improvement Technique Webinar

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 17:15:50 GMT

ECRS Improvement Technique Webinar

Looking to get 'out of the box' and create transformational improvement, the ECRS improvement technique can help. Watch this webinar to gain an introduction to this ECRS improvement technique - what it is, when and how to use this.

ECRS = Eliminate, Combine, Rearrange, Simplify

Another explaination to workforce shortages and high turnover

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 17:31:37 GMT

Are you seeing these "We're Hiring" signs EVERYWHERE?

Much evaluation and reporting has been done to explain our workforce shortages. You too have probably read about pay rates, early retirements, the great resignations, and other explainations.

There is another explaination to workforce shortages and high turnover: Your Environment and People Development work processes.

What is your work environment like? Do you have an environment where:

Team members know the work goals, measures, targets , and expected deliverables? They have a reliable process and standardized work to use?
Everyone is comfortable asking questions and offering ideas?
There is routine collaborative problem solving ?
Value-added coaching is routinely received?
Everyone is able to try new ideas to learn, develop more skills, and influence their daily work?

If you are on the path to creating/changing the environment and processes that attract - develop - retain your people, let's learn from this organization: People were not staying; within 6 months of hire 50% of people were gone. The leaders stated the gap and asked a team to work on closing this gap. Using the Kaizen improvement method , the team began with a system-wide view and data , see image below of the 6 steps in the People Development process. Their data analysis led them to focus improvement in the Onboarding and Mentoring processes. Implementing improvements in these 2 steps resulted in:

Decreased 6-month turnover rate from 50% to 5%.
Less stress, frustration, and knowledge gaps
Better moral and team work
>$1M savings per year in recruiting and hiring.

You too have the ability to create the environment and processes that enable the development, health, and long-term success of everyone, (individually and collectively).

Looking at the 6 steps of the People Development process (above) - where would you focus improvements to the process and environment?

Interlocking Your Actions Webinar

Thu, 21 Jul 2022 16:56:45 GMT

Hoshin Kanri=the interlocking and cascading of goals and actions so that you can accomplish more!

This webinar will help you gain a better understanding and some ideas to better link your strategic – annual – project - personal plans and actions.

Link to resources mentioned in the webinar

Strategic Planning - Creating your Vision/Mission/Values and the 3-5 strategies to advance your team closer

Annual Planning - Creating annual focus and resource alignment

Leading Projects - The steps of leading projects to meet or exceed their goals

Team Huddles - Engaging all teams members in raising and collectively solving problems to achieve their performance goals and targets together

Strategies to Fuel Your Creativity When Accelerating Your Modern Environment

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 17:43:28 GMT

"Modernization" - the Jetson's certainly had it figured out. They seem to be enjoying the results of a modern life - daily life was faster, easier, better, and cleaner. Where are you with Modernization? your team? your organization?

How often do you feel like you are behind the curtain manually juggling and connecting all the parts to get the benefits of modernization? Continual Impact is here to help you achieve the happy calm modern work life. Not the flying around part, like on the Jetsons. We're talking about your work life void of people turnover, ineffective on-boarding, and limited workforce development, poor utilization of resources and data, and duct taped integration of technology and processes.

Enjoy some strategies to fuel your creativity when accelerating your high-performance journey in today's modern environment:

1. Get Focused

Be purposeful and data-based when defining the journey to modernization. Begin with some big and bold visioning and then narrow down to specific tactics and actions.

Create/refresh your mission, vision, and values. Link to more
Gather data to create a 3 year strategic plan . Immediately cascade the plan to annual plans and team project. Link to more
Conduct system-wide evaluations of your entire organization and each department to determine where to best focus your resources, efforts, and technology to improve outcomes. Link to more
Contact us technical assistance in co-developing and co-leading data modernization implementation project plans. Link to more

2. Take a Data-Based Approach to People

Again, before diving in, gather data to assess your workforce. What knowledge and skills gaps exist? What is our turnover rate? What is our on-boarding time? How about our mentoring and coaching?
Analyze each team's capacity, productivity, and a flow analysis to truly understand the gaps and needs
Establish, resource, and implement workforce development plans and activities.

3. Develop Everyone's Skills

Building off of your workforce development plans, invest in your people. They are the critical key to your modernization success.

Provide Role-based training along with time for immediate application of the learning so that it sticks and creates benefits.
Develop in-house improvement skills so that you can continually lead complex problem solving and coach on-going skill development of others.
Nurture the proficiency of everyone's core skills, see list. They will elevate everyone's performance. Link to training for everyone.

4. Facilitate and Implement Transformational Improvements (beyond the improvements everyday, by everyone)

Expand, improve, accelerate your team's capacity using advanced continual quality improvement methods like Kaizen, Mistake Proofing, and Flow. Link to more .
Integrate technology into work processes so that systems enable you, not you working behind the curtain to make the technology work for you.
And lastly - focus on your desired goals and outcomes to define what data and process transformation improvements are needed to quickly, easily, and in a high-quality way delight your customers!

Welcome to this modern world! Together let's define it, create it, and enjoy a Jetson-like environment. Strap on your jetpacks; here we go ��.

Emerge Stronger

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 19:05:24 GMT

5 strategies to help you focus and strengthen your team so that you can emerge from the last few years stronger and more impactful.

Create a data-based plan and be focused.
Get some improvement project rolling to take away pain, frustrations, and stress (you, team, customers)
Use team huddles to focus and engage the team in solving their own daily work challenges. Share, learn, and improve together.
Relentlessly see and eliminate the wastes that consume time and resources. Focus on your value.
Acknowledge and celebrate efforts and results.

5S your Virtual Spaces

Fri, 17 Jun 2022 14:24:28 GMT

Gain a better understanding, examples, and excitement to try the 5S improvement method that reduces the wastes of Search and Getting Ready in your virtual, information-based work processes.

The Goal TO: Gain a better understanding, examples, and excitement to try the 5S improvement method.

SO THAT: You will learn more about 5S and its value. You get excited about making improvement. You continue to build your improvement abilities.

BY:

What is 5S
Benefits of applying 5S
5S method

Link to learn how to lead a 5S improvement project

4 Steps to a Vacation from Work

Wed, 08 Jun 2022 12:44:28 GMT

4 Steps to a Vacation from Work

Do you agree, we all need a vacation once in a while? To recharge our batteries! To reconnect with friends, family, or a good book! To give our brains time to wander and innovate! To find external best practices that can be brought back to work!

If you are like many of us, you may be saying "I need a break, I want a break, but I don't have time." OR "My work is important and I have no one to cover for me."

There is little doubt that what you do is important. Having balance, in your life, is not a poor reflection on your work ethics or importance. There are many root causes to why others do not vacation (this is for another time!). This article, is to provide steps to taking a true vacation from work. Not the "I'm checking email every day" or "Text me if you need anything" vacations. We're talking a true healthy and mentally-recharging vacation!

1. Plan For It

Write down or collect all work that must be done prior to your departure.
Write down or collect all work that you would like to do prior to your departure.
Write down or collect all the work that must be done while you are out.
Prioritize all the tasks. Reference our prioritization techniques webinar

2. Work Ahead

If possible, a little extra overtime now can make vacation time all the sweeter! TIP: Stay focused on the priority tasks.

3. Effectively Onboard Your Backup

Based on the priority tasks that cannot be completed prior to your departure, identify who can help. These team members, because together you are successful, may be a peer, your supervisor, or someone who works for you. Providing vacation backup can also be a development opportunity!
Provide documented standardized work instructions so that your back up has process knowledge to follow. Link to documenting standardized work instructions instruction
Walk through the standardized work to confirm understanding and your backup's ability to perform the work. Maybe have your backup do a bit of the work before you go so that you can answer questions and provide coaching live and together.

4. Prepare For Your Return

No kidding! Before you depart, prepare for your return.

Write down what you need to do immediately upon your return. This really helps you jump into productive 1st days back.
In your email, provide an away message with backup information; instead of contact me for anything��.
Leave unneeded work devices behind and ENJOY!
Enjoy some much earned rest and relaxation!��

We wish you a great vacation and a return where you are healthier and more energized!

Innovation: Process and Methods Webinar

Thu, 19 May 2022 18:06:03 GMT

Innovation occurs everywhere. Successfully developing and implementing transformational changes takes teamwork AND a process to follow. Register for this free introduction to innovation, the benefits of getting teams innovating, the process to follow, and powerful techniques to increase success.

Link to learn more

Having Fun at Work

Fri, 13 May 2022 19:52:02 GMT

If you are seeking some fun at work, try engaging everyone in improving their work processes.

Marrying improvement and fun has so many benefits (quantitative and qualitative). You get a chance to improve your work process and make it less frustrating. You get to be creative. You can improve your skills. You are part of a high-performing team. You end up with more pride and ownership of your work!

If you are having fun improving, your customers get better products and services AND your organization's outcomes and results improve AND this culture will attract more people to you.

Let's hear from some of these team members and how improvement efforts brought fun into their work.

"This blows away the red tape and lets us go forward with improvements. We were able to streamline processes and make real differences."

"Our team's productivity has improved 10X. We are so much more focused and supportive of one another."

"We implemented ideas and new processes that we've talked about for a long time but were unable to accomplish."

"I sincerely appreciate this wonderful opportunity for personal, professional, and institutional growth. We are stronger in providing services because of this."

"There have been times when we tried to get together to work through stuff—this is really neat to see it in action...huge feeling of accomplishment! I have never seen such collective enthusiasm and cooperation. Thank you!"

"Usually we just plan; the best part of this we did it too, we made the changes."

"I sometimes wonder if this is one of the main reasons I didn't retire sooner. No, I don't wonder, I know. You not only took me back to days where open thinking, mutual respect, and mentoring are paramount; you helped me remember that I really do have a brain and can be a positive contributor."

"My mind raced with ideas and improvements for days. In fact, the other night I found myself dreaming of wastes and woke up arguing the benefits of flow of single items vs. batching!"

If you don't have team members clamoring to participate in identifying and making improvements to their daily work - it may be time to evaluate some engagement ideas to increase your organization, team's, and individual's impact that includes more fun!

Engaging the Team in Finding Improvement

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 14:31:58 GMT

Gain ideas and approaches to engage your team members in finding improvements so that team members see process wastes and improvement opportunities, they get excited about making improvement, and you continue to build your improvement abilities.

4 Keys to Accomplishing More as a Team

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 14:33:41 GMT

Fact or Fiction: When we work together, as a team, we will accomplish more?

FACT!

This is likely not a big surprise. However, putting everyone together and calling them a team does not make it so. Let's share a few critical keys for teams to come together, accomplish more, and work at their peak performance.

1. Common Purpose

Use a team charter or goal statement to confirm everyone has a consistent and complete understanding of the team's aim and how to measure success. Benefits: alignment and faster on-boarding.

2. A Consistent Process

Define and use a work process map that clarifies the tasks and responsibilities of everyone's role. Sub-process (aka Swimlane) mapping captures the forms, templates, job aids, equipment, and systems to use for each defined task.

There are big side benefits of mapping out the work process. You will learn a lot about each other and the work process, one team's learning:

Our process's data and Information:

61 steps

24 handoffs, 34 wait times

Reject rate > 75%

49-106 days
10 approvals

This created a desire to improve quality and clarity of roles; resulting in significantly decreased handoffs, rejects, and # of approvals. Link to more

3. Provide Standardized Work Instructions to Follow

Process maps provide what to do. Standardized work instructions provide how to do a critical work task. A standardized work instruction provides a guide to follow. It includes resources need to complete the tasks, checklist of steps, tips, and quality self-checks. Benefits: deeper understanding, more consistent results, better quality, and faster on-boarding. Link to more

A process map and standardized work instructions create accountability, expectations, and trust in one another.

4. Team huddles

A routine forum for the team to come together. In a team huddle teams a) review their performance measures, b) share successes that can be adopted, c) discuss and resolve problems and barriers, d) establish actions and accountability to implement successes and solutions to problems. Benefits: build team relationships, more results, and trust in one another. " Productivity is up 10 fold! " Link to more

Contact us to help in developing the team's individual and collective skills and implementing keys to accomplishing more.

Your 20% vs. 80%

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 13:07:11 GMT

Time flies when you're having fun!* Can you believe we are in month 3 of 2022 already; 20% of the year is behind us! What have you learned/accomplished so far? Are you having some fun doing it? If not...

Let's explore the 20% and its better half, 80%.

Let's talk #s. No, not statistical analysis in problem solving. Let's talk 80/20. The 80-20 rule, also known as the pareto principle, asserts that 80% of outputs or consequences result from 20% of all inputs or causes.

YES! We still have 80% of 2022 to perform well, have some fun, and really make an IMPACT. Easier said than done, right? Following are some approaches to refocus/reprioritize our work to increase personal and team performance:

What is important? What are your work responsibilities and projects that will get you and your team to >80%?

A. What are your plans?

Are they written down? Have you shared them with others to get help, resources, and be held accountable? So far this year, are you focused on the big items? What has been added; do you need to refocus? Consider quarterly evaluation (see C below) to learn and adjust priorities. It not too late to create your strategic and annual plans, link to more .

B. In your role, what are your responsibilities?

What are the biggest items you are responsible for? Do they bring value to the customer or user of your output? Is this where you are spending your time? Is this where resources are assigned? Consider evaluating your responsibility vs. skill to understand what knowledge and skills to develop. Also consider a mentor, coach, or technical assistance provider for extra guidance and help along the way. A great way to increase your value add is by relentlessly identifying and eliminating the waste activities in your day.

C. It is a great time to reflect and find lessons learned

Periodically pause and evaluate your performance. This 4-step approach is used at the end of a meeting, throughout the year, end of a phase or the end of a project. It is a simple yet quick and effective technique to learn from the past, change the present, and create the future. Stop reliving the same mistakes and frustrations; instead learn and change! Link to learn this, see "learn from the past, change the present, create the future" and SRLD™:

STATUS: What have you accomplished vs. your targets?
REASONS: What helped or hindered your accomplishments?
LEARNINGS: What are the underlying learnings or root causes why you did / did not perform as desired?
DIRECTIONS: What actions need to be taken to learn from the past and keep getting better?

D. Continually prioritize your time.

How are you starting your days? Do you have a prioritized list of items to accomplish today or this week? Is data used to judge your priorities? Here is a link to the recent webinar with some prioritization method s. We also teach prioritization in Yellow, Green, and Black Belt trainings ( Learn more ) .

E. Often 80% is great AND perfection is not always needed. Which would you prefer 1) 1 month to get 80% improvement or 2) 6 months to get 99%? Improvement is continual; perfection is sometimes more than needed. Improvement involves problem solving, trying something, measuring results, learning, and over time continuing to identify more innovative changes to go beyond the 80%. Kaizen is an advanced improvement method that helps you get big (45%-90%) change in work process times and quality defects. Kaizen is done in rapid fashion (5 days). Spending very focused time pays off with results and impact sooner. Kaizen is also fun and engaging for the team; thus another win-win strategy to use time wisely and rapidly reap the benefits. Link to more

Increase your time in value-added activities to make the most of the remaining 80% of 2022.

*from Virgil's Georgics, line 284, book three

PDSA-Lean-Six Sigma-Quality Improvement Decoded

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 04:17:58 GMT

Improvement is simply about helping make things better - every day, everywhere yet, we may not understand it.

Join to decode improvement: What is PSDA-Lean-Six Sigma-Quality; how they are the same and different.

Effectively and efficiently implementing someone else’s success

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Fri, 18 Feb 2022 20:29:22 GMT

Someone else’s proven success is not always easily adopted. Join for tips to effectively and efficiently implement other’s successful data-based, evidenced based interventions (EBI) or practices.

CQI News: People - Your brains, muscles, and souls

Thu, 17 Feb 2022 15:14:39 GMT

People make the difference in every organization. They are the way organizations transform informational and physical resources into products and services the customers value. They are capable of generating ideas, solving problems, making decisions, and generating learning that improve the organization. People achieve your Mission through the application of their capabilities as individuals and teams. People are the brains, muscles, and soul in every high-performing organization - they are the primary determinant in whether it exists or fails to exist!

The People in High-Performing Organizations Have a Unique Set of Qualities:

Aligned and Focused on maximizing value to customers, eliminating waste in all work processes, and achieving extraordinary results.
Energized by the organizational and personal success they see possible.
Function as teams within and across the organization to achieve results and improve performance by identifying improvement areas, solving problems, and learning. See success through enabling or helping others.
Capable, with each individual knowledgeable and proficient, in executing their core responsibilities and in creating improvement. Competes through the excellence of products and services.
Pioneering, innovative, and internally driven to achieve the previously unachievable, probe new opportunities, and create new benchmarks of accomplishment at the personal, company, and industry levels. Uses continual improvement and learning to achieve success.
And, people are supported by leaders that believes in the capacity of people and creates an environment that enables their performance! [1]

So, who are the “right people” and what do they need to be successful? The core values, knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs), and setting are needed and based on the following performance features:

A. The Core Values Needed

Core values are simply the principles of conduct people abide by as they pursue the organization’s purpose. They have no “moral” underpinning however they often are a conscious choice on the part of an individual and need to be considered in hiring, onboarding, and advancement practices. The desired core values for people in a high performing organization can be identified by analysis of the above performance features using social science research [2] . They include: Intrinsically motivated, Teams with others, Self-starting and sustaining, Accountable for performance, Pioneering, and Persistent desire to master the skills.

B. What People Need to Know: Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

People need to develop competence in their knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) to fulfill their role. In addition to the technical KSAs required, working in a culture of high-performing continual improvement requires additional competencies . These enables everyone to continuously improve their own performance, the effectiveness and efficiency of their work process, and the organizations’ services and products. This leads to a set of core competencies and skills:

Note that these are for all members of the organization from the board room to individual contributors!

C. Enable the People by Creating the Setting

Another necessary component of helping people succeed and a characteristic of high-performing improvement organizations is a setting that enables people to perform. Deming, in his collective works covering “profound knowledge” and “14 management points” , reinforced the need for leaders to enable people’s success by setting the focus on continual improvement, knowing the work (process) they supervise, understanding the sources of improvement, and enhancing people’s capabilities so that they can succeed.

Do you have the setting/environment that help people succeed and leaders create?

Do people have the information and data needed to align with the direction? Understand the performance of their work process, their own performance?
Are resources (information, material, equipment, space) available to perform and improve their process?
Do reliable work processes with standardized work exist to produce the expected outcomes?
Are expectations clear with goals identified and measures available to provide feedback and guide improvement? Are the expectations reasonable? Is there a real, practical, and operating system that provides opportunities to improve performance ?

What is the performance of your people and their core values, KSAs, and setting? Are you set up up for high performance?

A local business leader, in an excavating business, once exclaimed “I do not know if we will be excavating rocks on the moon in 20 years or not. What I do know is we will have the people that will be able to figure it out”.

[1] Adapted from “The High Performing Learning Organization”; Raphael L. Vitalo, James. S. Byron, Patricia V. Bierley, and Christopher Holmberg

[2] Some of the relevant social science research includes: Bandura (1994; 1997); Carkhuff (1969; 1983) among many others

Making Great Decisions

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 02:51:08 GMT

Making Great Decisions

What is the quality and speed of your decisions? your teams? as a leadership team? If the answer is – “they can always be better”, join this webinar. You will gain an introduction to 4 types of decision making that apply to all activities between daily work and strategic plans.

