A Culture of Rapid Improvement

Book description

Become a corporate change agent

Learn to implement and cultivate a culture of improvement with the assistance of one of the world’s most respected experts

Managing a business so that it achieves a supreme pace of improvement requires that all members of an organization can and do make their best contributions to the success of the enterprise. Management must provide employees with a shared set of values and beliefs so that they can decide for themselves how to behave in accordance with the expectations of a nurturing and empowering culture.

A Culture of Rapid Improvement is intended for those leaders seeking to encourage dramatic improvement within their organizations. It shows these change agents how they can—

·         Develop the shared values and beliefs that serve as the foundation for a dynamic culture

·         Engage all employees to join the new culture and provide opportunities for these stakeholders to initiate and participate in improvement

·         Measure, evaluate, and manage the performance of the new culture

Filled with lessons garnered from practical examples, this text is based on Raymond C. Floyd's 40 years of industrial management experience, including his more than 20 years at Exxon Mobil. He is the winner of a Shingo Prize and also holds the unique distinction of having led businesses from two different industries that were both recognized by IndustryWeek magazine as being among the Best Plants in America.

 If you approach the task of improvement with proper action and full participation, improvement is not just possible, but inevitable. At six months, you will notice a difference in your organizational culture; at the end of two years, you will be operating with near–world-class performance.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Table of Contents
  7. Foreword by H. Eugene McBrayer
  8. Preface
  9. Acknowledgments
  10. About the Author
  11. 1 Industrial Culture: The Human Side of Change
    1. Improve the Performance of Your Business by Creating a New Industrial Culture
    2. The Importance of a Culture of Rapid Improvement
    3. How Your Culture Affects the Potential for Improvement
    4. How Culture Is Influenced by Strategy
    5. A Simple Model of Culture
      1. Element 1: Values
      2. Element 2: Beliefs
      3. Element 3: Behavior
      4. Element 4: Rituals
    6. How to Use This Simple Model of Culture
    7. Designing a Corporate Culture
    8. Elements of a Culture of Rapid Improvement: An Overview of How This Book Is Organized
    9. Summary of Chapter 1
  12. SECTION I: ESTABLISH THE VALUES AND BELIEFS OF YOUR NEW CULTURE
    1. 2 Strategy: The Values and Beliefs of an Industrial Culture
      1. Establishing Strategic Goals for Your Organization
      2. Establishing Your Organization’s Tactical Goals
      3. Setting Strategic Goals Is the Responsibility of the Senior Leader
      4. A Process for Establishing Strategic Goals
        1. Look Outside Your Organization
          1. Evaluate Your Customers and Competitors
          2. Consider the Owners of Your Business
          3. Do Not Forget to Consider Your Employees
          4. Assess the Needs of Your Organization’s Community
        2. Next, Look Inside Your Organization
      5. Analyze the Gap between Your Current Capabilities and Your Future Requirements
      6. Write Your Goals
        1. 1. Strategic Goals Have a Simple, Memorable Statement of the Gap You Are Closing
        2. 2. Strategic Goals Have a Directionally Correct Statement of Future Needs
        3. 3. Strategic Goals Have a Credible Description of Current Capabilities
        4. 4. Strategic Goals Have a Few Objective Measures That Define Progress
        5. 5. Strategic Goals Have Interim Tactical Performance Targets to Be Achieved
      7. Present Your Goals to Your Organization
      8. Conclusion
      9. Summary of Chapter 2
    2. 3 Making Your Cultural Values Personal
      1. A Three-Level View for Translating Goals into Actions
        1. The CEO’s Three-Level View
        2. The Division Managers’ Ihree-Level View
        3. Individual Department Managers’ Three-Level View
        4. A Case Study of the Three-Level View of Translating Goals to Actions
      2. Keeping the Whole Team on Board
      3. Refreshing Your Goals
      4. A Final Word on Translating Strategic Goals into Tactical Goals and Tactical Actions
      5. Summary of Chapter 3
    3. 4 Quality Stations: The Rituals of Your Culture
      1. Rituals at Work
      2. Using Quality Stations to Implement the Four Rituals of Improvement
        1. Ritual 1: Quality Stations Help Show Tactical Goals
