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What are the characteristics of a kaizen facilitator?

Kaizen events are an integral part of the continuous improvement culture. The success of those events depends on many factors, such as the characteristics of the kaizen facilitator. This person is responsible for leading the event, among other things. Experience leading events and continuous improvement knowledge are not the only characteristics that a facilitator needs. What are the characteristics of a kaizen facilitator?

Characteristics of a kaizen facilitator

Whether you are looking to hire or contract, the following are most haves’ characteristics. The facilitator must be courageous. In other words, a person who is comfortable having difficult conversations and asking tough questions. While being brave in the name of the event’s success, a coach is respectful and supportive.

Whether you are looking to hire or contract, the following are most have characteristics. The facilitator must be courageous. In other words, a person who is comfortable having difficult conversations and asking tough questions. While being brave, a coach is respectful and supportive.

Communication is another soft skill that is critical for success. The ability to convey information in a clear, simple, and concise way. A person who practices active listening and can do so with people of different levels in the organization or levels of education. If they cannot explain something in simple words, it will not translate knowledge effectively. Explain something complicated without too many technical words is an elusive skill for many.

Emotional intelligence skills are another characteristic of a kaizen facilitator

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions and those around you. People with a high degree of emotional intelligence recognize and understand their feelings and how they can affect other people. The emotionally intelligent person is skilled in four areas: identifying emotions, using emotions, understanding emotions, and regulating emotions.

A facilitator must motivate, make others feel comfortable, overcome challenges, and manage conflict. Therefore, the ability to understand and manage their emotions to influence others in positive ways is critical. Social skills such as interpersonal relationships with empathy, compassion, and humility are essential for this job. With them, the facilitator will be coaching others to learn and be their best self.

For instance, understanding human psychology and change management are key to influence people and drive a successful event. An honest and trustworthy individual who gives people credit for their ideas will navigate through the challenges of the event with greater chances of success.

A facilitator must have technical skills

A continuous improvement facilitator without technical skills and lean knowledge is not a good bet. Knowledge about continuous improvement and proven practical experience is non-negotiable. Moreover, problem-solving, time management, organization skills, and team building are also crucial. An energetic and passionate about continuous improvement person is the ideal driver for the cultural transformation from traditional to continuous improvement, one kaizen at a time.

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Facilitators, their role in a kaizen event

A kaizen facilitator has various tasks to complete, for example keep the team focus, engaged, and energized.

Various roles are critical for a successful continuous improvement event. One of those roles is the event facilitator. He or she is responsible for leading the event, but that is not the only responsibility.

What are the responsibilities of the facilitator?

Most of the time, the facilitator is also the kaizen or continuous improvement event planner. As an event planner, they organize and prepare all the activities related to the event. For instance, the facilitator works with the event leaders to establish the scope of the event and develop the charter. Also, they identify and gather resources and materials while keeping everything under budget.

During the event, the facilitator has a couple of responsibilities that can make or break the activity. A CI event requires a good coach that guides the team by asking questions. Through these questions, he or she helps the team to see and approach problems using lean thinking. In other words, participants learn lean thinking by doing it.

While executing the different steps of the event, the use of CI tools is common. Because not all team members know those tools, they learned them from the teacher or facilitator. This means that during the event, they develop team skills.

Keep the team motivated

Unfortunately, not everything always goes as planned. Sometimes, participants do not show interest or lose focus during the event. When that happens, it is time to put on a different hat. This time the facilitator will act as a motivator and cheerleader. Accepting change is never easy. Therefore, people need to understand the purpose of the event. Furthermore, why they are participating in the event and what is in there for them.

Even when event participants know those things, keeping them motivated and engage in the activities is a tall order. A good facilitator will take time to learn about their audience before the action starts. Knowing ahead how they learn better and their learning type will go a long way to keep them motivated.

