Blog Article by Ray Attiyah, Chief Innovation Officer
My last post discussed how a lack of confidence can creep into an organization. It poses as an overabundance of oversight, checks and balances or controls. While review is vital, it can become counterproductive if it steals from your front-line workers their ability to independently solve problems, try improvements and own their success.
Confidence may be the most important improvement you can bring to your organization. It is the foundation of every sustainable continuous improvement initiative, and it is essential to leadership development. The following five solutions are proven ways to spark confidence.
- Communicate external objectives – Workers become much more confident and engaged when they understand the connection between their task and adding value for the customer.
- Try-storm – Try-storming is a word we use for quickly giving an improvement idea a test drive. When a worker has an idea and a supervisor not only listens, but is willing to try it, even as a temporary experiment, the worker feels valued and becomes more confident.
- Reward top performers – It is common to find yourself spending too much time fighting fires with new or under-performing workers. When we ignore our top performers, they disengage and lose confidence in their ability to make a difference. Make time for your best people and keep them challenged.
- Find quick win projects – Quick wins are the surest way to prove to non-believers that improvement can happen. When your workers see change, they are more likely to want to be part of it.
- Update management systems – Make changes that reflect the progress made by front-line individuals and teams. Re-balance work and responsibilities and set new goals.
When workers are motivated to contribute to improvements, supervisors gain confidence in their front line. With confidence in the daily run, comes time to focus on big picture improvements and growth. It’s a winning strategy with long-tail benefits that are felt all the way to the top of the organization.
Executives often tell me this kind of confidence reduced stress, gave them time to focus on transformational changes that grew the business and allowed them to leave work at work, improving family life. It’s a win for everyone.
A good example of this comes from one of our good friends, Mark Hartings, the Plant Manager at PDi Communications in Springboro, Ohio. PDi is a growing company that produces adjustable television arms and consoles for a variety of industries including healthcare and fitness. Just six months ago, Hartings realized that despite his best intentions, he was a bottleneck for the company. The reason for this lay deep within his belief system.
confidence in his team and was making a more valuable contribution by focusing on the continuous improvement efforts of the company. It took some time to build that trust, but once he saw results such as an increase in on-time delivery from 30% to 84%, a lead time reduction from four weeks to four days and a productivity increase (as measured by televisions produced per hour) of 24%, he had the confidence to let the front-line leaders handle the operations. .
relationships with suppliers and customers. Our good friend Jim Hosley at 
Imagine Run-Improve-Grow™ as a triangle with the run function at the wide base. Ideally, your operators and front line supervisors are managing the run while your managers in the middle of the triangle are focused on proactive improvements. Too often the middle managers get called in to solve routine run problems. When they are working in the run, they are not working on improvement that would make the business more productive and profitable. It then falls to senior management at the top of the triangle to make improvements, when their time would be put to better use focusing on growth initiatives and innovation. I think you can see what then happens to the company’s growth pursuits when middle managers get stuck in the run. What percentage of time do you spend Running the business, Improving it and Growing it? What would you want it to be? How would the company benefit if you made the switch?
Run, operators and frontline leaders were empowered to make improvements themselves Run-Improve-Grow™ pushes time up. Middle managers have the time to focus on making 
At each of five stations was a huddle board, a medium through which best practices and continuous improvement ideas are discussed on a daily basis. The huddle boards are something tangible – a meeting point and organization station – that helped facilitate improvement related discussions and information dissemination. Yet it was the people and their dedication to solving the problems listed on the huddle board each shift that were the true power behind the company’s solutions.
increase in shocks produced per labor hour and – maybe the most indicative expression of the culture change – being voted as a Top Workplace in 2010 by the Cincinnati Enquirer and was a finalist in the Cincinnati Business