Emerge Stronger

Wed, 12 Jan 2022 15:30:25 GMT

No doubt, the last 2 years has held you back; hindered your progress and exhausted you. What are you doing to emerge stronger and more impactful in 2022?

If you have plans for you or your team, reply and share! What are your priorities? What are you challenges to emerging strong?

If you are looking for some strategies and tips to emerge stronger, read on.

HOW to emerge stronger in 2022? Here are 5 ways to improve your and your team's 2022 performance!

1. GET THE ORGANIZATION FOCUSED.

Without focus you may not be making progress towards your Vision and optimizing your resources on the most important things! Use a reliable and comprehensive approach to getting focused like Hoshin Planning – it will help you find the priorities, set clear and measurable goals, and integrate all efforts. Link to getting focused webinar. Link to learning how to do this.

Do some visioning – Where do we want to be in 3 years, 10 years?
What is my data telling me? Where are the gaps? the opportunities? What are the barriers to accelerating progress?
What are the priority improvement areas and goals for 2022? What are the projects we will charter and make happen THIS YEAR?
How will I measure progress?
Communicate, communicate and communicate the plan – so that everyone knows what is important.

2. GET THE PROJECTS ROLLING.

Improvement projects benefit greatly from a step-by-step information and knowledge processing approach. It helps to get better solutions, bigger results, and ultimately more efficient use of your resources. Think PLAN-DO-STUDY-ACT and use the steps well! An approach, like PrISM™, will guide teams through a. goal setting, b. data collection, c. problem solving, d. trying the solutions, e. learning from testing, and f. effectively installing the solution into the fabric daily work. Accelerate progress using advanced improvement methods linked here .

3. HELP THE WORK TEAMS SOLVE LOCAL PROBLEMS AND IMPROVE DAILY.

Work teams are at the heart of implementing new processes, solving local problems, and bubbling up new ideas. Supercharge their effort with improvement huddles! Huddles are a team-engagement method and process that focuses work teams on important team-based measures, helps them to solve problems, and create actions that continually improve their process and make it easier for them to succeed. They are an important part of installing improvement project outputs AND continually improving. More on team huddles.

4. GET YOURSELF IN A HIGHER VALUE ADDED - LESS WASTE SPACE.

Take some time out at the beginning of the year and look at how you are spending your time. What is truly adding value from a customer’s perspective? See �� the waste in your work, processes, and environment. Eliminate the waste in your day and provide yourself more value adding time.

Take the waste challenge.

Learn other prioritization methods.

5. ACKNOWL EDGE AND CELEBRATE EFFORT AND RESULTS.

Remind yourself to pause, provide constructive feedback, and acknowledgement (personal and specific) for the progress of the organization, projects, work teams and individuals. Find the positives and reinforce them frequently. Catch people doing it right and say so!

Prioritizing Your Time and Resources

Thu, 16 Dec 2021 21:11:26 GMT

Staying focused on what is important is critical to achieving your goals; establishing priorities (data-driven) helps you get there. In this webinar you get an introduction to several prioritization techniques that apply to activities between daily work and strategic plans.

View this recorded webinar for some personal, team, project, and organization prioritization techniques:

Creating a Successful Holiday

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 20:54:46 GMT

�� HAPPY HOLIDAYS! �� We are blessed to have you as friends, customers, partners, and community members. We wish you some enjoyable and relaxing time!

The year end hustle and bustle. Urgh! Sooo much you want to accomplish before the year is done. Sooo many holiday preparations, year end deadlines, and 2022 preparations. How do you get the important items done?

Bring on your Project Management and Prioritization skills!

Our work days require constant prioritization and good management of those priorities. Whether that be managing and executing a program, leading changes, facilitating improvement projects. These project management and prioritization skills are transferable to all walks of our lives, including the holidays! Join the Prioritization techniques webinar this week !

Accomplishing more over the holidays - with a few guiding questions:

Establishing action plans with What needs to be accomplished, by Who, and by When. And then relentlessly working these plans can help create a wonderfully successful holidays and work projects.

Involving others in planning, decorating, or baking increases their pride, excitement, ownership, and creates a better result. The same is true in work processes too!

Again, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year to you, your friends, family, and work teams!

Systemwide Thinking and Acting

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 15:29:36 GMT

Explore Systemwide Thinking and Acting in this webinar. We cover what it is, why it is important, and how to begin using Value Stream and Extended Value Streams to SEE the connections, relationships, and most importantly – where in the entire process to focus your efforts (including partners, suppliers, customers, and across functions).

Giving Thanks with 5 Win-Win Approaches

Tue, 16 Nov 2021 19:08:33 GMT

Healthy and long-term working partnerships come from continually nurturing a Win-Win relationship.

What is a Win-Win relationship? It is a working relationship where we care for and consider how we impact one another.

Win-Win is when EVERYONE BENEFITS!

In this season of giving thanks for what we have and what we have achieved together, let's share 5 approaches so that everyone wins!

1. Understand Your System.

Who are your customers?
Who are your stakeholders (other team members, other functions, grant/fund providers, and the communities where you work)?
What are your work process steps and technology that interact with the customer and stakeholders? Where are the gaps? Poor handoffs?

2. Routinely ask your stakeholders and customers

How are we doing? What is going well? What is not going well? What pain and rework do I create for you?
And what can I do that would delight you?

3. Nurture a gold-mining mentality

If we cannot openly share and talk about our problems; how can we possibly fix problems? Use frequent conversations, customer feedback, complaints, and open team huddle boards to capture ideas and problems to prioritize collective goals and resolution.

4. Solve problems together

Share and use data and facts.
Get to the root of problems together ( with 5 Whys and Cause & Effect analysis ).
Redesign work and handoffs so that they truly work smoothly for all.

5. Together test changes

Before rolling out changes OR receiving changes, try them out to make sure they are a win-win. Testing the changes in advance will provide an opportunity to get questions addressed, adjust (for smoother handoffs) and increase the “we’re in this together” mentality.

These approaches, individually or collectively, WILL help you build better trusting working relationships that foster and facilitate a WIN for everyone.

Achieve Better Outcomes with the Best Improvement Method

Thu, 07 Oct 2021 17:47:21 GMT

Selecting the Improvement Method to effectively and efficiently achieve better Outcomes

The team looks to you for guidance; "What is the best improvement method to solve my problem and achieve my desired outcomes?" Join to gain the logic model to: 1. Identify the OUTCOME needed. 2. What WASTES need to be eliminated. 3. The best improvement METHOD to apply.

Explore methods referenced in the webinar: LINK

View webinar here:

System-wide Thinking and Acting

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 15:57:46 GMT

Are you stuck in a silo? Do you only understand your tasks and not how they impact others? Are your fixing problems only to learn the root of the problem is outside your area, way up stream from your work? Spending all your time making one silo/area perfect rarely translates into better customer service/product/experiences. Applying system-wide thinking and action can help!

System-wide thinking helps you take a few steps back - to better see and understand your input, your output, and what you do collectively. System-wide thinking involves mapping the entire process, system, program, supply chain (from beginning to end) to see the over-arching opportunities to improve quality, cost, speed, and delivery.

The Benefits: Why System-wide thinking and acting

It will bring you, your customers, supporting departments, team members, partners, and suppliers together.
A significant increase in understanding how we all work together, handoffs, expectations, and deliverables.
It will increase innovation, focus, and collaboration. "That is what you do with what I give you? Why?" "Let's do this better!"
A significant improvement in customer impact when everyone is aligned and focused on creating an effective and efficient system.

SUCCESS #1: Find the biggest barriers to make the biggest impact

The team strived to improve their capacity by increasing # of customers visited/day. They put effort into improving the value-added step: the on-site inspection time with the customer. Two results were achieved 1. Improved quality interaction with customers ��and 2. No change to their capacity and process times. �� You are reading correctly, they did not achieve their goal.

The next improvement (improvement is continual ��), with system-wide thinking, they looked at their work from a higher and data-based view. A visual map, like the one below, helped answer these questions: What is the supplier input to their work? What are the work steps? What is customer output from their work? What are the gaps, delays, rejects, and rework?

The system-wide evaluation led them to travel time. More time was consumed in traveling between customers than on-site time. This led the team to identify and implement planning and scheduling strategies to decrease their work travel times, increase their visits per day, along with a happier team and customers!!

SUCCESS #2: Find the biggest barriers to make the biggest impact

The team was preparing to hire someone to help with their heavy work load. System-wide thinking helped them learn 90% of their input (from their suppler) was incorrect or incomplete. The biggest barrier was not in their process; it was in what they received! Their actions focused on working with their suppliers to improve quality of input. The results:

Quality improved (90% to 10% defects) in one month.
Working relations with suppliers improved, immediately.
Team capacity increased. Hiring an additional team member was not needed.

System-wide thinking and action guides more understanding of work (from beginning to end; the supply chain) and how information and materials really flow to identify the most

impactful actions.

Interested in trying this too?

Keep reading about maps to aid system-wide thinking and action .
Learn more with our training (see system-wide focus; the list is in alphabetic order) .
Or get help in facilitating the 1st time .

Implementing Changes So They Stick: Is it Trick or Treat?

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 16:35:56 GMT

TRICKS

Ever have any of these problems when rolling out your improvements or changes?

The change did not become part of the new way of doing things.
Large and unexpected resistance to the change.
Results did not achieve the performance demonstrated during the testing of the solution.
Performance falls off rather that continually improving.

TREATS

IMPLEMENTATION is a key part of the improvement cycle!

After problem solving, testing of the solutions, and learning from the initial application, implementation is key to getting the treats from all your hard work.

Done well, implementation should result in a smooth handoff to the work process owners and individual contributors, measurable improvements for all stakeholders, ownership of the new way, and ongoing improvements, see some successes .

Implementation does not simply happen by itself and takes some attention to a set of basic steps and tasks in order to be successful. How have you been doing? Can you check off these steps and tasks?

The Improvement is reliable, standardized and with clear accountabilities for use, learn more ?
Everyone has been taught the new process effectively ( using a Tell, Show, Do, Recycle approach )?
Measure and targets are defined and operationalized? Performance is tracked, learn more ?
A feedback mechanism for questions and ideas ( “Huddles” ) is created to regularly review performance, collectively solve resulting problems and focus on incrementally improving?
Performance coaching is provided; giving positive feedback and addressing gaps (individually and as a team), learn more ?

Creating Improvements, Rapidly: When the Team is Busy

Thu, 09 Sep 2021 20:02:21 GMT

Your work process has problems (poor quality, high costs, slow response time, lots of approvals, too many delays and hand offs). If you are experiencing any of these problems please jump and solve these problems rapidly. Your team, Your customers, Your results will be better, in a few days!

This webinar explores: how to create improvements, rapidly, with Kaizen.
1. What is Kaizen?
2. Benefits from using Kaizen?
3. How to use Kaizen when the team is busy with little availability.

How to become a Kaizen facilitator

Options to gain the knowledge, skills, rapid results, immediate return:

1. Training and co-lead the 1st Kaizen

2. Co-lead 1st Kaizen with training following to confirm knowledge

Watch webinar here:

Have Your Cake and Eat it Too!

Tue, 07 Sep 2021 16:34:59 GMT

Do you believe the old cliché “you cannot have your cake and eat it too”? Or has someone said “You cannot have quality and speed at the same time”? Let's explore this further! You can have faster, easier, less costly processes with better quality. This is often solved by examining your work processes. Don’t slow them down by adding numerous inspections or approvals. Look for two simple wastes - where the defects exist and where you are searching for any of the needed resources.

Start with some good ingredients: an effective work process, an understanding of where those defects exist and why, some good standardized work, and sprinkle liberally with some mistake proofing. Make work intuitive as to how to do it right the first time* or even impossible to do it wrong. Cycle time and cost will go down and quality will go up! And you can eat all the cake you want and it never goes away!

Speed, Quality, and Lower Costs together.

Let's slice it up and put it on the plate:

One slice at a time! This is great for being focused, getting deep, and fixing 1 item. There are improvement methods and techniques to get one result: �� https://powermarketing.editor.multiscreensite.com/home/site/98ff54d0/blog/blog/5s-accomplish-faster-easier . ��

The entire cake is on your plate!

Understanding all variables and using improvement methods can enable fixing many slices together. Some improvement methods that help you create speed, quality, and lower costs together: �� Process mapping, �� Kaizen, �� Value Engineering/Design for Excellence , �� Six Sigma .

Some of our customer's results:

*Zero d efects performance standards book: Quality is Still Free: Making Quality Certain in Uncertain Times, by Philip B. Crosb y

HIGH-PERFORMING work that is FUN!

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 21:40:31 GMT

Yes, you can have fun at work and achieve more than is believed possible, together. If work is not fun, rewarding, and meaningful team members will become disengaged. Disengagement can be very harmful – lack of attention to details and safety, and a drain on other team members. Neither high-performance and fun can be truly sustainable if not together.

6 Ways to Have FUN and work at HIGH PERFORMANCE:

1. Engage everyone in team huddles to collectively share problems, solve problems together, and implement the ideas from those who do the work everyday. In projects involve those who will receive the changes to increase commitment and ownership.

2. As a Leader knock down barriers and move aside so that your team’s skills and pride in work performance can shine through. Trust your team. Evaluate your culture too with tarot cards; now that is something! Link to tarot cards.

3. Take a breather ; whether it is a vacation or a 10-minute walk away from your desk. Innovative ideas and solutions to your problems struggle to surface when minds are all consumed with the next task.

4. Use evidence-based methods and techniques to eliminate nagging, energy-draining problems. These methods are specifically designed to engage team members in fixing problems easier, faster, and create high-performance that sticks. Link to methods.

5. Participate! Join your team in an improvement event or taking a gemba walk to see how work is being performed and how to help. When implementing a change use friendly competitions or games to make the change fun and increase adoption.

6. Spend time with someone different. Continually learn and develop more skills. Time with others can generate diverse ideas and help renew your energy. Link to talk. Consider joining a community with similar goals and aspirations. Link to improvement community

As you give these a try – please share so that you can be recognized and others learn from your success!

Replicating Evidence-Based Processes

Thu, 12 Aug 2021 20:38:05 GMT

Replicating Evidence-Based Processes
Replication Process – Gain Improvements Faster

Your work can be improved easier by adopting good and best practices yet we hear ‘we are different’ or ‘that won’t work for me’. Read/watch here to gain an understanding of the process to effectively replicate someone else’s success in a customized, personal way.

Using the replication process to gain improvements benefits

Speed to results.
Lower Costs. Labor reduction in solving the same problem over and over alone.
Probability of success increased.
Stronger social network created; more sharing of ongoing improvement.

Watch the webinar here:

The Value of Improvement Certification

Tue, 10 Aug 2021 20:39:27 GMT

Improvement Belts

Gain a better understanding of the roles, levels, knowledge, skills, and benefits of being a certified continual quality improvement practitioner.

What is a certified CQI White, Yellow, Green, and Black Belt?
What level is best for you?
The value these certifications create.

Watch the webinar here:

Engaging team members during this overwhelming time

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Thu, 08 Jul 2021 12:59:41 GMT

Engaging team members during this overwhelming time

Your team is off-site, on-site, asked to pick up other work, managing re-assignments, performing 2 jobs. Oh My Goodness - how do you have time to engage in quality time with every team member?!

Team member engagement - an investment in your team? Certainly.

What an incredible return on your investment in time! Less stress ⭐ More focus and energy⭐ Increased openness and trust ⭐ Faster problem solving and decision making ⭐ More pride in work ⭐ Retention!! ⭐ and Increase productivity and capacity!

Where to invest your engagement time?

Embed team engagement into work routines.

In Daily Work

Use team huddles and the Continual Improvement System so that all team members can stay aligned, focused, share pain/problems/improvement ideas, and jointly identify and solve problems together. This helps you fix problems as they occur rather them allowing them to grow and fester.
Take Gemba walks to truly understand the work and how to best support higher performance. Learn how to do this in Leaders Leading an Improvement Culture.
Use Standardized work instructions to clarify and standardized the work so that team members can focus on new, more challenging innovations. Link to more

Organization Direction

Create listening posts, evaluate, and act (timely), Communicate actions.
Include others in creating plans, i.e., gathering data, evaluating data and making decisions. Learn more in Strategic & Annual Planning
Involve others (customers, team members, suppliers, partners) in improvement projects. Establish goals, provide support, and remove barriers.
Plan and provide workforce develop learning and sharing opportunities. "We are investing in you because you are valuable."

Check out more ideas here, in the Value-Waste Challenge! Link

As you give these a try - please share so that you can be recognized and we can learn from your success!

Create Standardized Work Instructions: Learn the process, templates, and immediately begin

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Fri, 14 May 2021 14:28:51 GMT

Processes with lots of variation and poor performance need standard work instructions. Creating the standards sets expectations and creates a calm consistency. In this training learn (& immediately create) standard work instructions to gain process consistency. Each participant creates a work process map, standardized work procedure, and implementation steps along with the knowledge to continue creating more standardized processes.

Goal:

To gain the knowledge, skills, and templates to create standard procedures to continue standardizing more processes. AND To create documented process maps, standardized work procedures, and implementation plans.

Benefits:

Increased knowledge & skills to continue capturing and implementing standard procedures.
Consistent understanding and application of the standardized processes.
More productivity / capacity.
Clearer expectations, roles, and responsibilities.
Less process confusion and stress.
Improved speed and accuracy of work.
Teams have gained up to 20% productivity/capacity. (Simply by implementing standard instructions, no improvement!)

Agenda:

8 hours of working sessions. Participants bring a process to class on which to focus and practice.

Capture the current process map (Just-in-time process mapping education, templates, and immediate application).
Convert the current process map into standard procedures (Just-in-time standardized work instruction education, templates, and immediate application).
Prepare for standard procedure implementation.

Learn From the Past Change the Present Create the Future!

Wed, 12 May 2021 14:12:49 GMT

History repeats itself. WHY? Why do we experience the same situation or problem over again? Why are we not learning from mistakes? There is a better way! At the conclusion of an experience, event, project, or simply a meeting follow this 4-Step lessons learned method to analyze performance data, identify data-based reasons for performance (both good and bad), extract learnings, and create actions. Leverage the experiences and learning to create actions and accountability.

Goal:

To gain the knowledge and skills to help others capture lessons learned and convert them into actions.

Benefits:

Increase buy-in to actions and improvements .
Uncover more exhaustive root causes with strong solutions.
A positive approach to learning and prior experiences.
Documented and retained knowledge for future use and immediate sharing of learnings and actions with all stakeholders.
Prevent repeating undesirable outcomes (“don’t pay for the same ground twice”).
Resulting in increased resource effectiveness and efficiency.

Agenda:

4 hours. Just-in-time training and facilitated 4 hours, Virtual or on-site, with a diverse team members.

The Status
Deliverables: Evaluated achievement (outcomes vs. targets)
The Reasons
Deliverables: Identified reasons why the performance achieved the results including what helped, what hindered.
The Learnings
Deliverables: Identified underlying learnings or root causes. Ideas to improve future performance. (What caused the “Reason”?)
The Directions

Deliverables: Identified actions/directions for applying the learning in the form of What to do, Who will do it, and When will it be done by.

