Melanie Beaumont, Senior Advisor, Lean Advisors Inc, will be presenting at the International Performance Management Symposium on Thursday November 6, 2014 in Montreal, Canada.

Creating a culture for Lean Innovation – benchmarking and quantifying cultural change

A successful Lean Culture for Innovation requires developing a mutually accountable, interdependent, and collaborative work environment across functional and departmental boundaries. Much of this work focuses on eliminating wasteful ‘silo’ behaviours, conflicting priorities, and interdepartmental friction. It is necessary to properly benchmark the organization’s cultural current state and set measurable goals for where it should be. This is often problematic when dealing with individual and group behaviours which are frequently seen as ‘soft skills’ that can’t be adequately quantified for tracking and reporting to ensure success.

This session outlines useful tools and techniques for benchmarking the organization’s cultural current state as well as setting tangible goals and measuring progress towards creating an innovative environment for sustainable continuous improvement.

With a discussion-based, interactive approach, the speaker will also outline key steps to mistake-proof your progress including:

• Commonly made assumptions that can lead to poor quality measures
• Critical thinking necessary in properly using the ubiquitous ‘engagement score’ benchmarks
• Dealing with the complexities of measuring ‘intangibles’ without oversimplifying to a point of no return

Participants are encouraged to bring their questions and concerns about this challenging yet rewarding process.

About Melanie:                                                                                                             Melanie Beaumont is a consultant, trainer and management coach for leadership, change management and continuous improvement programs. She works at both the senior management and team level in public and private sector organizations. Previously she has been a successful executive in telecommunications and education.

 Melanie has developed and delivered numerous training and coaching programs including: ‘Leading Change Management’, ‘Coaching for Innovation’, ’Success Strategies for Continuous Improvement Leaders and Their Teams’, and ‘Building Sustainable Accountability’. She also teaches ‘Change Management’, ‘Problem Solving in Groups’, and ‘Conflict Resolution” at Mohawk College. She is a current guest speaker and conference co-chair for the Federated Press conferences on Lean Innovation in the Public Sector.

 Melanie’s client list covers Canada and USA and includes key government agencies, regional health care organizations plus manufacturers in the plastics, technology, food processing, and building materials fabrication sectors.

 A graduate of the University of Waterloo, Melanie has completed numerous post-degree studies including Leadership, Facilitation, Change Management, Conflict Resolution, and Behavioural Analysis Systems. She has a Lean Business Processes Certificate, University of Michigan.

Detailed program and speaker bios

CPA member registration

Non CPA member registration

Contacts:
Marc Valois
President and CEO
Intersol Group Ltd.
613-230-6424 ext.  241 | mvalois@intersol.ca

Larry Coté
President and CEO
Lean Advisors, Inc.
1-613-382-1583 | lcote@intersol.ca

Intersol Group Ltd. and Lean Advisors join forces to form a full service, integrated, top-tier management consultancy firm.

OTTAWA – May 20, 2014 – Intersol Group Ltd. and Lean Advisors Inc. today announced a joining of forces to combine Intersol’s strategic and cultural management expertise with Lean Advisors’ process transformation methodology.

With tremendous ongoing pressure in all sectors to do more with the resources they have, while streamlining business process and shaving costs, the focus has to be not only on process transformation, but also on strategic and leadership transformation.  The gap has been in how to integrate these elements with a view to creating ongoing sustainability.

Over the last couple of months serious discussion between these premiere consulting, training and coaching organizations has culminated in the two corporations jointly agreeing to provide a much needed solution.

“What we have just accomplished, by combining Intersol Group’s and Lean Advisors’ knowledge and expertise, gives organizations the complete knowledge, both of vision and action, that they require to effectively change their group or organization to meet the needs of their clients in the future,” said Larry Coté, President and CEO of Lean Advisers, Inc., “Our amalgamation is a union of expert talent that will give clients the complete solution to overcome and conquer the challenges facing them today and for decades to come.”

“We are delighted to welcome Lean Advisors into the Intersol Group of Companies,” said Marc Valois, CEO of Intersol Group Ltd. “Their Lean process expertise and methodologies, combined with Intersol Group’s expertise in Change Management, Employee Engagement, Leadership and cultural transformation provides a compelling way for organizations of all types and sizes to adapt to continual change while creating more value for the clients, members and stakeholders they serve.  The sustainability of the solutions we create with our clients will be a key differentiator for their organizations of the future.”

About Lean Advisors, Inc.
Lean Advisors is one of the most respected Lean consulting groups in North America.  Founded over 14 years ago and based in North America, it has built a team of senior consultants with hands-on experience in a variety of sectors.  In addition to their work with industry, the company has led the way to successful Lean practice in fields such as Healthcare, Education, Government and Manufacturing.

