December 20, 2023 • 51 mins
- Discover actionable strategies for success, including data-driven decisions and effective communication.
- Learn why operational excellence involves refining resources, not just adding them.
- Unlock the power of performance metrics and turning concerns into quantifiable data.
- Explore making lasting workflow adjustments and the value of reeducation over punishment.
- Celebrate the unsung heroes of process improvement and their impact on corporate goals.
- Foster a culture of innovation and efficiency through open communication and collaboration.
- Join the journey to becoming lean by design with us.
http://tiny.cc/PostIt
Thank you to our sponsor, Sigma Lab Consulting
Learn more about us by visiting: https://sigmalabconsulting.com/
Want our thoughts on a specific topic? Looking to sponsor this podcast to continue to generate content? Or maybe you have an idea and want to be on our show. Fill out our Interest Form and share your thoughts.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Oscar Gonzalez (00:00):
Oh, you guys did some improvement.
That's adorable, you know it'slike.
Well, the whole idea is to makethis place function better.
Welcome to Lean by DesignPodcast.
I'm your host, Oscar Gonzalez,alongside my co-host, Lawrence
Wong.
We are former MBA classmatesturned business partners with
(00:20):
over 25 years of combinedexperience in life sciences,
from R&D through manufacturing.
Our experiences have shed lightinto the complex, ever-changing
challenges experienced by thisindustry and many others.
We took a risk quit oursix-figure paying jobs in Boston
Biotech and Pharma to startSigma Lab Consulting.
Journey with us as we explorethe relationship between people
(00:44):
and workflow design, the goal tolearn, inspire and deliver
practical tips to navigate theseever-changing challenges.
Stick with us and learn to worksmarter, not harder, and be
lean by design.
Consider this A recent McKinseysurvey highlighted that 70% of
(01:08):
process improvement initiativesfail to meet their objectives.
Imagine being part of a teamthat spends months perfecting
new workflows, only to find out,much like three out of four
companies, you're not gettingthe results you expected.
We're picturing a manufacturingfirm investing thousands in new
quality assurance proceduresonly to see error rates remain
(01:29):
unchanged.
These are not merehypotheticals, but real
scenarios faced by businessesevery day.
This alarming statistic will bethe centerpiece for our
discussion today.
Together, we'll exploreinsights and walk through the
pitfalls and best practices,emphasizing the need for
tangible data, opencommunication and the critical
(01:50):
role of leadership in ensuringsuccess, from organizations
reverting back to old habits,despite introducing new
processes, to teams overlookingcritical tasks, leading to
bottlenecks.
We're here to dissect it all,so grab your headphones and get
ready for a deep dive into whattruly makes project improvement
tick.
Welcome back to another episodeof Lean by Design Podcast.
(02:21):
I'm your host, Oscar Gonzalez,here with my co-host, co-founder
, mentor, friend Lawrence Wong.
Hello, oh yeah that's right.
We've been hanging out enoughthat we can start to create some
superlatives for each other, soI'm okay with that.
We work together.
We were in class together andnow we're recording podcasts
(02:43):
together.
So, constant, trying to be alittle bit of a ying and yang as
we build this organization andreally bring knowledge and
educate folks out there thatthings don't always have to be
the way that they are.
We have opportunities to makeadjustments and make
(03:04):
improvements.
What I want to talk about todayhas to do with that next step.
We go into process improvementinitiatives, whether or not it's
structured or just somethingthat we're doing internally as a
function of our corporate goalsor our functional goals.
(03:25):
But what do we do after that?
A lot of times, we often willfind that we set those process
improvement initiatives up, justlike you mentioned before,
where you set up a new processand then, a month later, you
have a backlog of stuff already.
Why is that happening?
(03:47):
Why is it that every time weset something up, we pat
ourselves on the back and thenwe go on to the next thing like
there's nothing new for us to dohere?
I'm here to say that there's alot of work that's left to be
done.
Lawrence, you're as familiar asanyone that in process
improvement it's a cycle.
(04:08):
You have to continue to improvethose processes and really
refine what you're doing.
Not only that, you have to havesome level of consistency.
What we fail to realize as we'reputting together this process
improvement initiative is thatthere is some culture and some
(04:29):
habits that need to form.
A lot of the issues that weexperience usually come from
some bad habit.
Where we go in, we get trainedand oh yeah, you don't have to
worry about that stuff.
All we do is just send it tothis email address and they take
care of it.
I can't tell you how often I'vehad those sort of directives
(04:52):
thinking so I just send this offand you leave off all these
different spaces that we'resupposed to fill out just
because you deem that it's notnecessary.
How does the other group that'son the receiving end of this
form or document, et cetera, howare they going to feel about us
(05:12):
half-assing the work here?
There's a fair bit of work thatneeds to happen to change the
habits that have been createdwithin the organization, to
change the mindset of thatfunction, of that department,
into one that is hey, let's doit right, let's do it right the
(05:36):
first time and then we don't getthis cycle of having to redo
work, because that kills thisman.
The amount of rework that'sbeing done on a daily basis is
astounding Not in any research.
You're going to have a lot oftesting and trials and research,
so of course you're going to bedoing repeats and this didn't
(05:59):
work out.
That didn't work out.
I think there are spaces thatwe can be a little bit more
knowledgeable about what we'redoing and why we're doing it,
and really putting the bestpractices, rather than focused
on how fast we're gettingsomething done or how quick the
data is coming or oh, it's theend of the day and I got a
(06:21):
little bit lazy.
Well, now you're a little bitlazy is adding another two days
of work.
That wasn't originally planned.
Lawrence Wong (06:31):
I think so what you brought up before, where you
improve something and thensomehow a month later,
everything falls off the wagonand everything goes back to
square one.
I think there are probably athousand reasons why this
happens.
Some thoughts that come to mindare well, maybe one, the
process that you were improvingwasn't that important, so maybe
(06:51):
people were paying attention toit.
I think two, maybe there'snobody owning the actual process
.
I think when a team buildssomething together, they have
more, I would say, skin in thegame because they've designed
this process and they have kindof more effort that they've put
in so they care about it more.
(07:12):
I think the other point too iswhere does this align with the
overall organization's goals?
Because you don't want a teamof people just working on things
that they improve and thenmanagement doesn't recognize
that.
I find that that happens a lotwhere there was a lot of pain
being felt by some of the endusers that are doing something
(07:34):
daily and they'll improvesomething, but then management
doesn't really acknowledge it ormaybe they don't see it.
It quickly gets, I wouldn't saythe word is ignored, but
there's more priority placed onother things.
I think those three things thatI mentioned come to mind when I
(07:58):
hear process improvementinitiatives failing after people
spend so much time on it.
Oscar Gonzalez (08:05):
Yeah, it's almost like oh, you guys did
some improvement, that'sadorable.
You know it's like well, thewhole idea is to make this place
function better and I think oneof the things that we tend to
ignore about those processimprovement initiatives is that
people stick around when theyfind that a company is actively
working to improve upon theprocesses they have.
(08:28):
I've had friends of mine thatyou know coworkers at the time
that have left organizationsbecause they said this company
doesn't have their ish together.
You know how does that feel asan organization to see that your
turnover is so high.
And, oh, we have the bestmanagers, the best you know
scientists, the best you knowpeople from this group, from
(08:50):
that group, but they're such astruggle because to do the day
to day work it's hard.
Oh, I don't want to do this,but why not?
Well, because I can't find thefolder that I'm supposed to do
it in the PowerPoint slide I'msupposed to add it in when this
is supposed to be due.
You know, the list goes on andon and on.
It's these processes that don'treally exist, and you know
(09:10):
these processes are designed togive you almost like a
step-by-step approach anddevelop that consistency in that
organization.
I mean that consistency is whatwe want.
That consistency is what drivesgrowth.
It's not speed.
Speed is going to probably leadto a bunch of errors.
I mean, think about anythingthat goes super fast.
Usually something bad happenslater.
Lawrence Wong (09:33):
So you know, in the wrong direction, right?
That's the other point too.
Oscar Gonzalez (09:36):
That's the other thing too.
That's the other thing too.
You know, take, these processesare built for a certain reason,
they're designed for a certainreason and you know, I think
it's important and I'll saycritical for folks to recognize
that.
And you know, come intoorganizations and think to
themselves what can be done.
And you know, and once that'sdone, how do we carry it out?
(09:59):
You know, I to your point abouthaving leadership input and
leadership acknowledgement.
I just received an emailyesterday from the top
leadership from one of my, oneof my clients, and it was from
the COO and everybody else, allof the all of the C level
(10:22):
leaders jumped in on applaudingthe efforts, on applauding the
work and it's not done.
You know that that type ofthing is not done.
And you know, we had, I've seenin my experience of okay, well,
what do we do next?
And I've even seen from seniorfolks well, we didn't really
(10:45):
think of how we want to measurethis.
Okay, okay, so time out.
We have gone three, four monthsinto process improvement
initiative.
There's kicking and screamingon changing any of the processes
.
You know, eventually we wereable to corral that and and
determine okay, these are thethings that we're going to
accomplish and then at the endof those three months, we have
(11:08):
no idea how to determine if itworked or not.
Come on, I mean, you know thisis.
You know, do we want to go Togo to work and struggle to do
the things that we are beingpaid to do simply because
there's bad process or becausewe don't feel that we have time
(11:31):
in our day to numericallycompute how many times an error
happens?
You know, let's say that youhave to fill out a documentation
to onboard a new consultant,but everybody is constantly
uploading that documentincorrectly.
And then, well, you know, thenthe blame goes.
(11:54):
Well, this team took so long toreview because, you know, I
don't even know why, and so wehaven't had a chance to onboard.
You know X person.
Well, there was errors in there.
And until we start to createthe metrics and the numbers and
recording of of errors andinconsistencies, you're never
(12:19):
going to improve that process.