Flow - Balanced Work - and Kanbans

Mon, 03 May 2021 17:23:04 GMT

Accelerate the speed and improve the quality of a process by eliminating wait times, queue times, and other delays. Significant process improvement can be achieved with the application of flowing one unit at a time (or minimum batch size), with formulated and balanced resource responsibilities and time expectations, and kanbans (visual or automated controls) to manage and signal stop/start of items or information. These methods are best applied to processes with long cycle times, handoffs of work with long wait times, bottlenecks, and poor quality output.

Goal:

To increase knowledge and skills of the Flow, Balanced Work, and Kanban processes and methods and be able to use it to lead a team through realizing signficant time and quality improvements.

Benefits:

Shorter lead time.
Happier team members and customers!
Earlier quality problem discovery
Less scrap and rework.
Lower total inventory and higher inventory turns.

Agenda:

Training: 40 hours of education and immediate application. Participants bring a scenario to class on which to focus and practice.

Application and Coaching: On-site event co-lead. One-on-one coaching until results are achieved.

Certification: Participation in this course and completion of 1 project = Continuous Improvement Flow Black Belt CERTIFICATION.

Understanding the Flow methods.
Gathering data and information.
Determining current process variation to balance resource work load.
Understanding and implementing kanbans.
Understanding and implementing visual controls.
Designing the process flow.
Testing the work process flow and crating sticky implementation of flow, balanced work, kanbans, and visual controls.

Statistical Analysis Basics

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Mon, 03 May 2021 16:56:40 GMT

Develop knowledge and skills to effectively and efficiently evaluate data to better understand a problem. This course teaches the statistical analysis basics including the process, analysis charts, and templates.

This course is part of Continuous Improvement Green Belt, aka CI Project Leader.

Goal of Problem Solving & Solution Identification:

To gain knowledge and skills in using and representing data and data analysis basics .

Benefits:

Deeper understanding of the situation.
Focus on what is important.
Increased creditability.
Less confusion, debates, ambiguity.
Faster decision making.
Faster Information-based problem solving, not antidotes or gut feels.

Agenda:

Training & Application: 4 hours of interactive education and application. Participants bring a scenario to class on which to focus and practice.

Statistic al analysis process
When to use statistical analysis
Terminology
Identify and gather data
Represent data and draw conclusions.

Six Sigma (Black Belt)

Mon, 03 May 2021 16:36:37 GMT

Develop Black Belt knowledge and skills to effectively and efficiently lead teams through the six sigma method. Learn and apply detailed statistical analysis to decrease process defects and variation.

Goal:

To increase your knowledge and skills of the Six Sigma DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) process and methods and be able to use it to lead a team through a process variance or defect reduction project.

Benefits:

Focus on increasing customer satisfaction.
Improve productivity and financial performance.
Engage team members in decreasing process variation, reducing defects, improving quality and safety.
Create predictable and controllable processes.
Gain processes to follow, techniques and templates to use for collecting and analyzing data to measure the current process; identifying, evaluating, and installing the solutions to measure and control performance; and continually improving.
One year CI Community of Practice membership.

Agenda:

Training: 96 hours of education and immediate application. Participants bring a scenario to class on which to focus and practice.

Application and Coaching: 4 days of on-site event co-lead. One-on-one coaching until results are achieved.

Certification: Participation in this course and completion of 1 project = Continuous Improvement Six Sigma Black Belt CERTIFICATION.

Our Purpose - Mission, Vision, & Values

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Fri, 30 Apr 2021 21:09:45 GMT

What is our team or organization's purpose? What do we all seek to create? Why are we here? What do we believe? This training / working sessions help you create or update your Mission, Vision, and Values.

MISSION: The organization’s purpose; what does the organization do and why does it exist.

VISION: A long term view (5-10 year) or “snapshot” of the future that the organization wants to create.

VALUES: The principles of conduct people abide by as they pursue the organization’s purpose.

Goal:

To gain leadership knowledge and skills in creating, testing, and using mission and vision statements and values to lead your team members.

Benefits:

Organization's purpose is clear and concise.
Increased team member focus on the organization's purpose.
Values that guide hiring, promoting, and team member coaching.
Accelerate achievement of the organization's mission and vision.

Agenda:

Training & Application: 8 hours of interactive education and application.

1. Systemwide thinking.

2. Understanding the system

3. Evaluating the system

4. Using the systemwide evaluation to prioritize improvements.

Quick Change - SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Dies)

Fri, 30 Apr 2021 21:09:43 GMT

SMED (single minute exchange of dies) improvements reduce the waste of getting ready to do work. Reductions in changeover times of equipment or processes create immediate and significant benefits in labor productivity, cycle time and inventory. The SMED approach assesses each task of a changeover process to distinguish what can be done externally to the process of changeover and what cannot. The entire work process is then redesigned to eliminate tasks, move external ones out of the changeover process and streamline all remaining activities.

Goal of Quick Change - SMED:

To gain the knowledge and skills to effectively and efficiently facilitate SMED improvement events including confirming and preparing the scope and team; performing the SMED event; and implementing the improvements.

Benefits:

Decreased process to process changeover times (equipment, processes, and resources)
Immediate and often significant benefits in labor productivity and capacity.
More process flexibility.
Lower inventory levels and costs.
Team pride and ownership, as well as more energy and enthusiasm for more improvement.

Agenda:

Training: 26 hours of education and immediate application. Participants bring a scenario to class on which to focus and practice.

2-hour (virtual)

Understanding the what, why and how of Quick Change
Understanding the method and positioning with other methods
Identifying opportunities to use the Quick Change method
Selecting projects to apply during training

Classroom (3 Days)

Learning how to lead a team through Quick Change.
Confirming the opportunity.
Preparing the team.
Performing Quick Change (each step of the method) including techniques used in each step of the process.
Institutionalizing the solutions and managing the change.
Preparing for application.

Co-lead and coach application: on-site with the team to achieve real and immediate benefits.

Application and Coaching: 3 -5 days of on-site event co-lead. One-on-one coaching until results are achieved.

Certification: Participation in this course and completion of 1 project = Continuous Improvement SMED Black Belt CERTIFICATION.

Team Huddles: Bringing Improvement into Daily Work

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Fri, 30 Apr 2021 21:07:56 GMT

Focus and engage team members in achieving goals, identifying problems (daily), joining in solving problems and implementing improvements. Team Continual Improvement System™ (CIS™) process and huddling around the CIS™ board is a fantastic way to increase adoption of improvements more quickly and sustain more improvements longer.

Goal of Team Huddles:

To learn the process of leading my team in routine team problem solving sessions to focus together on performance measures and what and how to achieve goals together.

Benefits:

Increase engagement and involvement of all team members.
Engage everyone to understand the status of their efforts easily, visually, and independently.
All team members understand and are focused on achieving team goals.
Increased effectiveness of solutions.
Increased team morale and pride.
Increased adoption and compliance to improvement.

Agenda:

Training: 4 hours of interactive education with immediate implementation.

8:00 AM - 12:00 PM TRAINING

Establishing the team huddle framework to engage staff in everyday CI processes by following the PDSA, improvement, cycle.
Understanding team huddles and where they are used.
Appreciating the benefits huddles can bring.
Establishing team huddles boards.
Practice leading a team huddle, including identifying/confirming team performance measures, problem identification, problem solving practice, and converting discussions into actions.

~1 hour PM IMPLEMENTATION

In work location: establish huddle board location, confirm performance measures, and add morning content to the board
Convene the individual teams. Introduce the huddle. Conduct a huddle meeting to identify action(s) to address a team-based problem.

Application and Coaching: One-on-one coaching until results are achieved.

A recent webinar on this topic:

System-wide Focus & Action

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 20:30:32 GMT

System-wide thinking approach and templates help identify big changes that improve work processes and outcomes for all. It's a Win-Win! This will help identify where problems occur AND where they begin. Note, system-wide thinking will have you focusing beyond your areas of control. It will involve your customers, supporting departments, partners, and suppliers.

Goal of System-wide Focus with Value Stream Mapping & Analysis:

To gain the knowledge and skills to evaluate and focus efforts that create systemwide understanding, alignment, and great changes.

Benefits:

More focused, accelerated, and larger improvements by identifying priority opportunities that impact work processes and handoffs across work units.
A system-wide view to manage, communicate, and guide performance improvements. Better communication and collaboration through understanding of roles and responsibilities particularly across work units.
Accelerated improvements. Bigger improvements that impacts everyone.∆ Increased quality outcomes and customer satisfaction by finding and addressing the sources of errors.
Reduced overall cycle times by seeing and addressing bottlenecks.
Reduced cost and improves financial performance by addressing process wastes and optimizing system resources.
System-wide maps that increase understanding and awareness of impact on one another.
The skills to engage others in system-wide thinking.

Agenda:

Training & Application: 4 hours of interactive education and application.

1. Understanding what system-wide thinking is and being able to identify the value streams.

2. How to map the high level process (value stream) + immediately create your value stream map.

3. Evaluating the value stream maps for system improvements based on your desired outcome.

4. Using the maps to identify the priority areas of focus, improvement methods/projects to initiate.

 Bring your process to create your own extended value stream in the training!

Working with Others - Active Listening & Communicating

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 16:08:52 GMT

If you experience co-workers not listening to or considering one another’s ideas , not understanding the what and why of ideas , not using each other’s thoughts to build better solutions , providing feedback that alienates the person , or having your idea stolen ; than this Working with Others course is for you and the team!

Goal of Working with Others:

To i ncrease listening & communicating skills + impact. Education and classroom practice is focused on improving the core skills of:

Clarifying and confirming the idea for understanding.
Building on the idea for an even better one.
Providing constructive feedback to identify concerns.
Maintaining positive relationships in the team.

Benefits:

Increased team productivity.
More effective communications (verbal and written). More win-win conversations that improve relations.
Better teamwork. More positive working relationship with peers.
More engagement.
Better decisions.
Better ideas, problem solving, and solutions. Solving problems is more fun, positive, and productive.
Better information handoffs . Decrease the waste of rework because we did not truly understand each other.
Gain skills that enable participants to participate in teams effectively and increase their job personal productivity.

Agenda:

Training & Application: 4 hours of interactive education and application.

1. How to get another’s point of view – Clarifying.

2. How to get another’s point of view - Confirming.

3. How to give your view - Constructive feedback.

4. How to give your view - Building upon other’s ideas.

This course is part of Continuous Improvement Green Belt, aka CI Project Leader , Leading a Culture of Improvement , and Supervisor skill development training .

Problem Solving & Solution Identification

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 15:39:59 GMT

Stop using guesses and symptoms to address problems and get to the root causes and corrective actions that will prevent the problem from reoccurring! This course “Problem Solving and Solution Identification” teaches the process and techniques to frame a problem, get to the roots of the problem, and identify high priority solutions to prevent problems from reoccurring.

This course is part of Continuous Improvement Green Belt, aka CI Project Leader.

Goal of Problem Solving & Solution Identification:

To increase knowledge and skills in using data and information to systematically understand problem’s causes and effects and identify solutions that prevent problems from reoccurring.

Benefits:

Ident ified solutions solve the reoccurrence of problems .
Results are improved at a rate greater than in the past.
Understand the relationship between problem solving and the improvement cycle.
Knowledge to lead a team through the step by step process of a cause and effect analysis.

Agenda:

Training & Application: 8 hours of interactive education and application. Participants bring a scenario to class on which to focus and practice.

Problem solving approaches and methods
Cause and effect overview
Complete cause and effect analysis (training and practice)
Define the problem & goal
Establish categories
Identify and prioritize data-supported issues
Perform root cause analysis, 5 Whys
Effective manage and install solutions

Process Mapping

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 19:48:29 GMT

If you would like to understand what really happens on the job, documenting the real sequential flow of work provides great insight to individuals and teams. There are different methods to writing, or mapping, a process; high level maps to identify gaps and opportunities, and transactional step by step level maps to identify defects, bottlenecks, and other wastes. This “Process Mapping” course teaches process mapping at different levels of details and how to analyze your process map for value and waste.

This course is part of Continuous Improvement Green Belt, aka CI Project Leader.

Goal of Process Mapping:

To develop additional knowledge and skills in documenting and analyzing work processes and activities. Education and classroom practice is focused on the process mapping methods (Value Stream Mapping, Sub Process Mapping, Information Circles) and analyzing the value and waste of the work process.

Benefits:

Understanding the concept of mapping levels and different types of maps.
Applying the approach and template for creating an effective value stream map, an effective sub-process map.
Understanding how to perform a waste analysis on the process and prioritizing opportunities.
Identifying the value, waste, and improvement opportunities in a work process so that improvements efforts are more focused on high impactful wasteful activities.

Agenda:

8 hours of training and templates, with application.

What is Process Mapping
Value Stream Mapping
Information circles, spaghetti diagrams
Sub Process Mapping
Waste / Value Analysis

Helping Others Embrace Change - Understand, Plan, & Communicate

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 19:29:13 GMT

Everyone works through changes at different rates (one imposed upon us and even ones in which we are involved). Using tried and successful change management processes and techniques can help decrease the stress, anxiety, and time to implement changes while improving the effectiveness of the change. This course focuses on the knowledge and skills to understand the concepts of change, identify techniques to help and begin apply techniques to your change.

Goal of Change Management:

To develop additional knowledge and skills in helping yourself and others (individuals, teams, leaders) to understand, accept, and embrace changes. Education and classroom practice are focused on the reasons for change resistance and the process and methods to help overcome the resistance.

Benefits:

Improvements efforts are more successful.
Results are improved at a rate greater than in the past.
Participants, team members, and all stakeholders transition to commitment and support of the change with minimal stress and anxiety.

Agenda:

8 hours of Change Management training, templates, and classroom practice focused on the reasons for change resistance and the process, strategies, and communication methods to help overcome the resistance. Participants bring a scenario to class on which to focus and practice.

5S / Workplace Organization

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 19:22:36 GMT

Individuals often report that several hours per day are wasted in searching for materials, equipment, and information needed to do their job! 5S / Workplace Organization Method and Skills teaches you how to help teams get engaged in improvement and create immediate, meaningful, and visual improvement in their workplace.

Goal of 5S Methods and Skills:

To gain the knowledge and skills of the 5S method and be able to use it to decrease searching and getting ready wastes, improve productivity, and create an environment that is safe, visual and supports work processes. The training encompasses both physical and virtual work environments.

Benefits:

Reduce SEARCHING and GETTING READY wastes in daily work activities.
Increase the safety and productivity of your team.
More teamwork, ownership, pride, and commitment to sustain the improvements / changes.
More visual, standardized work process (eliminate language & communication barriers).
Free up time for more capacity and value-adding activities for our customers.

Agenda:

Training: 18 hours of education and immediate application. Participants bring a scenario to class on which to focus and practice.

2-hour (virtual):

Overview of 5S method (what, why, and how)
When to use 5S
How to identify opportunities
Identify 5S project(s) to apply during training

Training with co-application (2 days):

Confirming and preparing the team
Understanding how to lead a team through 5S in a physical environment
Seeing how to perform each step: Sort, Straighten, Shine, Standardize, Sustain
Simulation or begin co-leading 5S application
Understanding how to lead a team through 5S in an office/information environment
Seeing how to perform each step
Understand differences in approach and techniques from a physical environment
Simulation or begin co-leading the 5S
Continue co-leading application in a selected work environment

Application and Coaching: 2-4 days of on-site event co-lead. One-on-one coaching until results are achieved.

Certification: Participation in this course and completion of 1 project = Continuous Improvement 5S Black Belt CERTIFICATION.

Kaizen Method & Skills

Fri, 23 Apr 2021 18:39:42 GMT

Tired of working 6 months, 9 months, a year to see the benefits of solving a work process problem? This Kaizen education provides the information-based problem solving process to engage and energize teams in creating big improvements within one week. Yes, all steps of the improvement cycle in 1 week! Stop waiting for change and needed results.

Goal of Kaizen:

To gain the knowledge, confidence, and job aids to facilitate a Kaizen event effectively and efficiently in a high priority process area. Understand and use ~40 improvement and change templates and techniques.

Benefits:

A Kaizen event has created a minimum of $50,000 of benefit.
Speed to implemented changes and benefits. Teams complete all steps of the improvement cycle, typically in 1 week.
High team engagement, pride, ownership. Energy and excitement to create measurable improvements.
Immediate return on your learning investment. Results are improved at a rate greater than in the past.
Access to continue using the Kaizen skills, process, and ~ 40 improvement, change, and project management job aids and techniques to continue leading rapid process improvements.
Kaizen skills to lead more improvement projects.

Agenda:

Training: 20 hours of education and application. Participants bring a process to class on which to focus and practice

Kaizen event process overview - what and why.
Selecting and confirming priority processes for the 1st Kaizen event(s).
Preparing and engaging the team.
Performing the Kaizen event
Understanding the current process (goal, target, data, and process maps).
Problem solving: Identify priority wastes and issues, determine the root causes of problems, identify priority solutions, develop & test solutions.
Preparing for implementation (process ownership, new process map, standardized work procedures (SOPs), training materials, performance measures, and a team huddle to enable continual improvement.
Close out, Celebration, Recognition! Coaching, facilitating, and assisting in effective and efficient implementation. Measuring progress and performance.

Application and Coaching: 4- 5 days of on-site event co-lead. One-on-one coaching until results are achieved.

Certification: Participation in this course and completion of 1 project = Continuous Improvement Kaizen Black Belt CERTIFICATION.

Mistake Proofing (aka Poka Yoke)

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 14:10:37 GMT

Creating a high-performing work environment where human errors and defects are not accepted. Instead errors and defects are identified, and work processes redesigned to control, minimize, or ELIMINATE the occurrence and effects of human error. This course will help develop knowledge and skills to effectively and efficiently facilitate the systematic Mistake Proofing approach to prevent defects associated with “human error” and avoid the costs resulting from those defects.

Goal of Mistake Proofing:

Develop the knowledge and skills to understand and use the systematic mistake proofing approach.
Decrease defects associated with “human error” and avoid the costs resulting from those defects.

Benefits:

Reduce "things gone wrong' and 'inspection' wastes.
 Changes or mistake proofing devices decrease or eliminate recurring problems.
Immediate return on training investment.
Knowledge and skills to continue eliminating recurring problems.
Team engagement in seeing problems and knowing how to 'mistake proof' them away.

Agenda:

Training: 16 hours of education. Participants bring a repeating defect, problem, or a process that has lots of rework.

Types of errors vs. defects and conditions that allow.
The Mistake Proofing approach.
Understand human factors and their impact.
Poka Yoke devices and strategies.

Application: During the education, apply the mistake proofing process and idenitfy device(s) to decrease/eliminate defects and create some immediate benefit.

Requisite: CI White Belt . Yellow Belt training recommended .

Coaching: On-site personal coaching & help provided by Continual Impact during training and application.

Certification: Participation in this course and implementation of >=1 improvement/change/device = Continuous Improvement Mistake Proofing Belt CERTIFICATION.

