Creating and Sustaining a Culture of Improvement and Agility | 053

Creating and Sustaining a Culture of Improvement and Agility | 053

Welcome to Lean Leadership for Ops Managers, the podcast for leaders in Ops Management who want to spark improvement, foster engagement, and boost problem solving – AND still get their day job done. Here’s your host, Leadership Trainer, Lean Enthusiast, and Spy Thriller Junkie, Jamie V. Parker. 

 [00:00:29] Operation leaders, I’m really excited for this conversation today because we’re going to touch on some things that are in my zone of genius and some things that I really love. So, I’m really excited to be here with you today. Now we’re working in this leading excellence model with the four cultural enablers of Purpose, Participation, Performance, and Progression; keeping in mind that caring for people and serving people is at the center. 

If this is the first episode that you’ve listened to on this model, then just know that you can always go back and listen to the last few episodes about it. You can also head to processplusresults.com/podcast, and that’s where you can find a visual aid, so you know what we’re talking about. But we’re talking about essentially a circle that has a plus sign in the middle of it so that you end up with four quadrants: Purpose, Participation, Performance, and Progression.  

In the last episode, we were on the right side of the model with Purpose and Participation. And if you think about the two pillars of Lean respect for people in Continuous improvement, some people might consider that right side kind of the respect for people side. I mean, of course, respect for people goes through everything.  I’m not saying it’s limited, but just thinking that the right side could be that cultural foundation that is going to enable respect for people to go through everything.

[00:01:53] And then the left side, with Performance and Progression, could be thought of as the continuous improvement side. Today we’re going to talk about Performance and Progression. But before we jump in, I want to tell you, make sure you stay until the end, because after I talk about these two cultural enablers, I’m going to reveal kind of like a secret of sorts. I mean, it’s not really a secret, but it’s a big idea. It’s a simple idea but a big idea in the way these come together. And it can really help you make a difference. It can help you choose the right things to focus on, help you be better when you tackle performance and progression. So, you definitely want to stick around for that at the end. 

 [00:02:36]  Let’s talk about the third quadrant, the cultural enabler of Performance. Now, remember, from Episodes 50 and 51, that Performance is something that both team members want and leaders want because people want to win. So your team members want to know that they’re contributing. They want to achieve goals and of course, leadership. You want to achieve goals. I mean, it’s kind of in your job description, right? And so, you know, everybody wants Performance.  

Performance is not something that only managers, executives, and owners want. Performance is something everybody wants. Team members want this too. Now, you’ve heard me say that I am a recovering Command and Control Manager, and I learned that style in the organization that was really heavy on performance results; hit your year, your quarter, your month. There was always an end-of-month push to find the dollars, hit your numbers, hit your numbers, hit your numbers. It almost didn’t matter how you hit your numbers. 

Now, what’s interesting is I have a client I’m working with and the CFO said to me, “Jamie, I’ve heard you say that and we’re kind of like the opposite of that. We go through motions, go through motions, go through motions. But our managers don’t really understand all the numbers and the data and how the motions impact the results. There isn’t really accountability for performance.” And I bring that up because it’s like this pendulum with process on one side and results on the other side.  

And we’re looking for that combination; the balance of Process Plus Results. And if you think about it, Lean thinking and tools and systems are really a way to create that balance, and to create a connection between the process and results. It’s trying to create a systematic way to deliver performance and continuously improve performance. 

[00:04:27] Here’s the problem, though. Have you ever experienced 5S as a cleaning event, not as a learning and improvement process? Or what about stale daily meetings? I have a client who recently began their own work and rethinking daily meetings because they’re stale. 

They’re being done to mark off the check box instead of being ways that help people make the decisions or to raise problems. I know you’ve probably seen this, right? 

You’ve seen improvement tools become wallpaper; for example, you walk out to an hour-by-hour chart and it’s last week’s stuff. I worked with a manager who was trying to use an idea board to engage his team in suggesting improvement, but when I went to visit his plant and looked at it, there were things that were months old sitting in the review section waiting on either the management team or the review team to do something with it. Not very engaging, right? It’s not going to help performance. 

