Many may be surprised to hear of how an organisation who are responsible for the collection of tax in the United Kingdom and have made such a high number of errors have been promoted as a leader of ‘lean thinking’ in the public sector.  1.4 million people have unwittingly paid too little tax through the PAYE system, while 4.5 million have paid too much; another 17.9 million might have paid the wrong amount, but HMRC is not sure. This amounts to 23.8 million people whose tax affairs are uncertain.

However, Dr Zoe Radnor advocates HMRC’s approach as “the closest of any public service organisation to date in implementing Lean philosophy” while John Bicheno believes “HMRC is a ‘neo-Taylorist’ implementation of what Bob Emiliani calls ‘Fake Lean’. Ohno would be horrified, as would Mike Rother, and Thomas Johnson.”

This debate continues after publication of another journal: Lean and mean in the civil service: the case of processing in HMRC by Bob Carter, Andy Danford, Debra Howcroft, Helen Richardson, Andrew Smith & Phil Taylor. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09540962.2011.560708 The article is a survey and critical review of Lean in HMRC, giving a strong opinion of the negative effects of HMRC’s use of lean techniques.

Unipart, a consulting organisation who supported the lean programmes over a 4-year period promote the approach used and have a case study downloadable on their website. They quote the programmes will deliver productivity improvements of 30 – 50%. A phenomenal increase in anyone’s book. http://www.unipart.co.uk/wps/wcm/connect/42373100470f445f84f694d36e5ceb1e/UEP+case+study+%28Public+Sector+HMRC%29.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CACHEID=42373100470f445f84f694d36e5ceb1e

Professor Gregor Gall from Hertfordshire University also has been vocal with his opinions of the effects on the workers of HMRC of the ‘lean’ implementations. Gall claims that they are responsible for “de-skilling” and “de-humanising” workers. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/09/tradeunions.workandcareers

Professor Seddon has also  expressed negative views of the use of lean in HMRC with many examples shared in his publication, Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: The Failure of the Reform Regime…. and a Manifesto for a Better Way.

As there is such a divided opinion on this interesting subject lets continue the debate. What’s your opinion? Is lean getting a bad name? What does this mean to the future of lean? Please feel free to contribute on our blog.

Ryan King
Head of Learning & Development
REINVIGORATION

After running our own ‘Lean for Services’ training our clients tell us what they went back into the business and actually changed, and then what tangible results they achieved, but are there any tools or a ‘best practice’ approach to follow?

Here’s 5 links, tools and articles that  just might help.

1. Tools

The UK’s Chartered Management Institute are currently developing two tools:

• The first, an employee assessment package, which includes two modules – Perform and Engage – can reveal vital  gaps in managers’ skills, then measure their progress after targeted training.  The product is a partnership between Cognisco and CMI, which will take the lead in creating tailored training for candidates, and includes mentoring and coaching and online support, on a group  or individual basis.
• The second, an integrated alignment tool – part of CMI’s ROI Service – features a combination of bespoke consultation and online survey and analysis features. These allow you to assess the approach to L&D in your organisation, to consider how well it aligns to core business objectives, and then to provide a mechanism for measuring improvements in capability.

2. Theory

Gina Abudi’s white paper ‘Using Return on Investment to Evaluate Project Management Training’ is a template approach worth considering. Her paper includes a focus on the use of ROI to measure the effectiveness of project management training programs in particular. She cites Jack Phillips of the ROI Institute, Inc. who developed a Level 5 ROI evaluation, as a follow on to the Kirkpatrick Levels 1 – 4 Evaluation Model (Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick, 2005) for the measurement of training programs. Phillips’ Level 5 takes the measurement of the effectiveness of training program to a higher level – converting the benefits of the training to a monetary value, thereby demonstrating its value to the bottom line.

3. Benchmarking

UK based, The ROI Academy, has created what they call a ‘Training Impact Evaluator‘. They say ‘it is an easy to use solution benchmarked against the National Occupational Standards for Management and Leadership. It gives you that ‘hard to find’ measure of what difference the training makes back in the workplace (Kirkpatrick Levels 3 and 4).’

4. How to measure the ROI of training

This very popular slideshow from ExploreHR.org  shows you the steps to take and is available to download too. Or you can even go on a course to learn it via The Independent’s own ‘Measuring Training Return on Investment 1 day workshop’.

