1 How can we build a culture for Lean within our project teams?
Culture starts with people.
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
― Peter Drucker
Having the right culture is foundational to lean implementation, and culture starts with people. To truly initiate a lean culture, we need to embed such behaviors that support lean principles among our project teams. While using this lean deployment planning procedure and resource templates is useful as a means, the organizational and project leaders must initiate the right culture and mindset through leadership, collaboration, modeled behavior, education, and making continuous improvement part of project routine.
Leadership and Collaboration
The procedure kicks-off with setting conditions of satisfaction amongst the project stakeholders, selecting methods and identifying responsible party for each. The opportunity, throughout the process and implementation, exists for leaders to emerge through learning and mentoring in lean theory and processes. In the planning and pursuit of each method, there are built-in learning opportunities, intended to help every project member develop essential knowledge, skills, and expertise. Finally, the project leadership must integrate regular routines and behaviors to embed Lean principles and practices into the everyday, such as using plus/delta at the conclusion of meetings, the need to model the commitment to lean is essential. How will you begin modeling Lean behaviors?
Performance
The orientation of the process toward planning methods, and the subsequent tracking and improvement steps, are intended to create an awareness of performance. Once a plan is established for each method project teams can begin to seek opportunities to improve. The target areas of improvement can help set the tone for measurement categories and specific metrics can be tracked by groups or individuals to engage them not just in the management, but the philosophy of continuous improvement that is essential to Lean adoption. How will you encourage performance and improvement?
Education
As integral to lean adoption as continuous improvement is continuous learning. The planning procedure begins to draw this to the surface by helping teams define the initial educational plan for each method. However, it is essential that teams also step back and consider not only the method specific understanding, but fundamentals of lean theory as well as approaches for embedding education as a value carried through the project. How will you create a learning culture on your project?
Communication
The effectiveness of the project plan is dependent on how well it is communicated to those responsible for implementing it. If a picture is worth a thousand words, consider the best options to communicate both the plan or progress in the fastest and most intuitive manner. The planning templates are oriented to allow the planned steps to be easily replaced with graphs, charts, or other visuals that will convey progress and performance. However, if these progress charts are not shared and communicated to all, their value and impact are negligible. Where and how will you share your plans and progress?