All you're doing is having aninitiative that allows you to
create a new workflow, thatallows you to understand a
little bit further that cycle ofwork within the organization,
that department, et cetera, andthat's it, like it's just a
documentation, if you don't planto measure that change and
(12:44):
understand where you know,because every, every function,
every process is usually acombination of many processes
inside of it.
Now, the only way that thatwhole thing works is if the full
process is fluid.
So as you start to create theseerrors, you go where did this
(13:05):
error take place?
How often is this error takingplace over there?
And I'm speaking from anoperational standpoint, from a
facility standpoint.
For yourself, it's the sameidea.
You don't look at a whole, youknow a whole system full of
tanks and pipes and valves andet cetera, and go oh, this whole
(13:26):
system stinks.
No, you try to find where thaterror happened and you fix that
error.
In the same way, when you'relooking at you know operations,
when you're looking at processesthat organizations have,
internal processes, you know howwe communicate to vendors, how
we onboard people, how weonboard.
You know alliances, how we workwith those alliances.
(13:47):
These are all many processesthat occur within operations.
We have to take a look back andgo okay, well, we need to
measure this to know if theerrors are coming in still,
where are they happening?
Why?
Because you want to direct yourtraining, you want to direct
your learning, you want todirect your messaging to that
(14:09):
specific space.
You know it's sort of likehaving, you know, having an exam
in high school multiple choiceand everybody gets number 21
wrong.
You're not going to go throughevery single one that pretty
much everybody got right.
You're going to focus on theone that people got wrong and go
(14:32):
.
Let's talk about this.
This is what's happening.
Was the question worded badly,aka?
Was your process, was that partof your process not clear, or
are we just negligent?
You know what's causing us tomiss that specific question so
much in this course.
What is the cause of that inour process?
(14:54):
Why is that part of our process?
And we tend to not look at thatand it doesn't have to be
anything, you know, superintense.
I just posted a LinkedInmessage, really about that.
Take a post-it note, take apost-it note pad right next to
your desk.
(15:15):
If this is your day-to-day work,every time something comes into
your flow from somebody else orfrom another department or
function related to thisparticular operations process
and it's incorrectly filled out,it was incorrectly managed, it
was whatever it is.
Mark a tick, just a nice littletick.
(15:35):
You know.
One, two, three, four, cross itfive.
One, two, three, four, cross itfive, you know.
Next thing, you know, hey, thisweek we had 10 instances.
You know, I heard this fromleadership before, from senior
employees going yeah, I just,you know, I don't know that we
(15:56):
have the time.
Are you kidding me?
We don't have the time to markoff that something, that an
error is occurring, yet we wantto improve the process.
We're just going to come backand say it didn't work.
Yeah, that's not true.
Lawrence Wong (16:12):
It's ironic because people will complain
about, oh, this doesn't work,but yet they won't take the time
to actually measure, like, whyit's not working.
And you know to your pointabout measuring performance.
I think there's kind of twoscenarios where I see, you know,
you have some existing processin place, right, and you improve
the process, so there should bea new, I would say, baseline
(16:36):
performance.
And then so you're looking at,like, what your target is and
you're looking at how you'redoing which is your baseline,
and hopefully whatever you'vedone has gotten you over to
whatever that target is.
So you need to be consistentlymeasuring it, otherwise, what
did we just spend all this timedoing, right, otherwise it was
for nothing.
I think there's another scenariowhere I maybe it's more common
(16:58):
in the area that we work in isthere just simply are not
processes and metrics designedaround these like very, I would
say, informal things that peopleare doing.
And so when you design theprocess right, once you set that
up, it's okay to say that thisdoesn't work, but you have to
have some sort of target right,like, are you expecting, you
(17:20):
know, 100 entries with no error?
And once you start to see theerrors, like, you need to record
that so that you can take thenext step in improving it.
Oscar Gonzalez (17:28):
If you just set up the process more, than a
feeling, more than a feeling,and that actually came up where
they said, well, it's more of afeeling.
Okay, I just my eyes got so bigjust thinking okay, in the
future, if you want to reach outto your senior leadership and
(17:52):
say, oh, I need more people, Ineed a new piece of equipment, I
need this is the data thatyou've been looking for to go to
leadership and say, look howmany entries we had last month.
You know, in IT we had 72.
And I only have two people.
I only have one person andmyself on staff.
(18:13):
We can't respond to this loadwith the number of people.
I need more people, rather thanjust like, oh, there's just,
there's just so much, there'sjust so much to do.
Like, how can you tangibly takethat and expect to, you know,
receive $200,000 toward a newemployee because there's too
(18:34):
much stuff to do?
Look at the process, look atwhat you know, find out what
those errors are, like that thatyou know our go to I don't know
what it is our go to is I wantmore people, I want another
machine.
And I look at it like, well,you're operating right now like
a 40% success rate.
Like that's probably notsomething that someone would
(18:57):
want to spend another milliondollars on a machine, to add to
that Like it's not going to getbetter because you're getting a
new person or a new machine.
It gets better because youdesign a new process and you
educate yourself, you educatethe teams, and this idea of just
like well, it feels this way.
You have to remove all biases,because feelings are all biased.
(19:20):
You can have 10 solidlyexecuted experiments or you know
process.
You know that process thatyou've been working on, 10
executed flawlessly, and thenyou get one.
They catch you on the wrong day, catches you on a day when it's
raining and you stepped in amud puddle and you forgot your
(19:41):
coffee and it just sets youthrough the roof.
Guess what that one instance Nowtrumps all the times that you
got things right and you mightgo oh my gosh, I can't.
This is just too much like.
It drives me insane.
And the reality of it is itdoesn't really occur.
But because it feels this way,we have to get out of this, this
(20:03):
, this incessant desire to saywe feel this way.
Therefore, we should have a newperson a new, you know, without
having any kind of supportingdata to suggest why would you
need an extra person.
What you know it's oh, there'sso much work to do.
We need more people to reviewthis and this and this.
Well, why are there so manypeople to review that when, if
(20:24):
you look over the last year, theentries have not increased,
which means the errors areincreasing, which means there's
a lack of education, which meansthat people are jumping outside
the process, and these arethings that we actually can
directly influence.
Lawrence Wong (20:42):
We'll be right back after a quick break.
Is your team constantlyfighting fires?
Are you struggling withproductivity and think it's due
to inefficiency in youroperations?
These challenges can bedifficult to measure, but not
impossible.
Sigma Lab Consulting can helpyou define and prioritize the
issues that are negativelyimpacting your team.
We partner with stakeholders toredesign workflows so you can
(21:05):
work more efficiently.
Find out more atSigmaLabConsultingcom.
There's a lot of, I would say.
You know, I'm going to speak toit from like a management
perspective, where they they'relooking at a limited amount of
time, money and resources.
And if you're going to come tosome steering committee and say,
(21:28):
hey, we need more resources todo this for this process, and
you can demonstrate with datathat, yes, this is, you know, a
solution for the process to makeit better, that's one thing.
But, to your point, if you'rejust going to come and say, you
know that one instance out ofthe hundred times that we ran it
and you're going to complainabout that one time, there's no
(21:49):
justification to be able to, youknow, allocate the resources
and time to alleviating that,because it's clearly not.
It's a one off, it's not aroutine occurrence, right, right
, and you know, from yourperspective.
What are some good practicesthen?
Right, like, once, a continuousimprovement initiative is in
place.
What do you suggestpractitioners look at a month
(22:13):
out, six months out, a year out,like what are those, those key
considerations you would look atonce.
Something is in place.
Oscar Gonzalez (22:21):
Take small bites .
Process improvement is notsomething that happens in two
months and it's done.
As we mentioned before, it's aniterative process.
There's a lot to it andsometimes there's a lot to a
process.
We'll start taking small bites.
Start taking you know.
You already mentioned that youhave a feeling.
Okay, I'm assuming you alsohave a feeling of where things
(22:45):
tend to become issues.
It's probably not in the verybeginning, it's probably not at
the very end.
It might be just before thisportion or just before this
happens.
Either we lack a signature orwe lack numbers, or we lack you
know.
Whatever the case is, you havesome, a semblance of what is a
(23:06):
problem within that workflow.
So I would say, take a coupleof each of those you know.
If you have a 20 step process,look at step four.
You know 11, 13 and 20.
And you know, over the courseof the next couple of weeks,
have those steps in a number.
(23:27):
You know 10, 14, etc.
Etc.
And just next to it, how manyerrors are happening.
This is going to inform you ofwhere either the education for
this part of the process was notstrong enough or the there was
some miscommunication.
The documentation was not hadtoo much open space to really
(23:51):
guide people.
You know, sometimes when we'recreating these, these, these
work instructions or SOPs, wewant them to be broad, to cover
a large sweep of items, but wehave to make sure that they're
also executable.
If you know, we want toreference this one work
instruction for a plethora ofitems.
(24:14):
Perhaps keep it, you know, to alow number so that folks
actually know.
Okay, when I go in here, thisis the document that I need to
look at.
If we run this SOP or thesework instructions with a broad
stroke, sometimes that broadflexibility becomes more of like
a question in the mind ofsomebody that's trying to
(24:35):
execute that workflow.
You know just like is thisrelated to me?
I'm not entirely sure.
You know, it's a little bitconfusing, but again, it's the
education.
You know, take those smallbites and that, and that's
something that you would seethree to six months.
You know, one of the things thatwe tried to do was understand
what is the.
How often are new requestscoming into the system?
(24:59):
Couldn't get an answer.
How often are we creatingerrors?
Couldn't get an answer.
But the answer I did get wasthis person, this person, this
person, they don't know what todo.
Well, there's also no workinstructions.
So the fact that everybody elseis, you know for lack of a
(25:21):
better words they're, they'reknocking this, you know, out of
the park, or at least they'redoing an acceptable job.
