Accountability and Creating Process Ownership | Operational Excellence Quick Hits

Speaker 1: (00:06)
In the last session, we talked about engaging your employees to create positive change for the organization and that mindset of continuous improvement, and every process can be improved and improved significantly. This session, we’re going to talk about building accountability into the process and more importantly, creating ownership of the process. So once the employees have ownership of the process, the opportunities for improvement are endless.

Speaker 1: (00:35)
So if we look at a process, we follow the IPO model input process output, and how do we build accountability into the process? First, let’s understand what’s the difference between responsibility and accountability. Responsibility is being answerable for something within one’s power, control, or management. But accountability is being responsible for something but also ultimately being answerable for your actions. Accountability is something you hold a person to only after a task is done or not done. So responsibility can be shared while accountability cannot.

Speaker 1: (01:13)
So how do we build accountability into the process? So we talk about the management window. So the management window is the time between when action is taken until the time management understands the effect, that can be either a positive effect or a negative effect, of the action taken. So the goal is to reduce the management window so the time between when the action is taken until the effects are known is relatively short. So if we look at a process or a system that’s a series of processes, we can have the determination of whether the process or the system met the requirements at the end of the process or at the end of the system. And then what we call that time between when we understand what actions were taken and the outputs, whether they’re positive or negative, is a management window. What we want to do is make that window really short so when a process in the system is done, we understand the effect of that before it goes to the next step in the process.

Speaker 1: (02:18)
I’m not talking about doing inspections. So it’s about how do we understand that when action is taken that it’s correct, building quality into the process or quality at the source so that we know the inputs for the next step in the process are correct?

Speaker 1: (02:35)
Once we do that, then we work on creating ownership. So what is the ownership? Where the employees take pride in the workplace. The more pride they have in the workplace, the more engaged they’re going to be in creating a positive work environment or a positive culture.

Speaker 1: (02:53)
So how do we understand if we got ownership or not? So here’s a simple thing you can do, go out in your parking and look at the cars in the parking lot and pick out the cars that are immaculate. So some people that own their car keep it immaculate, so it’s shined, it’s clean inside, the tires are clean. It’s beautifully kept. Then go into that employee’s workplace and see if it’s kept the same way. So if we see a difference between how the employees keep their own vehicle that they own and their workplace, if the workplace is a mess, they don’t have ownership. If the workplace is spotless like they keep their vehicle, then they have ownership. So the key is creating that accountability, but more importantly, creating that ownership in the process so employees have pride in the workplace.