8 Ways to Get Total Involvement

There was an inspiring article by Pete Abilla on the Shmula blog yesterday called Total Company Involvement. In any company-wide continuous effort, there are various levels and degrees of employee engagement. In a true high-performance work culture, we should aim for total involvement in daily improvement activities. Although we say “less is more” in many aspects of lean, this is a case where “more is more“. In reality, just as we target zero for negative aspects like accidents, defects, and other waste, we ought to aim for “all” or “total” when it comes to positive elements such as 5S, quality management, and kaizen.

Eight Strategies for Total Participation: Teamwork, Uniforms, Meetings, and Cross-training

How can we ensure total participation from our team members in productive initiatives? Here are eight strategies:

1. Teams. People work more effectively when collaborating closely with others. As social creatures, we flourish through communication and teamwork. A practical first step to total involvement is to start small and local. It may be too much to expect one thousand people to all agree and engage fully in a common goal right away, but we can achieve this in the short term with groups of five to ten fairly easily. Encouragement fosters engagement, and in the long run, peer recognition for achievements is as vital, if not more so, than monetary or other external rewards.

2. Uniforms. Simplifying and standardizing our appearance not only eliminates superficial differences that distract from our shared goals but also reminds us that we come to work with a purpose. Just like protective equipment is essential for working with machines, diving gear for diving, and lab coats for lab work, a basic uniform helps individuals be aware of their active involvement in their tasks.

In fact, there may even be health benefits to wearing uniforms. A number of recent studies show the way we think about how old or young we are has actual physical benefits. A study mentioned in a Newsweek article titled “Just Say No to Aging?” expanded the research to include people who wear uniforms. The study stated:

“Most people try to dress appropriately for their age, so clothing in effect becomes a cue for ingrained attitudes about age. But what if this cue disappeared? Langer decided to study people who routinely wear uniforms as part of their work life, and compare them with people who dress in street clothes. She found that people who wear uniforms missed fewer days owing to illness or injury, had fewer doctors’ visits and hospitalizations, and had fewer chronic diseases–even though they all had the same socioeconomic status.”

3. Stand-up meetings. Successful teams form the habit of meeting to review the game plan before the start of the day and review it at least once, during, or at the end of the day. This speeds up communication, addresses any issues promptly, and reinforces the goal of the shared work of the team. The team meeting is the most basic act of total involvement. Any organization claiming to aim for total involvement or to practice lean must have teams that hold regular brief meetings.

4. Cross-training and job rotation. Total involvement means never saying “That is not my job“. Team members who can provide mutual assistance to others require knowledge and skill of the work of others. This is developed through cross-training and job rotation. The benefits of cross-training are immense, both in terms of hard savings and soft savings, and include flexibility, job satisfaction, exposure to problems, improved quality, and of course reduced cost. To get total involvement, give people more to do.

Dressing in a uniform, forming a team, undergoing rigorous training, and beginning with a huddle – these all sound like elements of a sports game. The key to a victorious team lies in the fusion of individuals who unite for a common goal, communicate effectively during the game, and are guided by captains and coaches: this embodies total involvement. A player who fails to demonstrate these qualities often finds themselves sidelined, not playing much or for an extended duration.

Four More Tactics for Full Participation: Cleaning, Suggestions, Maintenance, and Policy Alignment

Several of the most popular methods for achieving total involvement in lean organizations depend on the following activities, systems, or tools:

5. Cleaning. A high-performance workplace should be clean and well-organized by design and discipline. This should not be the result of heroic daily efforts at cleaning. While daily 5 to 15-minute clean-up times may be the way to start this practice, clever managers target these minutes for “savings” or to increase capacity, resulting in not only more clutter but damaged morale due to eroding involvement, and ultimately lower performance. A more effective practice of cleaning is to make 5S a natural part of the work cycle so everyone can “clean as you go“. Processes should be designed for ease of putting things back, picking things up, and sweeping things away periodically, with an emphasis on always eliminating the need to clean through root cause countermeasures.

Total involvement is again the key – making sure that cleanliness is not the janitor’s job but part of everyone’s habit.

6. Suggestions systems. The human mind, a fundamental unit of creativity, exists within every individual in an organization. However, it is often underutilized in the workplace. A well-structured suggestion system, designed to encourage small, local, and practical improvements toward eliminating inconsistency, overburden, and waste, stands as the most effective way to facilitate total involvement.

Over time, people have identified various obstacles in implementing suggestion schemes. For more insights on these pitfalls and how to avoid them, refer to the article, “The Top 10 Suggestion Stumblers and How to Avoid Them“.

Organizations that have successfully implemented a robust suggestion scheme have reaped the rewards, with an average of one idea implemented per employee every month, sustained over many years. An article that showcases this practice is “Toyota’s Suggestion System: 56 Years and Still Going Strong“.

7. TPM. We could say that Total Productive Maintenance is a highly specific and concrete application of lean thinking and principles, focused on making the most effective use of production equipment. The term TPM predates the term “lean” and incorporates many of the concepts and tools of lean. It was a marriage of preventive maintenance disciplines with TQM (Total Quality Management) and has evolved over the years, expanding its reach into administrative and management areas. At the heart of TPM is teamwork, the development of people, and total involvement in improving safety, quality, delivery, and cost. Due to its highly structured and focused nature, whenever appropriate TPM should be implemented towards a lean operation with total involvement.

8. Policy deployment. Also known as hoshin kanri, hoshin planning, strategy deployment, or simply goal alignment, this approach aims to establish a few significant objectives. It then utilizes a “down-up-down” deployment process, which involves discussions at every level of the organization. These conversations determine how each team can contribute to the achievement of these overarching goals. Combined with a built-in PDCA process for corrective action and learning, policy deployment may be the most powerful management discipline available to us today. In essence, policy deployment is the systematic application of kaizen to management and planning. Under policy deployment, everyone is involved in building the success of their company and thereby creating their own future.

The Key to Long-term Success in Lean Practices

It’s no coincidence that four out of the eight strategies emphasize people and organizational dynamics, while the other half focus on specific improvement methods and tools. More than half of long-term success in implementing lean practices depends on the design of the organization. Without striving for total involvement, sustained success with lean methods is unlikely. However, if total involvement remains a cornerstone of your guiding principles – your “True North” on the journey towards lean practices – you stand a good chance of achieving success.

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