Their senior consultants are passionate about Lean transformation.  Their mastery of Lean and Kaizen methods combined with hands-on industry experience has prepared them for tough ‘real world’ issues such as resistance, outside perceptions, conflicting agendas, and the need for senior management support.  They help individuals become Lean leaders within their organizations as they overcome resistance to change and instill a Lean culture of continuous improvement. To learn more, please visit www.leanadvisors.com

About Intersol Group Ltd.
Intersol Group Ltd. is a bilingual team of experienced consulting, facilitation and learning professionals whose expertise lies in harnessing and building lasting organizational capacity for its clients.  Since 1989, the Intersol team has successfully delivered over 6,000 projects to hundreds of public sector, private sector and non-profit organizations across Canada.

Whether the focus is on shaping vision and strategy, on managing change, on stakeholder consultation, or on high performance teamwork, Intersol helps organizations leverage the knowledge, experience and expertise inherent in their own people.

Using processes, methods and tools that engage people to collaborate effectively and efficiently, we work with clients in the areas Stakeholder Engagement and Public Involvement; Direction Setting and Organizational Effectiveness; and Individual Effectiveness and Workplace Learning.  To learn more, please visit www.intersol.ca

By Larry Cote, President Lean Advisors Inc

In the past few years there have been rumblings from the North American manufacturing community about the desire to return some of their manufacturing to North America.

There have been many changes in the economics and the markets since the early 90s both here and in Asia (China specifically).  Some of those changes are that China’s economic environment has evolved and grown.  As it happens in every economy, growth and competition puts pressures on the cost of doing business, the infrastructure of transportation/logistics of shipping higher volumes and more products becomes stressed.

In the meantime while this evolution has been happening in China, North American productivity has improved, especially in the US through technology and advancements in process thinking.  All these factors (and many more) have caused CEOs of manufacturing companies to reassess the decisions that they made a decade or two ago to move production overseas.  They are realizing that it may be more profitable now to do some of their manufacturing here on this continent.

This opportunity should not be missed by Canada or the US.

Management teams must first recognize that they can be competitive in quality, cost and speed of supply.  Once this realization is made then they quickly must re-examine the importance of dramatically and quickly transforming their current methods and thinking – both culturally (value thinking) and processing.  We must not kid ourselves, this opportunity to take advantage of ‘repatriation’ or ‘re-shoring’ will not last long.   CEOs are constantly searching for the next place to invest, where they can drive profits and a better ROI.

The one solution that is being touted for attracting manufacturing back to North American soil is to adopt the latest technology as well as investing in innovation.  This is a simple solution that on the surface is an obvious statement to make.  The reality though, is that over the past decade, our margins have been squeezed so tight that survival has been the primary focus.  In this scenario, very little money can be freed up to buy new technology let alone spend time on research and innovation.  So, what do we do??

Our belief is that expensive technology should not be the first step in becoming attractive to foreign business.  Technology should be the second step in turning around your company.  “Leaning out” your existing processes is the first step and will give you the knowledge and understanding of what technology you really require and should invest in.

Initially, North American organizations should be focused on ensuring their current processes are ‘waste’ free.  Without this customer focus of ‘value’ as the major driver of the corporate strategy, we will miss the opportunity to attract the manufacturing industry we lost to foreign countries over the past few decades.  This “leaning out” will also give organizations the profits they need to move to the next phase, which is purchasing new technology.

I know this sounds like the same old preaching Lean has been teaching since the mid 90s, but ‘off-shoring’ of manufacturing began well before Lean could have an impact.  Now we’ve had the past 15 years to become experts – let’s call the last 15 years ‘practice time’ – and we are ready to actually demonstrate to the world that North America is the place to invest if you want the best quality, service and cost.

Manufacturing is the backbone of our economy.  Let’s not miss this small window of opportunity to bring back some of the manufacturing we lost and even to develop new opportunities for growth.  We have been given a second chance, let’s not miss out!!

Mike Boucher, VP of Client Services,  discussed the benefits of the management capacity program and how to free up management time by understanding executive priorities, analyzing management activities, and creating Standard Leadership Roles.

We hope you enjoy our recorded webinar and have the opportunity to benefit from the valuable content that was shared.

Click Here to View Recorded Webinar

To learn more about our management capacity program click here.

If you would like to be notified of future webinars, please join our E Newsletter: Talking Lean.

Mobilizing Our Ingenuity Through Good Management.

In this video, Mike Rother shares valuable insights into the importance of ‘structured’ change methodology, called Kata.

At Lean Advisors, we believe Kata is the next major critical concept organizations need to grasp in order to create a sustainable transformation. Mike has uncovered, through his research with U of Michigan another important piece of the puzzle necessary for success and taking your team to the next level of competitiveness

Message from Larry Cote, President, Lean Advisors Inc.

