Tag Archives: operational excellence

Do’s and don’ts of managing autonomous teams (or Super7’s) – part V

Managing autonomous teams, or Super7 teams, requires a different management style than managing regular teams. Here’s the last part the key do’s and don’ts from my practice as a Lean Super7 consultant. And, in my opinion, this one is the most important.

Perhaps most importantly, Do: Use your own strengths and talents.
Don’t: Put all your efforts on improving your weaknesses.

The best advice I can give any manager is: be the best person that you can be. Use your talents as much as you can. If you only focus on improving your weaknesses, you won’t be able to perform at your best. You will be most effective when you do the things you like to do and use your own unique talents while doing them. When faced with a transition from a more traditional organization towards autonomous teams or Super7’s, you might at first only see those elements that are difficult for you, that you don’t like and where you can’t use your talents. But if you give it a chance, if you start experimenting, you might find that there is a way to use your strengths in the new way of working. In my experience, most managers will find a way that fits them. Of course, managing autonomous teams or Super7’s will not be the perfect job for everybody. It is important for your happiness and for your chances to success that you keep searching for an environment where you can do the things you like and use your talents at the same time. And in some cases, this may mean a change of career. But, there isn’t just one way or one perfect style of managing autonomous teams. Take a chance, experiment, and you might just find the style that works for you and for your teams.

Menno R. van Dijk.

Do’s and don’ts of managing autonomous teams (or Super7’s) – part IV

Managing autonomous teams, or Super7 teams, requires a different management style than managing regular teams. Here’s part four of the key do’s and don’ts from my practice as a Lean Super7 consultant. This week, we’ll look into the competences that an output-manager needs. When your department introduces Super7 Operations, or other forms of autonomous teams, this may help you to adapt to the new situation you’ll face as a manager.
Do: Adapt to the new situation and experiment with the required competences
Don’t: Expect this change to be easy
Other skills and behaviors are asked from a manager when an organization makes the transition from a classical, input steered organization towards autonomous teams or Super7’s.
Typical skills are:
• Facilitating style, focused on output
• Creativity in developing improvement experiments together with the team
• Drive to improve continuously
• Group focus instead of focus on the individuals
• Flexibility, managers should be able to manage each other’s teams
• Working fact-based, using facts and figures for planning and forecasting
• Analytical; being able to interpret data to challenge the teams and to identify improvement opportunities
Typical behaviors are:
• Proactive in finding improvement opportunities and in implementing improvements
• Focused on customers and customer processes
• Inspiring the team to be customer focused and innovative
• Helping teams and team members in their journey towards autonomy

Keep an eye out for the last post in this series: the most important tip will follow shortly

 

Menno R. van Dijk

 

Do’s and don’ts of managing autonomous teams (or Super7’s) – part III

Managing autonomous teams, or Super7 teams, requires a different management style than managing regular teams. Here’s part three of the key do’s and don’ts from my practice as a Lean Super7 consultant. This week, we’ll discuss the do’s and don’ts of management metrics and dashboards for autonomous teams. When your department introduces Super7 Operations, or other forms of autonomous teams, this may help you to adapt to the new situation you’ll face as a manager.

Do: Use quantitative metrics on output performance

Don’t: regard output as a Boolean function (i.e. true or false, the output has been delivered or the output has not been delivered)

Many managers in Financial Services Operations are used to manage by spreadsheet. When switching to output steering, they might tend to overcompensate. Instead of managing productivity, Fisrt-Time-Right and throughput time, they just evaluate whether the output has been delivered or not. The outcome is black or white, good or bad: either the team made it, or they didn’t. Managers should use quantitative metrics to measure the output. When the target output hasn’t been met, the team should be able to see by exactly how much the target was missed. This allows learning and evaluation of improvement experiments.

Do: Use the well-known Lean steering metrics to evaluate performance and to give the team insight in where they can improve. (.e.g. Efficiency (productivity, availability), First-Time-Right percentage, throughput time)

Don’t: Use these Lean steering metrics to manage the team on a daily basis.