        2. Ritual 2: Quality Stations Show Activities in Progress
        3. Ritual 3: Quality Stations Show Projects Completed and Measure and Communicate Results
        4. Ritual 4: Quality Stations Show Ideas for the Future
      3. Details on the Four Rituals of Improvement
        1. Ritual 1: Show the Tactical Goals of the Team
        2. Ritual 2: Show the Projects in Progress
        3. Ritual 3: Measure and Communicate Results
        4. Ritual 4: Make Ideas for the Future Visible
      4. Culturally Appropriate Small-Team Leadership
      5. Communications at the Quality Stations
      6. Appearance of a Quality Station
      7. The Work of a Quality Station
      8. Management Quality Stations
      9. A Final Word on Quality Stations
      10. Summary of Chapter 4
  13. SECTION II: ENGAGING PEOPLE IN YOUR NEW CULTURE
    1. 5 The Objective Elements of Engaging People
      1. Creating a Framework That Engages People to Help
      2. Element 1: People Need Goals to Achieve
      3. Element 2: People Need New Skills to Do New Things
        1. Root Cause Analysis
      4. Element 3: People Need Time to Work on Improvement
      5. Element 4: People Need Access to Resources
        1. Providing Funds
        2. Small-Event Improvements
      6. Element 5: People Need a Structure for Action
      7. Summary of Chapter 5
    2. 6 The Subjective Elements That Disrupt Engagement of People
      1. What if Improvement Does Not Happen?
      2. The Subjective Elements That Disrupt Engagement
        1. Element 1: Some Teams Do Not Trust Management
        2. Element 2: Some Teams Have Disruptive Members
          1. Intentionally Disruptive Team Members
          2. Direct Relationships with Management
          3. Intentionally Disruptive Individuals
          4. Unintentionally Disruptive Team Members
      3. Summary of Chapter 6
  14. SECTION III: THE SOCIAL DESIGN OF YOUR NEW CULTURE
    1. 7 Understanding the Theory of Industrial Culture
      1. Personalities and Personal Cultures at Work
      2. Each Business Has a Culture That Defines the Workplace
      3. Social Cultures at Work
      4. Three Typical Responses to a Dominant Culture
        1. 1. People of Different Cultures Will Appear to Fit the Dominant Culture at Work
        2. 2. People of Different Cultures Will Adopt a Neutral Behavior while at Work
        3. 3. People of Different Cultures Will Resist the Dominant Culture at Work
        4. What to Do about These Three Responses to Your Dominant Work Culture
      5. Situational Cultures
      6. Summary of Chapter 7
    2. 8 The Social Design of a New Culture
      1. Social Design in Industry
      2. Social Consideration 1: Precision and Timeliness
        1. How to Handle Routine Work
        2. How to Handle Nonroutine Work
        3. When to Begin
      3. Social Consideration 2: Collaboration and Teamwork
        1. Communicating about Differences within a Team
        2. Different Expressions of the Same Family Values
        3. Different Interpretations and Assumptions of a Simple Task: Getting the Mail
        4. How to Handle Aberrant Behavior
      4. Social Consideration 3: Inclusion and Contribution
      5. Summary of Chapter 8
    3. 9 Valuing Individuals
      1. Five Elements of Valuing Individuals
      2. Element 1: Develop Corporate Awareness That Individuals Are Different and Valuable
        1. Recognize That Many Personal Qualities Are a Mixed Blessing
      3. Element 2: Provide Emotional and Social Support during Cultural Changes
        1. Dealing with “Heritage” Issues
        2. Establish Affinity Groups
        3. Facilitate Meetings of Affinity Groups
        4. Unexpected Affinity Groups
        5. Establish a Group of “Diversity Pioneers”
      4. Element 3: Establish New Policies and Practices for Your New Culture
      5. Element 4: Enforcement of Your New Culture’s Policies and Practices
      6. Element 5: Celebration of Your Cultural Change
      7. Summary of Chapter 9
    4. 10 Managing Emotion at Work
      1. Exploring Emotions at Work
        1. Listen to What Your People Tell You about Their Feelings about Work
      2. Everything Is Not Good When Real Change Is Happening
      3. Interpreting the Emotions of Change
      4. If You Cannot Interpret Emotions at Work, Find Someone Who Can
      5. Interpreting Emotions Is Key to Implementing Successful Change
      6. Summary of Chapter 10
  15. SECTION IV: MANAGING AND SUSTAINING CULTURAL CHANGE
    1. 11 How Communication Reflects Your Culture
      1. Three Types of Messages from Management
        1. 1. Delivering News
        2. 2. Making Statements of Belief and Support
        3. 3. Giving Instructions for Action