Some parts of a continuous improvement or kaizen event can be bored. Not everybody enjoys sitting in a room for hours or analyze information. The facilitator needs to work hard to keep those individuals engaged and energized. A way to do this is to acknowledge those challenges and the accomplishment of milestones during the activity. Celebrate those accomplishments as all small wins. Keep the audience active by incorporating exercises and having them assisting you in some parts. For example, participants can help as scribers.

Facilitators also manage conflict

Another situation that is inevitable when we are dealing with change is conflict. Some people will be more open than others to accept change or participate in activities that lead to change the status quo. Those groups may disagree on the causes or solutions. When that happens, the facilitator acts as a mediator to help those groups to reach a consensus.

There are a few other things that can cause some trouble. For instance, when technology fails, it must pivot and adjust the training to the new circumstances. The same happens when the original training plan is not working.

Help the team succeed is the most important job of the facilitator

The event facilitator’s most important job is to help the team succeed. Teaching and coaching while focusing on the kaizen’s objective is a critical part of that job. Also, to remove any obstacles to learning and keep the group energized. Motivate and show respect by focusing your attention on whoever is sharing an idea or commenting on a subject. Celebrate small wins and praise teamwork and collaboration. In other words, create a positive and safe environment that invites people to participate and be the best they can be!

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Lean champions, who are they?

Every activity, movement, or new initiative needs advocates, people that support and promote the cause. Continuous improvement or lean is not the exception. The journey to transform the company will be easier if you have lean champions in your team.

Why you need them?

As we plan the continuous improvement rollout, we spend a lot of time on how to earn the trust of our employees. During previous years, most of the staff changed. At the time the plant changed its business operation model, many people retired. For that reason, we hired new supervisors and managers. The concern of the most senior members of the staff was that people could have trust issues.

Accept changes is never easy, especially when you tell people with an average of 22 years on the job that they will learn new ways to do it. Knowing all the changes from the previous year, how could they trust that we were not trying to fire people? Our lean coach suggested identifying team members known for being natural leaders to help. People feel at ease with trusted leaders. Therefore, they come into the conversation with less apprehension. An advocate that is considered trustworthy by the team is the best way to gain their attention.

What are lean champions?

A lean champion is an advocate for the continuous improvement journey. He or she knows the tools and helps others to use them. Moreover, they promote lean thinking not only with words but with their actions. In general, they will work closely with their coworkers to identify areas for improvement. Also, they will guide and support the implementation of improvement ideas. Most of the time, champions know the process very well and have experience in different functions. That experience helps them to ask the right questions and guide their coworkers to learn. However, it is not critical to be a subject matter expert.

This group is more than promoters for the lean cause. They will assist in continuous improvement events or even facilitate them. Of course, they will need a coach to learn the ropes of the trade before going solo.

Lean champions may have different levels of experience, education, and qualifications. People with previous continuous improvement experience are candidates to be champions. However, not having experience in lean is not a deterrent to being a champion. After all, continuous improvement is not about using tools but about the people and their learning experience. For that reason, there are some characteristics or traits that have more weight than knowing the tools.

What are the characteristics of the lean champions?

Attitude and communication skills are among the most meaningful characteristics of members of this group. They are positive people with the ability to adapt, avid learners, and enjoy helping others. Their communication skills are above average. They can express ideas and simply and clearly. Also, they can adapt their communication to different audiences.

Honesty, integrity, consistency, and empathy are critical character traits for members of this group. Champions do what they say and have no problem admitting they don’t know something. Of course, they have a strong will to succeed. But also, they can cope with challenges and setbacks. The ability to step back for a second to see the big picture and reflection as a learning tool is part of their skills.

Lean champions don’t need to have any leadership positions. The best I worked with were team members with a strong desire to learn and contribute to the company’s success. Also, they have their egos under control and value the power of teamwork and collaboration. These people don’t look to be in the spotlight at all times, although they feel comfortable doing it.

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Improvement suggestions program, what is it?

A solid foundation of employee involvement activities is critical to achieving the continuous improvement goals. One of those elements is the improvement suggestions program.

What is an improvement suggestions program?

An employee suggestion program gives your employees a formal way to express their ideas to improve the processes of the workplace conditions. Also, it is a way to channel those ideas from the work floor to management.