As said, many managers in Financial Services Operations are used to manage by spreadsheet. These spreadsheets may still be of value for autonomous teams or Super7’s. However, the teams should only be managed on their performance against the daily output target. All other metrics should be used to aid in the team’s continuous improvement efforts. Dashboards and spreadsheets give valuable insight in where the autonomous team or Super7 can improve.

Do’s and don’ts of managing autonomous teams (or Super7’s) – part II

Managing autonomous teams, or Super7 teams, requires a different management style than managing regular teams. Here’s part two of the key do’s and don’ts from my practice as a Lean Super7 consultant. When your department introduces Super7 Operations, or other forms of autonomous teams, this may help you to adapt to the new situation you’ll face as a manager.

This week: protecting the boundaries of the team – with more than one different meaning of the word boundaries.

Do: actively manage the boundary conditions, keep optimizing

A manager can improve on performance by setting and adjusting the boundaries. As a manager, you are responsible for how much resources can be used to finish the task. You set the boundaries, for instance on how much flex-hours can be used this month. But don’t get complacent if everything keeps running smooth: too much green lights is also bad. Green lights tell you that everything is perfect, while there is always room for improvement.

Don’t: overload the system, prevent overburden (or in Japanese Lean-speak: Muri)

In many classical operations departments, managers used rigid controls, like hourly standardized work packages. These confine creativity and hinder team work, but they protect the employees also from over-burden. A Super7, or any autonomous team, won’t have this protective cage. Keeping the workload manageable is your responsibility as a manager. A team with performance that is up to par (i.e. 100% productivity in productive time and less than 20% unavailability) should be able to get the work done within the time they have. If they can’t finish on time day after day, you may have under-capacity. You as a manager should protect your team from overburden.

Do: Offer help by adding flex capacity from within the boundaries of Super7, rather than by adding extracting people from other Super7’s.

A recent study into Super7-effectiveness show that help by asking a team member to come back from home is better that help by asking a team member of another team to step in. Help from within their own team is appreciated more, and increases the team bond. With flexible (min/max) contracts, it is possible to increase available capacity without adding people to the group. An unexpected study result it may be, but it appears that a strong independent Super7 team is better than two Super7’s that work closely together.

 

Hope you enjoyed this part II – part III will follow shorty.
Menno R. van Dijk.

Do’s and don’ts of managing autonomous teams (or Super7’s)

Managing autonomous teams, or Super7 teams, requires a different management style than managing regular teams. From my practice as a Lean Super7 consultant, I deducted several key do’s and don’ts. When your department introduces Super7 Operations, or other forms of autonomous teams, this may help you to adapt to the new situation you’ll face as a manager.

In the following weeks, I’ll share them with you on this site (www.cooperationalexcellence.nl). This week, I give you the first two sets.

Do: Let go, let the team make their own mistakes

Sometimes, the team manager sees problems that the team hasn’t recognized yet. A pro-active team manager might want to go and fix it directly. Fix it for the team, to help them along. However, studies show that teams that are allowed to make their own mistakes are more effective and more successful. You as a manager can warn the team, but the team must be left free to fix it or respond to it.

Don’t: Leave the team alone.

A team manager can let go too much. An autonomous team needs management support. They may not need detailed steering, but they do need coaching, facilitating and help in solving problems beyond their own circle of influence.

Do: Offer help when the team asks for it – ask questions later.

An autonomous team is capable to deliver results. Even more than the sum of what each individual could deliver. But there is a limit. When the team says they can’t do it, the team manager should help. What he can do to help depends on the specifics, but could include: add capacity, move resources from one team to another or approve lower output for that day.

Don’t: Always offer help when the team asks for it, without evaluating afterwards.

For example: a team indicates that they can’t meet today’s target, and the team manager accepts that some of the work is shoved foreword to the next day. The manager is right to offer help, but he should evaluate the average productivity of that day. Should it be less than normal, he/she should evaluate this with the team. And, the next time he can demand that the team steps to at least normal pace when they ask for help.

I will share more do’s and don’t in the next couple of weeks. In the mean time: keep experimenting!

Menno R. van Dijk.