      2. Organizational Implications of Communication: The Role of Senior Management
      3. The Role of Middle Managers in Communicating
        1. Problem 1: People Do Not Get Your Message
        2. Problem 2: Middle Managers Are Disenfranchised
      4. Manage and Measure the Communication
      5. Summary of Chapter 11
    2. 12 Measuring the Performance of Small Events
      1. Principles of Measuring Small-Event and Autonomous Improvement
      2. Measuring How Engaged Your People Are in Improving Your Business
      3. Using Bulk Measurements to Ensure You Are All Working toward the Same Goal
      4. Measuring Visible Results Reinforces an Intuitive Understanding of Performance
      5. Make Sure Your Measures Are Consistent and Credible to the People Being Measured
        1. Make Your Measurements Direct and Exact
        2. Keep Your System Fair and Accurate
        3. Create a Subject Matter Expert for Measurement
      6. Other Interesting Measurements
        1. Useful and Nearly Objective Assessment of Subjective Data
        2. Use Bulk Measures When Individual Data Are Not Available
        3. Look for Useful Trends in Meaningless Data
      7. Defend Your Measures
      8. Summary of Chapter 12
    3. 13 Managing the Competence of Your Employees, Especially in Business-Critical Roles
      1. Early Assessments of Individual Employee Competence
      2. Recognizing the Importance of Critical Positions to the Overall Performance of the Organization
      3. The Basis of Data Gathering to Assess Employee Competence
        1. Measure the Percentage of Critical Positions Occupied by Highly Competent People
        2. Measure the Overall Performance of the Organization
      4. The Process of Data Gathering to Assess Employee Competence
        1. Step 1: Identify the Critical Positions in Your Organization
        2. Step 2: Assess the Individuals Working in Your Critical Positions
      5. Correlating Personal Competence with Organizational Performance
      6. Management Lessons from Competence Assessment
        1. Focus Your First Personnel Development Actions on Critical Positions
        2. Begin Promptly
        3. Spread the Word about Competence Management
        4. Recognize That Not All Managers Need to Be Highly Competent
        5. Many Critical Positions Are Underappreciated
        6. Lessons to be Learned from the Exceptions
        7. Summary of Chapter 13
  16. SECTION V: GETTING STARTED IN YOUR ORGANIZATION
    1. 14 Phase I: The First Six Months
      1. Task 1: Create Strategic Goals For Your Business
      2. Task 2: Give Your People New Capabilities or Tools to Practice Improvement
        1. Single Minutes Exchange of Dies
        2. Total Productive Maintenance
        3. Reliability Engineering
        4. Value-Stream Mapping
      3. Task 3: Establish the Basis for a New Social Culture That Is More Inclusive and More Autonomous
      4. Task 4: Conduct Your First Pilot Project
      5. Task 5: Sustain Your Gains
      6. Summary of Chapter 14
    2. 15 Phase II: The Second Six Months
      1. Task 1: Complete the Process of Deploying and Translating Your Goals
      2. Task 2: Initiate a Second Round of Pilot Projects
      3. Task 3: Take Formal Steps to Include Individuals in Your Culture Change
      4. Task 4: Implement New Tools and Methods in Your New Pilot Projects
      5. Use Quality Stations
      6. Task 5: Sustain Your Gains in Communication and Performance
      7. Summary of Chapter 15
    3. 16 Phase III: The Third Six Months
      1. Task 1: Create Quality Stations That Small Teams Will Use to Advance Your Goals
      2. Task 2: Establish Pilot Projects on the Front Line
      3. Task 3: Select New Tools That Support Autonomous Action
      4. Task 4: Create Affinity Groups to Ensure Inclusion of All Individuals
      5. Task 5: Sustain Your Gains by Establishing New Formal Practices
      6. Summary of Chapter 16
    4. 17 Phase IV: The Fourth Six Months
      1. Task 1: Ensure That the Goals You Are Implementing Are the Goals You Deployed
      2. Task 2: Select Only Projects That Improve Performance
      3. Task 3: Train People to Use the Specific Tools That Will Meet Your Goals
      4. Task 4: Make Sure All Individuals Are Included in Your Culture Change
        1. Communicate Your Belief and Support of Your Culture Change
      5. Task 5: Sustain Your Gains into Year Three and Beyond
        1. Looking toward the Future
      6. Beginning the Third Year
      7. Summary of Chapter 17
  17. Index

Product information

  • Title: A Culture of Rapid Improvement
  • Author(s): Raymond C. Floyd
  • Release date: March 2020
  • Publisher(s): Productivity Press
  • ISBN: 9781000077599