We Just Lost Half of the Team

One day were are a happy team, plenty of work coming in and we don't have too many customers calling every other day about their orders.  Then the boss from corporate comes in, goes to our branch manager's office and closes the door.  This does not look good.

A couple of the sales guys split, muttering something about hand delivering some reports.  A few of us go to lunch and the rest plan out the remainder of the day.  The manager's office is empty when we return, but our in-boxes have a meeting notice at the end of the day.  Of course we all panic, there was nothing in the body of the email and we never have cake at the end of the day.

The remaining minutes and hours count down and we all meet in the larger conference room.  The branch manager is standing at the front of the room with a powerpoint on the wall.  He goes through the charts; sales per employee, backorders by customers, quality surveys from customers, accounts past due to suppliers.  None of this looks good and our question was how long had it been like this?  Has anyone been paying attention?

One by one we were called into the office.  There were three of us at the table, the branch manager, someone from corporate HR, and I.  They asked if I understood the information presented and I said that I did, and I asked how long has performance been like this?  He made some comments about the softness of the local economy and expected it to turn around at any time.  None of what he said sounded good.

About half the team survived this round of layoffs.  We had to do something.....

This is how some organizations start their Lean Journey.  Sometimes we see teams respond with positive change by using their metrics and creating a plan to improve customer satisfaction and aggressively getting new orders and customers.  Sometimes the teams blame others, lobby for a government bail-out, and continue in their same, old, wasteful ways.

Just like any other personally damaging situations; smoking, obesity, and high-stress are all responses to bad practices and our businesses can exhibit the same types of response factors.  Fire-fighting, low customer satisfaction, and poor team relationships are not going to fix themselves.  You can't wait for the team to turn around on their own.  Someone (you) needs to make a bold statement.  "We will no longer be in the Fire-Fighting business!"

You will hear some chuckles, but it's ok.  Half of the team is gone, so how do you do the same amount of work with less people?  It's not simple, but you're going to have to learn from your mistakes.  Talk to your customers about your delivery, look at how you do things and improve.  You have to get the team out of Egypt and get Egypt out of the team.

You  may be tempted to start creating plans and roadmaps and start bringing in high-powered consultants.  If you were starting the Lean Journey when times were good, those tools would be perfect, but you are not and we need to start the transformation now.  Your Burning Platform (or BHAG) is right in front of you, take a picture if you need one.  Start with the processes you use to create your products and remember this analysis is based on the thing going through the system or process.  Do you have any performance data; cost, quality, delivery?  If not, then begin collecting it now.

Have you talked to your customers yet?  We will use that information when we create the new processes.  We may even pull out our House of Quality (or QFD) to help align customer needs and the requirements we must comply with.

We then map those processes and remember this is based on how we do it now, not how we want to or what the SOP says how the process is supposed to operate.  Ask where are those inspection review processes and how we fix the documents?  Circle these steps with a Red Sharpie, these will be targeted first!  If you have some sort of review trail from emails or a workflow system, put the quality failures in categories and force rank them by count so you can attack the worst offenders first.

Once you have that, get the team together for a fishbone party.  Remember that you put the problem statement or quality failure at the head of the fish and the potential causes on the four bones.  What four bones?  I'm glad you asked.

If you start using Man, Method, Measurement, Mother Nature, Material, and Machine in the office you will spend the next hours trying to get the team to not think of these in manufacturing terms.  In our information processes we use People, Place, Policy, and Procedures.  Nearly all issues that exist today will fall into those categories.  When the team is passed out on the floor and have nothing else to give, begin weeding out the least likely causes and work your way up to the most likely or direct causes.

Bundle related causes together and begin brainstorming potential solutions.  We will also begin to start mapping out the new process based on the number people available, a "No Fire-Fighting" culture, a bold statement that our internal teams will neither accept or pass on defective information, and we cannot inspect quality into our products as high-quality must come from the process.  Everyone must buy-in to the new process, both the smart people doing the jobs and the Leaders of the organizations.

Once you have tried a few things and have picked the best of the best (for now) you need to document how the process operates so when new team members come on when the economy recovers they have something to be trained on.  Determine some metrics so poor performance is not a surprise anymore and there will be plenty of time to respond.  Everyone needs to know what right looks like.

Transforming under fire is never pleasant, but the good times just doesn't always provide the need for change.  Bad things happen, and then we pick up the pieces and continue on.

When your team has been through a rough time, what kind of lasting change did you make?