01

The power of all hands on deck

Companies are not made up of a few managers. The process of creating value for customers is largely in the hands of front-line employees. Lean belongs to all employees, not the elite.

Throughout the global lean enterprises, there is an important sign of successful transformation: Lean is no longer the implementation of a few rapid improvement projects; Nor is it just a prototype project that stops at a branch or a production line; Beyond lean as an important management tool to be introduced at a certain stage; Lean thinking is no longer a management philosophy, but deeply rooted in the corporate DNA of all employees' daily thinking and behavior.

In other words, when lean thinking has entered the subconscious level of the enterprise from the superficial consciousness level, all levels of the enterprise, including executives to frontline employees, think about doing lean things every day, but no longer deliberately feel that it is in the pursuit of lean, congratulations, the enterprise has successfully transformed.

The reason why full participation is an important sign of lean enterprises is that only when every cell of the enterprise is lean, the enterprise can truly have the ability to lean.

The so-called "good everyone, is really good", the core competitiveness of the enterprise always lies in the composition of each production unit at all levels of personnel, just imagine, even if managers understand what lean is, if employees do not actively participate in the daily activities of the enterprise lean can really be implemented? How far can activities that create value and reduce waste go? I'm afraid it's more in meetings, in reports, in journals, on banners? Many companies that have failed to implement Lean have stopped lean at the management level and have not made it a daily activity for all employees.

On the contrary, in Toyota, Denso and other world-class lean enterprises, we can strongly feel that every employee thinks and does lean things, although they do not know what lean production is (the term lean production is summarized by the Americans, the Japanese themselves do not know), so the competitiveness of the enterprise is huge.

One of the most shocking to us is that Toyota's 37 factories around the world have more than one million improvement proposals put forward by employees every year, and 5.000 improvement proposals are implemented every day, which means that: first, the company has achieved improvement everywhere through the participation of more than 95% of employees. Second, Toyota is changing every day, the relentless pursuit of perfection, resulting in competitors can not surpass. In other words, lean thinking goes beyond the level of "technique" and integrates into the "Tao" of corporate culture.

My personal experience is: every year we take senior executives to visit Toyota, whether it is the Toyota factory of GAC or Nagoya Toyota factory, including the factory of Denso, they often improve the reception and visit process: from 2010 to 2009. there are as many as 9 improvements in a short 40-minute tour!

For example, before Toyota refused visitors to bring a camera into, many people because they can not take pictures and regret, 10 years to Toyota improved: a special open space outside the workshop, set up a dozen languages of the commemorative card, by the reception staff for everyone to take photos, and then sent to the visitors by email.

You know, responsible for the reception work is a recent graduate of college students, and do not have a wealth of work experience, but they can be careful to understand the needs of visitors, and seriously implemented in the daily work, these small changes can bring personal feelings to customers, greatly creating value for the corporate image.

And these need to be improved, only front-line employees can master, managers are simply not able to experience! Every job at Toyota, whether on the production line or in the warehouse, or in back-office positions such as finance and human resources, is filled with such employee-led improvements. Imagine if a company:

Each employee knows how to contribute to the implementation of the company's strategy;

Each employee understands what value-added and non-value-added activities are;

Each employee can contribute their insights to improve work processes;

Each employee has mastered problem-solving skills;

Every employee sees change as an opportunity rather than a threat;

...

In this case, I am afraid that you have already created an impressive performance and become the benchmark for peer learning, and with lean "real", you will naturally "deserve".

02

Prerequisite for full participation

Enterprises to achieve lean full participation, we have only seen in Japanese enterprises, foreign and domestic enterprises, have not seen or heard of a very successful. The good news: If you do, your company will become the national leader. The bad news is: It looks like it's not going to be easy.

It is not that the enterprise does not want to achieve full participation, (Ford seriously learned to introduce Toyota's full participation system, but five years later, regrettably announced that it gave up), but the difficulty is really very large:

1. The blueprint of full participation is easy to describe, but the corporate culture and value transformation that need to be established behind it are difficult.