You know, on the on the process, it's either luck or somebody
that trained them has a reallygood idea of how to run the
process.
Everybody else, they might benew.
So you can't just say like, oh,this person, this person, this
(25:42):
person you know, I heard it, Iheard it best from from a good
friend, ryan Dumblap withconflict, ish, don't look at the
person, look at the process.
Why has this been sochallenging?
And then, what is thereeducation been we're so
accustomed to, when someone asksus a question or someone does
(26:04):
something incorrectly, we don'teducate back.
I have a two year old son.
When something is doneincorrectly, I try to educate
him Instead of taking it out ofhis hand, telling him I
something needs to be done.
And, and you know, I try to gethim like oh, okay, okay, buddy,
(26:25):
like you know, is that whereyou thought that that goes?
Okay, this is trash, so let'sgo ahead and throw this in the
trash.
Can you know?
Not like hey, don't throw thaton the floor.
Why are you throwing and thengrabbing it and throwing it in a
trash?
Can Guess what?
He didn't learn anything.
So, just like that, we have to.
We have to assume that peopleare coming into our organization
with a very top level idea ofhow the processes work in this
(26:51):
organization.
It's up to us to actually go.
Oh, you know, that's.
I saw what you did there.
Like, just, you know, here'sour work instruction.
You know I, you know, ask youto look again at steps 14
through 16.
So it's really important for usto have blah, blah, blah before
this.
That's all I'm asking to do.
(27:12):
I'm not asking you to set up awhole 30 minute training and
read, but educate folks.
And the more that you have thisconversation, the more that you
have this kind of pushing outof the education, of this new
workflow etc.
The more people start to getaligned to it.
And not only that, the morepeople find themselves self
(27:34):
sufficient.
So when they're filling it outagain, they're like, oh wait,
she sent me.
I did that one thing wrong.
Let me go grab the workinstruction again and see what
I'm doing, because otherwise, ifyou're not, if you're just
blatantly ignoring all thatstuff, that that person's
probably not going to be in theorganization long.
But you know again this is justto reiterate we can't always
(27:54):
respond with like I'm trying tothink of the right word for it.
We need to respond with moreeducating.
You know, when people ask me,hey, Oscar, I don't know where
to find this or I don't knowwhere this was, I will direct
them usually to a dashboard andsay this is a great place to
start for a lot of the questionsthat you have.
(28:14):
And if you look over here andhere, you can find links to blah
, blah, blah and a report downunder here.
Now, the next time they havesome kind of similar question,
they know where to at leaststart and I can stop getting the
question, Oscar, where do I go?
And it's more of like hey, Igot here, but I can't seem to
find this exact work instructionOkay, maybe the nomenclature
(28:36):
was a little off, but working onthose small bits and small
chunks.
And again, it's a little bit ofnot just culture change, but
it's also changing our habits.
So instead of just trying toget rid of somebody right away,
spend the two minutes to educatethem so that they're not coming
(28:57):
back to you to ask the samequestion Because you never
educated them the first time.
You just took it and said I'lljust deal with it.
Yeah, I think that's not gonnateach anybody anything.
Lawrence Wong (29:06):
Education pieces is crucial, and it's not just
like a one-way street whereyou're just communicating.
This is the way that you dothings.
I think you're also giving achance to somebody who's in it
to respond back with oh, I'mhaving this issue.
Maybe it's something that weneed to update on the work
instruction.
Maybe it's some step in theprocess that needs to get
updated.
But having just thequantitative measures there and
(29:31):
not having the qualitativemeasures there, I think needs to
be addressed as well.
You can have metrics where itshows a certain number and your
success rate, but I think theother thing you should be doing
is creating a safe space forpeople to give that feedback so
you can take a look at thosecomments and make further
improvements, because I thinkwith those two pieces together,
then you get a more realisticpicture of okay, well, where
(29:53):
should we focus next if we wantto improve other aspects of our
operation?
Oscar Gonzalez (29:59):
That's exactly right.
I mean, we're looking at here,can we follow the process and
what is the quality of theoutput?
It's super crucial for us tounderstand and also distinguish
between those two things,because, on the one hand, you
don't want to get things thatare pushed through the system.
(30:21):
Everyone filled everything outsuper fast but the system has
advanced and now the quality orthe information that's put in
there is incorrect.
Yes, information is put inthere, but it's actually
incorrect.
Now you got to start thinkingokay, is there a step that we've
skipped?
That is allowing our quality togo down?
Because it's interesting, it'salmost like a catch-22 with
(30:44):
folks when they look at bigprocesses that go oh my gosh,
this takes so long.
You know what takes longergetting halfway through and
having something that wassupposed to be done in the very
beginning and not being done,and now you got to start all
over.
I love the phrase I don't knowwho coined it, but the fact that
we never have enough time to dothings right the first time,
(31:07):
somehow we find time to do itagain, to redo it.
Yeah, it blows my mind, becausewhen you have the information
available to you on how toproceed and we ignore those
things we're creating reworkwhich does not push.
(31:29):
It reminds me of rowing in crew.
I did crew at VCU when I wasthere for a little bit back in
early 2010s.
Around there, and if you're notworking together and you're
constantly slamming the ore andslamming forward, you're
(31:49):
basically checking the boat.
So instead of the boat going inone direction smoothly because
people are rowing, becausepeople are trying to go so fast,
their body weight pushes theboat backwards.
So you'll see a boat kind ofdoing this and to me, that's
what that rework is doing.
(32:10):
It's like progress, stop,progress, stop, progress, stop.
Lawrence Wong (32:14):
Right, it's not smooth and you're having to go
through a lot more friction thatyou necessarily need to.
So, to your point aboutcollecting the feedback and
holding the trainings and makingthe process measurable, who, at
the end of the day, a month out, six months out, a year out,
(32:36):
who is responsible for makingthose improvements once you've
completed the project?
Because I've seen this handleda number of ways, where you have
a team put together to do thecontinuous improvement and then
everybody scatters after so andso, gets their belt and now
they're like, okay, this is notmy project anymore, and then
they vanish, and then somebodyelse has to kind of deal with
(32:57):
some of the, I would say,maintenance issues that go on
with making sure the process isin line with what you want to do
.
But also these incrementalimprovements that can be done,
and they're not necessarilyproject level improvements, or
maybe, hey, just update thisdocument, or maybe let's place
this sample on this end of theroom and not the other one.
(33:18):
But who's responsibility is itto own some of these incremental
improvements at the end of theday?
Oscar Gonzalez (33:26):
All right.
So this is a hot take of yearsof experience.
Okay, I'm gonna give you alittle nugget here.
That's gonna sound verypolitical.
Everybody, now everybody has adifferent role to play.
If you're doing this processand you're finding that it's
(33:50):
clunky, you're finding that it'sdifficult, you don't have
logins, you don't have all thesetypes of issues that constantly
come up it is up to you tovoice them to the person.
If you have an apartment andyour apartment's in shambles, do
you keep it all in and then,when you move out, just be like,
oh yeah, that apartment sucks,so I decided to leave?
(34:10):
No, you, actually you saysomething to your landlord.
I think the people closest toit are gonna be those within
that given function and the linemanager.
That line manager needs to beable to support this, because
the question that comes to youis are you, do you want your
function to be more productiveas a function of external
(34:34):
stakeholders external from yourgroup, internal to the
organization, externalstakeholders air-proofing that?
Lawrence Wong (34:43):
We'll be right back after a quick break.
Oscar Gonzalez (34:46):
Do you suspect your life sciences company could
do things more efficiently?
Maybe you're seeing costlyworkflow issues or maybe the
work feels more difficult toperform than necessary,
affecting team around.
If any of this resonates, reachout to the team at Sigma Lab
Consulting for a freeconsultation on how we can
develop and launch a customsolution fit for your team.
(35:06):
Our consultants will build acustom workflow solution for
your team to reach peakefficiency.
Find out more atwwwSigmaLabConsultingcom.
You know this is the whole idea.
You know this is where you knowSigma Lab Consulting came from.
It's the idea of using Lean SixSigma principles, and one of
(35:26):
those at the very end of that iscontrol.
You improve, but then you needto control it.
How consistent are we ingetting this through the gate,
through the system?
And the less speed bumps thatyou have, the smoother that ride
is gonna be.
Over and over again.
Then, once you receive thatconsistency, once you achieve
that consistency, you know ayear out then you start to look
(35:49):
okay, we need to understand.
Now that we're consistent, wherecan we start to bring in those
timelines?
Is there anywhere?
Now understand, we may notalways have the availability to
bring in timelines by 20, 30,40%.
It's like saying hey, we knowyou have a grocery budget.
(36:10):
I want you to cut it in half.
Well, you have to actually eat.
So, no matter what, there'sgonna be a minimum that you
actually have to buy, and theremay be a minimum to a process.
Well, once we do this, we have acontract with that organization
that they have a five-dayturnaround.
You can't change anything aboutthat because that's their
(36:32):
process.
You can't change a CRO'sprocess.
That is what their process is.
You can maybe negotiate hey,can you stick us in here or
speed it up a little bit, takeus out of the queue?
But there's certain thingsinternally that you can have,
whether it's everything to beturned in by Thursday to be
available for Monday, one ofthose things.
(36:53):
But we have to constantly it'slooking at the initiative itself
, looking at where that processimprovement was.
It's gonna be a dialoguebetween the ground troops and
the manager.
The thing that we tend to do inthese meetings that we go with
our managers is we give updates.
That's what we do, is we giveupdates and where that's fine.
(37:17):
A lot of those updates andstuff sit in documents, they sit
in PowerPoints, they sit inExcel files, they sit in this
other database system.
All that stuff's available, butalso your work is a direct
result of all these other folksthat are in that organization.