A well manage suggestion plan serves two purposes. The first is to formalize the suggestions process. The second is to provide documentation of individual contributions. With the former, leadership can prioritize ideas aligned with the company goals. The ladder provides documentation for the year-end performance review.

Are you ready to lunch this program?

Why do you want to lunch an improvement suggestions program? If you want to check a box from your to-do list, do not do it. Are you receiving a steady number of suggestions? If ideas are not flowing from employees to supervisors and managers, maybe you are not there yet. On the other hand, if enthusiasm is growing and team members are communicating ideas constantly, it is time to launch your suggestions program.

Characteristics of an improvement suggestions program

But the improvement suggestions program is much more than a suggestions box. Above all, careful design of the process is important. For instance, the following are factors that describe a successful suggestions plan.

Hassle-free process – Make it easy to participate by providing a simple suggestions form.
Clear and fair rules – Same rules for everybody, explain how you would assign a value or impact to the results of the estimated improvements. Moreover, explain the rewards and recognition system tied to the suggestions propositions and results. Also, establish guidelines for the type of topics open to suggestions and how ideas are prioritized.
Quick feedback – Establish a standard, such as responding to suggestions within one week. Even more, create the standard for what information should be included in the response and how the feedback will be provided.
Program promotion and evaluation – Check how the system is doing versus the standards and look for areas for improvement. Furthermore, create a measuring or evaluation system and publish the results. For example, the total number of suggestions and participation percentage

Don’ts

A badly designed program will hurt your continuous improvement transformation. Once it loses credibility it will be undertaken to win it back. Put simply, avoid hurting the continuous improvement journey and the business bottom-line. The following are mistakes that should avoid.

Create a complicated form requesting too much information.
Take too much time to answer, don’t be the bottleneck of the process!
Have a homogenous evaluation team, include people from different functions and levels.
Fail to follow the program rules.

Summary

Team involvement activities are critical to achieving improvement goals in the areas of quality, cost, and delivery. For that reason, their engagement is decisive to achieve the continuous improvement goals. Certainly, it is important to create and maintain a fair and simple program that motivates participation.

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Kaizen event do’s and don’ts, behaviors for success.

The ten ground rules for practicing continuous improvement events exist to ensure the right environment to encourage participation exists. Therefore, is the job of the event facilitator to set clear expectations about following those rules. It is also their job to steer the group in the direction. Effective facilitators know how to guide the team and get results creating a positive and high-energy environment. They do that by encouraging and motivating the right behaviors. Let’s summarize them with the continuous improvement or kaizen event do’s and don’ts.

Kaizen event do’s and don’ts for Success

Keep the momentum on your CI event

Through the kaizen event, the facilitator teaches team members how to think lean and identify waste. For instance, the team will learn by doing. While they go through the event process, the team learns and uses tools to analyze the current state. Using lean thinking they will question the status quo and will learn how to see things differently.

To keep momentum, the event facilitator keeps asking questions. He or she builds upon the team’s ideas and concerns to challenge the status quo. Maybe, asking questions is the facilitator’s most important job. In other words, questions are the vehicle to guide the team to discover their solution. Through questioning with respect, they learn how to challenge the status quo.

Kaizen event do’s and don’ts, one more don’t

Also, to keep momentum on your CI journey I have one more Don’t for you. Do not engage in an event that is not aligned with your business goals. Through events, you are targeting those big gaps between the goals and the current state. Before you start planning the event, ask Do these activities help the business to achieve its goals? If the answer is no, then find another subject for your event.

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How to collaborate, learn and motivate others to work with you.

Businesses cannot survive or be successful unless their teams collaborate. Entrepreneurs and business leaders know that. For that reason, they are seeking to hire candidates with collaboration skills. Learning how to collaborate and motivate others to work with you is then a critical skill to develop. Also, many of them are working on being examples of how to collaborate.

Learn how to collaborate, start with this.