2. managers (senior executives, middle managers, grass-roots managers) must change their ideas, from the heart to respect the knowledge, quality, culture, etc. are far lower than their own employees. This is too much of a challenge for the official Chinese.

3. It is not only necessary to study the external market environment and government policy changes, but also to understand the needs of employees and meet them in good faith, which means that enterprises must sacrifice some short-term interests. For managers who are struggling to cope with external challenges, it can be difficult to convince their boss or board of directors to develop a win-win financial strategy, in addition to expending more energy.

4. the process of achieving full participation, in fact, is a management team constantly update self-concept, constantly challenge the process of self, both skills, more need is determination and perseverance, through long-term efforts and efforts to achieve their own may not see the goal, for the pursuit of short and fast 21st century managers, it is more difficult.

Why do employees get involved in Lean?

For the identification of the role of grass-roots employees, most managers and employees in the current enterprise agree that employees are paid to work, implement the instructions of managers, and complete daily work.

However, what we feel in Lean enterprises is that employees are the source of value creation, and when employees are well mobilized, enterprises can maximize value creation for customers and reduce waste.

Therefore, in such enterprises, employees are respected and have a high sense of belonging; Employees not only contribute their physical strength, but also contribute their wisdom anytime and anywhere; Employees have a strong sense of responsibility and active commitment; Employees have a high sense of self-management, and managers have a high sense of service for employees.

The previous Foxconn employees 13 serial jump incident, from an extreme point of view, enterprises to use good employees, in addition to pay wages, there is a lot of work to do. In particular, young people born after 80/90 will soon become the main force of employees in the future. For the only generation favoured by their parents, life is relatively carefree and self-aware, and salaries and bonuses are harder to discipline.

Although many employees think that as long as more salary bonuses, I am willing to cooperate with anything, willing to do, this is because they often have not achieved economic freedom, so they think that all their desires can be satisfied by money. They do not know that their sense of responsibility and initiative and infinite wisdom do not need to be discovered with money, it is already in them.

Of course, paying employees more than the industry or regional average is an absolutely necessary prerequisite, but it is not a sufficient condition for a high level of participation. From the perspective of human nature, the realization of material desire can bring certain satisfaction; But people's desires do not stop there, they also have many spiritual needs.

For enterprises, to improve employee participation, we must first make employees satisfied economically, and this kind of problem can be solved with money, in our view, generally can not be called a problem.

The most critical thing is to make employees feel satisfied at the spiritual level, which is the real effort of employee management and lean development of enterprises, and is also the most challenging and rewarding. Because it is difficult to do, once it is done, it is difficult for competitors to imitate and surpass.

From years of practice, we have summarized the reasons why employees are willing to actively participate in Lean:

1. The company or boss pays attention to my personal growth and provides opportunities for me to learn more abilities (note, not knowledge).

2. the company needs us to participate in the decision-making of the scope of daily work, for example, the boss often discusses with me how to reduce waste in daily work

3. I have the authority to solve the problem of my own work, the boss also requires me to take the initiative to find the problem, I will not be punished for the exposure of the problem

4. If I eliminate large amounts of waste for my company, I will be publicly praised and rewarded

5. if I participate, do not do well, the boss will not blame me, he will help me analyze how to improve, so that although I do wrong, but I can learn something

6. if I participate in, do well, the boss will immediately find, do not have to wait for me or colleagues to report, he will not rob my credit, will immediately give affirmation in time. Sometimes it's a material reward, sometimes it's a public thumbs-up, and I'm happy

7. If I don't know how to get involved, will my boss patiently help me, guide me, inspire me, even help me with ideas or contribute his good ideas to me

8. My boss and colleagues and I can find each other's strengths, mutual recognition

9. I hope my boss will treat everyone equally at work, without favoring his relatives or confidants

10. the boss can respect me, not sarcasm, not name-calling, not to embarrass me in public

11. and the relationship between colleagues, we can help each other...

To sum up, enterprise managers need to create an atmosphere and conditions suitable for full participation, help employees transform from "I want to do" to "I want to do", enhance the sense of integration and responsibility of employees, and truly realize the advantage of employees being the owners of the enterprise.

