11May 2018 by Steve Musica 1 Comment
Understanding Key Performance Indicators

Understanding Key Performance Indicators

Lesson
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the vital few metrics that define success or failure for a process. KPIs vary based upon the process being studied and the definitions of success for the process. Good organizations understand their KPIs. Better organizations measure them. The best organizations seek to improve them every day. Read on to learn about Key Performance Indicators and how a team or department can use a balanced scorecard of KPIs to support improvement.     The initial challenge with KPIs is selecting them properly from the many possible performance indicators available. The second challenge is determining how to measure and share them throughout the organization. Our team has helped numerous organizations establish and measure KPIs. Here are some highlights from the Lean East training module covering the selection…
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08Mar 2018 by Steve Musica 94 Comments
The Power of A3 Process Improvement

The Power of A3 Process Improvement

Lesson
The Lean East team helps organizations learn how to use Lean thinking and tools to remove waste from their processes. We prefer to employ a “learn by doing” approach where we train and coach these methods while engaged in organizational improvement projects. If organizations already have an established improvement process we will work within that process and seek to improve it. But if the organization does not have a robust process in place (and most do not) then we recommend using the Lean East A3 Process Improvement tool.   Lean thinking Let’s define a few terms first. Lean refers to a philosophy and management strategy focused on customer value and respect for people. Lean is not about layoffs or running the organization on a shoestring. Lean is continually improving the…
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06Feb 2018 by Steve Musica No Comments
Team of Teams

Team of Teams

Review
  Retired US General Stanley McChrystal was frustrated. The US battle against the jihadist militant group ISIS (Islamic State of Iraqi and Syria) after the US occupation of Iraq was not going well. ISIS always seemed to be a step ahead of his forces. His forces took too long to process and act on intelligence – by the time the location of an ISIS cell was acted upon the location had long been abandoned. McChrystal was learning that the network structure of ISIS allowed them to adapt more quickly than US forces to avoid capture. While the US had overwhelming resources and a disciplined command-and-control structure, ISIS operated much faster – more like a group of separate franchises with a common purpose.   Command Structures The US Military in the…
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17Dec 2017 by Steve Musica 3 Comments
Five Ways to Engage Millennials

Five Ways to Engage Millennials

Lesson
Millennials (also known as Generation Y) represent people born from about 1982 to 2000.1  These 17 to 35-year-olds are expected to represent 75% of the US workforce by 2025 and are technologically savvy and purpose driven. Yet business leaders have expressed frustration from this group of workers. How can they attract, hire and retain talented young millennials?   Leaders find millennials make challenging employees due to their sense of entitlement, impatience, and inattention to authority.2  Many millennials struggled to find good jobs during the 2008 recession and have been called “lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents” by Time Magazine. Yet millennials are technologically savvy and purpose-driven. Companies that relate well to this age group can benefit greatly. Here are five ways you can engage the millennials who already…
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05Sep 2017 by Steve Musica No Comments
Accelerating Change

Accelerating Change

Lesson
  Organizational improvement is becoming more and more important every year as the pace of change in technology, consumers, and competitors is accelerating. Twenty years ago, companies didn’t have websites since people were still sending email on their dial-up modems. Google search engines didn’t exist. It is just ten years ago that Apple introduced the iPhone. Remember when we rented movies from stores instead of streaming them? It is becoming rare for me to visit a store any more now that I can read product reviews online, order with one click from my phone, and have the item at my door in two days for free. I am learning to adapt, but my children are growing up in a world where they expect instant gratification: any item or information they…
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12Aug 2017 by Steve Musica 1 Comment
Leaders Eat Last

Leaders Eat Last

Review
In our previous posts, we have discussed the importance of having a clear reason to change and explained that organizational culture and history matters when establishing a sense of urgency. Now we will look at some of the reasons why this is the case, truly “evolutionary” reasons related to our brain. Thanks to the trial-and-error process of evolution taking place over the past two-and-a-half million years, human brains have adapted to survive. In the 2014 book Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t, author Simon Sinek explains why a feeling of safety is necessary whether we are a caveman or an assistant in a large corporation. Sinek discusses five chemicals that our body has designed for evolutionary reasons that still impact all of us every day.…
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31Jul 2017 by Steve Musica 2 Comments
Establishing a Sense of Urgency

Establishing a Sense of Urgency

Lesson
People Don't Hate Change II Establishing a Sense of Urgency This is our second post reviewing why some teams and organizations struggle with change more than others. In our previous post, we share the need to create a burning platform – a clear reason to change. Unfortunately, many leaders struggle with this first important need. Consider these two scenarios: Leader A:         The leader meets with the team and shares recent performance results. The new initiative is not meeting goal, putting the future of the entire team at risk. A 20% cost reduction will need to be made, and each member of the team is asked to help identify and make the changes. Leader B:         The leader meets with the team and offers coaching and facilitation for team members to improve the process…
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04May 2017 by Steve Musica 3 Comments
People Don’t Hate Change

People Don’t Hate Change

Lesson
People Don't Hate Change Improve your change process and people will enjoy change Change occurs all the time; how can you get better at it?   At Lean East, we coach teams on how to improve their processes. Most of the organizations we help have dedicated employees and smart leaders, yet they struggle to make changes. We often hear the excuse from individuals that they don't like to change, yet some teams and a few organizations don't have these same issues. Why do some teams and organizations struggle with change more than others? We have observed several causes for these struggles and grouped them into several themes. In our next several blog posts we will describe several common issues and give examples of each. We will then conclude by showing how…
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16Mar 2017 by Steve Musica No Comments
Simplify the Customer

Simplify the Customer

Lesson
To improve health care delivery in the United States, simplify the customer Lean Six Sigma focuses on maximizing value for the customer by removing waste from processes. The customer is usually easy to identify; they purchase a product or service and expect that product or service to have the features they want, at the time they want it, with perfect quality at the lowest possible price. In a free market system, companies that provide customers the most value at the lowest cost are rewarded. US-based health care is not a free market system, making the customers in health care harder to identify and understand. Our Lean Healthcare East team has identified customers for our (United States based) client organizations as: Client organization Customer Hospital and physician practice The admitted patient…
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05Feb 2017 by Steve Musica 1 Comment
Leadership Lessons from Toyota

Leadership Lessons from Toyota

Review
This is part of an ongoing series of organizational and personal improvement book reviews. If you have read the book already use this as a reminder of key lessons. If you have not read the book and are looking to learn and grow as a leader, this summary will share some of our favorite quotes. Lean East recently read How Toyota Became #1: Leadership Lessons from the World’s Greatest Car Company, a book by journalist David Magee published in 2008. The book was written to review the history of Toyota’s growth from a Japanese start-up to the largest automobile manufacturer in the world. Magee interviewed many of Toyota’s senior executives to write the book and became amazed at the differences between Toyota and other auto companies. During his research, he realized…
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