Article #1 for Senior Leadership from MAQ Maquet

 

Leadership Commitment to Implementing a CPI Culture

 

     If you are a CEO, Senior Manager, Business Owner or Management in any Military or Commercial organization and are considering jumping into Continuous Process Improvement (CPI), you should start by asking yourself three questions.   These questions are listed below:

 

1. What is a CPI Culture and what does it mean to implement one in my organization?

2. Do we need to implement a CPI Culture in our organization?

3. What is the first step?

 

1. What is a CPI Culture?  It is a culture in your organization where each employee is committed to constantly improving their jobs every day. Employees and leadership are never satisfied with the status Quo or the way “Things Used to be done.”  A CPI Culture is a requirement to become a Great Organization, not just a Good one.  Once an organization accepts the challenge to create a CPI Culture in the organization, you will see these characteristics become dominant:

-         Leaders and Supervisors become Coaches rather than Drill Sergeants

-         Supervisors stop Blaming Employees for poor Quality or errors

-         There is an increase in Communication up and down the Organization

-         Customer Satisfaction becomes the Primary goal of every employee

-         Employees, Leaders, Unions all respect each other and work together

-         The Organization Accepts the fact that everything they do is a Process

-         Training for all employees increases with a goal to be a Learning Organization

-         The organization makes decisions on the long term support of Customers rather than short range financial details

2. In determining if you need to implement a CPI Culture, ask your self the following questions. If you answer YES to any of the following questions, then you need CPI.

          1. Does my organization have any limited Resources like: Capitol, Manpower, Raw Material, Machinery, Time?

          2. Do my customers think our products/services are too expensive?

          3. Does the organization think there is any Waste in organization Processes?

          4. Does management think that production, service, or administration costs are too high?

          5. Does my organization have any problems with Unions or employees?

          6. Does leadership hide problems in the organization with rosy status reports?

          7. Is there a feeling from the Leadership that we could be better if we tried?

The Missing Leadership Link:

 

      I just read a great book on Leadership.  I know “Not another Leadership Book!” but this one really was different.  Many leadership books tell us what we need to do to lead people, but they often don’t give us much detail on HOW to do it.

      This book was written to challenge the standard view of identifying leaders by special characteristics.  The book states that there are no uniform Characteristics of a leader, but there is one common thread. That common thread lends itself to a new definition of leadership as “The ability to set goals and Achieve desired Results.  The inclusion of goal setting and achieving results are not new to the discussion of leadership, however these are typically discussed as results of a good leader.  In this book, the emphasis is on establishing a Leadership Development Process so that leaders can use this process to lead and achieve results. 

    You may also say that there have been lots of leadership training courses too, but this one is still different.  I think it identifies the missing LINK that gives leaders a specific process to follow to lead their organizations and people.  A summary of the details required to accomplish Fail Safe Leadership is listed below.  I highly encourage anyone serious looking at how to be a leader read this short direct book.  You won’t be disappointed.

 

Fail-Safe Leadership

Summary

 

 To achieve fail-safe leadership it requires an organization’s leadership to establish two things.

1. Level 3 Alignment from Vision statement to Actions required to get Results

2. A Leadership Engine that defines how leaders go from Goals to Results

 

Level 3 Alignment requires:

            1. Vision Statement from Senior Leadership

            2. A Mission Statement

            3. Core Values

            4. Critical Success Factors (typically 4-8)

            5. Goals

            6. Action Steps: Who does What by When!

              Note:  ALL these items need to be focused on RESULTS for the organization

 

The Leadership Engine is the GOAL setting and Achievement Process:

 

            1. Organization GOALS must be SMART Goals and be communicated to all

            2. Leaders must spell out the REWARDS or benefits of achieving the goals

3. Leaders must also spell out the NEGATIVE CONSEQUESNCES of failure

4. Leaders must help their teams LIST POSSIBLE OBSTACLES to success

5. Leaders must help their teams LIST POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS to problems

6. Leaders must help their team DETERMINE YOUR ACTION PLAN that  

     details out Who does What, When to be successful.

 

Note: The Leadership Engine should also be used by Individuals on their own Goals.