You should probably talk abouthow has it been?
(37:40):
How is it feeling?
Are there a lot of errors?
And this conversation is withinthat particular function.
And you're right, usuallythere's a facilitator that is
putting together the processimprovement initiative.
That's very close to it from aprocess standpoint, very
unbiased.
They don't do the work, theyjust understand processes and
(38:02):
how to corral folks and how tobring that in, similar to the
things that we do.
Don't let them go so far, youknow.
Keep them somewhat aligned,keep them somewhat in the loop
of what's happening, so that youguys can have a conversation
and determine what's gonna bethe next step.
Well, why don't we have atraining that focuses just on
this?
(38:22):
And you guys mentioned thatthere's a couple of key
offenders.
Let's make sure that they're apart of the meeting, but we
extend the invitation toeverybody because we're finding
that this is the most commonerror and even though some folks
maybe did not cause that error,they may have only had one
opportunity.
So in that situation, you know.
(38:43):
So it's important to include alot of folks that have been
involved in that process to say,hey, we're finding a lot of
errors here and you don't makeit a dialogue, you don't have to
teach it like it's a lecture,you know, just raise your hand.
How has anybody, you know, dealtwith that particular situation?
Oh, last time I did that.
I contacted such and such andshe gave me a form that allowed
(39:06):
me to kind of, you know, jumpsteps because of blah, blah,
blah.
You know, talk to your people,talk to the talk to your
function and figure out, youknow, what is the right, what is
the right next step to solvethese issues and make sure that
we're educating folks, you know.
So they are ultimately the onesthat are responsible, but again
(39:27):
, it's everybody that has anystakeholder that has worked with
that function or with thatinitiative.
Should it be open to freelyspeak on challenges, successes
and the like?
Lawrence Wong (39:45):
Yeah, I think you know, in our conversation we've
kind of gone over looking at aprocess, from evaluating the
metrics to make sure that we'rethe improvement is actually on
track.
You know this training piece,which is really about educating
people that are new to theprocess or maybe unaware of some
of the changes.
We've talked about sharingresponsibility for the ownership
(40:09):
of the process and not havingall of that responsibility fall
on one person that may or maynot be part of the organization
and you know some set amount oftime.
I also think you know wehaven't talked about this yet,
but you know, to kind of wrap upthe conversation, what sort of
incentives do you think need tobe in place for all of these?
(40:31):
I would say good practices tocontinue.
You know, from a managementperspective, I feel like if you
have a group of process ownersthat are, you know, going above
and beyond and collecting thefeedback and improving their
teams, there should be somespotlight on these individuals
and these teams to say, hey, youguys are doing a, you know,
(40:54):
awesome job with this and hey,if there's any other areas
within your operation that youfeel is in need of some
improvement, we are now gonnaallocate the time, money and
resources to that, and so you'recreating this incentive for
them to kind of seek out theseproblems and to kind of solve
them.
What are your thoughts on?
(41:15):
You know the incentivestructure there and what have
you seen in the past to kind ofnot only sustain the current
improvement but to carry thatmomentum forward to maybe
another initiative that mightneed the same level of support?
Oscar Gonzalez (41:32):
I've seen more mature organizations actually
include that into theircorporate goals.
That their corporate goals is alevel of improvement because
the organization as a whole hasa mission to improve the
processes that they haveinternal and really tweak.
You know, there's things thatwe're doing every day, every
(41:54):
single day.
We have 15, 20 differentprocesses that we're executing
on in order to get our work done.
So what are these things thatare tedious, manual, prone to
error.
You know, look at those thingsand, to your point, having
leadership, acknowledge and tohighlight those things, shoot, I
don't know, have a pizza partylike they did in kindergarten.
(42:16):
A lot of times when things wentwell, we had a pizza party.
So you know, there's a lot ofdifferent things that we could
do and I think it's really up tothe organization and the way
that their culture isestablishing the praise for
identifying core processes inthe organization and what that
(42:37):
improvement looked like, and notonly that, it gives you a sense
of accomplishment, you know, Ithink that being able to do work
every day and not, you know, dothe face palm or, you know,
just kind of rolling the eyesbecause you got this other thing
that you know, this other emailcame in with a submission that
(42:58):
was just completely wrong.
Or you know I'm frustratedbecause you know no one's doing
this right.
I don't know how many timesI've heard that and nothing was
done about it ever.
And you know it's.
So.
Bring in these types ofincentive programs.
You know whether it'sacknowledgement, or, you know,
(43:19):
almost like a competition, like,hey, find your worst, yeah,
your compensation.
You know, and ideally, ideally,you're gonna feel it here
personally.
You're gonna feel weight offyour shoulders because you're
not coming into the office witha stack full of stuff that is
(43:42):
error and it stops you fromdoing the work that you need to
actually push that to the nextstage.
Oh, I can't do it because thisis all wrong.
You know, hopefully it gives asense of accomplishment and a
sense of desire to do that again.
You know the that's what's been,I think, special for me about
process improvement initiativesis that the seeing a light bulb
(44:05):
moment in people seeing wideeyes, that, wow, this was so
easy, I think.
I can't remember, I think, oneof the first videos I posted on
LinkedIn, I talked about worknot having to be hard.
If the field that you're in isdifficult to nature, that's one
thing, but to actually do yourjob and having just the actions
(44:30):
of doing your job in an officesetting let's just talk about it
as an office setting and it'sdifficult.
Like, doesn't that make youwant to scratch your head and go
why is something so basic or sostandard, incredibly
complicated or incrediblydifficult to successfully
initiate all the way through?
Why aren't we having thosequestions answered?
(44:53):
Why aren't we questioning it?
We go into organizations and wego well, this is how they do it
.
That's fine, but that mighthave been a process that was
implemented years ago, if not adecade ago.
Yeah, I think let's feelcompelled to have that question
to answer that.
Lawrence Wong (45:12):
Yeah, I think having, like you said, a pizza
party or some sort of incentivewhere you reward people for
going about making things betterright.
So there's a level of, I wouldsay, accomplishment that you get
from not only just improvingthe way that you do things, but
if you're able to influence howother people do things right,
(45:34):
and I think there's a level ofownership that you have.
And when you go about thesechanges, I also think that
there's a lot of opportunity,right.
If you are looking to, let'ssay, gain more responsibility,
this is one of the most obviousopportunities for, like driving
(45:57):
change management, demonstratingto the leadership.
Hey, I can, like take on thisresponsibility and I can
influence change, and that'sexactly what they're looking for
in somebody who's trying tomake things better and it opens
so many more doors for you.
I mean, we can probably go onand on about like chances that
we've taken in improving thingsthat have opened these doors for
(46:17):
us.
Oscar Gonzalez (46:18):
Yeah, absolutely that was.
I think that's a fantastic wayto end this conversation is
really, you're coming up andyou're young and you're curious
and you want to make an impact.
It doesn't have to benecessarily directly related to
some scientific discovery.
(46:40):
If you're able to find bettermethods that are more consistent
, and whether it's creating theprocess improvement or just
discovering those methods youknow and being able to execute
on those things, people arewatching and you're exactly
right.
We are direct examples of whenyou improve a process or improve
(47:00):
a system or improve a workflow.
People see that and they noticeit.
And then you do another one andthey go hey, this person's got
some chops, I like what they'redoing and I like what they're
doing for the organization.
And look at how well people arecommunicating with them about
all these issues.
You know it's not about being alistening ear to everybody's
(47:23):
troubles.
It's about thinking back andwhen you have an influence on
something, a direct influence onsome workflow, being able to
say that's a great suggestion,let me surface that Like I can
see where that works.
Or you know what?
Yeah, I did see that we're notseeing that.
It happens very often, so Idon't know that that's something
that we would do an initiativeon right away, but we are paying
(47:46):
attention to it.
At least being able to saysomething like that it creates a
different feel for theemployees that are there.
I mean, let's stop thisresentment with other functions
that happens in everyorganization and start looking
at the process instead of thepeople as the cause for that ish
(48:09):
.
I'm gonna steal from Ryan again.
He's gonna kill me.
Lawrence Wong (48:14):
There's something to be said about being able to
push change throughout yourorganization to the extent that,
like management will recognizethat, and then they'll start
pulling you in to things thatthey want you to work on.
Oscar Gonzalez (48:27):
Right, because you have a different perspective
.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, you know what Iappreciate the time.
This was great conversation andI hope our listeners get
something from it too.
You know, it's really importantto make sure that we're
questioning what we're doing andthe manner at which we're doing
it.
We spend a majority of ourearly adult lives through middle
(48:52):
adulthood, through middle age,middle age working, and if we
can't make it better for us orfor the people around us, it's
not gonna be fun.
It's gonna be a long, long road.
I will say that, and there's alot of opportunity out there Lot
of opportunity to be seen, lotof opportunity to be heard, lot
of opportunity to move upquickly when you're executing on
(49:14):
things like that.
Lawrence Wong (49:16):
Absolutely.
Oscar Gonzalez (49:21):
In today's discussion, we unraveled some
crucial insights on processimprovement.
First and foremost, theimportance of relying on
concrete data rather than merefeelings or isolated incidents
cannot be stressed enough.
It's also become evident thatthe foundation of any successful
process lies in clear workinstructions and SOPs.
Without them, confusion anderrors are inevitable.
(49:44):
We also highlighted thecritical role of ongoing
dialogue between teams andmanagers.
Open communication fostersunderstanding and collaboration,
enabling teams to adjustchallenges and share successes.
On the topic of collaboration,the shared responsibility of
process ownership emerges as avital component.
Everyone, from leadership tothe front lines, has a part to
(50:09):
play in ensuring successfulprocess improvement.
Lastly, integrating theseinitiatives into broader
corporate goals and recognizingteams for their efforts creates
a culture of commitment andmotivation.
