Canadian Government Executive - Volume 23 - Issue 02

Our mission is to contribute to excellence in public service management Editorial Editor-in-Chief: Patrice Dutil patrice@promotivemedia.ca www.patricedutil.com Associate Editor: Marcello Sukhdeo marcello@promotivemedia.ca Editorial Advisory Board Vic Pakalnis, Mirarco, Laurentian University; Denise Amyot, CEO, ACCC; Guy Gordon, Manitoba; Peter Jones, OCADU; Murray Kronick, BDO-Interis Consulting; Michael Eastman, Government Internal Auditors Council of Canada; Peter Stoyko sales VP Content & Business Strategy: Marcello Sukhdeo 905-727-3875 x4 marcello@promotivemedia.ca Vice President, Sales: Terri Pavelic 905-727-3875 x2 terri@promotivemedia.ca Events Director, Social Content & Events: Laskey S. 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High quality reprints of articles and additional copies of the magazine are available through circulation@promotivemedia.ca. Privacy Policy: We do not sell our mailing list or share any confidential information on our subscribers. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund (CPF) for our publishing activities. www.canadiangovernmentexecutive.ca Erratum: In the February issue, TVO was identified as the Ontario Educational Technology Agency. Its official name is the Ontario Educational Communications Authority. Our apologies. 4 / Canadian Government Executive // February 2017 Falling in Love Again Through Lean Hey, it’s February, and the mind turns to the passions of life. Faithful readers no doubt smiled on seeing this month’s cover. Over the past few years, CGE has devoted a great deal of space to explore the concepts and application of the Lean approach to management. Lean, for me, is an obsession with waste — es- pecially wasting time. It’s about knowing your muda from your muri and your mura . ( Muda is work that adds no value, muri is the overburden and the mura is the uneven- ness in your unit’s output.) Whether you work in policy in Ottawa, oversee a team of scientists in British Columbia or direct a service-delivery unit in Halifax, you are deal- ing with that Cerberus every day. Your concern should be about eliminating all three and you can only do that by creating a team around you that shares the same obsession. It’s about making it part of the office routine, not something that will just leave like a fad when you do. Lean is here to stay. So I have to ask: How is your Kata these days? When was the last time you took that Gemba walk? When was the last time Lean actu- ally became a subject of conversation at your coffee break. Does it make it to a meeting of directors? Lean actually started in Toyota’s car-making factories in the 1930s, far from Cana- dian government offices. The core idea was to deliver the best quality product possible by refining processes. It was Taylorism on steroids, focused on eliminating waste and wasted time. To be lean was to be economical, geared to tangible results, and account- able. What could be more relevant to a 21st century Canadian public servant than those objectives? Government has finally started paying attention, but it’s far from a generalized con- cern (the focus today is Deliverology — making sure the politicians have numbers handy). In their drive to improve customer value, departments are looking at the pro- cesses they use in delivering services. The aim is to keep improving—a core concept of Lean management. There is ample evidence that governments are indeed good at ex- ecuting their commissions and it is encouraging to see managers still unhappy with the generally defendable results they are obtaining. We are far from zero-waste scenarios, but the direction is set. At least that is the case in many departments. It’s a matter of education, of consensus building, of endless problem-solving while aiming for a basic stability. Lean requires a generalist perspective. That means leadership. It is not about the use of technology, or about physical assets, or even about improving services in one depart- ment. The challenge for public service leaders is to carry the momentum across depart- ments, to make Lean a horizontal obsession where departments will work together to eliminate waste and deliver the right product to the right people at the right time. More than that, they will focus together on adding a new level of service. There is now a good literature on the application of Lean, and it is really worth ex- ploring. What I like about this philosophy of management is its respect for colleagues — something we know a lot of public servants are struggling with. In Lean, everybody has a contribution to make; everyone has an opportunity speak to improve the system of delivery. It is healthy and it is sustainable. It commands respect in anyone who par- ticipates in it. So go ahead, and take your Gamba walk tomorrow when you get to work. Better still, put Lean on the agenda of your next meeting. editor’s note Patrice Dutil web