Super7 Operations seminar for Lean and Operational Excellence professionals – a report

To present for an audience of Lean and Operational Excellence professionals: quite a daunting task! Last week, I was invited to discuss Super7 Operations with the experts of one of the leading Dutch consulting firms. Consultants, managers and directors: You would expect them to ask challenging questions – and they did. I really enjoyed the discussion with such sharp and experienced professionals. And, I regard it a great compliment that they were impressed with the results we achieved with Super7 Operations. And that they will be reading my book as a result.

As an author, I regularly get request to speak about my book on Super7 Operations. In most cases, I’m asked as an expert, and the audience is interested in how it works. This session was much more a dialogue, where the consultants shared their own experiences with Lean and Operational Excellence.

Key learnings from this expert seminar:

  • The small autonomous teams of Super7 Operations could be used outside financial services: for instance, energy companies have similar back-office operations, as do some telecom providers. And perhaps even healthcare? However, for logistics and production will benefit more from the original Lean approach from the Toyota Production System.
  • It is important to involve the Works Council in the pilots. There may be concerns about the flexibility in hours that is needed to work TITO. Also, changing individual performance reviews into team performance reviews may raise questions. On the other hand, in our experience at a leading Dutch retail bank, we have found that the Works Council is enthusiastic about the increased responsibility and autonomy for the employees.
  • Other Dutch retail banks and insurance companies may be interested in Super7 Operations and consultants could play a crucial role in spreading the idea of Super7 Operations across the Financial Services sector.

I’m looking forward to the next seminar for Lean and Operational Excellence professionals.

Menno R. van Dijk

Improve performance without performance dashboards

Can you improve performance without operational dashboards? As a consultant, I regularly speak with team managers about their team’s improvement efforts, or the lack of thereof. One cause of stalling improvement that keeps popping up is: “I don’t have accurate data. I can’t do anything about team performance without accurate data.” Of course, performance dashboards can be important for many reasons, for one to give focus to your improvement efforts. But is the absence of performance dashboards a reason not to improve? It doesn’t have to be.

An operational team should be given the responsibility to improve their work on a daily basis. Improvement should be their habit. It should feel weird not to be experimenting at any given time. This works best with autonomous teams, which work together on one common daily goal. The Toyota Kata has taught us that these teams should do frequent, small scaled experiments. And that it is equally important that the team learns from each experiment, as that the performance actually improves.

To start improving, a team needs time (a bit of overcapacity is needed to improve), and direction. The direction – what should the team’s improvement efforts focus on – could be derived from operational dashboards. But, often just as well, the direction could follow from a vision, translated into ‘target states’ (see The Toyota Kata). In Lean companies, the vision would be translated through ‘policy deployment’ or ‘hoshin kanri’ in Japanese, other companies would use for instance year-plans.

With time and direction in place, all a team needs is resourcefulness and a whiteboard. Well, you could do without a whiteboard, but in my experience it’s a great tool for improving and experimenting.

As a manager, ask your teams to start improving with what they know now. In parallel, you can work on perfecting your operational dashboards. Don’t wait for perfect dashboards. Start improving today.

 

Menno R. van Dijk.

Super7 Operations - making it work

Soft Skills for cooperation in Super7 teams

What soft skills are needed for cooperation in Super7 teams – what soft skills are essential for a team to reach cooperational excellence? The implementation Super7 Operations (link) within the operations departments of one of the leading Dutch retail banks is in full swing. Many things need to be taken care of in the preparation phase: small, autonomous production teams (Super7’s) arent’ formed overnight. But one thing in particular is essential for a smooth introduction of Super7 Operations: attention to the soft skills that are needed for working together in a small, autonomous team.
In our experience, the most important soft skills for cooperation in Super7 teams that required training in preparation of Super7 Operations are:
1. Giving and receiving feedback
2. Understanding the development of autonomous teams
3. Effective meetings and making decisions as a team

Let’s look at these subjects in a bit more detail:
1. Basics of giving feedback
• Describe what behavior you have observed
• Explain what effect this behavior has on you
• Check if the person you give feedback understands you
• Indicate what behavior you would like to see

2. Basic development steps of autonomous teams
• Phase 1: group of individuals
• Phase 2: a developing team
• Phase3: a cooperating team
• Phase 4: an autonomous team, striving towards cooperational excellence

