Crowdsourced Leadership Standard Work

A few weeks ago I posted an article where I asked for your thoughts on what “leadership standard work” meant to you.  As is typical, you all blew me away with your comments.

Steve Armitage, a reader of Gemba Academy’s blog, captured the eye of many of you with his comment about his personal use of a leader standard work document.  He also offered to share it with us all… and as it turns out, Steve is a man of his word.

So, without further delay here is Steve’s version of leadership standard work.

Additionally, Steve sent this message along with the document.  Please, if you don’t mind, take a second and thank Steve for openly sharing this with the entire world wide web by leaving a short comment below this post.

I use my working menu to capture key tasks that are fundamental to the role I have as Lean Coach for our site. My team of 5 all use them and I review with them on a weekly basis. Questions I ask:

• Are you meeting the key tasks that deem you have met the minimum requirements for support as an advisor?
• If not, why is this so?
• If not, what do I need to do to help you meet this?

My aim is not to use it a session when my team member is lashed for not meeting their requirements, but rather as a pre-emptive snap shot of the load my people are carrying and what we need to do to ensure the work that needs to be done gets done. The feature of this is that I get no nasty end of month surprises when my boss asks where we are at, I have already actioned catch up plans to take up any lag or headed off any potential falls.

I use the same process with my leader, he reviews my WM with me and I am able to clearly articulate where the work is happening and what is being done. The most satisfying aspect of my own WM is that if asked to take on a task that clashes with one I have already, I can point to it and ask the question about how the priority lies and have not yet had a “discussion” at the end of the month as to why aspects of work are not on time or delayed.

The roll out where I work has been a fascinating journey and to see the changes to our workplace and stability that has followed as a result has been nothing short of staggering. Let me know if you would like any further info.

Regards,

Steve Armitage

Once again, here is Steve’s leadership standard work.

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