03

Establish a mechanism for full participation

Due to the special reasons for the rapid development of the Chinese market, the success of domestic enterprises is largely attributed to the correct strategic choice of the decision-makers, and the primary competitive market has not produced high requirements for the refinement of operation. This also leads to the current enterprise management too much reliance on the personal ability of the boss or senior executives, grass-roots work is more dependent on a small number of cadres, resulting in the lack of a systematic guarantee to maintain long-term advantages.

To improve employee engagement, companies must first change the mindset of managers, so that they can switch the pursuit of management technology to the emphasis on people; Secondly, it is necessary to gradually establish a mechanism for full participation and common growth of employees and enterprises.

The main purpose of establishing the mechanism of full participation is to create conditions to gradually increase employee participation. To ensure the formation and maintenance of lean culture at all levels of the enterprise with the system and system.

We can basically build the employee participation mechanism in three major modules and eight value-added steps as specific operations to help enterprises complete the lean process from attracting employees to making employees belong to the heart. These eight steps should have the following effect:

1. Attract employees who are flexible, can contribute to the value-added process of the enterprise, and have the characteristics consistent with this;

2. cultivate these employees, so that they have the ability to complete the work of high quality every day;

3. retain these employees, so that they can not only complete their own work, but also have the ability to solve problems and improve work;

4. Assimilate these employees, so that they have a high sense of belonging to the enterprise, loyal to the enterprise, and can continue to learn and grow, and do their best to contribute to the enterprise.

From the perspective of improving employee engagement, the core functions that need to be established in each step of the modules are:

The first module:

A. Recruitment

Enterprises strive to form long-term and stable relationships with employees, and management establishes the value of investing in employees and puts it into practice. Because only then are employees likely to work closely with the company to achieve long-term shared prosperity.

Therefore, in terms of the quantity and quality of recruitment, the fluctuation of recruitment and turnover caused by short-term fluctuations of the market should be balanced, so as to avoid hasty recruitment in peak season and increase quality and training costs; The low season is followed by mass dismissals, undermining trust between employees and the company.

B. Selection

Under the premise of long-term stable employment, the characteristics of the selection of employees are far more important than their current skills.

The premise is that the company should have a job analysis of each job and identify the real needs of each job - not only the need for skills, but also the need for personal qualities such as teamwork, initiative, problem finding and solving, learning, adaptability and so on.

Establish a funnel talent evaluation procedure to objectively evaluate the abilities of candidates. Because employees cannot be dismissed easily, the hiring process should be rigorous and prudent.

C. Initial positioning

Establish procedures for initial positioning of employees, set initial personal development goals and paths for employees according to the evaluation of employee characteristics during selection, and let employees understand the company's responsibilities and expectations for them.

Since employees will develop in the enterprise for a long time, the initial positioning does not have to make employees assume responsibilities that their abilities have not reached, but should be considered from the perspective of helping them adapt to the corporate culture and job as soon as possible.

The second module:

A. On-the-job training

Rather than lecturing in the classroom, it helps employees learn how to do their jobs through extensive specialized training programs, like training surgeons. A "master" needs to be assigned to supervise its performance and make timely corrections.

In order to build the team spirit of employees and reduce departmentalism, rotation training can be considered in the upper and lower posts to make them feel the connection and cooperation between different posts, so as to reduce the behavior of wasting work before and after for the sake of upper and lower posts in the future.

B. Systematic training

Training is not only the responsibility of the human resources department, the main responsibility for the training of people should be on the managers of various positions. Human resources is responsible for planning the long-term development plan for all kinds of employees in the company. The development speed of enterprises varies at different stages, and the channels for promotion of management positions are always limited. Therefore, enterprises should plan staff development channels other than job promotion to ensure the retention of talents.

According to their development plans, human resources develops a variety of training plans in addition to learn-by-doing training for all kinds of employees: including company culture and discipline training; Product/quality/safety training required in the work; Problem identification and solution training; Report writing; Interpersonal communication; Leadership training, etc., to help employees develop in the long term.

