True Empowerment — Lean Sponsor

There are so many books written about “Empowerment”.  The first I remember reading was “Zapp! The Lightning of Empowerment: How to Improve Productivity, Quality, and Employee Satisfaction”.  

Still many people just don’t get it.  I met Managers who struggle with getting everything done in a day, and even so have a tough time letting go. 

Since it is the start of a new year here are some thoughts:

• Look for the problem areas (anytime people say “they” is a great candidate). Backlogs and customer complaints provide another source of information.
• Get a team together, and set a stretch goal (make the objective clear and measurable).
• Your job as a sponsor is to set the stage, run interference and know when to get out of the way.
• Let the team decide what needs to be improved first, and then transfer ownership quickly so the team feels the burden of accountability. 
• Your job is not to know the answers, instead know which questions to ask.
• Ask; “what do you think causes this?”  “Why?”  “What would tell you this is the reason?” and so on. 

Mentor the team without giving the answers, as you want them to grow and take on the responsibility.  When you are confident the team is on the right track, ask “what do you think will solve this?”  Let the team agree on potential solutions to try as a series of small experiments.

Then transfer ownership and accountability to the team.  This is done by asking; “Who wants to take on this part?”  Once everything is assigned, ask the team to report out in a week. 

During the report out, be very generous with praise and remember that this is uncomfortable for the team members.  Make the report out a positive experience, and then stretch the team with more challenges and questions.  Encourage your team to implement improvements rather than just pointing out problems.  Remember “improving the work is just as important as doing it”, and “the people doing the work know it best”.

Teams will look forward to reports outs and find solving their own problems to be very empowering!

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Using Open Space Technology for Lean Transformations

Certain facets of Open Space Technology are used for creating and transforming high performing teams, and this can apply to lean facilitation as well:

• Once, when facilitating a value stream mapping team, we were called out of the room to participate in a survey. 
• Thinking this would likely end in disaster, an hour later the team had proved that thinking to be totally flawed. 
• The team had gone through the Storming stage and was already Norming!  We could not believe how quickly the transfer of ownership moved from the facilitator to the Team, and how well the team took charge of their own progress. 
• From that point on, we used this method each time a new team starts to create a value stream map.

Please share your thoughts…

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