These key takeaways underscorethe multifaceted nature of
process improvement and thestrategies required for success
(50:32):
and to become lean by design.
Thanks for listening.
Don't forget to leave us areview, like and share on
Spotify, apple and GooglePodcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts, and if you'reinterested in being on the show
(50:53):
or becoming a sponsor, send us amessage at Lean by Design, at
SigmaLabConsultingcom.
Work harder before you Worksmarter before you work harder.
Oh my gosh, look at me.
Oh, you guys did some improvement.
That's adorable, you know it'slike.
Well, the whole idea is to makethis place function better.
Welcome to Lean by DesignPodcast.
I'm your host, Oscar Gonzalez,alongside my co-host, Lawrence
Wong.
We are former MBA classmatesturned business partners with
(00:20):
over 25 years of combinedexperience in life sciences,
from R&D through manufacturing.
Our experiences have shed lightinto the complex, ever-changing
challenges experienced by thisindustry and many others.
We took a risk quit oursix-figure paying jobs in Boston
Biotech and Pharma to startSigma Lab Consulting.
Journey with us as we explorethe relationship between people
(00:44):
and workflow design, the goal tolearn, inspire and deliver
practical tips to navigate theseever-changing challenges.
Stick with us and learn to worksmarter, not harder, and be
lean by design.
Consider this A recent McKinseysurvey highlighted that 70% of
(01:08):
process improvement initiativesfail to meet their objectives.
Imagine being part of a teamthat spends months perfecting
new workflows, only to find out,much like three out of four
companies, you're not gettingthe results you expected.
We're picturing a manufacturingfirm investing thousands in new
quality assurance proceduresonly to see error rates remain
(01:29):
unchanged.
These are not merehypotheticals, but real
scenarios faced by businessesevery day.
This alarming statistic will bethe centerpiece for our
discussion today.
Together, we'll exploreinsights and walk through the
pitfalls and best practices,emphasizing the need for
tangible data, opencommunication and the critical
(01:50):
role of leadership in ensuringsuccess, from organizations
reverting back to old habits,despite introducing new
processes, to teams overlookingcritical tasks, leading to
bottlenecks.
We're here to dissect it all,so grab your headphones and get
ready for a deep dive into whattruly makes project improvement
tick.
Welcome back to another episodeof Lean by Design Podcast.
(02:21):
I'm your host, Oscar Gonzalez,here with my co-host, co-founder
, mentor, friend Lawrence Wong.
Hello, oh yeah that's right.
We've been hanging out enoughthat we can start to create some
superlatives for each other, soI'm okay with that.
We work together.
We were in class together andnow we're recording podcasts
(02:43):
together.
So, constant, trying to be alittle bit of a ying and yang as
we build this organization andreally bring knowledge and
educate folks out there thatthings don't always have to be
the way that they are.
We have opportunities to makeadjustments and make
(03:04):
improvements.
What I want to talk about todayhas to do with that next step.
We go into process improvementinitiatives, whether or not it's
structured or just somethingthat we're doing internally as a
function of our corporate goalsor our functional goals.
(03:25):
But what do we do after that?
A lot of times, we often willfind that we set those process
improvement initiatives up, justlike you mentioned before,
where you set up a new processand then, a month later, you
have a backlog of stuff already.
Why is that happening?
(03:47):
Why is it that every time weset something up, we pat
ourselves on the back and thenwe go on to the next thing like
there's nothing new for us to dohere?
I'm here to say that there's alot of work that's left to be
done.
Lawrence, you're as familiar asanyone that in process
improvement it's a cycle.
(04:08):
You have to continue to improvethose processes and really
refine what you're doing.
Not only that, you have to havesome level of consistency.
What we fail to realize as we'reputting together this process
improvement initiative is thatthere is some culture and some
(04:29):
habits that need to form.
A lot of the issues that weexperience usually come from
some bad habit.
Where we go in, we get trainedand oh yeah, you don't have to
worry about that stuff.
All we do is just send it tothis email address and they take
care of it.
I can't tell you how often I'vehad those sort of directives
(04:52):
thinking so I just send this offand you leave off all these
different spaces that we'resupposed to fill out just
because you deem that it's notnecessary.
How does the other group that'son the receiving end of this
form or document, et cetera, howare they going to feel about us
(05:12):
half-assing the work here?
There's a fair bit of work thatneeds to happen to change the
habits that have been createdwithin the organization, to
change the mindset of thatfunction, of that department,
into one that is hey, let's doit right, let's do it right the
(05:36):
first time and then we don't getthis cycle of having to redo
work, because that kills thisman.
The amount of rework that'sbeing done on a daily basis is
astounding Not in any research.
You're going to have a lot oftesting and trials and research,
so of course you're going to bedoing repeats and this didn't
(05:59):
work out.
That didn't work out.
I think there are spaces thatwe can be a little bit more
knowledgeable about what we'redoing and why we're doing it,
and really putting the bestpractices, rather than focused
on how fast we're gettingsomething done or how quick the
data is coming or oh, it's theend of the day and I got a
(06:21):
little bit lazy.
Well, now you're a little bitlazy is adding another two days
of work.
That wasn't originally planned.
Lawrence Wong (06:31):
I think so what you brought up before, where you
improve something and thensomehow a month later,
everything falls off the wagonand everything goes back to
square one.
I think there are probably athousand reasons why this
happens.
Some thoughts that come to mindare well, maybe one, the
process that you were improvingwasn't that important, so maybe
(06:51):
people were paying attention toit.
I think two, maybe there'snobody owning the actual process
.
I think when a team buildssomething together, they have
more, I would say, skin in thegame because they've designed
this process and they have kindof more effort that they've put
in so they care about it more.
(07:12):
I think the other point too iswhere does this align with the
overall organization's goals?
Because you don't want a teamof people just working on things
that they improve and thenmanagement doesn't recognize
that.
I find that that happens a lotwhere there was a lot of pain
being felt by some of the endusers that are doing something
(07:34):
daily and they'll improvesomething, but then management
doesn't really acknowledge it ormaybe they don't see it.
It quickly gets, I wouldn't saythe word is ignored, but
there's more priority placed onother things.
I think those three things thatI mentioned come to mind when I
(07:58):
hear process improvementinitiatives failing after people
spend so much time on it.
Oscar Gonzalez (08:05):
Yeah, it's almost like oh, you guys did
some improvement, that'sadorable.
You know it's like well, thewhole idea is to make this place
function better and I think oneof the things that we tend to
ignore about those processimprovement initiatives is that
people stick around when theyfind that a company is actively
working to improve upon theprocesses they have.
(08:28):
I've had friends of mine thatyou know coworkers at the time
that have left organizationsbecause they said this company
doesn't have their ish together.
You know how does that feel asan organization to see that your
turnover is so high.
And, oh, we have the bestmanagers, the best you know
scientists, the best you knowpeople from this group, from
(08:50):
that group, but they're such astruggle because to do the day
to day work it's hard.
Oh, I don't want to do this,but why not?
Well, because I can't find thefolder that I'm supposed to do
it in the PowerPoint slide I'msupposed to add it in when this
is supposed to be due.
You know, the list goes on andon and on.
It's these processes that don'treally exist, and you know
(09:10):
these processes are designed togive you almost like a
step-by-step approach anddevelop that consistency in that
organization.
I mean that consistency is whatwe want.
That consistency is what drivesgrowth.
It's not speed.
Speed is going to probably leadto a bunch of errors.
I mean, think about anythingthat goes super fast.
Usually something bad happenslater.
Lawrence Wong (09:33):
So you know, in the wrong direction, right?
That's the other point too.
Oscar Gonzalez (09:36):
That's the other thing too.
That's the other thing too.
You know, take, these processesare built for a certain reason,
they're designed for a certainreason and you know, I think
it's important and I'll saycritical for folks to recognize
that.
And you know, come intoorganizations and think to
themselves what can be done.
And you know, and once that'sdone, how do we carry it out?
(09:59):
You know, I to your point abouthaving leadership input and
leadership acknowledgement.
I just received an emailyesterday from the top
leadership from one of my, oneof my clients, and it was from
the COO and everybody else, allof the all of the C level
(10:22):
leaders jumped in on applaudingthe efforts, on applauding the
work and it's not done.
You know that that type ofthing is not done.
And you know, we had, I've seenin my experience of okay, well,
what do we do next?
And I've even seen from seniorfolks well, we didn't really
(10:45):
think of how we want to measurethis.
Okay, okay, so time out.
We have gone three, four monthsinto process improvement
initiative.
There's kicking and screamingon changing any of the processes
.
You know, eventually we wereable to corral that and and
determine okay, these are thethings that we're going to
accomplish and then at the endof those three months, we have
(11:08):
no idea how to determine if itworked or not.
Come on, I mean, you know thisis.
You know, do we want to go Togo to work and struggle to do
the things that we are beingpaid to do simply because
there's bad process or becausewe don't feel that we have time
(11:31):
in our day to numericallycompute how many times an error
happens?
You know, let's say that youhave to fill out a documentation
to onboard a new consultant,but everybody is constantly
uploading that documentincorrectly.
And then, well, you know, thenthe blame goes.
(11:54):
Well, this team took so long toreview because, you know, I
don't even know why, and so wehaven't had a chance to onboard.
You know X person.
Well, there was errors in there.
And until we start to createthe metrics and the numbers and
recording of of errors andinconsistencies, you're never
(12:19):
going to improve that process.
All you're doing is having aninitiative that allows you to
create a new workflow, thatallows you to understand a
little bit further that cycle ofwork within the organization,
that department, et cetera, andthat's it, like it's just a
documentation, if you don't planto measure that change and
(12:44):
understand where you know,because every, every function,
every process is usually acombination of many processes
inside of it.
Now, the only way that thatwhole thing works is if the full
process is fluid.