The third module:

A. Develop working standards

Chinese people prefer to do things in their own way and pay little attention to team efficiency/group interests, so the stability and reliability of products manufactured need to be controlled. In daily management, the common method is also the "one day a courtier" approach, each supervisor or boss can have their own understanding of the work, employees will often feel subject to "people", and gradually lose their enthusiasm for work.

Therefore, "No standards, no problems" is the most important concept in Lean to improve employee engagement. Standards are developed with the operational staff and are maintained by the staff, which means that the staff can decide for themselves how to work (this is a big challenge for our managers, do you trust your staff to do this?). Managers only provide guidance and help for employees to develop standards.

According to the standard operation, employees can evaluate the effect themselves, which greatly improves the awareness of self-management. Moreover, in the process of developing and improving standards, employees can share each other's experience and adopt best practices to achieve operational consistency and improve operational stability. At the same time, operating standards are the benchmark for continuous improvement, while solidifying the best experience in the minds of employees into the role of process operations.

B, continuous improvement of work standards

With basic operating standards in place, one of the most important responsibilities of employees, in addition to completing routine work tasks, is to constantly identify where existing standards can be improved to make operations more economical and more in line with consumer needs.

In other words, the employee is not only paid to work, he is also responsible for maintaining and improving the process of his work like a child, making it leaner.

This step is the most challenging for managers. It is necessary to gradually establish a long-term perspective, coupled with the concept of absolute trust in employees.

Because employees' abilities need to be gradually cultivated, they may not be able to quickly find and solve problems at the beginning, or even make some improvements that make the work backward. This requires managers to resist the habit of replacing themselves, give employees opportunities to learn and exercise, bear the consequences of improvement failures for employees, and provide acceptable guidance for employees.

When managers overcome past work habits, if they can persist in trusting, encouraging, guiding and training their subordinates for more than half a year, they will certainly receive a gratifying effect: your employees have grown up, and you can be freed from the daily fire fighting to think about more valuable things.

When employees learn to take responsibility and care for their own processes, find ways to improve them every day, and have fun doing so, lean thinking slowly takes root at the bottom of the corporate culture.

C. Solve the problem

"Happy after hearing" needs to start from the manager to cultivate.

First of all, enterprises should change the work habit of finding problems to blame, because this can only make everyone blame the attribution of the problem, and escape or cover up the problem, the worst consequence is: employees will lose their sense of responsibility, because no one is willing to be blamed.

There's no shame in having a problem. Failure to solve it is incompetence.

To solve the problem, you can use the PDCA steps of Deming, or you can use the general 8D method, or other routines summarized by the company's own practice.

Establish an incentive mechanism for employees to identify problems (both physical and mental); Provide training or training to improve employees' problem-solving skills; Provide guidance and assistance to employees in the process of problem solving; Give the most timely feedback after the problem is solved.

In this way, every employee of the company can become an observer of the process, and they are not only passionate about their job, but also interested and responsible for how to improve it. Small streams into rivers and seas, small steps and thousands of miles, each cell of the enterprise will become dynamic and efficient, competitiveness will naturally be greatly improved.

Closing remarks

At present, Chinese enterprises are simply rushing to lean production, but most of them have not achieved the expected success. Because they pay more attention to lean production methods and ignore the importance of relationships. People copied the methods that came from Toyota, but the environment we were in was very different from the environment that Toyota employees were in. Techniques and methods are important, but if people are not supported and challenged in learning how to use them, they will not learn how to use them effectively.

Most people only want to copy the surface of Toyota's lean production, but do not want to work on the more difficult level that must take more time, and do not understand the deeper cause of the more challenging - to change people's thinking, change people's behavior, change people's work habits, and thus replicate or create a lean culture, only to develop methods without properly developing people's capabilities.

If an organization sees itself as a business, not just a business, then it expects the company and its team members to prosper together, so it must build a strong relationship between the two. Among them, how to improve employee loyalty is the most important consideration.

One definition of loyalty is: devotion. If companies want employees to truly respect each other, admit mistakes, solve problems, and commit to their work, they must inspire and rely on their loyalty.

In order to inspire employee loyalty and thus achieve a high level of employee engagement, leaders must lead by example in their daily work and be role models in living up to the company's values.