Innovation Process and Method

Thu, 22 Apr 2021 12:54:25 GMT

Innovation can be transforming - It can create sizable results for customers and stakeholders and even fun for the team! Unfortunately, a significant number of innovation attempts fail (reported failure rates of 30% to 80%).
Fortunately, lessons have been learned from the success and failures for others to benefit. This course focuses on the Innovation process and the utilization of improvement methods to create new and innovative products, services, and processes.

Goal of Innovation:

To increase knowledge and skills in the application of the innovation process and its methods so that organizational performan ce is SIGNIFICANTLY improved

Provide new or advance customer-desired services and outcomes.
Increase process and program efficiency.

Generate more revenue or use of current budgets.

The process is used when a significant or transformational change / improvement is desired, not incremental. The Innovation process has been used to Increase process and program efficiency, decrease costs, generate more revenue, and the processes to delight customers (internal and external).

Benefits:

A product, process, system, or service transformed with immediate and long term impact and benefits.
Innovation that sticks!
Increased number of new, high quality ideas, efficient implementation, and better, sustainable solutions.
Ability to continue applying the process, methods, and skills to create more innovation.
Use of additional methods and techniques to improve teams and the organization’s performance

Agenda:

Training: 24 hours of education and application. Participants bring a scenario to class on which to focus and practice.

Understanding what the Innovation process is, why it is important, and how it fits with CI.
Understanding when to use the Innovation process and supporting improvement methods.
Leading the innovation process.
Preparing the team and the organization for the change.
Targeting the innovation scope with customer, opportunity, and emerging technology data.
Identifying and mitigating critical success factors.
Effectively manage the resulting changes.
Generating ideas, evaluate, and select innovations & techniques to help.
Developing innovative products, services, and processes.
Testing the innovation(s).
Learning from the testing and adjusting
Creating and installing new standardized work, training, and rollout.
Understand Replication opportunities & strategies to share.

Application and Coaching: 1-1 team coaching to confirm/prepare for initial application + On-site project, with coach as co-lead (real, immediate application and results).

Certification: Participation in this course and completion of 1 project = Continuous Improvement Innovation Black Belt CERTIFICATION.

Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA)

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 21:32:45 GMT

Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) is a preventative quality method used alone or within problem solving methods including Cause & Effect Analysis, Mistake Proofing, Kaizen, and Six Sigma. This FMEA training, application, coaching, and certification includes lots of practice (classroom exercises plus real, process and product exercises) helps you use FMEA, develop, and implement actions that prevent failures and create on-going benefits.

Goal of Failure Mode Effect Analysis Methods & Skills:

To prevent process and product failures before they occur by learning and applying the FMEA process.

Benefits:

The rate of improvement benefits is increased; $s saved or avoided as a result of mitigating/eliminating potential failures and defects.
Increased engagement, work pride and ownership.
Improve product/process reliability.
A fast and continual return on your training and certification investment.

Agenda:

Training: 12 hours of modular classroom training (tell, show, do, recycle approach; with practice). Participants bring a scenario to class on which to focus and practice using the practical training and coaching.

Application: Complete all phases of a FMEA project to confirm their knowledge and skills and creates immediate benefit.

Coaching: Personal coaching & help provided by Continual Impact during training and application.

Certification: Participation in this course and completion of 1 project = Continuous Improvement FMEA CERTIFICATION.

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 18:53:51 GMT

Learn how to help teams get involved in creating/improving maintenance operations and processes resulting in equipment reliability, less labor, and more capacity! This education includes 5 strategies (pillars) to proactively apply preventative maintenance processes to maximize the operational efficiency of equipment.

Goal of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM):

To increase TPM pillar knowledge, skills, and ability to use TPM to create more team productivity, safety, and equipment effectiveness.

Benefits:

Reduce the “Six Big Losses” of equipment utilization (unplanned outages, brief stops, running at low rate, production defects, reduced yield, and setup).
Improve equipment effectiveness, productivity, capacity, and safety, and continue progress to a culture of improvement.
Build teamwork, ownership and understanding in the equipment management and understanding of the equipment capabilities.

Agenda:

Training: 7 days of education and application.

Training in the WHAT, WHY and HOW of TPM, including its concepts, losses that are addressed, strategies (“pillars”) that are used to make improvement, measures of performance, a roadmap for implementation and a project template to guide success. Participants bring a scenario to class on which to focus and practice.

Module 1: 3 days classroom training

Understanding the what, why, and how of Total Productive Maintenance
Chartering the effort and creating the case for change
Measuring (baseline, target, and trending progress)
Building the TPM team
Communicating the case for change
Applying details of TPM Pillars and the roadmap to establish: Autonomous maintenance
Application (one month)

Module 2: 2 days classroom training

Applying details of TPM Pillars and the roadmap to establish: Focused improvement
Applying details of TPM Pillars and the roadmap to establish: Planned maintenance
Application (one month)

Module 3: 2 days classroom training

Applying details of TPM Pillars and the roadmap to establish: Quality maintenance
Applying details of TPM Pillars and the roadmap to establish: Early equipment management / maintenance design

Application and Coaching: One-on-one coaching until results are achieved.

Certification: Participation in this course and completion of 1 project = Continuous Improvement TPM Black Belt

Value Engineering and Design For Excellence

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 17:54:37 GMT

Value Engineering and Design for Excellence

Goal:

To develop knowledge and skills of the Value Engineering and Design for Excellence methods and be able to critically analyze the value of every item’s component, decrease item, processing, and operating costs. The team will use the analysis to identify component and assembly design changes that significantly reduces item costs + process times and quality .

Benefits:

Better designed items.
Items and processes are performed with less cost, time, and higher quality.
Reduced operating costs.
Increased margin and profitability of products.
Increased pride and ownership of improved products.
Engage team members in improving the process, product, or service. Increased pride and ownership of improved products.

Agenda:

Training: 40 hours of education and application. Participants bring a scenario to class on which to focus and practice.

Leading a team through the Value Engineering process.

Confirming and Preparing the team.
Facilitating the process.
Gathering and analyzing current state data (customer, regulatory, costs and processes (procure, fabricate, assemble, inspect, rework, ship, warranty)).
Performing the functional analysis.
Identifying alternative ways to satisfy functions.
Prioritizing, selecting, testing, and implementing improvements.

2. Leading a team through the Design for Excellence process.

Facilitating the process.
Performing the cost analysis.
Defining the “x” (construct, assemble, dissemble, environment impact, service, transport, etc.).
Evaluating current practices.
Identifying, prioritizing, and selecting cost reduction areas.
Testing and implementing improvements.

3. Application with the team - One-on-one coaching to confirm/prepare for initial application. On-site project, with coach as co-lead (real, immediate application and results).

Application and Coaching: 48 hours of on-site event co-lead. One-on-one coaching until results are achieved.

Certification: Participation in this course and completion of 1 project = Continuous Improvement VE/Df(x) Black Belt Certification.

Annual Improvement Planning

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 17:54:34 GMT

Want to align resources and time to close priority gaps and achieve outcomes? A good, ann ual improvement plan helps create the focus on organization outcomes and the activities needed to accomplish desired outcomes. This course teaches data exploration methods and the process to systematically evaluate an organization, identify aligned projects, cascade activities to teams and individuals to achieve/exceed results.

Goal:

To g ain the knowledge, skills, and methods to lead and establish the infrastructure to lead the data-based and prioritized annual plan creation, and guide, measure, and communicate improvement throughout the year. Deliverables include an annual improvement plan, established needs outcomes and the projects and teams with goals, measures, and plans to drive these outcomes.

Benefits:

Organization results are achieved at a rate greater than in the past.
Resources are focused on what is important.
More successful in creating leadership focus when solving problems.
Increased understanding of the organization and customers’ improvement wants, needs, and improvement opportunities.
The planning process, templates, and ability to lead future annual plans
The step by step process to follow.
Learn and apply over 30 improvement, evaluation, change, and project management templates and methods learned and practiced during the course.
One-on-one application coaching time.
Outcomes: An annual improvement plan with

o Measurable Outcomes for the organization and customers.

o Prioritized and resourcesd projects (Drivers), to create the needed Outcomes.

o Project teams with draft gap, goal, team members, timeline, and approach.

Agenda:

Training: 36 hours of education and application. Participants bring organization data to class on which to focus and practice. Develop knowledge and skills to effectively and efficiently facilitate the organization’s annual improvement plan.

The course includes:

Evaluating organization data & information to identify the priority gaps/needs (Customer, Organization, Work Processes, Systems and Structure, Culture, Learnings).
Create an Improvement Plan.
Cascade the plans to project teams.
Confirm the projects will achieve the goals with balanced resources.
Lead the CI and the plans throughout the year. Establish a leadership structure to lead and support the projects in achieving the prioritized projects and plans.

Application and Coaching: 1 .5 - 4 days of on-site event co-lead. One-on-one coaching until results are achieved.

Certification: Participation in this course and completion of 1 project = Continuous Improvement Annual Planning Black Belt CERTIFICATION.

Green Belt - Improvement Project Leader (Lean Six Sigma & Quality)

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 16:11:27 GMT

Processes not performing optimally need improvements. You will learn how to lead/facilitate process improvement projects to accelerate process times and increase quality 20%-90% .

Goal of Improvement Project Leader / Green Belt:

The goal is to develop the knowledge and skills to lead a team through all phases of an improvement project, utilize improvement, change, and project management techniques, and help create sustainable results. Everyone brings a team-based problem to begin and advance during training.

Benefits:

Skills and confidence to lead and coach team members through improvement projects.
Projects achieve or exceed measurable benefits.
Stronger solutions in place.
Increased team engaged.
Knowledge and skills to lead more improvement projects.
Unlimited access to improvement projects templates, job aids, and a storyboard.

Agenda:

Training: 32 hours of education and application. Participants bring a scenario to class on which to focus and practice.

Project Leadership

Roles and Skills
Project skills, tips, & structure
Effectively building a productive team

2. Understanding the current state

Value stream mapping
Subprocess mapping
Spaghetti diagrams and information circles
Project return on investment

3. Problem Solving

Use of data, measures, and basic statistical analysis
Cause and effect analysis; determine root cause of problems
Prioritization of wastes and solutions

4. Managing the Change & Continual Improving

Preparing others for change
Dealing with problematic behaviors
Team facilitation education, templates, and lots of practices.

5. Effectively Implementing Improvements:

Standardized work and training
Adult teaching
Extracting learning
Effective installation of changes and continually improving

Application and Coaching: One-on-one coaching until results are achieved.

Certification: Participation in this course and completion of 1 project = Continuous Improvement Green Belt CERTIFICATION.

Advanced Facilitation

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 15:46:12 GMT

Come learn, practice, and gain methods and techniques to effectively facilitate teams.

Goal of Advanced Facilitation:

To gain additional facilitation methods and techniques to engage team members to acheive or exceed your goals.

Benefits:

C reate highly productive teams.
Achieve goals easier.
Make better decisions.
Less conflicts - More alignment.
More facilitation knowledge, skills, abilities, and CONFIDENCE!

Better Facilitation = Better Outcomes

Agenda:

12 hours of interactive, hands-on training, practice, coaching and feedback. Facilitation methods, techniques, and templates are included. Individual modules can be provided separately.

Supervisor Education: Leading an Improvement Culture

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 18:35:04 GMT

I want my team to be best they can be, collectively and individually and my boss expects high performance. How do I make this happen? Throughout this course, join to learn and practice foundational supervisor skills, how to develop and support my team, how to manage performance, and as a team continually improve.

Goal of Leading an Improvement Culture:

To develop additional supervisor knowledge and skills to a) lead people, b) develop people and c) manage and improve processes in a manner consistent with the quest to create a high performing organization.

Benefits:

Personal and professional growth. More confidence and impact.
More engagement of team members.
Increased team productivity and performance.
Better focus.
Improved skills to help, coach, support problem solving, and improve morale.
Daily decision-making that creates success for all stakeholders.

Agenda:

Training: 44 hours of interactive education, templates, and application practice.

Application and Coaching: One-on-one coaching until results are achieved.

Certification: Participation in this training & demonstrated application of skills and behaviors = Supervisor CERTIFICATION.

Modules:

1. Building role profiles (position role, responsibilities, descriptions)

2. Your current state performance and gaps; supervisor learnings

3. Foundations of good relations

4. The importance and potential of people

5. Team model; Evaluating your team

6. Motivating & engaging people

7. Active listening and communicating
8. System-wide Focus

9. Managing and prioritizing your time; assigning tasks

10. Get focused with goal statements

11. Identifying and using performance measures

12. Team huddles

13. Solving problems and improving work processes

14. Decision Making
15. Change / Communication
16. Mitigating problematic behaviors

17. Problem solving when performance is not as expected + Providing feedback and escalation

1 8 . Documenting standardized work instructions

19. Developing & Teaching People

20. Using Lessons Learned

21. Supervisor Skills Capstone (supervisors present application of new skills to peer supervisors and leaders)

Strategic & Annual Planning: Creating & Interlocking Activities

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 18:05:02 GMT

Align long-term and short-term priorities, resources, and actions to achieve your organization’s goals using a data-based strategic and annual planning process.

The process uses team input and multiple data analyses (community, environment, customers, employees, financial, organization, and processes) along with a prioritized SWOT analysis to create 1) strategic initiatives with goals, measures, timelines, and resources; 2) Immediate interlocking to Annual Work Plans; 3) Team member activities and projects; and alignment of team and individual activities.

Goal of Strategic and Annual Planning:

To create data-based plans AND immediately convert plans into actions that engage and involve everyone in the organization.

Benefits: The Strategic Plan and Annual Plan leads to -

Clearly defined strategies to communicate throughout the organization.
Improved priority setting and matching resources to strategies.
Strategies that are converted / interlocked into annual improvement projects and everyone’s’ daily work.
In daily work activities, everyone knows how to impact and help achieve the organization’s mission.
Goals achieved or exceeded more efficiently and effectively.
Improved products, services, and experiences for customers.

Approach and Deliverables with the Hoshin Kanri Planning Approach:

A 3-5-year Strategic Plan.
A 1-year Annual Improvement Work Plan.
Continual quality improvement methods and techniques to effectively manage the plans throughout the year.
Achieve your goals FASTER, EASIER, and with BETTER QUALITY.
Measurable Outcomes for the organization and customers.
3-8 projects to produce the needed outcomes.
Project teams with gap, goal, team members, timeline, and approach.
Increased understanding of the organization and customers’ improvement wants and needs.

Leading an Improvement Culture: Leadership Education:

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 17:26:10 GMT

Goal of Leadership Education:

To understand the key role, behaviors, and skills of leaders in a high performing culture of improvement and begin applying the skills in a practical manner. High performing organizations are all about engaging and empowering all organization members in actively improving the workplace and work processes every day. An essential key to the organization’s success and the development of the most important resource – People, is through leaders (anyone who observes and directs the work of others).

This Leading in a Culture of Improvement course provides teaching and application of critical leadership knowledge, skills, and abilities.

Benefits:

More encouraging, supporting, and leading teams to achieve improvement at a rate greater than before and beyond what is thought possible!
The ability to explain the what, why, and how of improvement (including what is in it for the individual, and the benefits case for the organization).
A greater understanding of our current culture.
See the importance of our people and how to develop and engage them in meaningful ways.
Improved communication skills (from elevate speeches to 1-1).
More leadership problem solving methods, templates, and skills that support and enable the culture.
Id entified performance gaps. ∆ Identified opportunities to help our people develop knowledge and skills, to engage them in CI in meaningful and important ways, and how to better enable their success.
Participation in this training & demonstrated application of skills and behaviors = Leadership CERTIFICATION.

Agenda:

Training: 18 hours of interactive education and application.

Application and Coaching: One-on-one coaching until results are achieved.

Certification: Participation in this training & demonstrated application of skills and behaviors = Leadership Belt CERTIFICATION.

Creating a picture of your culture.
Understanding the elements that support the culture.
Enabling the most important element – People.
Developing good people relations.
Understanding the leadership improvement cycle.
Establishing organization focus and priorities.
Role modeling behaviors that support and enable the culture.
Understanding and helping prepare people for change.
Leading the way forward.

Yellow Belt - Improvement for Everyone (Yellow Belt-Lean Six Sigma, Quality)

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 02:53:44 GMT

In a culture of improvement, everyone has skills in seeing the opportunities (aka problems), using the problem solving process and implementing solutions. This “Individual Contributor / Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt ” course prepares every member of the organization to complete personal improvement activities and enable them to participate in team improvement activities that target larger opportunities.

Goal of Continuous Improvement Yellow Belt:

Learn how to perform a CI project. Everyone brings a problem/project to training to begin and advance a project during training. Certification upon completion of small, individual project. Using the Tell/Show/Do/Recycle learning approach, participants will learn several Improvement (Lean Six Sigma and Quality) techniques followed by immediate application on their own work problem. They will learn and apply the improvement cycle phases of establishing goals and measures; process mapping; using data, identifying waste & value to understand the opportunities in current activities; performing cause and effect analysis to determine the root of the problems and identify solutions; testing and installing solutions.

Benefits:

Personal and immediate benefits achieved.
Problems are eliminated rather than recurring.
Effectiveness of solutions is increased with more ideas identified, evaluated, and implemented.
More pride and ownership.
Better prepared to participate in larger improvement projects.
The rate of improvement benefits in daily activities is increased.

Agenda:

Training: 16 hours of interactive education and application. Participants bring a scenario to class on which to focus and practice.

Working with Others active communication skills
How to apply the improvement process to a problem step by step (and templates to help!)
Creating a goal and measures of success
Understanding the current state; evaluating value and waste and prioritizing opportunities
Problem solving, using 5 Whys to get to the root of problems
Prioritizing actions and solutions
Testing, learning, and installing the solutions in the workplace

Prerequisites (recommended): White Belt: Introduction to Improvement Course .

Application and Coaching: One-on-one coaching until results are achieved.

Certification: Participation in this course and completion of 1 project = Continuous Improvement Yellow Belt CERTIFICATION.

White Belt - Introduction to Improvement: “Seeing the Possible” (White Belt-Lean Six Sigma Quality)

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 20:24:38 GMT

Gain an understanding of the process used for continual improvement and some of its methods helps. Start to learn how value can be increased and waste decreased is even better. Perhaps most importantly, experience firsthand how much positive change can be made in a short period of time. Typically, 10-30 improvement ideas are generated per participant. Certification received upon completion of training.

Goal of Introduction to Continuous Improvement:

Using a hands-on simulation, participants will receive a basic understanding of the continuous improvement approach, how to see waste and value in your work process, methods that help you improve, and the degree to which positive change and benefits are possible.

Benefits:

Energy and excitement to create measurable improvements
Understanding of the what and how of continuous improvement and the improvement cycle
Appreciation of the degree of change and benefits that are truly possible when applying improvement
Understanding and ability to identify the concepts of improvement (Waste/Value, Improvement Methods, and some examples of their use)
Prepared for additional improvement training and participation in activities such as improvement events

Agenda:

Training & Application: 8-hours interactive education (tell, show, do, recycle framework including application via simulation and role play)

Goal of CI and its key elements
Identifying opportunities: Waste and Value
The what and how of the Improvement Cycle
See how CI Methods help make improvements
Appreciate the degree of Benefits possible

Certification: Participation in this course = Continuous Improvement WHITE Belt CERTIFICATION.