 

Two Focuses must exist in a successful organization:

            1. Focus on RESULTS

            2. Leadership is the ability to set Goals and Achieve Desired Results

Article #002 for Change Managers

 

Change Managers are the Key to Success

 

Although the title of Change Manager can be used to identify any manager in a changing organization, I will specifically talk about Change Managers (CM) as those individuals that have been assigned the duties of sponsoring, supporting and coordinating all aspects of an organization’s change to a CPI Culture.

     CMs should be assigned and trained at every major level of an organization, starting from the top down, as sub-organizations begin their transformation. The duties of the CM are listed below.  As you can see, the CM must be everything to everyone when it comes to CPI issues. They must have enough credibility and respect from all members of the organization that they will be listened to equally from the top leadership to the lowliest worker.  They must be able to Mentor senior leaders, manage other CMs in sub organizations, supervise staff members in their own organization, and facilitate teams as they make improvements. CMs should be selected from the BEST the organization has to offer. They should be the next senior leaders and be politically savvy to keep the organization on track during change. 

     The largest part of their job is to support the CPI Events being conducted in the organization.  These duties range from selecting team members and leaders to coordinating all the team logistic needs, to sustaining the changes identified by the team after the event.  The CM is the one person who tracks the status of all implementing actions for the commander or CEO in the organization.  Team Facilitators will come and go inside an organization. The CM is the continuity for the organization to ensure that good ideas and changes don’t die off for lack of leadership support and involvement.  

 

- CM:  Is the organization’s single Point of Contact for all CPI Activities

-         Coaches Leadership to Drive CPI Culture Change

-         Markets and Sustains the Org CPI Effort

-         Ensure Org generates and Follows a CPI Implementation Plan

-         Schedules and records all CPI Training

-         Updates Training accomplished on Organization Master Tracking Documents

-         Assists Leadership to Identify/Prioritize Event Topics (Processes)

-         Ensure facilitators in Org are using current CPI Trng Material/Tools

-         Be an Active Member of Organization CM Board

-         Communicate up and down the organization on plans and successes

-         Coordinate/Accomplish all aspects of each CPI Event:

-          Pre-Team and Steering Team Mtgs

-          Help Identify/notify Steering and Work Group Team members

-          Identify and publish Logistics, Room, Times, Dates

-          Assist Team Lead in collecting Process Data

-          Schedule Leadership for Kick-Off and routine event visits

-          Assist Team Lead to Implement and report on Event Actions

-          Print and ensure leadership Presents Event Certificates to team members

-          Maintain Data and work sheets after events

Article #3 for Culture Topics                 CPI must be a Culture Change               By Maq Maquet

 

     As leaders begin Implementing CPI in their organizations, it is critical for them to understand that they are not just supporting a Project or short term Program. CPI will only last in an organization if it is introduced as a Culture Change.  It must permeate every level of an organization or it will die. 

     Sure some organizations have introduced it as a program and had some short term successes, but ultimately they fail.  CPI will only work if it is truly Continuous as the C in CPI represents, and the only way to make the effort Continuous is to engrain it into the culture of the organization so everyone does it every day.  To make it part of the Culture, it has to be understood at every level of the organization and every employee must embrace the principles and concepts.  That means no-one can opt out of participating. Anyone who tries should be moved out of the organization. 

     That seems like a Harsh Statement to make but it is necessary.  Every organization will have resistors and they should not only be expected, but planned for.  Organizations need to make several efforts to convince resistors that CPI will benefit them and the organization.  However, if a resistor cannot be convinced after a reasonable amount of time, they need to be removed from the area that is changing. Resistors are much like Cancer in a body.  What does Cancer live on in a body?  Healthy flesh.   If resistors are allowed to remain in an organization that is changing, they will eat the live flesh that is the other employees. Therefore, they must be cut out of the organization, just like cancer is cut form a living body. Every organization that has transformed has had to move some people out of the way of progress.  If you ask the Aerospace Industry partners who make up the Lean Aerospace Initiative (LAI) they will tell you that in the first two years or their culture change, they had to replace 20% of their SENIOR leadership because they were unable to make the transition to the new culture. 

     That seems drastic but it is necessary for success.  If one considers that many companies that can not change their culture ultimately close their doors for all employees, then removing the few resistors is sacrificing the few for the sake of the many. There are always casualties to change.

