#15 How to Achieve a Culture of Continuous Improvement in the Public Sector with Renee Smith

Enterprise Excellence Podcast with Brad Jeavons

• 45 min

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Summary Washington State was embracing lean as an operating system, a culture and way of working. Renee and her team were preparing a lean conference for the entire State. Renee had a life-changing chat with her Executive Director Chris Lew, who began his training at Toyota in the early days. Renee and Chris were discussing the leadership style that was required to sustain fantastic results from people. He said, and Renee quoted him saying "eliminate fear from the workplace", which was music to Renee's ears. She began to thoughtfully unpack that idea - if we were to decrease fear, what would take its place? Naturally, it's polar opposite: love. What does 'love' look like in the workplace? How do we encourage people to speak up, offer their ideas, complete PDCA, and apply lean techniques to improve a workplace? Renee began to study. She researched hundreds of people's stories and developed a firm idea of what fear and love looked like in the workplace. Renee provides insights into what she calls moments that count. Renee kindly shares how a leader can approach these moments that count with their people to drive out fear and foster love, caring, trust and respect. Practically, Renee believes that it is easiest to think of a way to drive fear in a situation and asks leaders to make their fear plan first. Then on the other side of the paper, detail how they can create the opposite - their loving, respectful plan.  Renee believes that by looking at the difference between the two plans, leaders can be present in each moment. They can consciously place themselves in the shoes of their people and plan a more humanistic approach for moments that count. This approach will ultimately build and foster a positive team culture. Links Websites • AHumanWorkplace.com  (Company Website) • MakeWorkMoreHuman.com/blogposts  (Blog) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-smith-wa-state-lean/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ahumanworkplace/ Quotes 09.24min Chris, like let’s get real. Tell me what do you think is the most important job of a leader? And I will never forget what he said. He immediately answered, 'to eliminate fear from the workplace'. 12.58min if we're going to have this respect for people in this culture that we're trying to build, then that means that I need to hold precious the humanity of my team members. Right? That's underneath all of everything else that we would do is to hold precious, deeply caring for the humanity of my team members. and it means that I'm going to hold precious the humanity of my customers, and deeply caring for them as human beings. 15.03min Lean is a human centred philosophy of work, or a human centred approach to work. At its highest level, that's what it is. 15.15min and that approach creates a culture that has certain principles and values, and it uses certain methods tools, and results in certain things. It results in continuous improvement and delivering better value to customers, and flow and so on. 25.09min Part 1: think through what can I do to create fear? What is my plan for fear? And we know, right? We know. Sometimes we've got to pause and slow down a little to think about it, but we know. We know the things, like poor communication, surprising people, not explaining what’s happening, not providing people the resources they need, and not giving people them time to get to know each another. We can make that list of what would create fear in that scenario.  26.45min almost anything that we're doing, even in strategic planning. It could be in the implementation of an improvement that we're making. We pause. That's like a lens To learn more about what we do, visit <a href="https://www.enterpriseexcellenceacademy.com/" rel="nofollow">www.enterpriseexcellenceacademy.com</a>. Thanks for your time, and thanks for helping to create a better future.