Gemba walks are a favorite Lean management technique, but they can be used by any leader to become more connected with the people and process they manage. During a Gemba walk, the manager visits the place where work is done to observe, show respect to the employees, and potentially identify opportunities for improvement. This post will outline the agenda items for such a walk.

Let’s begin by saying that having an agenda is what sets Gemba walks apart from the technique called Management by Walking Around (MBWA). MBWA is intentionally unstructured and fluid. Gemba walks, on the other hand, have a defined purpose and a specific process to be observed. Although you might not have an exact order of events because you don’t know what you will see, you absolutely should have a list of agenda items that you want to complete before, during, and after each walk. Here’s what should be on it.

Before we start chatting about who should be involved in strategy deployment, I think it’s important to point out the difference between strategic planning and strategy deployment. Most organizations have gone through a strategic planning exercise at one point or another, but very few can turn that plan into sustained action over the long-term.

Why?

Because creating the plan is only the first step to reaching an organization’s breakthrough goals. In order to be successful, that plan must be integrated into day-to-day activities and decision making. In other words, it must be deployed, and that’s a job for, well, everybody.

The Lean business management approach is used widely in healthcare organizations because cutting waste from health care delivery is not just a nice idea; it is an urgent imperative. Healthcare organizations are under tremendous pressure to provide the highest quality care for the lowest cost possible.

When resources are strained, Lean is a powerful solution.

Here are the functions that Lean software serves in a healthcare organization.

When people think of the Lean business management methodology, they often associate it primarily with waste reduction. The elimination of waste is indeed a significant goal of Lean organizations, and it does become a significant factor in decision making, but attention to waste reduction alone does not make an organization Lean. There are several factors that successful Lean organizations have in common.

Whether you’ve read a ton about various business methodologies and the philosophy of continuous improvement, or just a little bit, you can’t be blamed if you’ve started to wonder if Toyota developed every improvement technique.

The Hoshin Kanri method of strategic planning and deployment is brilliantly simple, yet powerful. It helps organizations navigate toward their “true north,” while practicing continuous daily improvement. However, like most great ideas, the devil is in the details. When we talk to leaders who have tried the approach but failed to get the desired results, the problem is usually not in the effort, but instead, in the execution. We’ve compiled a few tips to help make sure you achieve the intended outcomes.

Provide training about the approach and let people know what to expect and why Hoshin Kanri is different from other strategic planning tools.

I’m just going to put this out there – your employees have been through strategic planning exercises before. Anyone who’s been around the block at all has seen various goal setting schemes come and go. You’ll probably get enthusiastic nods while you’re in the meeting, but expect eye rolls and Dilbert jokes as soon as management leaves the room. Success depends on convincing your team that this is not the annual plan that gets sent out and then stuck in a drawer. A large part of the discussion should be focused on how Hoshin Kanri will guide everyday decisions and be a consistent part of how the organization is managed.

Hoshin Kanri is a popular approach to strategic planning and deployment. It provides a roadmap to achieving an organization’s most important three to five-year objectives, while at the same time achieving continuous, daily improvement.

(If the approach is new to you, start here for the background.)

While the Hoshin Kanri methodology is relatively straightforward, there are a few common errors that send it off the rails. We’ve looked to the literature to see what the experts have to say about each frequent mistake. Hopefully this post will help you avoid or correct them. (It will also make a handy reading list.)

DMAIC is said to be the Six Sigma methodology’s roadmap to improvement. It is one of the core tools of the approach, but organizations also use it as a standalone improvement technique. We have clients in almost every industry from healthcare to construction who have achieved quantifiable impact against core business metrics by using this technique. Here are some of the questions we get asked about it most often.

Kaizen events are a frequent subject of discussion when we are meeting with potential clients or others who are interested in the technology that powers improvement. Although we talk to folks in almost every industry, almost everyone we talk to has one thing in common. They’ve lived through a disastrous - or at least ineffective - Kaizen event. We’re not surprised because there are lots of ways that rapid improvement blitzes can go off the rails. We don’t want that to happen to you, so we’ve assembled a list of our most important advice for making your Kaizen event a smashing success.

Then the Lean management methodology was first developed, based largely on the management techniques of Toyota and other Japanese automakers, it was mostly used in manufacturing. Today, the approach has been embraced by almost every industry. Along the way, software has been developed to support the approach. When we chat with people about the details of these Lean management systems, we are often asked some standard questions. Here are the answers.