When we talk about Lean and Six Sigma, it takes a certain amount of expertise to implement it. How do you visualize taking Lean and/or Six Sigma through the government? I mean, it’s in pockets right now, but do you just grow from them pockets? Or how do you visualize that getting expanded in government? – jd
Excerpt from a past podcast:
Hundley M. Elliotte : I think it depends on the government organization and where they are, what they have going on, what’s the leadership bias, what’s on their plate right now, what kind of challenges and issues are they facing, because it’s not a cookie?cutter approach. It doesn’t work well if it’s a cookie-cutter approach.
If it’s really critical to transform processes and really improve on speed and accuracy from an organization standpoint, and you have a very, very strong leader that wants to use that as a transformation catalyst, then I think that’s great. You start with a top?down approach.
But in a lot of other situations, it’s better just to start in different areas of the business, attacking specific issues. So, for instance, “Hey, let’s just go focus on claims processing or issuing passports,” or those kind of things, specific issues where we want to improve speed, and then demonstrate and then show other folks in the organization and get them interested and kind of grow organically from the bottom.
The important thing out of all of that is, no matter where you start, whether you start small?scale or big, top-down, is to really focus on specific issues from day one.
Again, pick something very tangible, like, “We’re processing these claims, and if we do them 30 percent faster, that’s going to create X value and X more satisfaction from our clients. Let’s go do that.”
To be very specific like that is very powerful because, number one, it gets you focused, gets you the results; number two, people in the organization see it and they can actually relate to it; and number three, it just kind of generates that enthusiasm and momentum to try it elsewhere in the business.
Related Podcast and Transcription: Process Excellence in Government
Hundley M. Elliotte is the global lead for the Process Performance group within the Accenture Process & Innovation Performance service line. He has more than 15 years of consulting experience, focusing on managing business value, setting strategy, identifying customer needs, and identifying and implementing improvement opportunities in diverse business sectors.
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