People are more receptive to work with you when they feel valued. Therefore, the first step for collaboration is to build connections. You don’t have to be friends with the people you are working with. However, cultivating personal connections, help to improve teamwork. Take time to know the person, their interests, pain points, concerns, and what they value. All that information will help you with two things.

First, you would be able to identify who’s who in the workplace. For example, you will see who you can influence, who can influence others, who are eager to learn and do new things, or not. Also, you will know with whom you need to invest more time and effort to motivate.

Second, while you learn their pain points and interests, you will identify the best fit for future projects. People are willing to participate in activities where they see some value for themselves. Therefore, you are connecting with them and knowing who can help you in the future.

Guide for effective collaboration

When you are presenting an idea or a new initiative, be clear about it. Above all, be honest, talk about the challenges, benefits, and risks. Most importantly, answer the question, what’s in it for me? Learning how to convey your suggestion or solution is critical. The process consists of alternating between talking and listening.

Allow people to digest the information, give them time to ask questions, and present their views. Before you try to convince people to change their mind, take time to listen. Use active listening to understand, not to criticize. You would be able to influence people if they feel that you are genuinely trying to understand them. Show that you value their opinion.

Do not interrupt, but when you have a chance, ask open-ended questions. With them, people are prompt to give more details. Finally, enhance their propositions, try to build upon other people’s ideas.

How you learn to collaborate

You can learn how to collaborate by watching how others do it and practicing yourself. When you practice how to collaborate, you will find the challenges associated with it. For instance, you will feel how difficult it is to concentrate on what other people are saying. Shut off your thoughts and focus on somebody else’s words is not easy.

Sometimes, it is easy to feel anxious and try to convince people that they are wrong. But, when you feel that urgency, it is time to breathe and listen. Listen to what others have to say with the intention of understanding and not judging. Putting yourself in the other person’s shoes helps to grasp their feelings and emotions. Therefore, you will gain a better understanding of their whys.

Regardless of your experience, your idea may not be the best. Collaboration is the simple act that makes teams effective. It is also a tool to boost creativity and respectful debates that will prompt better ideas. With effective collaboration, people will feel motivated to participate and support your initiatives.

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Collaboration and continuous improvement

Collaboration is when two or more people work together toward shared goals. It is the vehicle that conveys the success of a business. Also, it is what makes possible a successful culture transformation from traditional to continuous improvement. Being so crucial, you would expect entrepreneurs and c-suite leadership to treat it with the criticality it deserves. Like most things in life, you can learn how to collaborate. Therefore, this skill should be part of what you model and teach to your team.

There are two pieces of this story. One is how you motivate colleagues to support your ideas, and the other is how to teach collaboration. Let me tackle the first one today and the second on my next post.

Learning collaboration

I started my career working in a research & development department. The department would be successful, only if it works in collaboration with everybody else. For that reason, since day one, my boss makes a point of teaching me how to do it. Moreover, she modeled the behavior.

Present your ideas and listen

The first step is to communicate your initiative or ideas with clarity. Clear and effective communication minimizes confusion. Be honest about your intentions and present them subjectively. In other words, talk about the benefits, challenges, and risks. Present the facts, show data if you have it.

Secondly, let people express their concerns. While they talk, you should listen. Active listening occurs when you suppress the need to dominate the conversation or provide ways to solve problems. Instead, you listen and focus on the speaker. Notice the speaker’s body language, tone, and emotions while it speaks. Understanding how he/she feels helps to recognize the implications of the words. As a result, the communication would flow better.

For better collaboration, assume positive intent and switch between being a leader and a follower.

Further, practice positive intent. Assume that people want to do the right thing. That they are as invested in the company success as you are. It is easier to be receptive when you come into a discussion with that positive thought.

When you are a leader, regardless of rank or title, you are used to making decisions and give orders. Accept criticism is not easy, especially if it comes from your team or colleagues. But for successful collaboration, you need to learn how to accept feedback. Sometimes you have to listen and follow, while others you talk and lead.