I recently came across this video of Mike Rother who spoke at the Lean Summit in 2012. I had the privilege to work with Mike back when Lean was just gaining interest in the mid 90s.

At that time, much of Mike’s research and efforts were focused on Toyota and the primary transformational tool known as Value Stream Mapping (VSM).

We wanted to share this with our online community.

Lean Summit 2012 – Mike Rother – Toyota Kata

Thank you to all who attended the January 24  Webinar “Management Capacity: Creating Standard Leadership Roles for the Lean Supervisor” – if you missed it, click here to view the recording.

There were a number of great questions asked by attendees during the Webinar. Mike Boucher, VP of Client Services at Lean Advisors shared his insights and knowledge. Below are Mike’s responses to questions posed at the webinar:

Q.  What is the right time to apply the management capacity program?

A. We have found that management capacity can be applied throughout the 3 phases of our Lean Transformation program. In our Foundations phase, we set the strategic direction with the stakeholders and begin selecting value streams. Often, at this stage, we identify areas where managers or teams are overly stressed to try to support other activities.  The goal is to move change forward where it is critically needed but if our management team isn’t capable of providing the support and resources to make that change happen, then we would introduce the management capacity program to free up time in order to enable the necessary change in the identified areas.

In the second phase, (VSM phase), we assess our current state, develop our future state and create an implementation plan. Once we’ve reviewed the implementation plan and understand the resources required to support the kaizen events, we begin to identify that it might be too aggressive given the available resources. At this point, we would stop, reassess and create the opportunity for the managers to be able to support the implementation plan. Again, we would introduce the management capacity program as a stepping stone to leading our process change.

The third element involves the execution of the kaizens and implementation plan. Quite often, a great implementation plan begins to fade away on us as delays begin to creep in and we lose momentum. At this point, senior leadership needs to take a step back and acknowledge the resourcing issue and lack of management support for the value streams. In order to support those mangers, we would introduce the management capacity program to free up their time and place structure into scheduling the change elements that we’ve introduced in the implementation plan.

Q.  Should we introduce the program across the entire organization or should we introduce it one department at a time?

A. This is not always a straight forward answer. I often ask the organization to look at what their success rate has been in the past in terms of resourcing, programs and making change happen. Often, the answer is “we don’t have a very good success rate.” So, my recommendation typically is to focus on the area where they are trying to drive change first. They should focus on the critical areas, the crisis issues and where crisis is happening and then we figure out how we’re going to resource again and put in the necessary time as senior leaders to support the change.

Q.  Would these assessments be conducted with different levels of management separately or together?

A. In terms of the assessments, I would look at it from a value stream perspective. Who is the management team within the value stream? And within that value stream, I would want all managers, regardless of level, to participate in the program. One manager or supervisor may be creating the problems for someone else, so if they are working on it collaboratively and collectively and doing their reviews as a group, they begin to address issues from a team perspective – rather than individually.

Q.  Can you give an example of a value stream for an office manager?

A. In terms of an office or admin environment, I often see manager’s time tied up not really addressing what they are directly responsible for but actually focusing a lot of their attention in other areas. In particular, I’ve seen a lot of managers putting a large amount of time into a hiring process, perhaps an area that they don’t really excel at but end up being dragged down and spending a lot of their time supporting the hiring process and it’s taking them away from their actual day to day responsibilities and the things they are directly responsible for.  That is not to say the hiring process isn’t important but we need to understand what is the goal of these managers in the hiring process and what can they realistically do and what work should be moved to where it belongs. In many cases, this is because it can be done more effectively. In other cases, we are just duplicating effort.

The federal government’s overhaul of Canada’s refugee determination system is driving the Immigration and Refugee Board to embrace business efficiency practices pioneered six decades ago by Japanese automaker Toyota.

Ahead of the expected December implementation of the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act, the IRB is turning to “Lean” processes that it hopes will enable it to deal with refugee applications and appeals much more expeditiously.

The new law imposes tight statutory time frames for the board to hear and decide applications and appeals. Whereas it now takes an average of 19 months for the IRB’s refugee protection division to complete an initial hearing, the revised system requires that to be done within 30 to 60 days.

For those whose claims are denied, a new refugee appeal division must hear cases within 60 to 90 days, and reach decisions in as little as 30 days. Further complicating the IRB’s task is a backlog of more than 38,000 refugee claims it has yet to deal with.

“Compliance with these time frames requires the IRB to transform the way it operates so that it can hear and decide refugee claims and appeals much faster that is currently the case,” the board says in an email, adding that a Lean transformation is “particularly appropriate for an organization undergoing fundamental change.”

In a nutshell, Lean practices identify and eliminate all activities in a process that don’t add value for the intended customer. The result can be dramatic improvements in efficiency.

