Standard Work is a big part of Lean. But there seems to be a lot of confusion about that in services. Can Standard Work still be a part for the creative type and for services?
I asked Debashis “Deb” Sarka, one of world’s leading lights in the space of Service Lean.
Related Podcast and Transcription: Process Thinking in Services
Sarkar: “I think that’s an excellent question. I think a mistake many Lean practitioners make is that they believe that, in a service organization, we can go ahead and invent standard work all across it. That’s not the reality. The approach to do it is wherever you have processes which are customer facing, you cannot have a standard work, right. On the other side, if your processes are not visible to the customer, you can have standard work.
Let me give you an example. If you get into a hotel and if you go to the front office, it doesn’t make sense to have standard work for the way you know the front office executive engages with a customer because every customer is different, the queries are different. Standard work would not be of use there. What you need in this customer facing process is a guideline, not standard work.
You don’t need to tell the person to look into the customer’s eye, speak this way, and speak that way because every customer is different. Right their moves are different. For customer facing processes, when you do Lean implementation, please keep in mind standard work should not be pushed. What we should look for are general guidelines. That’s one part but when you look at the back end of it, for example, reservations or maybe the kitchen, of course standard work is important there, and you need to have standard work.
I think the broad guideline that one needs to follow that if you have customer facing processes, you can’t have; you shouldn’t have standard work. But whenever the processes are not customer facing, you can go ahead and have standard work. Let me give you another example. Again this is from financial services. For example if you’re talking about processes in the back office, there you would have standard work. But if you’re talking about relationship management wherein high net worth clients are involved. You can’t have standard work right because customer is different, their requirements are different. So there you will not have a standard work, but you’ll have broad guidelines. How should you approach the customer? What are the do’s and don’ts?”
Related Podcast and Transcription: Process Thinking in Services
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