Set an Improvement Agenda for Your Project
June 19th, 2003 by Hal
Sorry for being late with this week's Project e-Tip. I'e had an exciting week visiting the Toyota Camry plant and another Toyota Group company both in Kentucky. I'll provide some details on Friday. In the meantime, this week's e-tip is a follow-on to last week's. I raised the issue of conflicting intentions as a significant impediment to adopting practices of self-directed continuous improvement. In this week's e-tip I share how a project manager can create a situation for engaging all team members in improving activities that are focussed.
 The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week |
| 008: Set an Improvement Agenda for Your Project |
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The Japanese have a goal-setting practice called hoshin. They use it for annual and five-year planning. It is a top-down and bottoms-up approach that aligns individual intentions for improvement with the strategic intentions of the firm. The brilliance of hoshin goals is in the limitation imposed for no more than 2 or 3 goals/division. Why is it brilliant? First, there are no corporate conflicting intentions. Everyone is focussed on the same thing. Second, it engages everyone's reticular activating system in the same way. Take the time at the outset of every project to set 2 or 3 improvement goals. Do this with your team rather than for your team. Provide the context of the strategic intentions of your company. Also share what your customer would appreciate as added value. Then solicit team proposals in a way that allows a (re)shaping of goals. Finally, create a routine of reviewing improvements in team meetings.
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