Operational Excellence and High-Performing Organizations

In my last article, The Myth of Motivation, I discussed the importance of culture and intrinsic motivation for building a high-performing organization. In my opinion, that's where every organization should start. Focusing on operational excellence in an organization takes time, patience, and, most importantly, trust.

An organization needs to be focused on continuous improvement to reach the bar of being excellent. This can be a difficult transition for some who are used to, and perhaps comfortable with, being told what and how to do everything. But it won't lead to significant gains in how the organization operates.

Operational Excellence is unsurprisingly critical for a high-performing organization. As mentioned above, a culture of continuous improvement is the starting place. However, you'll need to develop an obsession with optimizations, and to do that, you'll need metrics.

In The Myth of Motivation, I talked about how the behaviors of intrinsic motivation align well with some of the flow triggers that Steven Kotler outlines in his book "The Art of Impossible." However, while there were a lot of areas where those two intersected, there is still an opportunity for creating even more intersections through improving your organization's operations.

While a strong culture, where intrinsic motivation is given ample opportunity to manifest in alignment with your organization's goals and mission, a chaotic operational environment can and will constantly pull individuals and teams out of their flow states. It will also increase the difficulty of getting into those flow states. A strong culture but poor operational efficiencies will create highly intrinsically motivated yet extremely frustrated individuals.

Make work visible; if you can see it, you can measure it. If you can measure it, you can improve it. 

The behaviors of a lean organization are also that of an organization focused on creating an environment to foster intrinsically motivated individuals and high-performing teams.  

Here are some of the behaviors of a lean organization:

1. Andon Cord: An Andon cord is a visual aid highlighting where action is required. The goal is to identify a problem in the system and implement countermeasures to resolve it and prevent its re-occurrence. Functionally, if a situation is identified in the system, any individual can pull the Andon Cord, highlight the issue, and ask for assistance in resolving the problem. This may mean stopping the production line to resolve the issue in a physical manufacturing environment. 
2. Kanban: Kanban is simply a signboard that conveys information between processes. However, the real power comes when it's your single source of truth about how your process works and where work is in the system. It must represent how the work is done, not how it's imagined to be done. A well-functioning Kanban board should always be able to communicate the exact state of work in the system. 
3. Just-in-time (JIT): JIT is a pull system that allows a workstation only to pull work needed to be done and when it's required to be done. In knowledge work, this means not having work that isn't ready to be worked on already assigned to an individual. JIT systems are also designed to eliminate overburden of equipment and people. 

Lean is highly focused on the flow of value through a system, specifically, how that value is delivered to customers. But I believe the behaviors above also create flow triggers.

An Andon Cord is more than a visual aid to help identify where a problem is in the system. It's an empowerment tool. The mere existence of this visual aid does several things for your organization. It communicates to the entire team that they can stop the production line to ensure quality standards are met. These are not my quality standards as the business but "our" quality standards as a team. Everyone, regardless of work, wants to take pride in their profession. The Andon Cord signifies that the quality of the work is more important than the speed at which it can be completed. This gives everyone a sense of Autonomy, equal participation, shared risk, and the humility of blending egos. These are all social flow triggers, increasing the likelihood of individuals and teams getting into flow and staying there. It also has the hugely added benefit of moving quality up. When quality is moved up, it is no longer the last step in the process but a constant part, reducing future waste, such as defects and rework.

Kanban is a great way to communicate the state of work in the system. When this is being used accurately, it also creates metrics in which you can measure things like cycle times and takt time, but it can also help identify where waste is, such as queues. Kanban boards create good communication, which is also a social flow trigger. When good communication is present, it decreases the length of feedback loops, making the equivalent of immediate feedback for the whole group. This helps keep teams in a flow state because the information provided by the board guides the team's collective behavior.

Just In Time, or a pull system, can increase individual productivity by reducing cognitive load. It also gives individuals and teams a sense of control and equal participation. It also can increase complete concentration, as the focus is not being pulled away by future work. Social flow triggers include a sense of control, equal participation, and total concentration. Again, this behavior change increases operational excellence and helps individuals and teams enter and stay in a flow state.

A key component of agile and lean is decreasing the length of feedback cycles and improving the speed at which decisions can be made to create value. These decisions should impact not only the product but the process in which the product is being created, whether an organization is dealing with a complex environment and making substantial use of agile processes to experiment and test hypotheses quickly or dealing with a complicated environment where lean practices can accelerate the delivery of value to a customer. In all these situations, operational excellence will increase the ability of individuals and teams to enter and stay in flow states. When combined with a mission-driven culture, shared risks, and shared clear goals, an organization can become high-performing.

When culture is designed to create highly intrinsically motivated individuals and operational behaviors are aligned with creating flow triggers, an organization's ability to achieve its goals will increase significantly.