Capacity - How to Find More!

Mon, 19 Apr 2021 20:05:31 GMT

Capacity! We hear capacity references everywhere lately.

Vaccines per day, # Parts created, Struggles to find resources to do the job, Passengers on a plane, Fans in a stadium. What is Capacity? Capacity = the ability to understand and use information to make a decision and perform actions that maximize the amount that someone or something can produce or contain. Free up CAPACITY to accomplish more in the same time, with the same resources, and easier!

Read/Watch to learn more about the innovative ideas and continual quality improvement methods that can help you quickly and effectively expand capacity. Watch to learn more: https://youtu.be/-eKWoRyhg2I

Time and Resources are precious and scarce. Where does more capacity hide?

More capacity can be difficult to find because it is hidden in delays, approvals, defects, and rework loops. Engaging team members performing the work can help identify opportunities to increase capacity:

Wastes that consume resources without adding value and producing output. Work stops! Things Gone Wrong, ugh! Unnecessary movement of people, information, and items! This is no longer needed, yet we keep doing it because we have always done it this way! Getting ready to do the work seems to take up most of the day!

Where are work steps imbalanced (stop and wait for a person or the next step)? Where can resources in the process be freed up or redeployed to keep the work flowing?

When it is a hot job, we can do so much more. Why is not the norm? What is different?

Identifying and working together to eliminate these will increase productivity and capacity. COVID has demonstrated this with the speed of creating and administering vaccines.

Time and Resources are precious and scarce. Here are some ways to maximize your time, resources, and impact.

Use continual quality improvement methods to gain more capacity faster and easier. Relentlessly raise problems and solve them together. Post visual measures and targets to stay focused. Celebrate effort and progress! Applying Kaizen, Flow and Mistake Proofing to processes often produces a cycle time reduction and defect reduction of 50-75%!

1. KAIZEN-Systematic process to rapidly solve problems and implement solutions that stick. More

2. FLOW-Pulling of products, information, or people through a process; one at a time (or minimum batch size), at a formulated and balanced rate; without stopping, waiting, or any delays. More

3. KANBAN-Visual cards, signals, sounds to control the pace of the process, batch size, and material replenishment. No waiting, no runouts. More

4. FMEA-A predictive analysis to identify and anticipate potential failures and their effects, in order to address failures before they happen. More

5. MISTAKE PROOFING-Systematic approach to prevent defects associated with “human error” and avoid the costs, time, and rework resources. More

6. VALUE ENGINEERING-Design / Redesign a product or service so that it only includes value-added steps and parts. More

7. QUICK CHANGE-Changing from one task to another in the most efficient manner. More

8. 5S-5 step method to reduce time spent searching, moving, and getting ready to do work. More

9. STANDARDIZED WORK-Design and document streamlined work process instructions (per role) for consistent and measurable performance. More

10. CAUSE AND EFFECT ANALYSIS-5 step process to identify solutions that fix the root causes of problems so that problems do not return. More

Are these improvement methods worth your time? From our experience in helping expand capacity, we (with no hesitation) say, "Yes"! You can do more, achieve more! Grow team member's value! Reduce stress and feeling overwhelmed! Create happier customers, more customers! Free up CAPACITY – Accomplish more in the same time, with the same resources, and easier!

For the Love of CQI Champions

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 20:48:00 GMT

Link to more CQI Champion information

Link to certification information

Click below to View/Listen

There is much that can be done, RAPIDLY, to help you achieve, NO, exceed your goals!

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 20:26:00 GMT

Whether you are trying to administer more COVID vaccinations or provide more services and products, more can be accomplished in less time, with more capacity, and better quality.

Slash COVID process times Webinar

Thu, 11 Feb 2021 19:24:00 GMT

Gain a better understanding of how to significantly slash COVID vaccination process cycle times. Use work process mentality, continual quality improvement techniques, and sharing of learnings and good practices to dramatically improve COVID vaccination team capacity and process speed.

Click below to watch and listen:

Engaging Everyone, Every Day for Better Outcomes

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:16:10 GMT

Gain more understanding of engaging everyone, every day, and everywhere so that you continue increasing your professional development and teams/organization outcomes.

Together we explore

What is employee engagement.
Why it is important; the benefits gained.
How to increase engagement.

5S to Accomplish more Faster and Easier

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 14:57:00 GMT

If you are spending to much time at work getting ready for work vs. doing the work or time slips away in searching for information, approvals, and people 5S is for you and your team! To gain an understanding of the 5S continual quality improvement method and the immediate benefits it can create – check out this information or contact us .

AND establish a place for everything and put everything in its place!

Become a 5S facilitator

Improve now – with Kaizen!

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 15:32:00 GMT

Increase process speed, team capacity, and outcomes now – with Kaizen!

Gain a better understanding of how to increase process speed, capacity, team engagement, and outcomes NOW by utilizing the continual quality improvement method – Kaizen so that you can continue growing your continual quality improvement knowledge.

Kaizen – What it is, Benefits it can create, The approach

Become a Kaizen leader

Watch the video:

Proactively Improve Quality with FMEA

Tue, 12 Jan 2021 14:17:00 GMT

An introduction to the predictive and proactive continual quality improvement method, Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA). In this information-packed 30-minute webinar you will be introduced to the what, why, when, and how of FMEA.

Training, Practice, and Application Coaching help

The Power of Continual Quality Improvement to Create Extraordinary Benefits

Sun, 13 Dec 2020 18:07:00 GMT

The Goal: To understand the power and impact continual quality improvement can have on your organization’s performance and culture so that you can excite others to the potential SIZE and SPEED of the benefits and you continually learn additional ways to help create a sustainable high performing organization.

This information seeks to help you understand

Link to continual CQI learning

Measures of Success: How to Identify, Select, Define, Oh AND Use Measures Webinar

Thu, 03 Dec 2020 18:14:00 GMT

Learn some Measures of Success basics to gain more skills and help others better utilize measures to guide their performance.

You will hear and see more on

1. Choosing measures wisely – What will you measure?
2. Making the measures Real – How will you measure?
3. How to use the measures to guide continual performance improvement?

Quality Awareness & Stress Prevention Month and Learning Opportunities

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 15:54:00 GMT

Quality Awareness & Stress Prevention Month Let’s recognize world QUALITY AWARENESS month and STRESS PREVENTION month together. Yes, together!

If you are stressed at work or home or working from home, what are the root causes of your stress?

1. Lots of changes

2. High demands on your time

3. Poor Quality of Work

4. What other root causes of your stress? [No personal attacks on your children, significant other, or team members, please.]

This is the month to consider quality of work. Quality is the degree to which a process, product, or service satisfies a specified set of wants or requirements. When quality is poor this brings on Stress ; stress on you, your team members, the system, and your customers.

Going deeper, what are the root causes of poor quality?

The #1 cause of poor quality can be founds in Things gone wrong = Any unexpected outcome in the form of

Defects: Output of work that does not meet standards, specifications, or expectations.
Variation: inconsistency in completing the same tasks.
Rework / Fixing: Effort to correct a defect.

The cause of poor quality may be in these other forms of waste too, see all forms of waste here.

How to accomplish both – Improve quality and decrease stress?

Quality awareness brings with it several tried and true quality methods and techniques. Not only can these help reduce or eliminate things gone wrong, they also help reduce stress, frustration, and time consumed in fixing poor quality. What quality method or technique have you tried?

1. Finding and relentlessly eliminate wastes.

2. Process Mapping to understand a process; what is done, who does it, and identify where in process do mistakes and poor quality begin.

3. Cause and Effect analysis to ask why, why, why to identify solutions that fix the root causes of problems.

4. Mistake proofing to redesign how work gets done making it impossible for a mistake occur.

5. FMEA (Failure Mode Effect Analysis) to proactively identify where quality failures can occur and eliminate them. See learning opportunity below.

6. Kaizen to rapidly improve work processes.

7. Lean-Six Sigma to use data and statistics to guide work process consistency.

Benefits gain from increasing Quality and reducing Stress:

In the spirit of world quality awareness month AND stress prevention month continue learning how to improve quality and reduce your work stress.

Implementing changes that STICK: Sustain the Gains and Continually Improving WEBINAR

Thu, 12 Nov 2020 15:18:00 GMT

So much effort is put into fixing the problem and the changes do not stick. Urgh! These 5-steps to effectively implement a change can help! These help create more changes that are embraced, adopted, and stick for a long time!

Staying Focused on Achieving Long and Short Term Goals Webinar

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 16:41:00 GMT

Learn more about focusing and aligning your organization so that you and your team create data-based plans that are converted into actions. The interlocking planning process will help you achieve or exceed your goals, delight more customers, and nurture a culture that engaged everyone in the teams’ success.

Walk through the strategic planning process.
Walk through the annual planning process.
Understand how to immediately cascade long term/strategic plans into an annual plan, project teams, and individual activities.

Leading a High-Performing Organization: Skills & Behaviors Introduction

Wed, 26 Aug 2020 15:00:03 GMT

Gain an introduction to Leadership skills and behaviors needed to create and lead high-performing teams and the organization. This introduction and training can help you increase your development and personal, team, and organization outcomes.

The Agenda:

1. Review the importance of People and what they need to be successful.

2. Examine how Leaders help Peoples’ performance.

3. Understand key Leadership skills to help create performance.

Link to more Leadership Education

Effective & Impactful Training

Fri, 07 Aug 2020 20:53:00 GMT

The Gap: People need on-boarded faster I Professional development doesn’t just happen automatically I Training by just telling someone something and even showing them how to do it alone does not ensure knowledge transfer I Training everyone the same doesn’t work either I Insufficient engagement, innovation, productivity, and pride in work I Too much turnover

Root causes for not getting the return on training investment are often in People, Curriculum, Training style, Opportunity, and Application.

Close the Gap: People
Without your people, a high-performing organization does not exist — your people make the difference! The right people, in the right setting, and with the right knowledge, skills, and abilities are the keystone to your organization and a culture of high performing continual quality improvement* (CQI). This continual learning and knowledge, skills, and, ability development is also part of many accreditations and certifications. On your journey to a culture of engagement and continual quality improvement* make learning continual to lock in competencies, and get a return on your professional development budgets.

Close the Gap: Curriculum
Provide Role-Based Learning and Doing

Individual Contributors: Everyone with core skills to solve local daily problems, to improve themselves and the organization everywhere, every day.
CQI Practitioners:
Project Leaders: Individuals with core and foundational CQI skills to lead teams and create benefits through work process improvements. See 1 module below
CQI Champions: In-house experts for all improvement activities using advanced problem-solving methods to engage and lead teams in creating bigger improvements. This involves being a leader, teacher, infrastructure establisher, planner, focuser, and coach. See 1 module below
Supervisors: Leaders, responsible for the success of a team, developing, supporting, removing barriers, and driving continual process performance improvements.
Organization Leaders: Leaders guiding the organization vision, structure, environment, and focus including identifying targeted improvement areas, supporting and personally exhibiting the behaviors needed to nurture a high-performing culture. See 1 module below

Close the Gap: Training Style
Getting the best return on your training budget requires a very effective knowledge transfer approach that includes TACC (training, immediate application, coaching, and certification) with on-going application expectations. This approach works with both face to face and virtual training, application, and coaching.

TRAINING: Use the adult education principles of Tell you about a topic, Show an application, participate in application or “Do” it, and receive feedback ( tell/show/do/recycle feedback ).
APPLICATION: The next step in knowledge transfer is applying it in the real world where change management and unique situations exist. For example, after the conclusion of Kaizen training, we co-lead a Kaizen event with you to help successfully and practically apply training knowledge, create confidence for future applications, AND get the return on your training investment.
COACHING: After the initial application, ongoing mentoring is provided as you apply the methods yourself. This enables you to address new situations with confidence and continue to grow skills.
CERTIFICATION: Certification confirms the learning and is a commitment to professionalism. It represents a special transformation of you and your capacity to impact people and the organization’s results. Role-based certification involves a comprehensive continual quality improvement body of knowledge focused on learning and applying methodologies, engaging people, managing change, and creating immediate and long-lasting benefits.

Close the Gap: Opportunity and Application
Combining opportunities for your team with a value-added curriculum, following an adult learning training style, and with expectations to continually apply learning WILL create knowledge and skills that sticks! This combination results to more capabilities, capacity, benefits, and a high-performing culture where everyone is engaged in creating improvement – every day, everywhere. Link to training and application results: process improved 30-88%, not 2-5% and Return on TACC investment in 1-3 months.

Getting the return on your training investment
Training, Application, Coaching, and Certification can be arranged in multiple fashions, face to face and virtually; using conference, training, and travel budgets.

Link to training modules Contact Chris Bujak or Pam Vecellio

*Lean, Six Sigma, Quality, Employee Engagement, Operational Excellence, Performance Management, and Professional Development or just making things better across the organization for customers, business, team members and communities.

Data is Your Friend Success Stories

Thu, 16 Jul 2020 20:47:00 GMT

Yes, DATA is Your Friend! Data and its uses play an important role in the universe of continual improvement. Data can be used to help in focusing the organization, finding opportunities , getting insights into problem solving for process improvement and for judging performance . Pretty powerful stuff.

How are you using data? Any ah ha moments from using data? Successes? Failures Opportunities?

How about these? Here are some different organization success stories, in their representation, understanding and use of data:

A process team was trying to reduce cycle time and labor content in processing public health information. Debate ensued in one process step related to the quality of incoming information with opinions split between “no problem”, a little bit” and “all the time”. One day’s worth of data illustrated that incoming data was incorrect or incomplete >85% of the time and what information was commonly problematic. With some mistake proofing, form design, standardized work and education, defect rates dropped almost immediately with corresponding cycle time reduction.
A department debated over whether they had a turnover problem. A little data illustrated there was an opportunity with new hires who had a turnover rate of >60% within six months of hire. Not knowing the root cause, the team executed and assessed surveys and interviews of the targeted population and identified deficits in on boarding and mentoring processes. After defining and improving those processes, developing better materials and education for new members and supervisors, turnover dropped to less than 10%.
A public health organization was struggling with focus in improving outcomes for customers. They developed a value stream map of all phases of the customer and Clinic, including contacting the targeting population, getting them to come to the clinic, providing a quality referral, having the customer use the referral, and change their behaviors. They used a rolled throughput yield (the product of the yields for each process step of the entire process) approach to understand the overall opportunity, think innovatively, and then target program improvements in the weakest areas.

If you are struggling with your use of data, keep it simple and think about the steps of gathering, representing/understanding, and using the data. Data comes in many shapes, sizes, sources, and degrees of complexity (or simplicity!) that can be evaluated using different approaches.

To get focused and improve performance here are some of the key sources of data to gather and how this data is represented and analyzed:

Customer: What is more important than understanding what your customers value and how well you are doing in delivering it – from their perspective?
Surveys, complaint logs, growth in services and products
More on analysis

Organization: How is the health of the organization in terms of the resources, it needs, and cost to deliver products and services to targeted areas?

Growth, Revenue/Funding, Market share or targeted population served, Cost to serve for services and products
More on analysis
Value streams, work processes and systems: How effective and efficient are they?
Capacity, cycle time, value and waste ratios, quality and performance measures
More on analysis
People and culture: How engaged and capable are they? How supportive is the environment?
Surveys, diagnostics, turnover, grievances, sickness rates
Learning: What have we learned from past and others’ performance?
Lessons learned, benchmark comparisons
More on analysis

When gathering, representing and evaluating data, understand it comes with responsibilities in order to ensure its effective uses. You can do harm by bad data gathering and analysis practices. That does not mean it has to be complex, take a long time or requires everyone to have a PhD in statistics. Just get some data skills in gathering, representing and assessing data and use them well . A couple of tips:

Are you still not sure what data to gather? Ask yourself what questions you want to answer and then figure out how to get some data to answer the questions.
Be able to represent it (graph, plot, table) in a way that is meaningful and understandable.
Understand a couple of concepts: what is statistically relevant and the difference between correlation and causation.
Beware when you run into “A lot, all the time, it is a big issue”; remember that a little data can go a long way to gaining true insight.
Beware when you run into (even from yourself) “I know and this data shows it”; Watch out for confirmation bias which is a tendency to interpret data as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs.
Beware of “paralysis by analysis” or over-analyzing or over-thinking a situation that can cause no solution or course of action to be decided upon; base your data gathering and analysis on the complexity of the situation and the magnitude of the implications of the result.

Cultures of continual improvement are known for the development and use of data and fact-based information as one of the values you are looking for in all team members. They also ensure that the underlying skills of measurement and information/knowledge-based problem solving and decision making are part of everyone’s skill set.

Remember – Data is your friend + use it broadly ÷ Use it well and with integrity ± Do not under use or overuse it ∑ and Do no harm!

Evaluating your Current Performance to Identify Cost Savings, More Revenue, and Productivity

Thu, 16 Jul 2020 17:52:00 GMT

If you need to find cost savings, get more revenue, and increase productivity NOW – let’s analyze quantitative and qualitative data that exists. The goal of this session is to understand how to use your organization data to practically evaluate every service, every product, every function. This helps you answer the questions – What is not occurring in the most efficient manner? What is not created correct and complete the 1st time? Where do I focus my attention?

Incorporating organization analysis in your annual plans – more information here

Incorporating organization analysis in your strategic plans – more information here

Learn From Experiences to Create Proactive & Preventative Actions

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 20:55:00 GMT

Learn from the past, change the present, create the future!

History repeats itself. Why do we experience the same situation or problem over again? Why are we not learning from mistakes? There is a better way! In this webinar you will gain the 4-Step lessons learned method to analyze your performance during COVID-19, identify data-based reasons for performance (both good and bad), extract learnings, and to create proactive and preventative actions to prevent repeating undesirable outcomes.

Link to webinar video

Link to some help

Team Huddles, The Best-Known Way to Achieve Goals Together Webinar

Thu, 04 Jun 2020 20:32:00 GMT

Focus and engage your team members in achieving goals, identifying problems (daily), joining in solving problems and implementing improvements. Team Continual Improvement System™ (CIS™) process and huddling around the CIS™ board is a fantastic way to increase adoption of improvements more quickly and sustain more
improvements longer.

As you heard and can now read or re-listen (through the link below) huddles are quick and easy to lead and creates very powerful benefits for teams.

A Standardized Work Success – 88% cycle time improvement

Thu, 04 Jun 2020 12:38:00 GMT

“I don’t need to improve our pre and post inspection processes. We are good. I’ve been doing this many years – I know what is done; I know what my employees are doing. I repeat, we’re good.” , the team manager. The boss thought differently. Team manager, “ Ok “, I’ll set a big stretch goal; I challenge you, to find 30% improvement “.

What did the team do? They found and created an 88% improvement in their processing times.

How can this be? The process WAS good and the team WAS functioning well! The team was working hard to meet their performance targets. What they were not doing was working consistently. Let’s learn from them – here are the 4 steps taken to create process consistency:

Step 1. Understood what was current happening by mapping out the current process . Sub-process maps were created with swim lanes per role, all tasks performed, systems, and templates, forms, and job aids used.

Step 2. Identified process wastes, errors, problems , and data to focus on solving priority problems and solutions or improvements that will eliminate the problems.