So as you start to create theseerrors, you go where did this
(13:05):
error take place?
How often is this error takingplace over there?
And I'm speaking from anoperational standpoint, from a
facility standpoint.
For yourself, it's the sameidea.
You don't look at a whole, youknow a whole system full of
tanks and pipes and valves andet cetera, and go oh, this whole
(13:26):
system stinks.
No, you try to find where thaterror happened and you fix that
error.
In the same way, when you'relooking at you know operations,
when you're looking at processesthat organizations have,
internal processes, you know howwe communicate to vendors, how
we onboard people, how weonboard.
You know alliances, how we workwith those alliances.
(13:47):
These are all many processesthat occur within operations.
We have to take a look back andgo okay, well, we need to
measure this to know if theerrors are coming in still,
where are they happening?
Why?
Because you want to direct yourtraining, you want to direct
your learning, you want todirect your messaging to that
(14:09):
specific space.
You know it's sort of likehaving, you know, having an exam
in high school multiple choiceand everybody gets number 21
wrong.
You're not going to go throughevery single one that pretty
much everybody got right.
You're going to focus on theone that people got wrong and go
(14:32):
.
Let's talk about this.
This is what's happening.
Was the question worded badly,aka?
Was your process, was that partof your process not clear, or
are we just negligent?
You know what's causing us tomiss that specific question so
much in this course.
What is the cause of that inour process?
(14:54):
Why is that part of our process?
And we tend to not look at thatand it doesn't have to be
anything, you know, superintense.
I just posted a LinkedInmessage, really about that.
Take a post-it note, take apost-it note pad right next to
your desk.
(15:15):
If this is your day-to-day work,every time something comes into
your flow from somebody else orfrom another department or
function related to thisparticular operations process
and it's incorrectly filled out,it was incorrectly managed, it
was whatever it is.
Mark a tick, just a nice littletick.
(15:35):
You know.
One, two, three, four, cross itfive.
One, two, three, four, cross itfive, you know.
Next thing, you know, hey, thisweek we had 10 instances.
You know, I heard this fromleadership before, from senior
employees going yeah, I just,you know, I don't know that we
(15:56):
have the time.
Are you kidding me?
We don't have the time to markoff that something, that an
error is occurring, yet we wantto improve the process.
We're just going to come backand say it didn't work.
Yeah, that's not true.
Lawrence Wong (16:12):
It's ironic because people will complain
about, oh, this doesn't work,but yet they won't take the time
to actually measure, like, whyit's not working.
And you know to your pointabout measuring performance.
I think there's kind of twoscenarios where I see, you know,
you have some existing processin place, right, and you improve
the process, so there should bea new, I would say, baseline
(16:36):
performance.
And then so you're looking at,like, what your target is and
you're looking at how you'redoing which is your baseline,
and hopefully whatever you'vedone has gotten you over to
whatever that target is.
So you need to be consistentlymeasuring it, otherwise, what
did we just spend all this timedoing, right, otherwise it was
for nothing.
I think there's another scenariowhere I maybe it's more common
(16:58):
in the area that we work in isthere just simply are not
processes and metrics designedaround these like very, I would
say, informal things that peopleare doing.
And so when you design theprocess right, once you set that
up, it's okay to say that thisdoesn't work, but you have to
have some sort of target right,like, are you expecting, you
(17:20):
know, 100 entries with no error?
And once you start to see theerrors, like, you need to record
that so that you can take thenext step in improving it.
Oscar Gonzalez (17:28):
If you just set up the process more, than a
feeling, more than a feeling,and that actually came up where
they said, well, it's more of afeeling.
Okay, I just my eyes got so bigjust thinking okay, in the
future, if you want to reach outto your senior leadership and
(17:52):
say, oh, I need more people, Ineed a new piece of equipment, I
need this is the data thatyou've been looking for to go to
leadership and say, look howmany entries we had last month.
You know, in IT we had 72.
And I only have two people.
I only have one person andmyself on staff.
(18:13):
We can't respond to this loadwith the number of people.
I need more people, rather thanjust like, oh, there's just,
there's just so much, there'sjust so much to do.
Like, how can you tangibly takethat and expect to, you know,
receive $200,000 toward a newemployee because there's too
(18:34):
much stuff to do?
Look at the process, look atwhat you know, find out what
those errors are, like that thatyou know our go to I don't know
what it is our go to is I wantmore people, I want another
machine.
And I look at it like, well,you're operating right now like
a 40% success rate.
Like that's probably notsomething that someone would
(18:57):
want to spend another milliondollars on a machine, to add to
that Like it's not going to getbetter because you're getting a
new person or a new machine.
It gets better because youdesign a new process and you
educate yourself, you educatethe teams, and this idea of just
like well, it feels this way.
You have to remove all biases,because feelings are all biased.
(19:20):
You can have 10 solidlyexecuted experiments or you know
process.
You know that process thatyou've been working on, 10
executed flawlessly, and thenyou get one.
They catch you on the wrong day, catches you on a day when it's
raining and you stepped in amud puddle and you forgot your
(19:41):
coffee and it just sets youthrough the roof.
Guess what that one instance Nowtrumps all the times that you
got things right and you mightgo oh my gosh, I can't.
This is just too much like.
It drives me insane.
And the reality of it is itdoesn't really occur.
But because it feels this way,we have to get out of this, this
(20:03):
, this incessant desire to saywe feel this way.
Therefore, we should have a newperson a new, you know, without
having any kind of supportingdata to suggest why would you
need an extra person.
What you know it's oh, there'sso much work to do.
We need more people to reviewthis and this and this.
Well, why are there so manypeople to review that when, if
(20:24):
you look over the last year, theentries have not increased,
which means the errors areincreasing, which means there's
a lack of education, which meansthat people are jumping outside
the process, and these arethings that we actually can
directly influence.
Lawrence Wong (20:42):
We'll be right back after a quick break.
Is your team constantlyfighting fires?
Are you struggling withproductivity and think it's due
to inefficiency in youroperations?
These challenges can bedifficult to measure, but not
impossible.
Sigma Lab Consulting can helpyou define and prioritize the
issues that are negativelyimpacting your team.
We partner with stakeholders toredesign workflows so you can
(21:05):
work more efficiently.
Find out more atSigmaLabConsultingcom.
There's a lot of, I would say.
You know, I'm going to speak toit from like a management
perspective, where they they'relooking at a limited amount of
time, money and resources.
And if you're going to come tosome steering committee and say,
(21:28):
hey, we need more resources todo this for this process, and
you can demonstrate with datathat, yes, this is, you know, a
solution for the process to makeit better, that's one thing.
But, to your point, if you'rejust going to come and say, you
know that one instance out ofthe hundred times that we ran it
and you're going to complainabout that one time, there's no
(21:49):
justification to be able to, youknow, allocate the resources
and time to alleviating that,because it's clearly not.
It's a one off, it's not aroutine occurrence, right, right
, and you know, from yourperspective.
What are some good practicesthen?
Right, like, once, a continuousimprovement initiative is in
place.
What do you suggestpractitioners look at a month
(22:13):
out, six months out, a year out,like what are those, those key
considerations you would look atonce.
Something is in place.
Oscar Gonzalez (22:21):
Take small bites .
Process improvement is notsomething that happens in two
months and it's done.
As we mentioned before, it's aniterative process.
There's a lot to it andsometimes there's a lot to a
process.
We'll start taking small bites.
Start taking you know.
You already mentioned that youhave a feeling.
Okay, I'm assuming you alsohave a feeling of where things
(22:45):
tend to become issues.
It's probably not in the verybeginning, it's probably not at
the very end.
It might be just before thisportion or just before this
happens.
Either we lack a signature orwe lack numbers, or we lack you
know.
Whatever the case is, you havesome, a semblance of what is a
(23:06):
problem within that workflow.
So I would say, take a coupleof each of those you know.
If you have a 20 step process,look at step four.
You know 11, 13 and 20.
And you know, over the courseof the next couple of weeks,
have those steps in a number.
(23:27):
You know 10, 14, etc.
Etc.
And just next to it, how manyerrors are happening.
This is going to inform you ofwhere either the education for
this part of the process was notstrong enough or the there was
some miscommunication.
The documentation was not hadtoo much open space to really
(23:51):
guide people.
You know, sometimes when we'recreating these, these, these
work instructions or SOPs, wewant them to be broad, to cover
a large sweep of items, but wehave to make sure that they're
also executable.
If you know, we want toreference this one work
instruction for a plethora ofitems.
(24:14):
Perhaps keep it, you know, to alow number so that folks
actually know.
Okay, when I go in here, thisis the document that I need to
look at.
If we run this SOP or thesework instructions with a broad
stroke, sometimes that broadflexibility becomes more of like
a question in the mind ofsomebody that's trying to
(24:35):
execute that workflow.
You know just like is thisrelated to me?
I'm not entirely sure.
You know, it's a little bitconfusing, but again, it's the
education.
You know, take those smallbites and that, and that's
something that you would seethree to six months.
You know, one of the things thatwe tried to do was understand
what is the.
How often are new requestscoming into the system?
(24:59):
Couldn't get an answer.
How often are we creatingerrors?
Couldn't get an answer.
But the answer I did get wasthis person, this person, this
person, they don't know what todo.
Well, there's also no workinstructions.
So the fact that everybody elseis, you know for lack of a
(25:21):
better words they're, they'reknocking this, you know, out of
the park, or at least they'redoing an acceptable job.
You know, on the on the process, it's either luck or somebody
that trained them has a reallygood idea of how to run the
process.
Everybody else, they might benew.
So you can't just say like, oh,this person, this person, this
(25:42):
person you know, I heard it, Iheard it best from from a good
friend, ryan Dumblap withconflict, ish, don't look at the
person, look at the process.
Why has this been sochallenging?