      Another key concept in changing the culture of an organization is that it must be changed in all parts of the organization. Now I am not saying you should change every sub organization at once because that would require an army of facilitators and be too expensive to imagine. What I am saying is make sure every member of the organization is aware of the change and that they are expected to play.  Organizations are so dependant on each other to perform well today, that if only one part of an organization changes, they will soon wither and die because of lack of mutual support.  In organizations that planned on just changing the production elements and nothing else failed from lack of parts, manpower, financial support and many other things the rest of the organization had to supply.   Therefore start in a part of the organization that will be very visible to the rest of the organization, but then expand into every corner of the organization.  

     The key elements of the CPI Culture that will assist in making it a culture change are listed below:

            1. Respect for all employees and their ideas 

            2. Involvement of employees in the change process

            3. Stop Blaming employees for problems and focus on Processes

            4. Leaders and Supervisors becoming Coaches rather than task masters

            5. Increased communication between all employees

            6. Stop Hiding Problems and reward employees that bring problems to light

            7. Become a Learning Organization through training and sharing lessons learned

Facilitator Article #1                By Michael S. Maquet

 

Facilitators are Critical

            Facilitators have a crucial role in the implementation of CPI organization wide. Facilitators are given the important tasks of setting up the Rapid Improvement Event (RIE) with the help of the Change Manager (CM), Giving the CPI awareness to RIE work groups and leadership, Structuring the improvement event and directing the activities towards the projected goals, establishing implementation plans with dates of start/completion and points of contact as well as out briefing key leadership and process experts.

            Once a CM has identified a need for improvement in a group and has made the initial contacts with the appropriate leadership of that group, the CM enlists the help of a Facilitator. The Facilitator and CM work with the leadership through pre-team meetings to establish a scope, identify key players, determine preliminary goals, and establish RIE dates.

            The first day of the RIE is a critical one and requires the Facilitator to lay down the foundation of the several day event. This foundation typically comes in the form of an Awareness course and preliminary training. Both of which are given using the aid of Power Point and a prepared exercise. The initial training typically covers; get to know you exercises for the group and facilitator, roles of the participants, initial training on the basics concepts of CPI, and examples of CPI in other organizations. The exercise is a very important step of the foundation’s establishment. It gives tangibility to the concepts the facilitator has been discussing.

            Once the event begins the Facilitator now must rely less on prepared trainings and more on the structure of the RIE outline, personal intuition, and team dynamics. Failing to follow through with any of these will result in an RIE that appears unprepared and generic. It is the Facilitators responsibility to manage the team and understand where the event should be heading even if they don’t fully comprehend the specifics and intricacies of the process.

            At the completion of the formal event the Facilitator works with the team leader as well as team members to establish an implementation plan. This plan outlines the who, what, and when of how solutions will be implemented. This step is crucial and does not end once it is placed on paper. It requires the Team Leader to continue to follow up with the group days, weeks, and even months after the last day of the RIE.

            Once the plan is in place the Facilitator and RIE Team typically out brief Leadership and process experts. This requires a quick overview of the structure followed in the event, an explanation of how the process currently functions, a rationalization of how the process should/could function, and a breakdown of how the implementation plan will achieve the goals established by the steering team and pre-team meetings.

            Although the majority of a Facilitators time may be spent running RIE’s their duties are often expanded to other activities such as Brainstorming sessions and Senior Leader Trainings. The Facilitator is designed to be an organizational resource and should expect to be referenced often as to the concepts of CPI as it relates to theirs and others organizations processes. This responsibility requires appropriate training and certification as well as sufficient opportunities to hone their skills and develop their own style and techniques.