Nevertheless, for the team is not easy to receive feedback either. Clear and effective communication is essential for accepting criticism. Explain why feedback is important. If you notice aversion, ask why and address the situation. While giving feedback, be specific and direct. For instance, provide examples.

Summary

Leadership support and modeling of those behaviors that enable collaboration are vital for its success. If leaders are not capable or willing to collaborate, their teams will not do it either. To promote team collaboration, leaders should practice mentoring and coaching. Also, collaboration as a skill should be a key part of some human resources activities. Some of those activities are hiring, promotions, and selection for further training.

Anywhere more than one person works, the collaboration will be imperative to achieve desired results. Therefore, modeling and enforcing it will be a crucial part of the continuous improvement transformation. The way each team member reacts while working together is also critical. But that is the subject of the next post.

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What are the key roles for successful kaizen?

Planning and executing a continuous improvement event is a team activity. The team participating in the event is vital for its success. But there are other equally critical key roles. These roles are executive sponsor, value-stream manager, facilitator, event coordinator, and team-leader. Let’s see the responsibilities of each one.

Key roles for direction and support

The executive sponsor is typically a C-suite leader, vice-president, senior leader, general manager, or plant manager. His/her job is to provide direction and support to the event. For instance, the sponsor will talk at the beginning of the event to clarify that a successful activity is necessary for company performance. Moreover, the achievements of this type of exercise will not risk anyone’s job.

Frequently, the value-stream manager is a vice-president, director, or middle manager. It is someone that has the authority to approve policy-related changes. In addition, he or she has the power to approve improvements that can impact regulatory, financial, safety, or a critical process. The value-stream manager works with the event coordinator and participates in the planning and preparation stages. Another duty is to communicate complete support to the event and the team. Above all, should be present during the event ready to answer questions and remove barriers.

Key roles for planning

The event coordinator is responsible for the logistics of the event. For example, coordinate the event date(s), reserve the room, and send out invitations. Another task is to ensure that all necessary equipment and materials are available. The coordinator is part of the team whose responsibility is to identify the best team members. The other people responsible for this task are the value-stream manager and the HR manager.

Event Execution Roles

The facilitator is responsible for leading the event. Sometimes, the event coordinator and the facilitator are the same people. This situation is typical when the company has a seasoned staff in CI matters. The facilitator participates in planning, team selection, and event logistics. Also, it is part of the follow-up and post-event reflection.

In general, the team leader is the team member with the most knowledge in the process. This position may not be necessary if the event is led by an internal facilitator. But, if the facilitator is a consultant or external resource, the team leader is an advisor. The facilitator will ask this person for advice or help when needed.

External help for your kaizen event

If you are starting and have never done an event, you may want to hire an outside professional as your facilitator. The objective of a good external facilitator is to help you to become a skilled facilitator and coordinator. A good consultant will work with all the key roles in the planning, event execution, implementation, and follow-up of the event. He or she will teach each member how to fulfill their role successfully. Also, will let all key roles member to do their tasks while coaching them.

Are you ready for your first continuous improvement event? If you have doubts or need help to start your improvement journey, call Better Process Solutions. We can help!

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Are you a good discoverer?

Are you a discoverer, an investigator? Hopefully, the scheduled gemba walk is not the only time you visit the workplace. Another time is when something happens, and people escalate the situation to you. To be able to help, you need to understand what happens, and for that, nothing is better than go and see what is going on. But those times, you visit gemba with one objective in mind, looking at a previously defined situation.

Every opportunity you have to walk around the workplace is a chance to learn. While I worked in manufacturing, I used to take every available opportunity to go and see to learn something. You need to develop a new skill, being a discoverer.

How do you become a discoverer?

How do you start uncovering potential problems or finding things to improve? You need to develop discoverer’s eyes or become good in what I used to call, look for trouble.

When you visit or walk through an area, not just walk, see, and understand the process. Look at the three real things of the work area, the workplace, the facts, and the work in process. Unleash your curiosity, observe the environment, how things flow, how people communicate. Try to understand why things happen and how things work. Take attention to detail of the steps sequence, best practices, and potential opportunities. Learn about the metrics to measure the process’s success and if there is a way to highlight abnormal situations. Is there any work in process? Why it exists? Does the flow stop? Do you see waste? Can you see any risks or safety hazards? Talk with the people in the area and ask questions to understand the situation, never to judge.