And then, what is thereeducation been we're so
accustomed to, when someone asksus a question or someone does
(26:04):
something incorrectly, we don'teducate back.
I have a two year old son.
When something is doneincorrectly, I try to educate
him Instead of taking it out ofhis hand, telling him I
something needs to be done.
And, and you know, I try to gethim like oh, okay, okay, buddy,
(26:25):
like you know, is that whereyou thought that that goes?
Okay, this is trash, so let'sgo ahead and throw this in the
trash.
Can you know?
Not like hey, don't throw thaton the floor.
Why are you throwing and thengrabbing it and throwing it in a
trash?
Can Guess what?
He didn't learn anything.
So, just like that, we have to.
We have to assume that peopleare coming into our organization
with a very top level idea ofhow the processes work in this
(26:51):
organization.
It's up to us to actually go.
Oh, you know, that's.
I saw what you did there.
Like, just, you know, here'sour work instruction.
You know I, you know, ask youto look again at steps 14
through 16.
So it's really important for usto have blah, blah, blah before
this.
That's all I'm asking to do.
(27:12):
I'm not asking you to set up awhole 30 minute training and
read, but educate folks.
And the more that you have thisconversation, the more that you
have this kind of pushing outof the education, of this new
workflow etc.
The more people start to getaligned to it.
And not only that, the morepeople find themselves self
(27:34):
sufficient.
So when they're filling it outagain, they're like, oh wait,
she sent me.
I did that one thing wrong.
Let me go grab the workinstruction again and see what
I'm doing, because otherwise, ifyou're not, if you're just
blatantly ignoring all thatstuff, that that person's
probably not going to be in theorganization long.
But you know again this is justto reiterate we can't always
(27:54):
respond with like I'm trying tothink of the right word for it.
We need to respond with moreeducating.
You know, when people ask me,hey, Oscar, I don't know where
to find this or I don't knowwhere this was, I will direct
them usually to a dashboard andsay this is a great place to
start for a lot of the questionsthat you have.
(28:14):
And if you look over here andhere, you can find links to blah
, blah, blah and a report downunder here.
Now, the next time they havesome kind of similar question,
they know where to at leaststart and I can stop getting the
question, Oscar, where do I go?
And it's more of like hey, Igot here, but I can't seem to
find this exact work instructionOkay, maybe the nomenclature
(28:36):
was a little off, but working onthose small bits and small
chunks.
And again, it's a little bit ofnot just culture change, but
it's also changing our habits.
So instead of just trying toget rid of somebody right away,
spend the two minutes to educatethem so that they're not coming
(28:57):
back to you to ask the samequestion Because you never
educated them the first time.
You just took it and said I'lljust deal with it.
Yeah, I think that's not gonnateach anybody anything.
Lawrence Wong (29:06):
Education pieces is crucial, and it's not just
like a one-way street whereyou're just communicating.
This is the way that you dothings.
I think you're also giving achance to somebody who's in it
to respond back with oh, I'mhaving this issue.
Maybe it's something that weneed to update on the work
instruction.
Maybe it's some step in theprocess that needs to get
updated.
But having just thequantitative measures there and
(29:31):
not having the qualitativemeasures there, I think needs to
be addressed as well.
You can have metrics where itshows a certain number and your
success rate, but I think theother thing you should be doing
is creating a safe space forpeople to give that feedback so
you can take a look at thosecomments and make further
improvements, because I thinkwith those two pieces together,
then you get a more realisticpicture of okay, well, where
(29:53):
should we focus next if we wantto improve other aspects of our
operation?
Oscar Gonzalez (29:59):
That's exactly right.
I mean, we're looking at here,can we follow the process and
what is the quality of theoutput?
It's super crucial for us tounderstand and also distinguish
between those two things,because, on the one hand, you
don't want to get things thatare pushed through the system.
(30:21):
Everyone filled everything outsuper fast but the system has
advanced and now the quality orthe information that's put in
there is incorrect.
Yes, information is put inthere, but it's actually
incorrect.
Now you got to start thinkingokay, is there a step that we've
skipped?
That is allowing our quality togo down?
Because it's interesting, it'salmost like a catch-22 with
(30:44):
folks when they look at bigprocesses that go oh my gosh,
this takes so long.
You know what takes longergetting halfway through and
having something that wassupposed to be done in the very
beginning and not being done,and now you got to start all
over.
I love the phrase I don't knowwho coined it, but the fact that
we never have enough time to dothings right the first time,
(31:07):
somehow we find time to do itagain, to redo it.
Yeah, it blows my mind, becausewhen you have the information
available to you on how toproceed and we ignore those
things we're creating reworkwhich does not push.
(31:29):
It reminds me of rowing in crew.
I did crew at VCU when I wasthere for a little bit back in
early 2010s.
Around there, and if you're notworking together and you're
constantly slamming the ore andslamming forward, you're
(31:49):
basically checking the boat.
So instead of the boat going inone direction smoothly because
people are rowing, becausepeople are trying to go so fast,
their body weight pushes theboat backwards.
So you'll see a boat kind ofdoing this and to me, that's
what that rework is doing.
(32:10):
It's like progress, stop,progress, stop, progress, stop.
Lawrence Wong (32:14):
Right, it's not smooth and you're having to go
through a lot more friction thatyou necessarily need to.
So, to your point aboutcollecting the feedback and
holding the trainings and makingthe process measurable, who, at
the end of the day, a month out, six months out, a year out,
(32:36):
who is responsible for makingthose improvements once you've
completed the project?
Because I've seen this handleda number of ways, where you have
a team put together to do thecontinuous improvement and then
everybody scatters after so andso, gets their belt and now
they're like, okay, this is notmy project anymore, and then
they vanish, and then somebodyelse has to kind of deal with
(32:57):
some of the, I would say,maintenance issues that go on
with making sure the process isin line with what you want to do
.
But also these incrementalimprovements that can be done,
and they're not necessarilyproject level improvements, or
maybe, hey, just update thisdocument, or maybe let's place
this sample on this end of theroom and not the other one.
(33:18):
But who's responsibility is itto own some of these incremental
improvements at the end of theday?
Oscar Gonzalez (33:26):
All right.
So this is a hot take of yearsof experience.
Okay, I'm gonna give you alittle nugget here.
That's gonna sound verypolitical.
Everybody, now everybody has adifferent role to play.
If you're doing this processand you're finding that it's
(33:50):
clunky, you're finding that it'sdifficult, you don't have
logins, you don't have all thesetypes of issues that constantly
come up it is up to you tovoice them to the person.
If you have an apartment andyour apartment's in shambles, do
you keep it all in and then,when you move out, just be like,
oh yeah, that apartment sucks,so I decided to leave?
(34:10):
No, you, actually you saysomething to your landlord.
I think the people closest toit are gonna be those within
that given function and the linemanager.
That line manager needs to beable to support this, because
the question that comes to youis are you, do you want your
function to be more productiveas a function of external
(34:34):
stakeholders external from yourgroup, internal to the
organization, externalstakeholders air-proofing that?
Lawrence Wong (34:43):
We'll be right back after a quick break.
Oscar Gonzalez (34:46):
Do you suspect your life sciences company could
do things more efficiently?
Maybe you're seeing costlyworkflow issues or maybe the
work feels more difficult toperform than necessary,
affecting team around.
If any of this resonates, reachout to the team at Sigma Lab
Consulting for a freeconsultation on how we can
develop and launch a customsolution fit for your team.
(35:06):
Our consultants will build acustom workflow solution for
your team to reach peakefficiency.
Find out more atwwwSigmaLabConsultingcom.
You know this is the whole idea.
You know this is where you knowSigma Lab Consulting came from.
It's the idea of using Lean SixSigma principles, and one of
(35:26):
those at the very end of that iscontrol.
You improve, but then you needto control it.
How consistent are we ingetting this through the gate,
through the system?
And the less speed bumps thatyou have, the smoother that ride
is gonna be.
Over and over again.
Then, once you receive thatconsistency, once you achieve
that consistency, you know ayear out then you start to look
(35:49):
okay, we need to understand.
Now that we're consistent, wherecan we start to bring in those
timelines?
Is there anywhere?
Now understand, we may notalways have the availability to
bring in timelines by 20, 30,40%.
It's like saying hey, we knowyou have a grocery budget.
(36:10):
I want you to cut it in half.
Well, you have to actually eat.
So, no matter what, there'sgonna be a minimum that you
actually have to buy, and theremay be a minimum to a process.
Well, once we do this, we have acontract with that organization
that they have a five-dayturnaround.
You can't change anything aboutthat because that's their
(36:32):
process.
You can't change a CRO'sprocess.
That is what their process is.
You can maybe negotiate hey,can you stick us in here or
speed it up a little bit, takeus out of the queue?
But there's certain thingsinternally that you can have,
whether it's everything to beturned in by Thursday to be
available for Monday, one ofthose things.
(36:53):
But we have to constantly it'slooking at the initiative itself
, looking at where that processimprovement was.
It's gonna be a dialoguebetween the ground troops and
the manager.
The thing that we tend to do inthese meetings that we go with
our managers is we give updates.
That's what we do, is we giveupdates and where that's fine.
(37:17):
A lot of those updates andstuff sit in documents, they sit
in PowerPoints, they sit inExcel files, they sit in this
other database system.
All that stuff's available, butalso your work is a direct
result of all these other folksthat are in that organization.
You should probably talk abouthow has it been?
(37:40):
How is it feeling?
Are there a lot of errors?
And this conversation is withinthat particular function.
And you're right, usuallythere's a facilitator that is
putting together the processimprovement initiative.
That's very close to it from aprocess standpoint, very
unbiased.
They don't do the work, theyjust understand processes and
(38:02):
how to corral folks and how tobring that in, similar to the
things that we do.
Don't let them go so far, youknow.