The IRB started down the Lean road in late 2010 following passage of an earlier government initiative, the Balance Refugee Reform Act. Earlier this month, spurred on by the latest reforms, it advertised for a consultant to “facilitate Lean business process improvements.”

The goal, the IRB said, is to “yield a sustainable refugee determination process that will meet the legislated timelines while ensuring that cases are dealt with efficiently, fairly and in accordance with the law.”

While Lean practices are still relatively rare in Canada’s public sector, they are becoming more common as government departments and agencies grapple with shrinking resources coupled with steady or growing demand for services.

Canada Post adopted Lean nearly two decades ago and the Royal Canadian Mint has been doing the same for nearly a decade. The Export Development Corporation and Passport Canada are also on a Lean diet.

But the Canadian leader in Lean is the government of Saskatchewan. After the Lean approach saved millions of dollars and cut wait times for treatment in the province’s health-care system, Premier Brad Wall expanded the initiative to all government ministries in 2010. Earlier this year, he even appointed a cabinet minister, Nancy Heppner, with specific responsibility for the Lean initiative.

Despite their roots in manufacturing, Lean ideas are readily transferable to any public sector process that involves multiple steps, says Mike Miles, director of the MBA program at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management.

“Any approach that forces people to sit down and ask themselves the question, ‘Where are we wasting time, money and energy,’ that’s a good process,” he says.

At the Mint, Lean practices cut the time to develop a new product in half, doubled the throughput of coins in some areas and simplified many steps and processes. Lean also helped the Mint transform a $3-million loss in 2003 into a record $68-million profit in 2009.

Lean Advisors has deep experience helping people in government undergo this journey. Our Lean consultants understand political pressures, seemingly contradictory requirements, and the complexity of achieving true end-to-end value in large complex organizations. Our customer community is full of champions who have overcome barriers and made Lean Government a reality.

Lean Advisors employs senior consultants who are veterans in the industries they serve. To learn more about how we can help you make your organization everything that it can be, Contact Us or Call 1-877-778-6413.

They tend to overlook the fact that middle management is already operating in a stressed to the limit environment and the idea of implementing Lean sounds great but they have limited  time to focus on it.  Lean is no different than any other major change, it requires continuous effort from all levels-especially middle management.  So leadership needs to recognize that when they decide to implement Lean to make their organizations more competitive and increase their client satisfaction, they must deal with the fact this is going to take a commitment of time by the middle management.  And if the middle management is already working at 100%, then common sense says some activities the middle management is presently doing will have to be eliminated from their duties to free up time for continuous improvement and training/coaching.

Middle management fills their day, fighting fires, running to meetings, answering communication from above and below while making sure the product/service is going out to the clients.  They do all this, and all the while they are being told to cut costs, improve quality and speed of service.  Add to those pressures, the fact that they have little idea what the priorities should be, quite often it appears they are sent new ones regularly and each one of the priorities is “high priority”.

This type of situation is common in most organizations.  The solution is to adapt and apply the similar concepts and thinking of Lean to the roles of middle management.

Lean Advisors can help…. Once we understand the executive priorities and analyze the middle management activities we can then begin to develop Standard Leadership Roles which will allow managers more time to do activities such as training, coaching, continuous improvement etc. that support and drive the strategy of the corporation.  These Standard Leadership Roles will take the stress level down and allow the middle managers to work at an optimum level.  To learn more about how we can help your organization, contact us.

Here are some of the consolidated thoughts and ideas that were shared by the participants of the Lean Executive Day workshop on Resolving Conflicting Pressures.

For a more information email us at corp@leanadvisors.com or visit www.leanadvisors.com

Use communication and change management to counter the incorrect impression that lean and budgets appose each other.

- As lean eliminates waste, costs are dramatically reduced

- As lean standardizes processes, managers have freed time to examine other issues and focus on improvement

Ensure that headcount reductions due to loss of business, poor growth, budget cuts, etc. are not equated to process improvement due to lean.

- People will not participate in lean improvements if they fear their jobs will be eliminated.

Educate everyone on the relationships that drive budget success.

- Lean reduces inventories and tied-up capital

- Lean improves quality and reduces rework

- Lean reduces the effort to do the same amount of work – freeing time and capacity.

Ensure that there is a balance of metrics used to measure the organization’s success – not just financial.

- Cost, Quality (including safety), and Time.

- Do not let capital investment in point improvements (for example faster machines or huge IT solutions) take focus over the success of the end-to-end value stream. Use value stream mapping and customer demand to understand success.

Ensure that trends are used to review key metrics rather than month-to-month or point-to-point comparisons.

- Statistical process control charts and histograms are useful in understanding process behavior. A good consulting company can train you on them.

- Remember that value stream improvements require changes – which often need stabilization before full performance is realized. Don’t be too quick to judge!

Involve finance people or accountants in improvements early. If they understand the nature of the changes made, they will be better equipped to understand the success of lean.