I would like at this time to explain the Lean Service Design Trilogy Program in more detail. The first week of the program, the Lean Section is about standardization, the SDCA Cycle. The second week, the Service Section will improve a chosen Service Product and implement an improvement process, the PDCA Cycle. The third week of the program, the Design Section will be about developing an innovative approach to your Service Product, the EDCA Cycle.
5s: Improving Organizational Standards for Efficiency, Effectiveness and Success
5s is a systematic corrective action technique to clean up, get organized and make this the way you do business. In service organizations, the problems identified in 5S not only rob your organizations’ productivity but also your customers.
Service environments are especially prone to this waste. Often it is blamed on the lack of standardization. Every job is different. However, how much time searching is spent for misplaced files or sifting through piles of paperwork on desks? T work is hidden as we blame technology when we cannot find anything. How much blame is put on computers and software because of the lack of organization and cleaning taking place?
One of the measures used in Office “Kaizen” is percent accurate and complete. This is discussed in several of my podcasts with Mike Osterling and Karen Martin, experts in White-Collar Kaizen. The percent accurate and complete becomes particular important when these duties are handed off to others and to customers.
Many organizations will complete a 5s process without doing the last two steps. It is the act of Standardization that drives Sustainability. Without these components, the gains that you create in the first three will be lost.
When a 5s system is implemented, it creates a visual workplace that allows for quick determination of current state. In Service, Sales and Marketing, visual indicators are often non-existent. As Dr. Gwendolyn Galsworth said in a podcast to me, “If you are not visual, you are not Lean.” At a glance, we should be able to determine failures in our service system.
I recommend by implementing 5s prior to proceeding with the other components of Lean Service Design. Laying a solid foundation for improvement is imperative.
Up to this time, we have gathered information about Value, Experiences and Journeys. Maybe, in ways that you may not consider very Lean “like”. I did this purposely, one to open up your thoughts from an internal to an outside perspective. Secondly, to demonstrate your clarity or lack of clarity about the services you provide.
Are you ready to implement! Do you have the Business Model Canvas completed for a service product? Most of you won’t. What you may have discovered is that lack of clarity within your organization, in other words the lack of your organization to EXECUTE. It is not uncommon and it seems to be the buzzword for this year’s book publishing. My favorite book is The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business by Patrick Lencioni.and an outtake from the book description:
There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are. Simply put, an organization is healthy when it is whole, consistent and complete, when its management, operations and culture are unified. Healthy organizations outperform their counterparts, are free of politics and confusion and provide an environment where star performers never want to leave. In this age of informational ubiquity and nano-second change, it is no longer enough to build a competitive advantage based on intelligence alone. The Advantage provides a foundational construct for conducting business in a new way—one that maximizes human potential and aligns the organization around a common set of principles.
How do you start providing clarity? You have done much of the work with the two canvases, already. Now is where we will need to standardize the Service Product. Even before that we need to use the Lean practice of 5S. It is beyond the scope of this program to 5S the Business Model Canvas, but instead we will review the Customer Journey Map you completed in the preceding lesson.
5S your Trilogy Journey Map and go to the next page; Lean/Close.