4. Basic elements of effective meetings and making decisions as a team
• Use team roles in meetings: chairperson, time keeper, voice-of-the-customer
• Make sure all items on the agenda are well prepared
• Assign a fixed amount of time to each item on the agenda
• Start with giving all participants the chance to say something about the subject – finish the initial round before starting the discussion
• Use a white board or flipchart to write down the most important points
• Keep the focus on solutions and improvement ideas
• Make sure everybody gets their say
• Keep the discussion focused
• Don’t take minutes, write down actions (what, who, when)

For the team managers, the change from traditional Operational Management to Super7 Operations can be even more dramatic than for the team members themselves. More on this change and the required skills for managing Super7 Operations can be found in my book: Super7 Operations – The Next Step for Lean in Financial Services. More information about this book can be found on www.super7ops.com

How to apply Kata Coaching in implementation of Lean Super7 Operations

 

Kata coaching is especially useful in the implementation of Super7 Operations. The theory and examples of Kata coaching can be found on www.lean.org/kata or in the excellent books and you-tube posts of Mike Rother. Recently, I’ve applied Kata coaching during an implementation project of Super7 Operations.  Every week, I used the Improvement Kata questions to challenge the team managers to make one improvement step on each of the 7 principle elements of Super7 Operations. And in turn, the team managers have used Kata coaching questions to get their teams to improve. The effect of applying the Kata coaching questions to the 7 principles of Super7 Operations was impressive: not only did this lead to exiting improvement experiments on the shop floor, but it had a profound effect on morale as well.  I have found that Kata coaching is an effective way to get and keep things moving towards the desired direction. It just isn’t possible to implement perfection in one blow, and this isn’t any different for Super7 Operations.

The 7 principles of Super7 Operations:

The 7 principles of Super7 Operations

Principles of Super7 Operations

  1. Customer is central: The Super7 team has a goal that is relevant for the customer.
  2. Flexibility in skills and capacity
  3. Team manager steers on output and is supportive to the Super 7 team
  4. Daily rhythm and quick response to disruptions
  5. Super 7 team is autonomous in work distribution and in imporving the way of working.
  6. Continuous improvement of performance, supported by planning and forecasting.
  7. Visible management to create openness, transparancy and Super 7 team pride.

 

The Kata Coaching Questions (my own free interpretation – please refer to www.lean.org/kata for the standard):

  1. What does perfection look like to you on this element of Super7 Operations?
  2. How does the current situation look like?
  3. Where do you want to be next week on the development of this element of Super7 Operations and, what obstacles are in your way?
  4. What action or experiment will you undertake to get to where you want to be next week?
  5. What do you expect from this action?
  6. When will be able to evaluate what you have learned from this action or experiment?And afterwards:
  7. What did you learn from this action / experiment
  8. …start again at step 1

 More on Super7 operations can be found in my book: Super7 Operations – the Next Step for Lean in Financial Services.

Super7 Operations - the Next Step for Lean in Financial Services ; a book by Menno R. van Dijk

Super7 Operations – the Next Step for Lean in Financial Services ; a book by Menno R. van Dijk

Maturity Model for Autonomous Super7 Operations Teams

At this moment, Super7 Operations (link) is applied within several operations departments of one of the leading Dutch retail banks. A lot has been learned since. The change from strict daily steering to small autonomous teams –and at the same time keeping all the good things from LEAN and Operational Management – has asked a lot from both the shop-floor employees and their managers. What we noticed is that teams go through several phases, or maturity levels, in their journey towards autonomy. And, team managers need to grow towards supportive leadership and output steering – this too doesn’t happen overnight. 

When we recognised this, it became clear that a maturity model would be very helpful. With this, the transition can be broken up into smaller, more manageable steps. And, for each maturity level, specific training and coaching can be developed to support both managers and Super7 teams.

The maturity model is still a work in progress, and at the moment only available in Dutch. If you’re interested nonetheless, you can request a copy by replying to this post. And, I expect to be able to post an English version of the Maturity Model for Autonomous Super7 Opertions Teams on this site shortly.

I would like to hear your experiences with the development of autonomous teams. You are invited to join the discussion on Super7 Operations on http://www.super7ops.com/