Step 3. Documented the new improved process in the form of standardized work instructions so that everyone performed consistently, everyone knew what one another was doing, with set expectations.

Step 4. The entire team gathered to install the standard work instructions. They were told about the process and standardized work, shown the instructions, practiced the instructions, and received real time tips, feedback, and coaching. In the days following, they convened for weekly team huddles to measure their performance, raise new issues and ideas, and learn and adjust together.

What kept this team together was the use of standardized work.

Standardized work is simply the documented, current, best known method for doing something that is for all work process members to follow. Standardized work is a knowledge-based system that identifies important steps of the process and knowledge (or key points) within the important steps.

Standardized work reduces variation between performers and elevates performance. It provides a baseline for further improvement, enables job sharing and flexibility, makes training more effective and efficient, uncovers issues and areas for improvement, and eliminates the need for everyone to figure it out themselves. Further, as improvement is accelerated in the organization, the creation of standardized work and its’ subsequent revisions “locks in” improvements so that the organization can quickly adopt a new process improvement and take advantage of the improvement benefits.

In order for it to be successful, standardized work needs to be considered as an integrated system that includes a) documentation of important steps and key points in the appropriate format, b) an information system to support the standardized work (makes it easy to find, use, understand and change), c) ownership and accountability by a process owner, d) comprehensive and effective training that teaches the standardized work and e) an ongoing process that audits the standardized work and uses it to uncover local process opportunities for improvement and implements solutions to further improve effectiveness and efficiency.

The benefits of standardized work by themselves often create a ~20% productivity increase. In the majority of cases that we have experienced, implementation of a standardized work system is accepted as foundational to a culture of improvement.

Importantly, standardized work can free up team member time for local improvements to work processes and addressing issues related to expediting and escalating. That is exactly what happened for the team. They were able to exceed inspection goals, take on more work. What a morale and productivity boost! Congratulations to the team and thanks for helping us learn from you.

Establishing Inventory Management & Replenishment Systems – with Kanbans WEBINAR

Thu, 14 May 2020 18:11:00 GMT

Working from home, supply chain disruptions, and time ticking along on short shelf life items all impact your current supply needs and inventory.

If you need to 1. improve cash flow, 2. decrease inventory run-outs, 3. streamline supply ordering and replenishment labor time access this webinar material to learn a simple technique to manage your supply costs, with kanbans. Kanbans help you free up cash and manage inventory – when to purchase, how much to purchase, and where to purchase.

Link to learn more.

Speed & Accuracy of Ordering Supplies

Thu, 30 Apr 2020 21:01:00 GMT

How much time have you spent talking about replenishing supplies during this pandemic?! From toilet paper to PPE to critical raw materials, we have all learned the value of the right inventory at the right time with an efficient process to replenish. As we adjust to this ‘new normal’ AND prepare for ramping back up our operations let’s explore buying and replenishing inventory.

Speed and accuracy of ordering supplies is always beneficial. Today, during ramp up it is CRITICAL.

One of our customers had this gap. The average time to place an order was 93 minutes. Across the organization more than seven different methods were used to place an order, ranging from excel spreadsheets to the 1991 ½ page triplicate supply ordering form. An extensive amount of time was spent managing the organization’s orders. Some orders required researching an exact item, locating the best price, finding a vendor, and determining delivery times. Some orders required unnecessary approvals before the order was placed. Finally, the orderer did not always know if there were adequate funds to cover the cost; confirming with the accounting team consumed more time and delays.

Getting better – A cross-organization team was convened to create innovation solutions and significant benefits. The table below shows the improvement in ordering time 93 minutes to 17 minutes per order. This is part of their success. Thousands of $s were saved inventorying what is needed (no more, no less) and hours and hours of more productive time. Additionally, team members had what they needed to perform their job.

They achieved these benefits quickly. How? By creating the new and eliminating the old.

Re-sequenced and redesigned the process to eliminate unnecessary steps, recycle loops, wait times, and other wastes.
Created job aids including 1 standard order form, a standard vendor list (by category), and a list of items than cannot be ordered. Created a share point site to access the order form and store all ordering documents.
Shredded non-preferred vendor catalogs.
Distributed P-cards to heavy orderers.
Provided budget and codes, by role.
Granted orderers access to vendor web sites.
Trained team members in the new standard work procedure.

Going beyond the Ordering process the team helped improve supply Receiving, Inventory Management, and Replenishment.

Created delivery location rules.
5S'd the storage room .
Established a kanban ordering system to decrease inventory and standardize ordering. ( More on kanbans in this webinar. )

As you and your organization begin ramp up efforts let’s learn from this supply ordering and replenishment improvement team. The strategies listed here can enable your supply ordering process now and during the ramp up.

We have worked in these processes and have helped many organization quickly create innovative improvements to Ordering, Inventory Management, and Replenishment processes. Please check out your order quantities, safety stock levels, and reorder points at work and at home. Adjusting these are critical to keeping your operations flowing and managing costs. Shockingly – hording is not the answer!

Pandemic Demands and Downturn: Making the Most of What You Have

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 13:03:00 GMT

It is a time of concern and unprecedented change. Challenges abound all around us individually, as families, teams, organizations, and as a society. At work, we are faced with teammates being sickened, unavailable, or working separately. The products and services we provide and the ways in which we provide them are changing, demand has dramatically changed (up or down), and shortages of resources are wide spread.

Use continual improvement (CI) resources, knowledge and culture to help address the challenges.

If you are facing increased or unique demands caused by the pandemic , you are probably modifying or creating work processes for more capacity with people not familiar with the tasks and with a need for speed and quality. Rather than fire fight your way, apply some rapid mapping and standardized work development to give your team members a consistent standard to follow. Creating standard work procedures is important because:

It can be done quickly and has a big impact on outcomes and deliverables.
Reduces cycle time, improves productivity, and quality by 15-20%.
You can uncover problems before they occur.
Team members unaccustomed to the process are able to contribute correctly.
You can quickly check capacity and balance workload. Raw materials, resources, and customer needs are better allocated.

Implement standard procedures with immediate training in the standardized work (with the Tell, Show, Have them Do it, and Giving feedback method), together track performance, and use daily huddles for on the spot improvements.

All of this can be done in hours and days, not weeks!

I f you are facing a downturn , use t his time to reinvent your services and offerings and prepare your team for recovery. Prepare for the ramp up with some innovation , planning, process improvement, and maintaining your resources by investing in your People, the most important element in high performing organizations as viable strategies.

Using your core competencies, what other products and services can bring value to customers? What other venues or processes can you utilize? A local distillery temporarily shifted their distillation process from spirits to hand sanitizer in order to support the community, hospitals, assisted living homes, and beyond.
Become very focused. Create or refresh your strategic and annual improvement plans to forecast and prepare for the ramp up and prioritization of needs. Review your value streams and data for bottlenecks, resources and supplies, people and machine capacity. Be ready!
Get your house in order. During this downturn make improvements to your processes (physical and information) with Kaizen and solve nagging problems . 5S your information systems and networks virtually to bring benefit when activities ramp up. Contact us if you need help connecting the team, we have software.
Use the time for developing your People by training in technical, teaming or CI skills – virtually & on-site. .

Most importantly, we hope you are safe and stay healthy. And if you’re overwhelmed and want some help reacting effectively and efficiently – give us a call.

The CQI and Accreditation Bond Webinar

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:05:00 GMT

Utilize the strong bond between Vital Records / Health Statistics Accreditation and Continual quality improvement to understand, prioritize, decrease stress, and enjoy the accreditation journey.

Link to the Webinar slides

Link to more on the 5 support packs

Innovation is EVERYWHERE.

Tue, 03 Mar 2020 22:23:00 GMT

We experience innovation in our work processes, services we receive, and products we purchase. Innovation is in the minds and spirits of us all – we want to make life experiences better. It really is everywhere!

What innovation comes to mind? Uber? AI and robotics? Use of hand-held connected device vs. pen and paper? Changing the sequence of process steps? Change seating arrangement to encourage communication? Change tooling direction to reduce repetitive injuries?

If you experience a gap, there is a need for innovation. Welcome, you are now in step 1 of the Innovation Process! Now the challenges and FUN begins. Identifying the gap is the 1st and often the easiest process step. Yes, there is a process to innovation. You may be saying to yourself, “Why a process?” Because today, 30-80% of all innovation attempts fail. Many innovations never reach the light of day due to several causal factors like the need is not great, little receptivity, change not managed, or the entire innovation process wasn’t followed.

The 7-step Innovation process. 7 Steps! Yep, innovation takes focus, discipline, creativity, fortitude, and even failure (failure throughout the process is OK, just not at the end).

1. Prepare – Understand gap, goal, and level of change resistance

2. Target – Evaluate data (customer, environment, employees)

3. Generate – Create solutions, evaluate, and select

4. Develop – Develop the solution (end to end, high and low level of detail)

5. Test & Learn – Test, learn from testing, and adjust the solution

6. Install – Effectively install the solution

7. Replicate – Develop knowledge based and replication strategies/plans

The innovation process can also be viewed as an iterative learning process as it utilizes many techniques and templates to generate, develop and test solutions, lock in learning, and increase probability of success as you work through the process. Some of these powerful improvement and change techniques include goal setting, quality function deployment, extended value stream mapping, TRIZ, creative destruction, and FMEA,

What makes innovation different than other process, service, and product improvements? More time in solution generation, development, and testing. AND The amount of change resistance you, the team, or the market need to overcome.

What is the impact on our team? on ME? Change resistance appears as denial, fear, anxiety. You hear: “I like my pen and paper”, “That will never work”, OR “This is way out of my comfort zone”.

Why utilize the innovation process? Here are a few innovation benefits for the:

Team: increased creativity, excitement, pride, commitment, and retention
Customers: recipients of better products and services, see you as valuable and focused on me, the customer
Organization: better market offerings, industry leadership, improved quality, decreased costs, increased customers and revenue, portfolio diversification, increased learning, sharing, and focus
Suppliers and Partners: part of a winning team, increased collaboration and support

Human Error Reduction with Mistake Proofing Method Webinar

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 14:56:00 GMT

Explore the types of human error, resulting defects, and conditions that allow mistakes to occur, the Mistake Proofing process overview, and a few innovative Poka Yoke devices.

Using the Mistake Proofing process can help you get to the root of why mistakes occur AND prevent recurrence. Application of this has helped decrease quality defects >50% with a productivity increase of 30%. Often you will find the root in the work process or work and people settings or the solutions are not powerful enough.

Link to more Mistake Proofing training.

Creating a Bigger Impact: Building on Your PDSA Skills

Fri, 31 Jan 2020 16:15:00 GMT

You have been using the 4-step improvement cycle of Plan – Do – Study – Act for continual quality improvement (CQI) projects.

Good! Teams have learned the 4 steps.

Better! Projects have created improvements.

Best! With PDCA knowledge as the backbone – continue growing and advancing your CQI impact.

Let’s level set on what occurs in the PDSA improvement cycle
PLAN: ◊ Frame the Problem-gap & goal ◊ Understand the current state process ◊ Data collection and evaluation ◊ Identify root causes and solutions
DO: ◊ Test potential solutions ◊ Measure results
STUDY: ◊ Analyze results and determine impact (Will the goal be reached?) ◊ Extract lessons learned to identify additional actions or tests
ACT: ◊ Effectively install the new process or outcome

Build Upon PDSA to engage team members in creating more innovative, significant, and transformative results.

Abraham Maslow says, “If the only tool you have is hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail”. PDSA is the backbone for many improvement tools and methods (tools that follow the improvement cycle) so let’s build upon PDSA and expand your improvement toolkit. Advanced improvement methods use PDSA however are often tailored to specific types of problems or to eliminate specific forms of waste, in all types of processes . Here are some advanced improvements methods to learn-apply-advance your improvement impact:

5S + Visual Controls – Decrease time searching for information, material, people, or equipment. Sort, Shine, Straighten, Standardize, Sustain, (+ Safety). Benefits have included 35% productivity and 20% climate/engagement.

Flow – Decrease WAIT time within and between steps by balancing work content, sequencing tasks to one unit at a time, and introducing visual controls between work steps. Benefits have included 75% decrease in cycle time, 50% increase in process capacity, 95% on-time reliability, and 40% decrease in inventory.

Innovation Process – A process to create innovative, transformative processes, products, or services with immediate and long-term impact and benefits. Within the process several additional analytical techniques are utilized, including quality function development, value stream mapping, failure mode effect analysis, and TRIZ. Benefits have included increased customer loyalty and market growth.

Kaizen – Don’t wait for results. Get improvements rapidly (5 days) with the team-based systematic problem-solving process that flows through all phases of the improvement cycle effectively to identify waste in the targeted work process, understand and analyze the root causes, identify and test solutions, learn, install improvements, and create a system for ongoing improvement. Benefits have included 70% decrease in labor hours (575 to 175 hours per item) along with less frustration and overtime; shorter cycle time; and more standardized, consistent, and quality product.

Mistake Proofing – A systematic approach to reduce defects associated with “human error” and avoid the rework costs resulting from those defects. Benefits have included 99.8% improvement in data entry accuracy.

Quick Change / SMED – Reducing the waste of getting ready to do work or perform value added tasks by assessing each task of a changeover process to distinguish what can be done externally to the process and what cannot. Work is then redesigned to eliminate tasks, move external ones out of the changeover process and streamline all remaining activities. Benefits have included 94% decrease in changeover times (90 to 5 minutes).

Six Sigma – A disciplined, data-driven approach to reduce defects and variation in processes and products. With the high level of data analysis, the 4-steps are broken down into 5 steps: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. Benefits have included reduced process variation.

Value Engineering / Design for Excellence – Improve and simplify designs or processes in order to provide the lowest cost solution to meet the functional needs of the customer and where every component and activity is challenged to bring value. / Design information, processes, and products targeted to a specific phase of its life cycle, e.g., design for X = assembly, disassembly, customer service, transportability. Benefits have included simplified process design, reduced costs, and increased customer satisfaction.

The performance of your organization relies on development and use of both basic and advanced skills. Your personal challenge is to keep on developing skills and bringing more value by creating even more impactful improvements.

What methods have you applied? What have been most successful in your organization? Want to explore these advanced methods more? Call, direct message us.

Strategic and Annual Planning Webinar

Thu, 23 Jan 2020 21:46:00 GMT

Align long-term and short-term priorities, resources, and actions to achieve your department’s goals with our data-based strategic and annual planning process. Our process uses team input and multiple data analyses (community, environment, customers, employees, financial, organization, and processes) along with a prioritized SWOT analysis to create 1) strategic initiatives with goals, measures, timelines, and resources; 2) Immediate interlocking the Annual Work Plans; and 3) Alignment of team member and individuals’ activities.

Click to learn more about focusing and aligning your department with our strategic planning process that immediately cascades into an annual plan, project teams, and individuals.

Link to more Strategic Planning

Link to more Annual Planning

Diagnosing your Culture: To Improve your Culture

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 21:37:08 GMT

Are you seeking to create an organization culture where everyone is actively solving problems and improving the organization’s outcomes and performance every day? In this training, you will learn the organizational elements needed to be in place to create this culture, complete your organization’s diagnosis, learn how to apply the diagnosis results in your annual improvement plans, and how to help teams effectively achieve the plans.

Course Goal: To increase organization culture of quality improvement knowledge and skills and use them to focus and maximize your continual quality improvement (CQI) activities and results. Time Frame: 16 hour classroom training (tell, show, do, recycle framework; with role play/application).

Time Frame: 16 hour classroom training (tell, show, do, recycle framework; with role play/application)

Continual Improvement Tools Used:

Agenda

Day 1:

Gain a deeper understanding of a culture of quality improvement

Begin assessing your organization

And developing gap closing strategies using the Roadmap to a Culture of Quality Improvement Self-Assessment tool

Day 2:

Continue assessing your organization

And developing gap closing strategies using the Roadmap to a Culture of Quality Improvement Self-Assessment tool

Learn how to incorporate the culture assessment results and other data into the annual quality improvement plan

Learn and practice developing resulting project plans

Continual Improvement Roles & Responsibilities

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 17:07:26 GMT

There are opportunities for everyone to be engaged in continuous improvement. Efficiency and effectiveness increases with clarity.

Continual Improvement Community Huddles

Thu, 07 Mar 2019 12:19:00 GMT

As a professional, there are many options to continue growing your skills and abilities; we attend conferences, hear guest speaker, email good practices, read books, LinkedIn articles, and listen to TED talks. As an Improvement professional how else can we grow? Years ago, we ran a CI community of practice for 350 CI practitioners (inside one organization). The meeting, sharing, replication, and increased speed of improvements was incredibly powerful. Now, peers ask, “How do we get that again?”. A big question! One answer – Continual Improvement Community Huddles.

CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT (CI): making things better across the organization for customers, business, team members and communities with the help of Lean, Six Sigma, Quality, Employee Engagement, Operational Excellence methods to achieve results greater than historical norms and more than what is believed possible

COMMUNITY: feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals

HUDDLE: gathering together to share and learn practical solutions to help you and your organization accelerate performance

CI community huddles are in progress with a schedule to continue connecting the CI network.

The Goal of the improvement huddle:

To: Connect peers who are passionate about creating high performance

For: Leaders, champions, and anyone working hard to improve their organization’s performance

By: (agenda)

Meet others with similar passion and purpose
Problem solve common gaps or topics
Identify and share improvement ideas
Share and celebrate learnings (good and bad)

So that: (benefits)

Help the performance of yourself, your team, & the organization
Increased community sharing, learning, getting help/ideas, replicating
Get practical solutions to try tomorrow
Good changes are implemented faster and progress on your path to high performance is accelerated

Condition: Have some fun

Standards: (measures of success)

What How Measured Target Result

Participation % of participants sharing ideas, suggestions, tips 100% 100%

Benefits # of ideas adopted >75% TBD

What huddle members enjoyed

Connecting and networking with like-minded people
People and ideas from all aspects of a company
Meeting with amazing and energetic people
Environment and open discussion, especially cool stuff & opportunities shared
The ice breakers and group involvement when sharing best practices
“Can we meet more often?”

To join the continual improvement community Here

Tariffs, Budgets, and Prices; Oh My!

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 22:04:00 GMT

Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz, dealt with challenging animals; unfortunately, we have even bigger challenges. How do we continue to grow our business, help our customers, and improve profitability while managing all these planned and unplanned expenses that may be out of our control? We may not be able to control these changes; however, we can influence these changes AND we can control HOW they impact our organization.

An example – 90% of forms received from the supplier were wrong. The team says, “That is beyond us, we can’t do anything about what is given to us”. Challenge – the current paradigms! The team went on to 1. Define what makes a supplier form accurate, 2. Create a process and standardized work instructio n for acceptance of supplier forms, 3. Mistake proof the form so that errors cannot occur, and 4. Use working with others skills to provide supplier coaching and constructive feedback. Did they improve the accuracy of supplier information? Of course, they did and dramatically!

“True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid…” L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

This is a fantastic opportunity to show your customers, employees, and stakeholders that together you can overcome obstacles in and out of your control AND achieve results greater than historical norms and more than what is believed possible.

