"Catch a Fish" Project Phases

Most clients simply want me to “catch some fish” right away by leading some projects as opposed to "learning to fish." The following service delivery elements quickly allow us to apply Lean problem solving to your organization's problems and opportunities.

• MOVE IT!!! - Drive the pace of the steps below
• Choose it - Inventory potential projects and facilitate selection
• Analyze it - Establish a common understanding from the people doing the work while staying out of the "solution space"
• Design it - Facilitate collaborative draft design
• Pilot it - Test the design and rapidly mature it
• Implement it - Coordinate people, process and technology changes
• Train it - Develop and deliver training
• Follow up on it - Observe and coach several cycles
• Steer it - Coordinate and align management sponsorship
• Communicate it - Keep key constituents informed and involved throughout the project
• Learn from it - Develop and present post-mortem lessons learned reports and reviews and celebrate success

Guiding Principles

Prospective clients also ask me how I consult.  This section of guiding principles helps document my commitments to taking "the high road" even when the low road would produce greater financial return.

• Ideal future state:  Client is self sufficient in:
  • Kaizen / Continuous improvement
  • Defining and executing change with a recurring 90 day horizon
  • Local change agents can facilitate cycles of change and carry forward a shared and consistent change management recipe
• Honor and incorporate the client's culture, methods and habits
• Enable high employee involvement but ensure that management maintains full control and accountability
• Anchor any change method to the relevant principles of Toyota’s approach to managing change (Lean, Hoshin Kanri, etc.)
• Internal and external customers define value; Solve their problems!
• Learn to see waste across all members of the organization and drive it out from the customer’s perspective
• Balance People, Process and Technology interventions and avoid starting with technology

While forwarding these principles, change management tactics (project phases, workshop use, metrics structures, etc.) will be customized to work with the customer’s existing culture and protocols.

Potential components to a Project cycle

Many organizations lack a project structure for managing change and would like an efficient pattern developed and implemented. The following phases can serve as fodder for quickly piloting a problem solving approach (learning how to fish).

Inventory > Select > Charter > Diagnose > Design > Pilot > Implement > Check > Adjust > Reflect & Recognize

• Inventory the top initiatives, issues and opportunities. Simply use high-level business model graphics.
• Select a change management agenda - quickly!
• Charter the selected projects including clear problem definition and resources needed.
• Diagnose the current state, holding ourselves back from the “solution space.”
• Design the future state “on paper” allowing everyone to think through how it will work.
• Pilot the changes in a carefully chosen area.
• Implement the people, process and technology changes.
• Check on adoption of new behaviors and cessation of old world activities and habits.
• Adjust the designs based on real world applications of on-paper designs.
• Recognize people for benefits and results achieved and collectively reflect on lessons learned for future change management cycles.