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How do you inspire people to improve their own behaviour or way of working?

During Gemba walks (walks around the shop floor) one can randomly talk to people and encourage them to improve something by asking the following questions, which in our plant are also put on a Kamishibai card:

This week I thought of a way to improve my effectiveness in implementing changes. After a few good chats and reading some blogs and books, I came up with the following 5 step plan:

1. Specify the problem, waste or frustration
2. Make a plan to solve the problem (prevent it from reoccurring)
3. Talk to important stakeholders one-on-one about your plan and adjust it according to their feedback
4. Plan a meeting with all stakeholders and ask for commitment for the plan
5. Execute the plan

When you discuss the plan in the meeting, make sure you stay with the facts and know what you want. Prevent indecisive language to increase credibility and show more confidence:

Cartoonhero Dilbert also has plenty of Lean experience:

This week I decided to improve my personal KPI’s in facilitating our Lean Transformation. I already do Gemba Walks three times a week, with three different shifts. From this week onward, the output of each gemba walk should be at least 1 kaizen per gemba walk.
Kaizens in our company can vary from contributing to the 6S standard, to handing in a modification idea to improve machine efficiency.

The second improvement in my personal KPI is to solve one organizational problem each week to improve and speed up the process and capacity to solve problems and improve our processes.

The third KPI, the number of Kamishibai’s, stays the same: 1 per value stream per week.

In this series or articles I describe the tools and aspects of cultural change managment should use when facilitating a cultural change. Motivated by the concept of the change journey map, I took the liberty to use the same concept to built my own model for cultural change: the Fortress of Change. Since I am working in the field of Lean Management I will design my model with a focus on building a Lean culture. This model is purely based on my personal experience as change agent and the many books I’ve read on the subject while experimenting with the ideas at the organization I work.

The word team is often explained as “Together Everybody Achieves More”. By working together, people are capable of achieving incredible things. Without cooperation of men, there wouldn’t be pyramids, a worldwide distribution system of goods and services, and the current level of knowledge in healthcare would be questionable. Teams only produce results when people work together and for people to work well together, trust is the most important factor of success (Lencioni, 2002).

One of the most important principles in the Lean Philosophy is to try to create a Pull process. The principle of 'pull' is based on the assumption that one should only produce what is asked for by the customer. This includes two aspects: customer demand determines both the type and number of products to produce in a certain timeframe (1) and the production process produces exactly just enough to fulfil customer demand (2). The Pull principle can be applied in more than just production, it can be applied in the office and even in life.