PEOPLE: The Most Important Element in a High-Performing Organization

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 21:40:00 GMT

Without People, your high-performing organization does not exist –your people make the difference! In the previous article, we covered the 6 elements necessary to create a high-performing organization – PEOPLE, LEADERSHIP, FOCUS, LEARNING, IMPLEMENTATION, AND METHODS. An organization relies most importantly, however, on unlocking the capacity of its PEOPLE.

The people in high performing organizations have a unique set of qualities:

Aligned to the Mission of the organization and creating benefits to all its stakeholders.
Energized by the organizational and personal success they see possible.
Function as teams within and across the organization to achieve results and improve performance by identifying improvement areas, solving problems, and learning.
Capable , with each individual knowledgeable and proficient, in executing their core responsibilities and in creating improvement.
Pioneering and innovative , internally driven to achieve the previously unachievable, probe new opportunities, and create new benchmarks of accomplishment at the personal, company, and industry levels.
And, people are supported by a leadership that believes in the capacity of people and creates an environment that enables their performance! [1]

So, who are the “right people” and what do they need to be successful? What core values , knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs), and setting are needed for people in an organization that is based on the following performance features :

Focused on maximizing value to customers, eliminating waste in all work processes, and achieving extraordinary results for its stakeholders
Sees success through enabling or helping all its stakeholders
Competes through the excellence of its products and services
Is powered by teamed people who work together to a common goal
Uses continual improvement and learning, based on data and information to guide problem solving, to achieve success

The Core Values Needed for People in a High-Performing Organization

Note that core values are simply the principles of conduct people abide by as they pursue the organization’s purpose. They have no “moral” underpinning however they often are a conscious choice on the part of an individual and need to be considered in hiring, onboarding, and advancement practices. The desired core values for people in a high performing organization can be identified by analysis of the above performance features using social science research [2] . They include the following:

Intrinsically motivated: has a purpose greater than oneself; acts with integrity to that purpose
Teams with others; respects others; seeks to involve and understand the perspectives of stakeholders (empathy)
Self-starting and sustaining; accountable for performance
Pioneering: challenges the status quo and strives for perfection using fact-based information
Persistent desire to master the skills necessary to produce success; esteems ongoing learning and competence

What People Need to Know: Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

Certainly, one of the things people need is competence in the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) to fulfill their role. In addition to the technical KSAs required to fulfill their role, working in a culture of high-performing continual improvement requires additional competencies [3] . These enable each member to continuously improve their own performance, the effectiveness and efficiency of their work process, and the organizations’ services and products; self-manage their efforts, coordinate their efforts with others, and enable the performance of others including sharing learning, team membership, and leadership.

This leads to a set of core competencies and skills and the basis of a training curriculum for the organization:

Working with Others active communication [4]
Goal setting
Measurement
Information-based problem solving and decision making
Value & Waste detection
Learning from performance
Teaching and coaching others
Action planning
Implementing solutions and continually improving

Note that these are for all members of the organization from the board room to individual contributors!

Another necessary component of helping people succeed and a characteristic of high-performing improvement organizations is a setting that enable people to perform. Deming, in his collective works covering “profound knowledge” and “14 management points” [5] , reinforced the need for leaders to enable people’s success by

Setting the focus on continual improvement
Knowing the work (process) they supervise
Understanding the sources of improvement
And enhancing people’s capabilities so that they can succeed

What is this setting or environment that help people to succeed and leaders help to create?

Do people have the information and data needed to align with the organizations’ direction and activities? Understand the performance of their work process, their own performance?
Are resources (information, material, equipment, space) needed to perform and improve their process available?
Do reliable work processes with standardized work exist that can produce the expected output?
Finally, are expectations clear with goals identified and measures available to provide feedback and guide improvement?

Are the expectations reasonable? Is there a real, practical, and operating system that provides opportunities to improve performance?

How is your organization doing with people and the core values, KSAs, and setting needed for success in a high performing organization?

Next time, let’s take a deeper look at another element of a High Performing Improvement Culture: LEADERSHIP

[1] Adapted from “The High Performing Learning Organization”; Raphael L. Vitalo, James. S. Byron, Patricia V. Bierley, and Christopher Holmberg

[2] Some of the relevant social science research includes: Bandura (1994; 1997); Carkhuff (1969; 1983) among many others

[3] See “Building a Lean Training Curriculum”; http://www.continualimpact.com/customer-resources/papers

[4] https://www.continualimpact.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Working-with-Others-Course.pdf

[5] See “Deming Revisited”; https://www.continualimpact.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/deming_revisited-Vitalo.pdf

[6] The High Performing Learning Organization; Raphael L. Vitalo, James. S. Byron, Patricia V. Bierley, and Christopher Holmberg

5 Steps to Focusing and Aligning Everyone

Wed, 17 Oct 2018 20:12:00 GMT

15% of workers could identify their organization’s top three goals

48% of workers say the goals of their work team are translated into their individual work goals

38% of workers say their work team planning results in clear assignments for individuals

FranklinCovey and Harris Interactive poll of over 10, 000 U.S. workers

Yikes, this is not good! Let’s not be part of the 10,000 surveyed workers who are not aligned to your organization’s goals. How about focusing and aligning all team members by creating interlocking plans to achieve the vision, mission, and goals of the organization? This cannot be done effectively in a simple brainstorming session, nor by just telling everyone the goals and trusting that aligned action will happen. Good planning has a process, methods used in its creation, a structure for action and ultimately involves steps by everyone!

Step #1: Confirm the long term

Vision, what are you striving to become in 10+ years?
Mission, why does the organization exist? Its purpose?
Core values, what are the principles of conduct in every employee as they pursue the mission?

Step #2: Create a multi-year strategic plan

Gather and analyze data (customers, environment, employees, financial, organization, and processes)
Determine and prioritize your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
Identify the most important things you will pursue to progress toward your vision with goals, measures, timelines, and resources

Step #3: Immediately create an annual improvement plan

Cascade a portion of the strategic plan into annual work plans; what must be done THIS YEAR?
Make it real: WHO is doing WHAT, by WHEN, and HOW is success measured?
Have a strategic plan but it’s not cascaded? Check this out

Step #4: Engage and involve team members in achieving these goals

Use the collective knowledge, skills, and experience of team members to solve problems; delight customers; improve works processes; decrease stress and costs; and improve cycle times and quality
Provide the environment to succeed with leadership support of the plan, resources to achieve goals, knowledge to use improvement methods in problem solving, and the use of data in identifying solutions
Celebrate the successes and learn from the failures

Step #5: Make it part of daily work

Install the improvements, set up a system for continual improvement
Track progress and communicate often, openly and visually
Establish expectations, what to START and STOP doing, hold one another accountable
Engage and involve every team member to join in and contribute to what is important.

Often, organizations stop at step 2, create a pretty wall chart, and move on. The benefit of organization planning and execution is interlocking goals through all 5 steps. The 5-step planning process will create tremendous benefits: 1) Focus on what is important and value-adding: Productivity! 2) Grow and thrive amidst industry changes, 3) Simpler decision making, and 4) Everyone working to achieve organization goals – everyday!

Are you interested in getting help leading the process to create focus and alignment of goals?

Improve active communication = Improve your business

Mon, 24 Sep 2018 15:44:00 GMT

The 4 communication techniques practiced

“Thank you SO MUCH! I think I speak for many if not all to say that this was one of the most valuable Nine O’clock Club workshops I have ever attended.” Meeting participant

If you cannot go home saying today was a great day, let’s talk and help you and your team have more great days.

Building a Continuous Improvement Training Curriculum

Sun, 26 Aug 2018 19:09:01 GMT

Continuous Improvement Training Curriculum Guide

Guidelines, References, and Tips to build out your organization's Continuous Improvement training curriculum for all members of the organization.

-Authored by Raphael Vitalo and Chris Bujak

Predicting Your Organization’s Future

Mon, 16 Jul 2018 03:07:00 GMT

Use these high-performing organization TAROT CARDS to help your team understand and envision an organization optimally performing and creating extra-ordinary results.

The 6 Essential Keys to a High-Performing Improvement Organization

Sun, 11 Mar 2018 20:38:00 GMT

In previous articles we discussed the starting point of high-performing improvement organizations- a Mission grounded in relentlessly adding value to customers, eliminating waste that unnecessarily consumes resources, and creating extraordinary benefits to all the organization’s stakeholders, over time and changing market circumstances. Now let’s explore 6 keys or elements that are necessary to building this high-performing culture of improvement in the organization and creating this kind of performance.

WHAT ARE THESE ELEMENTS?
Think of them as essentials that together help unlock an organization to create long-term extraordinary performance. All of them are necessary and one, People , is more important than all the rest. The elements are more than a conceptual framework; each can be diagnosed for gaps by examining the evidence of behaviors that exist in an organization, identifying root causes, and making improvements. Remember that simple knowledge of what helps to drive high performance does nothing by itself- success also requires the conviction to change and skill in doing so.

WHAT WOULD AN IMPROVEMENT CULTURE BASED ON THESE ELEMENTS LOOK LIKE?

Want more detail and see some organizations on their journey? Take a look at their Improvement Culture video.

So, how did you do? As you evaluate what may be gaps and their root causes, remember that –

When you put all the elements together and make them real, however, you can achieve sustainable and long term results beyond historical norms and perhaps even beyond what is thought possible !

Next time, let’s take a deeper look at the most important element of a High-Performing Improvement Organization: PEOPLE

Continual Impact LLC, 2018 www.continualimpact.com

[1] “Hard Facts – Dangerous half-truths and total nonsense”; Pfeffer and Sutton

[2] “The High Performing Learning Organization”; Vitalo, Byron, Bierley, Holmberg

The post The 6 Essential Keys to a High-Performing Improvement Organization appeared first on Continual Impact .

The HOW of High Performing Continual Improvement: The Hunt for WASTE

Mon, 29 Jan 2018 14:27:00 GMT

But what about Waste? It is generally defined as any activity that consumes resources without creating value for the customer. Where value can be seen as helping the effectiveness of the business, reducing waste can improve the efficiency of producing that value and freeing up time for more value adding activities . An understanding of waste helps the team see much more potential for improvement and where to look. Additionally, waste not only squanders business resources but it also frustrates workers. It is workers who experience the aggravations caused by interruptions, searching, moving, rework, and other forms of waste.

What is the size of the opportunity? Huge! During an introductory course in continual improvement, we ask participants from all types of organizations to indicate how much time they spend during the day in two types of waste- searching for “stuff” (material, information, people) and resolving defects or “Things gone wrong” . After asking the question of thousands of people, the average answer is 2-5 hours per day (or an average of 44% of their work time). And this is only for two of the forms of waste!

Calculate how many hours you can free up for other value adding activities or growth with the same resources in your organization if you could free up only 50% of these two wastes!

Still not convinced? Using a work process improvement method such as Kaizen [1] the first time in a work process typically results in a 30-50% reduction in labor which can be used to grow, increase capacity or for other value-adding activities.

So, what does waste look like?

Definitions and understanding of waste, as it applies to work processes and organizations, have evolved from at least the early 1900’s [2] to the current day. Today’s nomenclature is largely based on work developed by Toyota (Taiichi Ohno and the Toyota Production System) and popularized as a key concept in the Lean improvement methodology. They start by categorizing waste into 3 types or wasteful practices to be eliminated:

MURA; A Japanese term for unevenness, irregularity, or inconsistency. An example would be work processes that have wait steps or interruptions or workloads that vary greatly across time causing team members to hurry and then wait. This type is often addressed by levelling scheduling driven by customer demand, flexibility of the workforce and visual techniques to control and add attention to the pace of work.

MURI; A Japanese term for overburden, unreasonableness or absurdity. It refers to excessive demands on workers (does not allow sufficient time to achieve the correct standard of work), or the overburdening of equipment. This type is often addressed by clarity of standardized work, work process improvements and balancing work content with customer demand and available work time.

MUDA; The Japanese term that refers to waste as a range of non-value adding activities. These are any activity that consumes resources without creating value for the customer. As mentioned above, it refers to any activity that, when first implemented, does not materially change a product or service output in a way for which a well-informed and reasonable customer is willing to pay. These non-value added activities exist in virtually all work processes that produce products, services and overhead (enabling) activities. And they also apply to physical (manufacturing) or information environments.

To help people see Muda better in their work processes, it is often divided into observable forms or categories that focus on resources (people, material, equipment) that are often wasted.

TYPE 1 – non-value added however it is currently required by the customer or law/regulation

TYPE 2 : non-value added and not required by customer or law/regulation

Both types are waste however it may be easier to start with Type 2 waste improvements!

An understanding and awareness of waste can be used in an organization from top to bottom and in long term strategy to daily work for achieving significant benefits.

An understanding of waste helps the organization see the opportunities better, apply the most appropriate problem-solving approach and get better insight into solutions that are effective and “stick”.

What can you as a leader start doing to eliminate WASTE and improve your organization? Let’s start by…

[1] Kaizen definition: Kaizen simply means “change for the better”. Kaizen is a way of life, a management principle, and a method. The Kaizen event method is a team-based approach to problem solving that flows through all phases of the improvement cycle effectively and rapidly. Before the event, a Kaizen-appropriate problem is identified along with goals in areas such as customer satisfaction, cycle time and labor reduction, and error elimination. The team is then mobilized and a Kaizen event begins. A typical event uses a systematic process to identify waste in the targeted work process, to enable the team to understand and analyze the root causes, to identify and test solutions, to learn, to install improvements, and to create a system for ongoing improvement. As the event progresses, numerous continual improvement and change management methods and techniques are applied. All this work is accomplished in a brief period of time, typically 5 days, with full benefits achieved within 1-3 months.

[2] In 1915, Frank Bunker Gilbreth and Lillian Moller Gilbreth, American industrial psychologists categorized work tasks into effective and ineffective types (wastes) known as “therbligs”, a reversal of the name Gilbreth, with ‘th’ transposed.

The post The HOW of High Performing Continual Improvement: The Hunt for WASTE appeared first on Continual Impact .

The HOW of High Performing Continual Improvement: Let’s Start with VALUE

Thu, 28 Dec 2017 22:22:00 GMT

Let’s look at Value first. An understanding of value is critical – it can increase growth, unlock innovation and product development, and challenging what does not add value identifies opportunities to improve work processes. To use the concept of value, lets establish some definitions and discuss how they are practically used. Noriaki Kano [1] added some guidance to the above definitions and characteristics by suggesting not all value were equal in the customer's view and that, when understood, opened opportunties to better add value and increase satisfication.

[1] For more on Kano, see Walden, D., 1993, The Center for Quality of Management Journal

Consider the above flu shot example and how we would innovate and improve the overall process using the above concepts and definitions. Would I see higher value, be delighted, if it was possible to receive a flu patch mailed to my home, automatically from my primary care provider, apply myself for a short period of time, and prevent the flu? Perhaps not currently possible, however, I would see it as adding value and sign up!

Organizations with a culture of continual improvement use these perspectives of value in achieving their Mission, product/service development, identification of improvement opportunities and daily behaviors when dealing with customers and creating products/services.

So, what can you start doing tomorrow to use the concept of VALUE to improve your organization? Plenty. Whether you are a small or large organization, let’s start by…

The Gift That Keeps on Giving: KAIZEN

Thu, 28 Dec 2017 21:58:00 GMT

Are you shopping for the ultimate gift to buy this season? How about a gift that keeps on giving throughout the year? A gift that has benefits for you personally, professionally, and your organization.

How about Kaizen?

A Kaizen event is a team-based approach to problem solving that flows through all phases of the improvement cycle effectively and rapidly. Before the event, a Kaizen-appropriate problem is identified along with goals in areas such as customer satisfaction, cycle time and labor reduction, and error elimination. The team is then mobilized, and a Kaizen event begins. A typical event uses a systematic process to identify waste in the targeted work process, understand and analyze the root causes, identify and test solutions, extract learning, install improvements, and create a system for ongoing improvement. As the event progresses, numerous improvement and change management methods and techniques are applied. All this work is accomplished in a brief period, typically 5 days, with full benefits achieved within 1-3 months.

What you get:

On-going benefits with more Kaizen events : Ability to continually, confidently, and independently lead teams through the Kaizen event process.

A Gift That Keeps Giving…

Interested in learning more:

High Performing Continual Improvement: What Benefits Can Be Achieved?

Thu, 26 Oct 2017 02:24:00 GMT

In the last article , we talked about what is keeping you up at night in your organization and the goal of continual improvement in helping to close those gaps. Let’s talk now about the type and size of benefits continual improvement can bring…

Different models of improvement place different emphasis on WHO are the recipients of the benefits and WHAT are those benefits. [1]. The benefits provided by continual improvement need to be real and inclusive of all stakeholders. Stakeholders = a person or group of people who affects or is affected by a change. Stakeholders and benefits include:

Although the list may not be surprising, there are two important points- 1) Customers hold a special and primary status (they are why you exist) and 2) Benefits to one stakeholder are not at the expense of another. [2] For example, if you use improvement methods to drive cost reduction solely for the purposes of improving the company’s profits, is that consistent with the purpose of maximizing value to customers? Does it help in worker participation in continuous improvement activities when people realize they are assisting in ending their jobs?

Are the Benefits Significant?

The impact of such an approach can be stunning. Organization effectiveness and efficiency can be increased at a rate greater than historical norms and perhaps greater than thought possible. Outcomes for customers can be improved. Costs can be improved that allow for more customers to be served with the same number of staff. Time can also be freed up to pursue other value-added activities.

Some Examples:

Customer: The time to deliver products and their quality are often of paramount importance to customers. Applying Flow [3] and Mistake Proofing to processes has produced cycle time reduction and defect reductions of 60-75!

Team Members: Team members have the opportunity to influence their process, make it less frustrating, grow in their personal capacity, experience a sense of ownership and, yes, have some fun!

Organization:

Suppliers: Often organizations teach their suppliers improvement and collaborate on improving processes across organizations. As a result, suppliers experience some of the same benefits as your organzation!

Community: Benefits are created by

a. a direct impact from safe and well-paying jobs provided by the organization

b. an indirect impact if the organization buys production materials and services locally

c. an induced impact from the flow of wages spent by new employees.

If you would like some help in calculating the amount of opportunity in your organization, give us a call!

Putting it Together

One of the companies examined for a transformation to a culture of continual improvement during the period of 1991 to 1999 was The Wiremold Company [6] , a manufacturer of wire and cable management products. Their CEO, Art Byrne, is credited for leading their transformation by establishing a corporate-wide, core strategy of continual improvement to remove waste and improve value-adding activities in order to deliver more value to their customers. Their results were impressive- significant increases in growth, new products, speed, quality, productivity, profitability and benefit sharing with the team. And, they freed up cash from inventory reduction to partially fund their acquisitions!

What is the secret sauce?

Actually, the basics are no secret. Art and the Wiremold team during this time exemplified many of the key elements of high performing improvement by

Establishing continual improvement as a key strategy,
Role modelling key values and behaviors,
Engaging their team members,
Focusing the organization on high priority opportunities,
Applying the information and data based methods of improvement such as kaizen in work processes throughout the organization,
and continually learning.

