What managers can do with corporate sperm count
Credit to Author: REY ELBO| Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2019 16:16:51 +0000
SAMMY Obara of Honsha.org often talks about Toyota and its extra-ordinary propensity and incurable obsession towards Kaizen-Lean or incessant waste reduction strategy. To change the people’s paradigm, he would ask them a question: “If a $300 billion company like Toyota is dead serious in saving a penny, then why can’t we do the same thing?”
Then Obara would change his tune to ask another question: “In the first place, why would you spend a penny for nothing?” It is one valid question with the same intensity as that of the corporate “sperm count” which management guru Gary Hamel is prescribing as a potent solution to many operational issues.
You know what it means. Just like when we need millions of sperm to fertilize a single egg, we also need millions of employee ideas to spark a great one or an innovation if you wish to call it that way.
And so, what’s the connection between the hypothesis of Obara and Hamel? Both experts encourage every organization to put up an active employee suggestion program participated by all workers so they can help out to plug “small leaks that can sink a great ship.” Obara prescribes the Toyota Production System as a model. To do just that, Hamel supports the idea of producing millions of employee ideas from around the world.
Toyota is not the only model. Even BMW has the same approach through its Virtual Innovation Agency. Outside of the auto industry, there are many dynamic companies at the forefront actively soliciting employee ideas, including 3M with its “15 percent program” where 15 percent of employees’ time is dedicated for thinking up of many creative ideas on product quality and labor productivity.
I’ve seen and heard many organizations wanting to do Kaizen-Lean approach except that they’re obstructed by issues, many of which are irrelevant. Take my recent experiment on social media about the meal vouchers of Philippine Airlines (PAL). It came to my attention when a friend showed a copy of PAL’s meal voucher on his Facebook page.
If and when a flight is delayed for at least three hours, all airline carriers, including PAL, are required to provide free refreshments or meals, among other minor amenities, according to the Air Passenger Bill of Rights.
The moment I saw the meal voucher, my inquisitive mind prodded me to ask the following question: “Is there a better way? How would you improve the process of giving out the vouchers and cut further costs for the airline, no matter how small they are?” If you’ll review the meal voucher form, it requires a worker or several workers to manually fill up the blanks for the passenger’s name, date of issue, flight number, name of issuing clerk, restaurant’s name and a rubber stamp that says “For Passenger’s Only.”
The voucher is an accountable form as evidenced by its pre-numbering system – an evidence of control that should have been served by the boarding pass. I can imagine the amount of time, money and effort needed by PAL to compensate passengers on a delayed flight. It is too tedious for a clerk or several clerks to manually write all those details in the meal voucher. If we’re talking of say 200 passengers in a delayed flight, then how much time is needed to fill-up all those vouchers?
Why not use the boarding pass, instead? Of course, I’m not saying it’s an excellent solution. Maybe the voucher is being used as the only basis for PAL to pay redeemed meals from Jollibee.
Whatever the case is, let’s open the door to discuss waste elimination as a matter of routine for all organizations with the active participation of its corporate “sperm count.”
When ordinary workers participate in a problem-solving process, their ideas must be respected. By understanding their concerns, management can better understand the real constraints in their operations and their work relationships.
Over a long period of time, we have been hearing this repeatedly. At the risk of being repetitive, management should welcome any intellectual discourse with their workers. If managers can identify the constraints, they can easily work their way into more productive directions. In any case, both managers and their workers must proceed to discover more solutions, preferably those inexpensive to implement. Being insiders, they can figure out which are workable and which are not.
Perhaps we can even require the workers to think of all crazy ideas out there. More crazy ideas, the better because it’s a manifestation that everyone has the license to think and suggest of new solutions for management approval.
Imagine what you could be missing out when you ignore hundreds of thousands of trivial issues because your top management decides to do an in vitro approach of relying on few “experts” rather than what nature tells us to do — to harness the power of our corporate “sperm count.”
Rey Elbo is a business consultant on human resources and total quality management as a fused interest. Send feedback to elbonomics@gmail.com or via https://reyelbo.consulting
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