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.

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To learn more about our management capacity program click here.

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In this webinar, Larry Cote, President, Lean Advisors Inc. shares an objective assessment of Lean 15 years after the concept was coined ‘Lean”.  He highlights his own experiences as well as examines and identifies how different organizations from all industries have succeeded with Lean implementations.

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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.

They are fighting fires while responding to pressures from both the organization above and staff below. Meanwhile, they are being told to cut costs, improve quality and improve service.

With so little hours in a day, where do they find the time?

Join us for our free webinar, “Management Capacity:  Creating Standard Leadership Roles for the Lean Supervisor.”

Mike Boucher, our Vice President of Client Services, will share his insights.

We will show you how to free up management time by understanding executive priorities and analyzing management activities, creating Standard Leadership Roles.

Date: Thursday, January 24th, 2013

Time: 1300 – 1345 EST

Space is limited.  Register Here!

About the Presenter: Mike Boucher, VP Client Services

Mike Boucher has had extensive experience with Lean in his role leading companies in their Continuous Improvement and Lean journey. Over 20 years, he held numerous operational positions with a major distribution and logistics corporation.  Mike has worked with various healthcare organizations and Government and College administrations including the Ministry of Health, Fleming College, Mayo Clinic, Toronto Sick Children’s Hospital, Marietta Memorial Hospital, Luther Midelfort Hospital and others. Lean applications within the healthcare setting include; Surgical Value Streams,Core Labs, Cytogenetics, Micro-Biology, Critical Care Units, Emergency Dept, Pre Surgical Center, Outpatient Clinics, Admissions & Discharge etc.  In the Government and College transformations, he worked on all administrative processes including policy, finance, human resources activities, quality etc.

Consistently, Lean applications in these settings focuses on optimizing service to the clients and improving turnaround times/lead times.  Through this endeavor, Mike has worked with teams to improve flow and truly identify the needs of the client. Unnecessary costs and wasteful activities are eliminated in order to better support staff in their efforts to provide service or value to their clients.

Mike’s greatest asset is his ability to simplify complex production and process issues through the application Lean principles and practice.  Mike is a strong promoter of Value Stream Mapping as one of the most important tools that companies can use to align their organization and promote a customer focused perspective. It is this approach that allows companies to best identify their waste and systematically remove it from their processes and value streams.

In case you missed it, we invite you to take a few minutes to watch the recorded webinar so that you have the opportunity to benefit from the valuable content that was shared.

Click Here to View

Managers, Supervisors, Team Leaders have challenging jobs! They are fighting fires while responding to pressures from both the organization above and staff below. Meanwhile, they are being told to cut costs, improve quality and improve service.

With so little hours in a day, where do they find the time?

“Management Capacity:  Creating Standard Leadership Roles for the Lean Supervisor.” Mike Boucher, our Vice President of Client Services, will share his insights.

We will show you how to free up management time by understanding executive priorities and analyzing management activities, creating Standard Leadership Roles.

To learn more about our Management Capacity Program, click here.

With so little hours in a day, where do they find the time?

Join us for our free webinar, “Management Capacity:  Creating Standard Leadership Roles for the Lean Supervisor.” Mike Boucher, our Vice President of Client Services, will share his insights.

We will show you how to free up management time by understanding executive priorities and analyzing management activities, creating Standard Leadership Roles.

Date: Thursday, August 30, 2012

Time: 1300 – 1345 EST

Space is limited. Register Today!

About the Presenter:

Mike has had extensive experience with Lean in his role leading companies in their Continuous Improvement and Lean journey. Over 20 years, he held numerous operational positions with a major distribution and logistics corporation.  Mike has worked with various healthcare organizations and Government and College administrations including the Ministry of Health, Fleming College, Mayo Clinic, Toronto Sick Children’s Hospital, Marietta Memorial Hospital, Luther Midelfort Hospital and others. Lean applications within the healthcare setting include; Surgical Value Streams,Core Labs, Cytogenetics, Micro-Biology, Critical Care Units, Emergency Dept, Pre Surgical Center, Outpatient Clinics, Admissions & Discharge etc.  In the Government and College transformations, he worked on all administrative processes including policy, finance, human resources activities, quality etc.

Consistently, Lean applications in these settings focuses on optimizing service to the clients and improving turnaround times/lead times.  Through this endeavor, Mike has worked with teams to improve flow and truly identify the needs of the client. Unnecessary costs and wasteful activities are eliminated in order to better support staff in their efforts to provide service or value to their clients.

Mike’s greatest asset is his ability to simplify complex production and process issues through the application Lean principles and practice.  Mike is a strong promoter of Value Stream Mapping as one of the most important tools that companies can use to align their organization and promote a customer focused perspective. It is this approach that allows companies to best identify their waste and systematically remove it from their processes and value streams.

Thomas Edison once said, “Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose.”

Time is always a challenge. Especially, for managers faced with the task of transforming their organization. It requires a lot of work and time to establish an effective lean transformation, but the benefits are well worth it, resulting in significant returns on investment.

Our new program designed to free up management time by understanding executive priorities and analyzing management activities, creating Standard Leadership Roles, kicked off last week at Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region and the reviews are raving!

“Thanks so much for the fabulous two days! I walked away Friday feeling on top of the world and so too did our team of 12 from Sunrise. “

“With amazing stuff like this on the horizon…I wouldn’t miss this for anything”                 -Christina Denysek, Sunrise Health Region

This program will result in more time for management and leadership to work on continuous improvement, strategic direction, Hoshin priorities, training, enabling and even controlled firefighting. This makes a significant difference in management productivity and they will also experience less stress!

To learn more the Lean Advisors’ Management Capacity program, click here.

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.