Maybe you’ve been involved in workflow changes, and then you watched as team members quickly reverted to their old ways. Or maybe they stuck around, but over time, atrophy kicked in and performance slipped back. Or maybe it was sustained, but it was just an event. No other improvement happened, you know, until the improvement practitioner comes back in and facilitates another event maybe a year from now. 

For me, I actually flopped big time the first time I tried to engage a team of 45 managers on Leader Standard Work. There was tons of time and energy put into this Leader Standard Work project, and it ended up really essentially being discarded. I actually talk about the mistake I made with that in the podcast in Episode 30 called Leader Standard Work Gone Wrong. 

So, does any of this sound familiar? I’m saying this to show you the concepts might be simple, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy; especially if you want to sustain and continuously improve.

[00:06:29] So there are three leadership practices to building Performance as a Cultural Enabler of Excellence.

1. Expand Lean thinking. Yes, across the entire team. This cannot be something that is limited to just your management team or to just the improvement group or to just the quality folks. We’ve got to expand Lean thinking. 
2. 2. Iterate Routines Together. If you are a Lean thinking individual, you understand the power of routines and processes, but iterating routines together is different than how it’s usually done. OK, it’s usually the people with all the knowledge go and iterate routines and do it to other people. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to iterate routines together.
3. Normalize Effective Feedback; even the correcting kind. People are learning new ways of thinking and new ways of working. They are not going to get it right the first time, and if we don’t have a way to normalize feedback, normalize these conversations about what’s not working, then we’re not going to be able to get the performance we want.  

So, of course, all the Lean thinking ideas like Go and See and Creating Flow, that’s  the “what” you’re doing. But these leadership practices are the “how.” They are some of those missing pieces that can help you with sustaining and continuously improving performance. All right, so that’s performance.

[00:07:59] Now, let’s move to the fourth quadrant, which is Progression. Back in Episode 50, I talked about how team members want Progression and that could be career progression or just growth within the same role. In Episode 51, I talked about Progression from the viewpoint of executives and senior leaders. 

Now, progression is when we move beyond Continuous Improvement. It’s becoming a learning organization that has the culture, the beliefs and the behaviors, and the systems that really enable intentional and purposeful movement forward. This is where we’re kind of creating organizational agility for the future.

And this is seriously my jam. It’s kind of what I was known for in corporate, particularly as it came to people development because the only way you can get this progression is by deliberately developing people every day. It’s why when Jeff, who’s a senior plant manager, got promoted to a regional manager role, we ultimately ended up hiring a front-line team member.  

Jeff, from the very moment I hired him, he told me what his dream job was and where he wanted to live. And from that point forward, we started working. I started working with Jeff and we started working together to make sure he was well-positioned so that when that opportunity came up, his dream job in his dream place, he was ready for it. 

But that’s not all, because when Jeff was promoted then Taylor backfilled him, and then Elizabeth backfilled Taylor, and then Melissa backfilled Elizabeth. At the end of the day, we hired an entry-level frontline team member person. Here’s the thing; Jeff, Taylor, Elizabeth, and Melissa are the ones that made that happen, but what I can guarantee you is that it does not happen by accident.

[00:09:57] Here’s the problem. When it comes to Progression, a lot of leaders end up being the firefighters, the problem solvers, the decision-makers, the doers. Brian was a manager I worked with like this. And it wasn’t because he was a bad guy who didn’t trust his people because he didn’t want to overburden them. He thought he was being a good leader by taking the problems off their plates. The problem was they weren’t learning, they weren’t growing, they weren’t being challenged. 

This is probably the biggest problem people ask me about. How do I stop being the guy or the gal? How do we get managers to stop being the do-it-alls?  

Now, there are other problems that get in the way of developing Progression as a cultural enabler to excellence. I have a client right now who told me we’re too nice. We avoid having hard conversations. We tiptoe around issues.  

Another client feels stuck because they seem to only be able to promote to a certain point. When it comes to this mid-level management role, they keep having to hire from the outside.  

Or maybe we spend a lot of time, energy, and money on improvement projects, but they’re not translating to strategic priorities, to making a difference in our future and who we are and what our capabilities are, and how agile we are for the future. So what do we do?

[00:11:12] Well, there are three leadership practices that help you achieve Progression as a Cultural Enabler to Excellence.  