It seems the latest HOT Terminology is the use of Lean Six Sigma or LSS to describe the use of several Process Improvement techniques at once.  I got used to using CPI or Continuous Process Improvement in 2005 because it was the terminology that was used by DoD  and other Consulting organizations in their effort to combine the techniques used by different Military Services.  However, they really describe the same concept. Use the Right Tool for the Right Job and the Right tTme.  Unfortinately, some companies want to restrivct the implementation of LSS /CPI to a few people whom they have trained, so I have seen more requirements to be a  Certified LSS Master Black Belt to work in certain areas, including DoD contracts.  However, the first question you should ask if you want a LSS Master Black Belt, is "According to WHO?"  This field of consulting is growing so fast it is difficult to know who is capable and who isn't.  If a consultant is Certified by a certain company or organization, what makes them better than anyone else?  Is it right for one organization to say they are the ONLY certifiers of LSS Master Black Belts or are there several sources of trained and expereinced Master Black Belts? 

     I believe that the individual's deeds and Experience must describe what they are capable of.  If a consultant pays for the training and gets the certificate from any source, but cannot mentor Black Belt students or work at the highest levels of an organization to Implement the use of the tools and concepts, then they should not be considered Masters.  On the other hand, if a person has been mentored by other Master Black Belts and has shown they can mentor other Black Belts and work with senior leaders to Implement LSS or CPI, but does NOT have a certificate, how do we rate that individual?  I think performance must speak louder than documantation.  It is unfortunate that some organizations have limited themselves to using only Certified LSS Master Black Belts when what they should really be asking for are Experienced Master Black Belts.  I understand that it is easier to identify a Certified Master Black Belt as your requirement in a Contract, but the reality of the situation says that you need to take the time to look at an individuals expereince and skills to identify the right person for your needs.  Don't be lazy in your selection of your Mentors.

 

WHAT are CPI and LEAN Anyway?

By Col (Ret) Michael “MAQ” Maquet

 

  You may have asked the question above recently.  If so, let me answer it.

Let’s look at CPI first. CPI stands for Continuous Process Improvement.  It is not a new term in industry, but it is relatively new in the Department of Defense (DoD). The term is used to describe a very important new implementation effort across all the Military Services.  When DoD started looking at what Process Improvement tools the Services were using in 2005, they found that the Services had been offered a Tool Box full of different tools to improve processes.  They further discovered that each Service, in traditional fashion, had selected different tools to use. The Air Force selected LEAN. The Army selected Six Sigma. The Navy/Marines selected Theory of Constraints.  The individual services were only common in the use of one sub tool, Benchmarking.

     This individualism was acceptable when they started in 2001, but it made it very difficult to share ideas and techniques and even just communicate between the Services in 2005 because each tool used different principles and terminology. Therefore DoD accepted the task to generate a Standard Approach to process improvement that could be used across all the services.  They selected the Title of CPI because all the tools focus on Processes Improvement (PI) and the goal was established to make this effort Continuous, thus CPI came into Military terminology. CPI is not a magical term.  It is an effort to combine the process improvement efforts in all the Services in DoD and use one common title.  The DoD CPI Guide was published in February of 2006 to standardize terminology and approaches across DoD.

    Now let’s look at LEAN.  Since the Air Force started using the LEAN tool back in 2001, we still see that emphasis in AF CPI activities. LEAN is not an acronym, but is a tool that Eliminates WASTE in any process.  It also contains the Value Stream Mapping sub-tool that almost all process improvement tools use in one form or another very early in the effort.  The principles of LEAN are listed below:

1.      Value: Value in any process can only be defined by the Customer/User.

2.      Value Stream:  A value stream is a list of all the steps in a process.  The steps are categorized as Value Added or Non-Value Added. The purpose of generating a Value Stream map is to see the Waste in the process.

3.      Flow:  Flow is the opposite of batch processing.  Instead of working products or documents in batches of 5 or 10, flow tries to complete one item and move it on to the next station so more value can be added to it.

4.      Pull:  Pull means only supplying building what as it is used. The best example of Pull is a grocery store, when a customer pulls a product off a shelf, a signal is sent through the distributor to the factory to make another one, and is done in real time.

5.      Perfection: Perfection is where we get the concept of Continuous in CPI. We don’t just improve a process once and we are done.  CPI must be a continuous effort to make processes better. We should never accept the Status Quo.

     Now that you know what CPI and LEAN are, GET INVOLVED!  This effort gives all of us another opportunity to CHALLENGE the way we do work, the AFIs that don’t make sense or are outdated, the work that takes us away from our important Missions. 

To get started, contact your Group POC or the Wing AFSO Office.