Developing your skills

All that looks like a lot but, as you get used to it, you will do it quite fast. The more you walk to see and understand, the better discoverer of opportunities you become. There are a couple of things that you can do to develop that skill, for example, the following.

Visit an area that you are not familiar with, like a different process or department.
Volunteer to participate in continuous improvement events out of your work area
Grab the standard work document of one of your department processes and audit it
Learn a new job, shadow someone from your team.

Take every opportunity you have to explore a process, learn about it, and discover how to improve it. When you visit take close attention to the workplace, the facts, and the work in process. Walk the process, observe, ask with respect, learn what happens and why, and finally discover how to improve it. Being a good discoverer or investigator is an art. The art of finding trouble or improvement opportunities. Three characteristics of good discoverers are curiosity, detail-oriented, and communicative. Let’s be good discoverers, like cats, and find all the hidden gems in our processes.

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8 Steps for a Continuous Improvement Event

Steps for a continuous improvement event and PDCA

Previously I mentioned that PDCA is a good tool to standardize the kaizen event. Today I will show you the general steps to do a kaizen event and how to use PDCA. There are 8 steps for a continuous improvement event plan and execution.

Understand the problem
Plan the event
Learn about the current state
Design and test the new process
Validate the results against objectives
Modify the process if necessary
Once we achieved results, standardize, train, and communicate
Make further improvements, start over.

Plan the Event

We learn before that the planning step is critical for problem-solving. Certainly, it is because, during that step, you are defining the problem. In other words, you are studying the problem to understand in detail what is happening. This includes finding the root cause of the situation.

In a continuous improvement or kaizen event, you start by understanding the problem or situation. Describe the current state as detailed as possible. Use the process name and its description, and the affected KPI’s for this description.

To plan the event, identify all the key information to make the event a success. This information includes the scope, objectives, expected deliverables, team members with their roles, event dates, and location.

Getting to know the current situation

The third step is to learn about the current state. It consists of drawing a picture of the process as is. For this, you need to know the process, the first and last step, steps sequence, and standards. You also need to know what are the customer’s needs. The golden rule to fix problems is to go where the value is created, observe, measure, and ask questions respectfully. Identify waste, where the flow stops, safety hazards or risks, and quality concerns. The most important part of the PDCA cycle is understanding the problem. While doing kaizen, it is critical to understand the process, including the root cause of the problems identified.

Create a new process and test if it works

Equipped with this information, you are ready to start designing the new process. Brainstorm possible solutions with the team. The target is to eliminate waste, improve quality, or reduce the cycle time. Prioritize and refine the list by selecting those ideas that are expected to have a bigger impact. The team should be able to complete the tasks during the allotted time frame.

Test the ideas, simulating the conditions of the new process. Measure the results and note the effect of the new method. Analyze the results vs. the objectives, and validate if the process can achieve them. Modify the process if you need and keep testing and measuring as many times as it is necessary. This step represents another PDCA loop by itself.

Validate the new process

The kaizen step equivalent to Check is to validate the effectiveness of the new process. The event is scheduled for one week or less, but sometimes you will have pending items that need to be finished later. This step includes follow-up on the completion of those items. It also includes a revision of the results to determine if the kaizen achieved its objectives. Normally, this follow-up process happens 30 days after the completion of the event. Similar to what happens in the previous step, if the new process falls short of the objectives, you follow PDCA to modify, measure, and adapt until the desired condition is reached.

Steps for a continuous improvement event – The last one, reflect upon the results

The last step in the kaizen event is to evaluate the performance of the process. Process monitoring should be part of the daily operation as well as discussion of gaps between standards and current results. Daily kaizen should address problems in quality, safety, or delivery performance. Remember, once the improved standard is stabilized, it is time to start the improvement process again.