Keep them somewhat aligned,keep them somewhat in the loop
of what's happening, so that youguys can have a conversation
and determine what's gonna bethe next step.
Well, why don't we have atraining that focuses just on
this?
(38:22):
And you guys mentioned thatthere's a couple of key
offenders.
Let's make sure that they're apart of the meeting, but we
extend the invitation toeverybody because we're finding
that this is the most commonerror and even though some folks
maybe did not cause that error,they may have only had one
opportunity.
So in that situation, you know.
(38:43):
So it's important to include alot of folks that have been
involved in that process to say,hey, we're finding a lot of
errors here and you don't makeit a dialogue, you don't have to
teach it like it's a lecture,you know, just raise your hand.
How has anybody, you know, dealtwith that particular situation?
Oh, last time I did that.
I contacted such and such andshe gave me a form that allowed
(39:06):
me to kind of, you know, jumpsteps because of blah, blah,
blah.
You know, talk to your people,talk to the talk to your
function and figure out, youknow, what is the right, what is
the right next step to solvethese issues and make sure that
we're educating folks, you know.
So they are ultimately the onesthat are responsible, but again
(39:27):
, it's everybody that has anystakeholder that has worked with
that function or with thatinitiative.
Should it be open to freelyspeak on challenges, successes
and the like?
Lawrence Wong (39:45):
Yeah, I think you know, in our conversation we've
kind of gone over looking at aprocess, from evaluating the
metrics to make sure that we'rethe improvement is actually on
track.
You know this training piece,which is really about educating
people that are new to theprocess or maybe unaware of some
of the changes.
We've talked about sharingresponsibility for the ownership
(40:09):
of the process and not havingall of that responsibility fall
on one person that may or maynot be part of the organization
and you know some set amount oftime.
I also think you know wehaven't talked about this yet,
but you know, to kind of wrap upthe conversation, what sort of
incentives do you think need tobe in place for all of these?
(40:31):
I would say good practices tocontinue.
You know, from a managementperspective, I feel like if you
have a group of process ownersthat are, you know, going above
and beyond and collecting thefeedback and improving their
teams, there should be somespotlight on these individuals
and these teams to say, hey, youguys are doing a, you know,
(40:54):
awesome job with this and hey,if there's any other areas
within your operation that youfeel is in need of some
improvement, we are now gonnaallocate the time, money and
resources to that, and so you'recreating this incentive for
them to kind of seek out theseproblems and to kind of solve
them.
What are your thoughts on?
(41:15):
You know the incentivestructure there and what have
you seen in the past to kind ofnot only sustain the current
improvement but to carry thatmomentum forward to maybe
another initiative that mightneed the same level of support?
Oscar Gonzalez (41:32):
I've seen more mature organizations actually
include that into theircorporate goals.
That their corporate goals is alevel of improvement because
the organization as a whole hasa mission to improve the
processes that they haveinternal and really tweak.
You know, there's things thatwe're doing every day, every
(41:54):
single day.
We have 15, 20 differentprocesses that we're executing
on in order to get our work done.
So what are these things thatare tedious, manual, prone to
error.
You know, look at those thingsand, to your point, having
leadership, acknowledge and tohighlight those things, shoot, I
don't know, have a pizza partylike they did in kindergarten.
(42:16):
A lot of times when things wentwell, we had a pizza party.
So you know, there's a lot ofdifferent things that we could
do and I think it's really up tothe organization and the way
that their culture isestablishing the praise for
identifying core processes inthe organization and what that
(42:37):
improvement looked like, and notonly that, it gives you a sense
of accomplishment, you know, Ithink that being able to do work
every day and not, you know, dothe face palm or, you know,
just kind of rolling the eyesbecause you got this other thing
that you know, this other emailcame in with a submission that
(42:58):
was just completely wrong.
Or you know I'm frustratedbecause you know no one's doing
this right.
I don't know how many timesI've heard that and nothing was
done about it ever.
And you know it's.
So.
Bring in these types ofincentive programs.
You know whether it'sacknowledgement, or, you know,
(43:19):
almost like a competition, like,hey, find your worst, yeah,
your compensation.
You know, and ideally, ideally,you're gonna feel it here
personally.
You're gonna feel weight offyour shoulders because you're
not coming into the office witha stack full of stuff that is
(43:42):
error and it stops you fromdoing the work that you need to
actually push that to the nextstage.
Oh, I can't do it because thisis all wrong.
You know, hopefully it gives asense of accomplishment and a
sense of desire to do that again.
You know the that's what's been,I think, special for me about
process improvement initiativesis that the seeing a light bulb
(44:05):
moment in people seeing wideeyes, that, wow, this was so
easy, I think.
I can't remember, I think, oneof the first videos I posted on
LinkedIn, I talked about worknot having to be hard.
If the field that you're in isdifficult to nature, that's one
thing, but to actually do yourjob and having just the actions
(44:30):
of doing your job in an officesetting let's just talk about it
as an office setting and it'sdifficult.
Like, doesn't that make youwant to scratch your head and go
why is something so basic or sostandard, incredibly
complicated or incrediblydifficult to successfully
initiate all the way through?
Why aren't we having thosequestions answered?
(44:53):
Why aren't we questioning it?
We go into organizations and wego well, this is how they do it
.
That's fine, but that mighthave been a process that was
implemented years ago, if not adecade ago.
Yeah, I think let's feelcompelled to have that question
to answer that.
Lawrence Wong (45:12):
Yeah, I think having, like you said, a pizza
party or some sort of incentivewhere you reward people for
going about making things betterright.
So there's a level of, I wouldsay, accomplishment that you get
from not only just improvingthe way that you do things, but
if you're able to influence howother people do things right,
(45:34):
and I think there's a level ofownership that you have.
And when you go about thesechanges, I also think that
there's a lot of opportunity,right.
If you are looking to, let'ssay, gain more responsibility,
this is one of the most obviousopportunities for, like driving
(45:57):
change management, demonstratingto the leadership.
Hey, I can, like take on thisresponsibility and I can
influence change, and that'sexactly what they're looking for
in somebody who's trying tomake things better and it opens
so many more doors for you.
I mean, we can probably go onand on about like chances that
we've taken in improving thingsthat have opened these doors for
(46:17):
us.
Oscar Gonzalez (46:18):
Yeah, absolutely that was.
I think that's a fantastic wayto end this conversation is
really, you're coming up andyou're young and you're curious
and you want to make an impact.
It doesn't have to benecessarily directly related to
some scientific discovery.
(46:40):
If you're able to find bettermethods that are more consistent
, and whether it's creating theprocess improvement or just
discovering those methods youknow and being able to execute
on those things, people arewatching and you're exactly
right.
We are direct examples of whenyou improve a process or improve
(47:00):
a system or improve a workflow.
People see that and they noticeit.
And then you do another one andthey go hey, this person's got
some chops, I like what they'redoing and I like what they're
doing for the organization.
And look at how well people arecommunicating with them about
all these issues.
You know it's not about being alistening ear to everybody's
(47:23):
troubles.
It's about thinking back andwhen you have an influence on
something, a direct influence onsome workflow, being able to
say that's a great suggestion,let me surface that Like I can
see where that works.
Or you know what?
Yeah, I did see that we're notseeing that.
It happens very often, so Idon't know that that's something
that we would do an initiativeon right away, but we are paying
(47:46):
attention to it.
At least being able to saysomething like that it creates a
different feel for theemployees that are there.
I mean, let's stop thisresentment with other functions
that happens in everyorganization and start looking
at the process instead of thepeople as the cause for that ish
(48:09):
.
I'm gonna steal from Ryan again.
He's gonna kill me.
Lawrence Wong (48:14):
There's something to be said about being able to
push change throughout yourorganization to the extent that,
like management will recognizethat, and then they'll start
pulling you in to things thatthey want you to work on.
Oscar Gonzalez (48:27):
Right, because you have a different perspective
.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, you know what Iappreciate the time.
This was great conversation andI hope our listeners get
something from it too.
You know, it's really importantto make sure that we're
questioning what we're doing andthe manner at which we're doing
it.
We spend a majority of ourearly adult lives through middle
(48:52):
adulthood, through middle age,middle age working, and if we
can't make it better for us orfor the people around us, it's
not gonna be fun.
It's gonna be a long, long road.
I will say that, and there's alot of opportunity out there Lot
of opportunity to be seen, lotof opportunity to be heard, lot
of opportunity to move upquickly when you're executing on
(49:14):
things like that.
Lawrence Wong (49:16):
Absolutely.
Oscar Gonzalez (49:21):
In today's discussion, we unraveled some
crucial insights on processimprovement.
First and foremost, theimportance of relying on
concrete data rather than merefeelings or isolated incidents
cannot be stressed enough.
It's also become evident thatthe foundation of any successful
process lies in clear workinstructions and SOPs.
Without them, confusion anderrors are inevitable.
(49:44):
We also highlighted thecritical role of ongoing
dialogue between teams andmanagers.
Open communication fostersunderstanding and collaboration,
enabling teams to adjustchallenges and share successes.
On the topic of collaboration,the shared responsibility of
process ownership emerges as avital component.
Everyone, from leadership tothe front lines, has a part to
(50:09):
play in ensuring successfulprocess improvement.
Lastly, integrating theseinitiatives into broader
corporate goals and recognizingteams for their efforts creates
a culture of commitment andmotivation.
These key takeaways underscorethe multifaceted nature of
process improvement and thestrategies required for success
(50:32):
and to become lean by design.
Thanks for listening.
Don't forget to leave us areview, like and share on
Spotify, apple and GooglePodcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts, and if you'reinterested in being on the show
(50:53):
or becoming a sponsor, send us amessage at Lean by Design, at
SigmaLabConsultingcom.
Work harder before you Worksmarter before you work harder.
Oh my gosh, look at me.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.