The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
—Marcel Proust
Everyone understands the need for developing educational material and standard work in an excellence journey. However, what often gets missed is development of a standard work process to create standard work. It may seem like an extra step but it isn’t. The standard work content developed in consultation with the staff (and physicians in the case of healthcare) has a much higher probability of acceptance by teams across the organization as compared to the one created by the centralized corporate team in isolation. Let me illustrate what a standard work process looks like, with an example from Hospital Heal (Figure 19.1).
Figure 19.1 Standard work for developing standard work for all management system elements at Hospital Heal.
The core team engaged the leadership team every quarter to decide which management system element(s) would be introduced in the rolling year. Working backward from the date of launch, the development of standard work for any management system element was a three-month process. An initial announcement was made to the staff informing them on the plan to introduce a new management system element in any one or more pilot area(s), three months in advance. In consultation with the subject matter expert and the communications team, an initial draft was created. The first draft was shared with the senior leadership, which included the chief of staff, for their in-principal acceptance of the broad outline of the standard work, the language used, and what the management system was expected to achieve, six weeks in advance of the launch date. A second draft with the necessary changes was then shared with the directors, managers, frontline personnel, and other physicians for their input on the content. Changes were incorporated in the third draft and shared with the senior leadership team for their final review and feedback two weeks prior to launch. The communications team then prepared a communications package and implemented a multiplatform strategy to reach the target audience one week in advance of the launch date.
Having a standard work development process clearly articulated to everyone in the organization completely eliminated any last-minute surprises, significantly reduced resistance from the pilot areas for introducing the management system elements in their area, and allowed teams to plan their workload during the implementation period.
Likewise, while developing the standard educational material for new staff orientation, creating awareness among staff on process-improvement tools and methodologies, project management, change management, innovation, creative problem solving, coaching and facilitation, etc., it is important that the language and terminology used resonate with the culture of your organization. Hospital Heal replaced the Japanese nomenclature with easy-to-understand English terms such as CQI (continuous quality improvement) instead of Kaizen; Go See Learn instead of Gemba Genchi Genbutsu; reflection instead of Hansei; strategic planning instead of Hoshin Kanri; waste instead of Muda; horizontal deployment instead of Yokaten; and beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels instead of yellow, green, and black belt Lean Six Sigma, among others.
Several examples of standard work for management system elements created for Hospital Heal are shared in the Appendix of this book to provide leaders and practitioners with a means to manage their businesses better. Note that standard work for all management system elements and the educational material for staff at Hospital Heal were developed in-house. A special shout-out to all members of the Hospital Heal family that included frontline workers, managers, directors, and physicians, vice presidents, and the CEO, who not only contributed to the continuous iterative development process but also had the courage to lead the implementation and promote standard work for all management system elements, during the transformation period. The core team collectively spent several hundred hours in content design, which included many late-night pizza dinners. The excitement to be part of creating something from scratch cannot be expressed in words; it has to be lived. I admit, I still have fond memories of those best times that we spent together as a team. We are all very proud of the work we delivered and the lessons and standard work templates presented here in this book are our way to “pay it forward.”
Sensei Gyaan: Develop the education material in-house only if you have a seasoned expert to facilitate content development. Otherwise it is best to take outside help for initial support. Steal shamelessly from others who have gone before you. However, customize content and language to suit your organization’s culture.