Canadian Government Executive - Volume 22 - Issue 2

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February 2016 // Canadian Government Executive / 9
Identify approval criteria and the per-
centage of time each criterion is not
met: Building a list of approval criteria,
and identifying what percentage of the
time each criterion is not met in the first
draft allowed the team to build questions
into their forms to help the user get it right
the first time. This can help increase the
probability that the first draft is sufficient-
ly strong to make it through the process
with minimal or no rework, saving effort.
Provide early support: As many appli-
cants in the approval process were infre-
quent users, and one-time training on the
process was likely to be forgotten as time
elapsed, the team began providing just-in-
time coaching to help users fill in the doc-
uments accurately. This may sound like
unnecessary effort, but a key principle in
eliminating defects is that often a small,
early, investment to help a user get it right,
pays major dividends, by reducing rework
later. In some cases, fifteen minutes of
face-to-face coaching can save ten or more
hours of preventable work. The earlier a
defect is caught, the lower the cost.
The lessons is clear: the later in the ap-
proval process a defect is caught, the more
effort or capacity is needlessly expended.
It will be then re-reviewed by more peo-
ple on the way back up the chain. And
the senior people who conduct the later
reviews are typically less available, caus-
ing the file to sit and wait, and eventually
fall out of date (e.g. airline and hotel prices
change) and then perhaps require an even
greater amount of rework, or even a com-
plete re-write. As well, reviews by execu-
tives cost more, in terms of both salary
and opportunity cost.
Eliminate sequential reviews: Instead
of the file being reviewed by the Ana-
lyst, Manager and Director in sequence,
the team submitted the draft request to
all three levels at the same time and re-
quired a face-to-face review of the three of
them, along with the requestor. This re-
duced four or five rounds of revision and
re-reviewing to one single round, cutting
their review/revision effort by up to 75%
and lead time by up to 90%. It also forced
each of the four levels to get onto the same
page, learning what a “great” submission
looks like so that the next request is of bet-
ter quality, saving effort.
Defects, and the preventable work in
addressing them, consume remarkable
amounts of our capacity, but because our
processes are invisible, this cost largely
remains unseen. Mapping the process,
quantifying defects, identifying them, and
addressing them at their source can free
up valuable capacity to be used to keep
up, or finally get ahead. In the next ar-
ticle, I will look at the waste of Excessive
Processing, and how it can be addressed to
further free up capacity.
Craig Szelestowski heads Lean Agil-
ity’s Lean Government practice. In his
time as a Vice President at the Royal
Canadian Mint, and later as an inde-
pendent Lean Government facilitator,
trainer and coach, he initiated and
has led some of Canada’s most notable
public sector Lean transformations.
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