1. Transition to Coach  
2. Strengthen Through Conflict  
3. Evolve on Purpose.

All right. Total transparency time. This is hard stuff. It really is, but it is so damn worth it. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that you can’t really have progression if you don’t on some level have the other three: Purpose, Participation and Performance.

[00:11:46] Now, what I’m not saying here this what I am not saying is that these are sequential and you need to be 100 percent complete on one quadrant before moving to the next. That’s not the case. You’re working on all of these at the same time, but when it comes to Progression, you can’t have it if you have a culture of fear or if we hide mistakes or if people don’t understand the TrueNorth or if it’s like an organization that I grew up in: hit your numbers,hit your numbers, hit your numbers. With that kind of pressure, you’re not going to be able to achieve that Progression. So there is some foundational work in the other three quadrants to be able to really go after a progression.  

Before I reveal the big secret, let’s do a quick reminder on Performance and Progression and what those leadership practices are. The three leadership practices to achieve Performance as a Cultural Enabler to Excellence are to expand Lean thinking, iterate routines together, and normalize effective feedback.

Now, the three leadership practices to achieve Progression as a Cultural Enabler to Excellence are transition to coach number, strengthened through conflict, and evolve on purpose.

[00:13:04] Now, here’s what I really want you to take away from this conversation. Ok, think about this. I want you to envision this image right now. And in those four quadrants, the top right is Purpose. The bottom right is Participation, bottom left is Performance and top left is Progression. 

Here’s what I want you to know. The quadrants complement each other on the diagonal. I mean, of course, they’re all interconnected and they meet in the middle, but there is a specific, strong connection when you look at the quadrants diagonally. That means Performance and Purpose go together and Progression and Participation go together.  

So let me explain this. We’re operations leaders, right? Of course, we jump to Performance and Progression and that makes sense. That’s the Continuous Improvement side; it’s the results side. It’s the long term sustainability and agility side. Of course, we jump there. This is where we’re doing most of our work, but the work we do in Performance and Progression really challenges the status quo. And that means it’s uncomfortable not just for leaders, but especially for team members. Which is why you need to pull in the complementary enabler to help you be more successful.  

So when you’re doing a lot of work in the Performance quadrant, then you really need to double down on Purpose at the same time. When you’re challenging people to iterate routines and come up with better ways of working and change the way they’re thinking and working, learn new ways of thinking and working and have daily discipline around it all, then double down on Purpose. Connect the dots, getting personal, helping people to feel connected to the why, double down on that Purpose.  

And similarly, when you’re doing a lot of work in the Progression quadrant, then you really need to double down on Participation at the same time. Progression can be painful. Not can be, it is painful. It’s deliberately pulling people outside of their comfort zone. It’s doing the hardest work there is. So it’s important to double down on Participation where we listen with empathy, build relationships and trust, nurture the connection, and really leverage the positive so that people feel seen, heard and valued for the good things they’re doing.  

Sometimes my friend Katie Anderson, and I think some others talk about it this way as well, talks about leadership as both challenge and nurture. Well Progression would be on the challenge side and Participation would be on the nurture side. So double down on nurturing the Participation quadrant when you challenge the Progression quadrant because then you’re going to be more successful.  

The diagonals are complementary. Did you get that? The diagonals are complementary, and when you do one on the left side, make sure you double down on the complementary quadrant on the right side.

[00:16:18] What do you do? What’s your next step? Well, now that, you know, the leadership practices and the four Cultural Enablers, and now that you know that the diagonals are complimentary, I want you to reflect on your organization or division or team.  

What’s happening now? Which quadrant do you think needs the most attention from you right now? And if you select either performance or progression, how can you double down on the complementary quadrant to better serve your team?  

I really look forward to hearing what you come up with.  

Now, if you want help assessing where your organization or division is today or coming up with your next steps game plan or developing your leaders on specific practices and the skill sets and the behaviors and the habits so that they can lead excellence, then schedule a call. You can go to my website processplusresults.com. Click on the schedule a call button, or you can send me an email directly at jamie@processplusresults.com. 

No sales pressure; just an opportunity to talk through your vision of where you want to be, your current state of where you are and the obstacles in your way. And if there’s an opportunity that I can help with, I’ll let you know. 

That’s it for today. Until next time.