Canadian Government Executive - Volume 23 - Issue 02

February 2017 // Canadian Government Executive / 9 Strategy How True North Changes Culture While True North objectives vary by organi- zation, the basic idea is essentially the same. Here are five ways in which True North helps create a purpose-driven culture. 1. True North connects every employee with the purpose of coming to work. Washington State, with 30,000 employees exposed to Lean methods, is one of the leaders in Lean government. The State’s True North metrics include areas such as a prosperous economy, sustainability, accountability, education, and health, all which are tied to specific measurements. “True North is important for focus,” says Hollie Jensen, Enterprise Lean Leader for the State of Washington. “When the work of those closest to the customers is connected to the broader mission of the state, it helps them prioritize what they should be work- ing on, and their engagement increases. It simply helps provide purpose to our work.” True North might remind a worker, for example, that a grant application is really about the underprivileged children who will benefit. “Often, we see government objectives in some sort of bureaucratic lan- guage,” says Craig Szelestowski, Founder of Ottawa-based Lean Agility. “True North is really about making that emotional con- nection with staff.” 2. True North is about improving the work, not just the results. HermanMiller, maker of the familiar Aeron office chair, was one of the first American companies to learn Lean meth- ods directly from Toyota, and has become a classic Lean success story. Early in their journey, they discovered that their focus on tools and results was causing workers to be overwhelmed. “The ‘aha’ moment for leadership was that they needed to ask, ‘what are you doing to make the work better for people?’ says Matt Long VP of Continuous Improvement. “Morale improved dramatically, but what we didn’t expect is that all of our oth- er metrics did too. That was a big cultural change moment.” Improving the work is now entrenched in their True North, which is depicted on a mural in their visitor center that illustrates their-20 year journey. “What we learned from Toyota is that there are two aspects for True North,” says Long. “There’s the aspect around employees – things like safe work environment, struggles in the workplace, job security, and then there’s the customer aspect – reliability, quality, shorter lead times, and that sort of thing.” 3. True North provides questions, not answers. True North metrics are intentionally left open to interpretation. “The leadership says ‘what’ but they don’t say ‘how,’” says Shilton. “Those who are closest to the front line are the ones who will figure out how to do it. It wouldn’t make sense for me to tell nurses on a certain floor, ‘well you need to start doing things this way,’ because I have no idea if that’s going to work.” “I think it’s important to keep the met- rics at a high level with True North,” says Toussaint, “not necessarily deploy a spe- cific metric to the front line, but ask the question, ‘how might you impact that met- ric in your daily work?’ That open-ended questioning gets people to think about mistakes, accidents, and howwe eliminate those sorts of things.” 4. True North helps support strategic alignment. In large organizations, it can be challeng- ing to get people reading off the same page. As part of the Quebec Government’s strate- gic healthcare and social services initiative, participating agencies are adding facilities to support stronger dialogue around goals and objectives. These include dedicated strategy rooms, tactical rooms, and depart- mental display boards that track daily prog- ress against the desired metrics. “We have organizations that employ nearly 20,000 people and have over 100 sites,” says Sylvain Landry, Professor of Logistics and Operations Management at HEC Montréal: “So we need something to guide people so that everyone can relate to where the organization is going, and have a sense of what they’re doing and how they are contributing to that goal. To me, this emphasizes the importance of True North.” 5. True North is always present in the workplace. Unlike strategic objectives that reside in the executive suite, True North is constantly re- ferred to when projects are planned, deci- sions are made, or customers are served. “TrueNorth helps usmanage all of our daily actions in order to achieve the performance expected by government,” says Jean-Fran- cois Robert, Senior Consultant, Continuous Improvement and Performance, University Health and Social Services Centre, National Capital Region. “So we use True North in all our routines and problem solving. If we start a project, we ask, ‘how will this action connect to the True North and its dimen- sions?’ This helps us ensure that we are do- ing the right things.” The bottom line Culture change is never easy, but the ex- perience in successful Lean organizations proves that employees will embrace the opportunity of working together towards a common purpose. “I realized we were truly transforming our culture a couple of years ago,” says Shilton, “when one of our nurses said to me, ‘What I really like about Lean is that you want me to tell you when things aren’t working. In the old days whenever I did that I felt like a whiner or complainer but now not only do you want me to tell you when things aren’t working, you also want me to tell you how I think we can make it better.’”