5. Books

The Jack J. Phillips book Return on Investment in Training and Performance Improvement Programs is a good start and offers:

* Applies the well-known ROI method to training programs
* Provides you with the tools to identify the key indicators for measurement and how to measure them effectively
* Summarizes in simple language everything practitioners need to do to sell, defend, or expand training initiatives to senior management

Please let us know (by posting your comments below) of any more noteworthy approaches and we’ll add them to the list. Thanks.

Check out some of the neat and nimble management dashboard visualisations from our favourite management data solution providers.

Klipfolio.com KPI Dashboard:

Klipfolio Dashboard is a real-time web, mobile, and desktop dashboard that features: (in their own words)

• Data visualization. Data-driven charts for real at-a-glance reporting. Easily view progress against company goals.
• Sorting, filtering and finding. Sort data, search for, filter and organize information so you can see what’s important to you.
• Drill down / across.  Drill down into the data to get the “why?” behind the numbers.
• Desktop alerting. Set up alerts to notify users of changes or new data.

Dundas Executive Dashboard

The Dundas Excutive Dashboard “displays financial metrics and sales metrics such as Margin by Month, Sales Distribution, Monthly Support Expenses, Monthly Revenue, etc. Visualizations consist of gauges, maps, area charts and line charts”.

Intuitive Business Intelligence

Intuitive Dashboards “provide(s) you with a single, consolidated view of all your disparate data by bringing together information from multiple sources including accounting software, forecast spreadsheets, CRM, HR and much more.”

ReadWriteWeb reports that the “New features include:

• HTML parsing functions (based on JSoup)
• Metaphone3 (American English) & Cologne Phonetic (German) coders & clustering
• Google Fusion Table import support
• Facet for exact duplicates
• Ability to star favorite expressions for reuse later
• Latest Apache POI library including a number of Excel bug fixes”

Mashable ran a great introduction to Google Refine late last year with Google’s own accompanying video demo of 2.0.

Lean Six Sigma for Service: How to Use Lean Speed and Six Sigma Quality to Improve Services and Transactions

by Michael L. George

The book promises to help you “discover how to:

• Integrate Lean and Six Sigma and apply them side by side
• Become a customer-centered organization
• Gain control over process complexity
• Improve response time on signature services
• Apply value-based management to project selection
• Clean up your workspace
• Develop supplier relationships”

The Lean Toolbox for Service Systems 

by John Bicheno

The publisher’s state that “all material in the book has been ‘field tested’ by exposure to service professionals and executive programmes. A feature of the book is that it integrates several approaches rather than advocating a particular approach. Attention is given to general Lean service concepts and frameworks, to mapping and understanding different types of service system, and to a range of tools that have been found to be useful in a variety of service environments.”

Lean Office and Service Simplified: Extending Lean Thinking to Administrative Processes 

by Drew Locher

This good baseline to start with “breaks down Lean concepts into their elementary components, describes them in a non-manufacturing context, and supplies readers with specific how-to methodologies. Providing detailed examples throughout, the text illustrates the functions found in most service organizations…goes beyond the basic tools to detail the key concepts of Lean as they apply to office and service environments. It begins by discussing value stream management, followed by chapters on standard work, flow, level pull, and visual management.

The Complete Lean Enterprise: Value Stream Mapping for Administrative and Office Processes

by Beau Keyte 

Although ‘manufacturing’ focused this book “offers a step-by-step approach to applying lean initiatives to the administrative and office environment…..applying value stream mapping (VSM) to non-production areas, identifying office wastes, establishing performance metrics, speeding up administrative workflow, and improving office efficiency.”

Lean for Public Sector: The Pursuit of Perfection in Government Services

by Bert Teeuwen 

“The book begins with coverage of the basic philosophy of Lean before detailing specific methods for improving processes in the public sector. It addresses concerns specific to the public sector environment and considers the role of the citizen, not only as customer, but as a voter, taxpayer, and community participant. The author provides a clear explanation of methods such as 5S, kaizen, standardization techniques, and Value Stream Mapping shaped to Lean Government. His approach provides a reality-based view of value-added services and waste in the public sector.”