AWAKEN: Create New Awareness
We kickstart phase 2 by leading a training on people systems, new ways of working individually and collaboratively in teams, and those soft skills we believe are required to
make any change management process successful.
In our experience, these early efforts to prepare an organization for transformation go a long way to make sure that your journey ahead is smooth and fruitful. This work is what provides a strong foundation upon which to build later sessions on Lean Six Sigma learning.
With new awareness of wiser, more effective ways of working, people have a deeper understanding of the “Why” behind the “What” of the lean learning engagement. This helps to create alignment around the real need for change as well as inspire hearts and minds. Unlike traditional training programs that typically begin and end with classroom training only, this phase involves the following activities, many of which are hands-on and experiential:
Our classroom training includes three modules. The first focuses on preparing teams for transformation and is focused squarely on change management. The second creates awareness of basic Lean Six Sigma concepts and methodologies. If applicable, we lead your team through a third module to orient them to the evolving digital landscape and introduce new digital technologies and possibilities.
A “Value Stream” is a set of all activities (both value-added and those technically considered “waste”) that are performed to fulfill a customer need. (The customer here can be either the internal customer or the external client). In this activity, we identify a suitable value stream to map and use this as a pilot study. At this stage, we also identify cross-functional team members who can support this study in an ongoing way.
This is a hands-on, collaborative activity during which we guide your team in walking the gemba (a term meaning the actual workplace in Japanese) to determine the value stream’s current state. This helps employees see and feel Lean theory in action and focus on identifying waste in the end-to-end value stream. By the end of this activity, your team members will be able to draw an accurate current state value stream map with wastes (time, energy, and resources) clearly identified.
Here, we provide a brief orientation on how to develop an ideal future state and follow this up with actual visual mapping of the future state. This activity encourages your team members to select key focus areas of improvement within the value stream that you later use to form the basis for your Value Stream Improvement Plan. In some cases, in addition identifying opportunities to eliminate waste in your value stream, you will see opportunities for digitalization. We help you decide which activities, if any, to automate or support with new technologies. This structured set of activities helps accelerate your team’s learning and stay aligned on the entire purpose of the purpose (as well as their role in the change work).
This phase typically requires 5 days depending on your leadership team’s resource commitment.