Leveraging Lean Strengths to Drive Supply Chain Innovation

"Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the Shade?" - Benjamin Franklin

As part of my work with clients, I am regularly facilitating them in the completion of a SWOT analysis. This exercise, to identify what employees perceive their organization's characteristics, asks the participants to list Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. In my experience most teams tend to be able to list twice as many weaknesses as strengths? Although not a scientific experiment, it certainly indicates that we are far more comfortable and able to focus on what is wrong with our organizations rather than on what is good. This may be because we are unaware of our organizational or personal strengths or perhaps even take them for granted.  Are we the product of a culture that focuses on what’s wrong before we can see what is right?

Many organizations have imposed limits on innovation by diluting strengths without even realizing the impact.  Polls referenced in Marcus Buckingham’s Go Putting Your Strengths to Work, reported on the state of strengths at work. "What percentage of a typical day do you spend playing to your strengths?" Only 17% of the respondents stated "Most of the time". Another question was "How often do you feel an emotional high at work?" 51% of respondents stated about once a week. So how does an organization committed to innovation ensure that it is identifying and more importantly utilizing the strengths of all its employees?

There are several factors that an organization must put in place to create the right conditions for innovative thinking to be harnessed and used. Any organization that has already embraced Lean Thinking will recognize these factors and should be implementing them.

1. Challenge the Status Quo
Are your processes good enough? Are your customers satisfied with the service levels that you provide? Are your costs at an acceptable level? Are your suppliers lead times too long? Lean thinking teaches us that we should always be in a (positive) state of dis-satisfaction. We should all be challenging every day to make improvements. We should continually be encouraging all employees to strive for improvements and, as described in point 2 below, encourage them to do something about it. To quote James Womack "To hell with your competitors, forget benchmarking, compete with perfection". How can you hope to create innovative solutions if matching a competitor will do?

2. Cross Functional Team Approach
How often have we tasked one individual to solve a problem or make an improvement to a process? What a challenge to expect one individual to come up with great and innovative ideas on their own, in isolation. If you want creative ideas to fuel innovative solutions then a team approach will have a much greater chance of success that one individual on their own. Why cross functional? Well, who is to say that the best and most innovative supply chain solution has to come from someone within the supply chain organization? Consider some of the other functions that are affected by the performance of a supply chain. The shop floor operator that uses the products may have great ideas about how to change design for better manufacture, or packaging that aids rather than hinders their assembly process; the Engineer who can contribute design ideas that would allow a supplier to make or ship the product cheaper or quicker; the IT specialist who can develop ways of passing information up and down the supply chain more quickly. Applying "Fresh Eyes", people who will look at a problem from for the first time from a different angle.  They will ask the obvious questions that others who know the process may not; will challenge why things are done in that order or why procedures are written in that way.

When you look at organizations that rely on innovative ideas from their employees such as advertising agencies and software companies, you often see that they take teamwork very seriously, together with a collective approach to coming up with ideas and solutions and having the time and space to be creative. People on high performance teams call upon their strengths more than 75% of the time. When was the last time you allowed some of your employees time together to be creative?

Taking the idea of cross functional teams further, why not invite your customer and key suppliers for a supply chain to join the team? Consider the multiplied power a team of experts including either side of your supply chain could bring into the improvement process?

3. Coaching/Facilitation
So having created a cross functional team, the next task is to harness that team. And that is where good coaching and facilitation comes in. People often think that coaching is about fixing problems. While it is sometimes, Coaching is most powerful when it is used to ”unlock” the strengths of the team. This is the role where it is necessary to be able to identify and understand the strengths of the individuals and to be able to draw them out to complete the tasks in hand. If you study Lean Thinking, the basic concepts are relatively easy to understand and can be taught in a short space of time. However, the big challenge to Lean Thinking is the application of simple concepts to your organization. This is where innovative thinking is required and this is where the skill of a good facilitator is best applied; allowing teams to explore all ideas, whether thought to be good or bad; ensuring that current practices and thinking can be challenged in a positive and non-threatening way; allowing discussions to continue to a point where decisions can be reached; ensuring all team members are allowed to contribute and be valued.

4. Management Support
Of course there is little value in allowing a cross functional team to come together and create an innovative solution if there is not absolute support from Senior Management. If you want your team to be creative and give you an innovative solution, you need to have the courage to empower this team and create the cultural atmosphere to allow it to function. Unless there is an extremely good reason not to implement the solution, such as financial, regulatory or legal then the team solution should be accepted and the team allowed to implement. This can be a big challenge for some management, especially those who have been working in a very autocratic culture, where they believe their job is to come up with solutions and employees are there to implement. However, without this constant and unwavering support, it is impossible to create an atmosphere where innovative thinking can prosper.

5. Collaboration
The cross functional team, whether it is internal or inclusive of suppliers/customers, there must be trust and openness. This means that the team must be able to expose and discuss honestly all the issues that they face and feel able to suggest even the most radical solutions. This can be particularly tough for organizations that have a very functional focus, or have always managed their customers and suppliers in a traditional relationship. These are incredibly big and difficult challenges for some organizations, but if collaborative supply chain solutions can be developed, the benefits are almost limitless for all parties involved.  The Win-Win solution is always possible.

6. A "Do It" attitude
One of the big differences between traditional approaches to improvement and a Lean Thinking approach is the attitude towards implementation. A traditional approach would consider all options carefully, choose the best one and then create a very detailed case. This would then be submitted to Management for approval. After due consideration, and maybe one or two iterations, hopefully the case would be accepted and then the solution could be scheduled for implementation. It is not uncommon for solutions to take months to implement. Lean Thinking is different. Of course communication of the new solution is a vital part of the process, to both Management and colleagues, but very quickly a “pilot to prove” path must be taken. This allows the solution to be tried in a controlled pilot, checked and measured for success. Changes/alterations can be made before a full roll out. The advantages of this approach is that the team members see their ideas put into reality very quickly. This satisfaction encourages and supports the atmosphere to generate more ideas to create more solutions. The advantage for the business is obvious too – they reap the benefits from a solution working much earlier.

My final thought is again from one of my Lean Thinking teachings. Activities identified as not adding value to the customer are called waste, or Muda in Japanese. Lean Thinking had identified seven different types of waste. When Lean Thinking came to the West, we had to add an eight waste that not present in Japan – the waste of not utilizing your employees. There is an old adage that with every person you employ, they come with a free brain. So if you would like to create innovative ideas for your supply chain solutions, identify the strengths that are hidden in your own employees and supply chain partners and leverage those strengths to create spectacular results. Go on; use your supply chain challenges to seek out those people whose creative work can inspire great solutions.

"When shall we live, if not now?" - Seneca