People – Standardised Work
With respect to the LTF, we have addressed how we do the work through the Purpose and Process topics. The next questions we need to answer are:
How do we improve the work? and
How do we develop the capabilities we need?
We shall cover these in this section People.
People – Standardised Work Video
Standardised Work supports Capability Development because the people who implement it are the same as those who establish it.
It CANNOT be done by the Leaders to the people.
It MUST be done by the people who do the work.
This is a very important and often overlooked or misunderstood by many companies and often the reason why Standardised Work is not sustained.
People Capability Development
By implementing standardised work, the people will need to become flexible and multi skilled which develops their capability.
By doing kaizen they not only make the work easier but also improve the work.
By applying P-D-C-A they improve further and continuously improve the situation.
These activities support Employee Involvement and Teamwork which are all necessary when trying to create a culture of continuous improvement.
Leadership Behaviours
What is the role of Leadership in standardised work?
Having involved the people to implement the standardised work, the role falls in to two categories:
Help maintain the standard.
Help improve the standard.
Maintaining the standard means helping the team, on a daily basis eliminate abnormalities and minimise fluctuation through problem solving.
Improving the standard means helping the team, by facilitating kaizen on a periodic basis to improve the standard.
How should Leaders do this?
Management Routines or Leader Standard Work needs to be developed and implemented.
Leader Standard Work requires the leader to go to the workplace, where the actual work is done, so they can observe and understand the real situation for themselves, on a regular basis.
This facilitates the time to recognise good practice, teach and coach, to develop further capability and feedback to re-align basic thinking and mindsets.
In principal, these are the leadership behaviours that are required to improve the work and develop the capabilities needed to support standardised work.