[2] See Emiliani, 2004, “Zero Sum Thinking”

[3] Flow: A method that attacks wait time between process steps by reducing batch size, balancing work content and visually controls activity

[4] Mistake Proofing: A method to reduce human error by making it more difficult or impossible to make an error

[5] A team-based method using a systematic process to identify waste in the targeted work process, understand and analyze the root causes, identify and test solutions, extract learning, install improvements, and create a system for ongoing improvement; accomplished in typically 5 days

[6] To read the rest of the story, read Better Thinking, Better Results”, Emiliani

The What and Why of Continuous Improvement

pam.vecellio@continualimpact.com (Pam Vecellio) — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 21:57:32 GMT

The Why and What of Continual Improvement

Virtually all organizations have made improvements over their lifetime. However, many report that the rate of change you are facing and the challenges it brings seems to be increasing. Is the rate of improvement being made enough to achieve your vision? Do you have the kind of organization that will create it?

For example, what is occurring in your organization that keeps you up at night?

Could it be the need to…

• Attract, develop, and retain a high performing workforce?

• Increase the value of products/services to your customers and develop new ones?

• Operate more efficiently-- decreasing costs, shortening cycle times, improving quality?

• Generate the financial resources needed to grow?

• Deal with change and the influx of technology, regulations, and cultural challenges?

If these do not bring up enough organizational challenges, try the following table. Simply answer the degree to which you agree or disagree.

This is where the need for and importance of continual improvement starts (the “Why” should anyone care) –

with closing the gaps between where you are right now and the Vision you have for your stakeholders.

So, what is continual improvement? It is the quest to increase the rate of improvement and benefits in an organization, beyond historical norms and perhaps beyond what is thought possible, to the benefit of your customers, your teams, funders, and society. And, it’s primary way of achieving its goal is by unlocking the limitless capacity of an organization’s most valued resource – its people .

Many people have heard of or tried a form of continual improvement- quality, lean, six sigma, or other strategies and have achieved some success. There are differences however in these popularized approaches in their purpose, application and content. They are often described and applied differently (and incorrectly) as “a toolkit”, “only for manufacturing”, or “all about cost-cutting”.

When we use the term “continual improvement”, we refer to an integrated model that uses the best of the best of what was learned from the past. It is largely based on 1) the Quality Model and the excellent work of W Edwards Deming who brought us an understanding of the role of leadership in high performing cultures and the use of data to solve problems and 2) the Lean Model, contributed to by many (see “Lean Thinking”, Womack and Jones), which brought us an increased focus on adding value for customers, eliminating waste in our work processes and a host of practical methods to do both and improve performance.

So, how can continual improvement help you and your organization start to close those gaps? Let’s try capturing its purpose and approach in a goal statement…

THE GOAL OF CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT

TO: Help organizations improve at a rate greater than historical norms and perhaps even more than thought possible.

FOR: Creating benefits inclusively for customers, team members, society and the shareholders or funding sources. This model is about achieving a win–win–win–win for all stakeholders (no win for one and penalize the others in this model).

BY: (HOW)

Understanding and adding true value to an organizations’ customers and solving their problems
Relentlessly seeking and driving out waste throughout all of the organization’s work processes to make them more efficient.
Engaging the most valuable resource of an organization- its People; unlocking their creativity and giving them the opportunity, skills, and support to solve the organizations’ challenges.
Leadership that supports them with the system, structure and expectations required for success
Providing Focus on the critical areas of improvement
Continually Learning from inside and outside the organization and from improvement efforts
Using reliable, data and information based Methods to understand and solve problems
Installing and operationalizing the improvements with reliable standardized work, training and feedback systems

SO THAT: (BENEFITS) Sustainable success for the organization is created and all stakeholders prosper.

MEASURES:

• Customers’ short and long-term success and satisfaction

• All organization members engagement in organization improvements, increased personal achievement and improved quality of work life

• Improved organization financial performance

• Supplier relationships that create a win-win and help them improve

• Communities thriving and with more career opportunities as a result of the organizations’ operations

A CONDITIONS: Leaders with an organizational Vision, a passion for learning and excellence, and a belief in people

Achieving Results Greater Than What is Believed Possible

Tue, 18 Jul 2017 15:04:00 GMT

Organizational Culture Changing Trifecta

1: Educate and involve everyone in improving their work every day, everywhere

2: Create immediate results in targeted areas to demonstrate the positive change that can be achieved

3: Develop an improvement structure and create organizational focus on future priority opportunities by developing strategic and annual improvement plans

See full success story

The post Achieving Results Greater Than What is Believed Possible appeared first on Continual Impact .

Can your team be high performing without standardized work?

Fri, 16 Jun 2017 18:18:00 GMT

An improvement has been identified and implemented yet it is not being followed successfully – ever wonder WHY? There may be several causes why the team members are not following the change (see table for other possible causes). Let’s explore one of those reasons – the existence of GOOD standardized work

What is Standardized Work?

PLUS

Why should you care about documenting and using standardized work?

– Eliminates the need for everyone to figure it out themselves

– Reduces variation in an individual’s performance and between people in the same work process – gets everyone to the best-known way

– Enables best practice sharing between team and locations

Documenting standardized work can be done in various formats*

Single Point Guidelines

* from “Lean Champions Resource Guide”, Chris Bujak, Chris Schucker, & Raphael Vitalo Vital Enterprises

How do you get started? What are the steps to creating good standardized work?

Let us know how you did, what questions you have, and show us your example!

Value Stream Map – A Map to Where?

Tue, 21 Mar 2017 21:43:00 GMT

Value stream maps show you WHERE to focus your improvements.

Fixing lots of things but not seeing the impact of the fixes?

An example – technicians wanted to increase the number of customer visits in a week. They focused on the customer facing step – decrease the on-site service time. Result: NO increase in the weekly customer visits. It turns out they dropped into problem solving mode before understanding the end to end process steps and data to identify the priority area. The Value Stream Map showed significant time being consumed in traveling and not the service; the focus area should have been on scheduling and technician drive time!

Why create value stream maps?

When do you use Value stream mapping?

Try it!

* See “Learning to See”, Mike Rother and John Shook

Continual Impact LLC, 2017

The post Value Stream Map – A Map to Where? appeared first on Continual Impact .

Sustain or Continually Improve?

Wed, 08 Feb 2017 16:36:00 GMT

Your project team achieved their goal, Congratulations!

Now what happens? The team assumes all the improvements will stick and everyone will readily adopt the new standardized work. They want to sustain the improvements, or do they? Sustain is to keep in existence; maintain, continue, or prolong.

Perhaps instead of sustaining, the team would like to continually improve? Continual improvement is the ongoing, incremental improvement of processes that lead to achievement of higher levels of performance. Do you seek to maintain or keep getting better?

If you are interested in advancing beyond sustaining to continually improving, here are a few features to establish with the team and actively pursue:

Designate a process owner responsible for continual improvement of the project scope. The process owner will coach performance by communicating status, facilitating feedback and consequences, aiding in problem resolve, and celebrating success
Teach the new process effectively ( Tell, Show, Do, Recycle education principle) with visual standardized work and clear accountabilities
Define and operationalize measures and targets that are openly tracked and visible to all team members and stakeholders
Create a feedback mechanism for receiving questions and ideas; resolve problems on a frequent basis and incrementally improve
Lead routine, quick (think stand-up) team meetings, with a structured problem solving approach like a Continual Improvement System and celebrate successes!

Making an Impact – 22 Organizations in 12 Months

Tue, 22 Nov 2016 19:22:00 GMT

Impacting the organization’s culture can happen in a short period. The Quality Improvement (QI) Leaders Academy program was an approach to create positive, focused, and measurable improvement in 22 organizations in just 12 months . The program managed by Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB), funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), with training and QI expertise provided by Continual Impact.

The community of 22 organizations all focused on the same goal – To develop QI Leaders with the knowledge and skills to promote rapid and measurable improvements in work processes and outcomes and help build high performing cultures of quality improvement. The community of QI Leaders learned together, followed by personal application within their organization.

To learn more, see the QI Leaders Academy program report . Congratulations to the QI Leaders and their organization members for making an impact!

Program phases:

Phase I: Kaizen

Phase II: Annual QI Planning

Phase III: QI Culture

“Being involved in this program has moved our health department so far along with our QI efforts and really turned QI in to a full health department program, rather than just the QI coordinator’s program.” Participating QI Leader

Continual Impact LLC
November 22, 2016

The post Making an Impact – 22 Organizations in 12 Months appeared first on Continual Impact .

Analyzing Customer Data

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 11:58:00 GMT

Using Customer Data to Focus Improvement

Link to QFD - Quality Function Deployment overview

Take the Waste – Value Challenge

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 11:58:00 GMT

Take the Waste - Value Challenge

Identifying the Value and the Waste in your daily work (and life) is one of the best ways to identify issues, problems, and improvement opportunities.

VALUE:
1. Your customer recognizes an activity as value and is willing to pay for AND

2. The activity changes the product or information AND

3. the activity is done right the first time.

WASTE:
Anything that consumes time and resources without adding value.

YOUR CHALLENGE:

The Importance of Setting Goals

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 11:58:00 GMT

Studies of truly great improving organizations, ones that have a culture of improvement, typically have several characteristics.

Self-Assessment Tool (SAT)

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 11:57:00 GMT

Organizational Culture of Quality NACCHO
Quality improvement (QI) is increasingly being embraced as a means to achieve efficiencies and other improvements with limited resources.

Organizational Culture of Quality SAT
The Organizational Culture of Quality Self-Assessment Tool was supported by funds made available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support, under award number 5U38HM000449-05, CFDA 93.283.

View full document »

SAT Scoring Summary
Refer to the following instructions to complete the scoring summary sheet. It is recommended to completed the scoring summary sheet as you complete the assessment for each sub-element.

View full document »

True Transformation

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 11:56:00 GMT

Advance readiness to a culture transformation at ASQ NEQC 57th Conference

By this presentation exploring and challenging our thinking

So that you can help positively impact their stakeholders beyond what has been previously possible.

Lean, Six Sigma, and Kaizen Compared (Origins, Model, and Scope)

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 11:54:00 GMT

“In this article, I will share what my research has uncovered about the origins of Six Sigma™ and Kaizen, the various meanings of each term, and the scope each approach claims. I will begin, however, with a review of the Quality Model, since both these methods emerged as implementations of the Quality Model or as instruments for accomplishing one or more of its goals. As to the issue of what the proponents say versus what happens in fact, I will try to share that within each section of the comparison, as best I can.”

Excerpt from Raphael L. Vitalo, Ph.D.

Deming Revisited: The Real Quality Model for Commerce

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 11:54:00 GMT

“As I dug into his works, I discovered an alignment between the Quality approach to commerce and the Lean Enterprise approach that was far broader and deeper than I first presumed. By the time I finished, it seemed to me that Deming’s work represents the heart and soul of Lean Enterprise, especially given his understanding of people and their striving to learn, grow, and achieve; his sensitivity to their needs and wants; and his recognition that they possessed an immense pool of untapped and largely ignored creativity.”

Excerpt from Raphael L. Vitalo, Ph.D.

Helping Vital Records Do Better – Perspectives from Continual Impact LLC

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 11:53:00 GMT

A mission to provide “more, better, and faster” data to improve public health and prevent waste, fraud, and abuse.

Helping Vital Records Do Better: Perspectives from Continual Impact, L.L.C.

NAPHSIS and the vital records jurisdictions are on a mission to provide “more, better, and faster” data to improve public health and prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. North Carolina and Minnesota State vital records offices and Continual Impact, L.L.C. have worked on improving efficiencies and enhancing processes b y providing valuable health information used to plan and evaluate public health programs andmeasure the health of our populace. In this interview with Continual Impact’s Pam Vecellio & Chris Bujak, we delve deeper into what quality improvement is and how it is working to improve vital records.

NAPHSIS: What is continual quality improvement?

Continual Impact: Improvement is simply about helping people make things better. It is achieving sustainable performance (increased efficiency and/or effectiveness) beyond what is thought possible to the benefit of your customers, teams, funders, and society . Good quality improvement is always a win-win-win-win.

Improvement activities alone, with a team, with customers all follow an improvement cycle based on data driven problem solving and eliminate non-value added work or simply, waste.

NAPHSIS: How can quality improvement help in vital records?

Continual Impact: Staff members use improvement methods to close gaps, reduce/eliminate work process ‘pain points.’ Past improvement projects included improving the community’s experience, decreasing internal certificate processing times, improving data quality, and increasing partner collaboration, just to name a few.

NAPHSIS: What results have you seen so far from states’ quality improvement initiatives?

Continual Impact: Several leaders of vital records offices sought to improve the timeliness, accuracy, and usability death data and ultimately their responsiveness to the user community, both consumers of data such as local health departments, and families of decedents. As most NAPHSIS members probably recognize, the demand for real-time death data is growing as more and more customers want more and more data, sooner. The teams we worked with ultimately had one improvement goal: reduce the time for death records to be available to both families seeking certificates, and for consumers seeking data.

In Minnesota Vital records office , the vital records office was able to

NAPHSIS: Did the participating vital records offices benefit in other ways?

Continual Impact: Absolutely. Both states experienced additional benefits from their quality improvement enhancements beyond better timeliness and accuracy. For example, the Minnesota state vital records office experienced an “explosion of energy and involvement” (meaning the excitement of knowledge and new skills to critically review existing processes and procedure enthused staff to want to improve more and more…. Almost hard to reign in and control the excitement… just wanted you to know because the excitement and the 5 whys is very real in MN. There is a desire to continually improve and make the time to make it part of our routine operations). They received many invitations to present/share their experiences and assist in training others, received unsolicited stakeholder feedback and inquiries to get real-time data, and were recognized by leadership. These positive responses facilitated a sense of ownership and pride among staff.

The vital records offices also saw their partners’ relationships improve at all levels—both inside and outside the health department. These relationships helped enhance the culture of quality and fostered a supportive environment among funeral directors and medical examiners who provide death data, the local public health department, NCHS, and NAPHSIS (see this article from Minnesota for more: “Regional funeral directors meeting valuable”).

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the vital records offices were able to revive local surveillance and be more relevant to public health practice (see this article from Minnesota for more: “Timely death data of great value to local public health ”). Local public health departments want to “feel the pulse” of the mortality landscape at all times so they may be more responsive to more emerging issues, such as drug overdose related deaths. More timely data enhances analytic capacity and ultimately “move the dial” on persistent public health challenges such as traffic fatalities, infant mortality and sudden, unexpected infant death, and other efforts.

NAPHSIS: How can other vital records offices learn more about quality improvement?

Continual Impact: Vital records offices can learn more about improvement by talking with peers, reading, training, and attending conferences. They can contact Continual Impact, L.L.C. directly at adminstrator@continualimpact.com or 877-252-5804, Molly Crawford ( Molly.Crawford@state.mn.us ) to discuss Minnesota’s experience, and they can learn more about other public health vital records improvement projects at: https://www.phqix.org/search/content/vital%20records .

But sometimes the best way to start on the path to quality improvement is to embrace it. Look for waste in your role and try to eliminate it. Engage customers & partners—both internal and external—at all levels. Listen to data, information, and pain points; you’ll find there are many opportunities to improve. Set up or join an improvement project team. And challenge the amount of results that can be achieved. You’ll be surprised just how much you can accomplish.

The post Helping Vital Records Do Better – Perspectives from Continual Impact LLC appeared first on Continual Impact .

Continual Impact News

Building Stronger Supervisors and Team Leaders: Training Within Industry Training

Building Stronger Supervisors and Team Leaders: Training Within Industry Training

Building Stronger Supervisors to Build Stronger Teams

Building Stronger Supervisors to Build Stronger Teams

Join International Ideas Month

Join International Ideas Month

Improvement Creates Fun, Satisfaction, and Results!

Improvement Creates Fun, Satisfaction, and Results!

Return on Investment (ROI) - Prioritization technique

Prioritize Impact with a Return on Investment

Core Competencies - A Competitive Advantage

Wastes and Value - Why They are Important to Performance

WASTES and VALUE - Why They are Important to Performance?

Overcoming Speed Bumps on the Journey to a Culture of Improvement

Creating More Change Buy-In & Engagement: Turning Resistance into Results

Creating More Change Buy-In & Engagement: Turning Resistance into Results

Performance below Expectations Webinar

Performance below Expectations Webinar

The Improvement Infrastructure

Using Performance Measures

Using Performance Measures

Organization Assessment Tools Webinar

Organization Assessment Tools Webinar

A Meeting's Magic Dust

We freed up another 176 hours +

BETTER OUTCOMES - HOW TO GET THEM FASTER & EASIER

Effective Goals and Measures

A best known way to be more focused and accomplish more begins with a well written goal statement with measures of success. This course is part of Continuous Improvement Yellow Belt , Green Belt , aka CI Project Leader, Supervisor Skill Development , and most improvement methods .

Goal:

Benefits:

Agenda:

Using Data to Drive Decisions

Using Data to Drive Decisions

Creating More Change Buy-in & Engagement Webinar

GOAL: To gain more ideas to create more change buy-in and engagement.

AGENDA: sharing best known strategies to

1. Increase leadership buy-in for teams to spend time improving performance.

2. Get team members excited/engaged.

Why Now is the Best Time for Continuous Improvement

Efficiency is successful if

Flow Method Introduction webinar

Flow CI Method Introduction webinar

If we are not learning/adapting, we are at the risk of being left behind.

Nonconformance Event Management Process

Nonconformance Management Process Training

Helping Others Embrace Change

Helping Others Embrace Change

Top Gifts of Knowledge (Idea-Generating Blogs & Webinars)

During this season of giving, please enjoy the top gifts of knowledge (idea-generating blogs & webinars),

as rated by you!

Advancing People Skills & Relations

Writing a Great Goal

The Importance of Setting Goals and How They Can Be Improved…

Leading High-Performing Teams & Organization webinar

Active Listening & Communicating

Making Good Decisions - The Approach & Types

Reducing Human Error with the Mistake Proofing (Poka-Yoke) Improvement Method Webinar

Enjoy this webinar to gain a better understanding of the Poka-Yoke improvement method, including The WHAT, WHY and HOW to Get Started.

Poka Yoke - Fun to say; what does it mean?

Poka Yoke is an improvement method for decreasing human errors (Mistake Proofing) in processes, systems, and equipment.

Eliminate Human Errors with the Mistake Proofing (aka PokaYoke) Improvement Method

A Mistake Proofing (or Poka Yoke) Device

The Benefits of Eliminating Human Error: Some of our customer's error elimination successes:

More Focus: System-Wide Thinking

﻿

5S Advanced improvement method webinar

5S - Visual Controls Advanced Improvement Method Webinar

Quality Check: Does my Team Have the CORE SKILLS for High Performance?

Performance Measurement

Goal of Performance Measurement training & implementation:

Benefits:

Agenda:

5 WHYs: Only Part of Problem Solving

Gain Ideas & Approaches to Building More Team Member Engagement Webinar

Gain ideas & approaches to building more team member engagement Webinar

Engaging All Team Members

ENGAGING ALL TEAM MEMBERS

Impact of Focus and Alignment

“5 Gifts to Get in a Groove”, Link , highlighted improvement strategies for this year. Let's unwrap some of those packages and the impact your journey to higher performance.