WHAT NOT TO DO?
Continue using the 19th century bureaucratic structure of government that demands results from employees.
-Continue to think of innovation as only occurring when major projects are initiated.
-Demand improved results from all employees when they have little or no responsibility for results.

When you have successful results from goals set by government managers in many cases it is not known how the results came about. Very often it is what you are doing and what you are saying as managers that makes all the difference in results.
I remember from a management class I had some years ago about a series of experiments in the work place done at Westinghouse. In one experiment the lighting was improved by increasing the wattage in the florescent bulbs over the work tables in the Westinghouse factory. Then over the next few weeks it was noted that productivity increased significantly over what it had been before. Some weeks later the light bulbs were changed again only this time instead of increasing the wattage they decreased the wattage. The workers were told that the wattage was increased even higher. The result was again an increase in productivity. The experiments demonstrated that by just focusing managements attention on employees there can be an increase productivity.
If you consider all the general statements made in annual meetings and in monthly pep talks about getting better results you would think productivity would increase significantly. What is different in this case is that the employees must be personally “touched” that is to say involved in making the improvements in productivity. When employees are not personally involved increased productivity and better results can mean next to nothing. This is primarily because of the lack of employee involvement in decisions affecting the work place they feel little or no responsibility for results.

Government today is still griped in the 19th century bureaucratic
structure. What is needed is to skip the 20th century move into the into a 21st century management structure. One clear example of an organization of the 21st century is Google. Google structures all of its management activities into small focused teams of employees. It is among the most innovative companies that innovate not just for themselves but for their customers as well. Google’s search engine business started with the question “what does the customer want?” not how can we make money from the customer.
Eric Schmidt CEO of Google knows the importance of innovation. His employees are allowed to spend 20% of their day working on their own innovations knowing if the company buys in they will have the chance to develop their ideas. Google spends 70% of their efforts on the core of their business the search engine, 20% on search engine related business and 10% on unrelated customer driven innovation.

Replacing Bureaucracies with Total Change
Bureaucracies in many ways are like dinosaurs capable of adapting to new environmental threats yet still remaining a dinosaur. They are remarkably adaptable when it comes to protecting their self-interest. Some unnamed state governments have promoted and implemented Total Quality Management (TQM) teams. But what really happened is only lip service was given to the idea and the teams were simply added to the structure of the organization and any benefit from the implementation of TQM was lost.
TQM is the same idea as the Work Improvement Teams (WITs) which I recommend. However bureaucracies are inherently unable to process the words “Total Quality”. That is understandable since TQM came from a manufacturing environment, which focused on raising the quality of a companies products thus increasing sales and profits. Lean Teams won’t work without getting the entire management to change their focus to process improvement and serving the public. The reason for an organization to exist is to perform one or more functions. Functions have a set of processes that can be improved by those performing the processes.
What is needed is cataclysmic change throughout the organization, which is nearly impossible in a bureaucratic organization. But change can come to bureaucracies if top management is willing to do the following: embrace the Lean concept, eliminate bureaucratic complexity, reduce the number of levels of the organization, empower all employees to be innovative and focus on the customer the public that you are serving.

By “elimination bureaucratic complexity” I mean just that throw out detailed job descriptions and endless evaluations. Instead trust peer reviews from the Teams. Don’t read any memo over two pages long and if you do get any send them back to be rewritten. Totally kill this idea of my office is bigger than yours by eliminating all offices and have only conference rooms. Where I once worked some times when a person could not be promoted because the larger office required was unavailable with out building an addition to the office.
Reducing the number of levels of management is gut wrenching for bureaucracies because their power resides in their ability to promote personnel. This must occur if it doesn’t you will know that the implementation has failed. The reason for this change is that there is nothing tangible for these extra layers of management to do except get in the way.
What you want is flat lean organization that adapts to change through innovation and continuous improvement. Develop a “loose tight” organization allow personnel the freedom to innovate while keeping tight control on the budget. Your organization should have a tough side not by top management banging their fist on the desk but through peer pressure. This will spell the end to kick backs, waste and other forms of fraud. Remember most personnel in bureaucracies know what is going on under the table but don’t say anything through fear of retaliation.

Empower all employees to be innovative. Encourage small failures because you also get small successes and by duplicating these small successes the entire organization benefits from the improvement.

Focus on the customer the people you are serving. Bureaucracies tend ignore this and have as their primary focus the organization itself and its survival. All improvements should in the end better serve your customer and the taxpayer.

Changing the Workplace Environment to get Innovation
The primary purpose of the Lean Team is to focus all the brainpower at the work place on innovation. In a competitive environment innovation is where you save the business and the employees’ jobs. In many government bureaucracies void of competition innovation is not only unwelcome it is discouraged. Actually there is a kind of government competition but it is within the state where agencies compete for tax dollars. This is where bureaucracies hide their wastefulness while making blotted requests for increased funding. The situation here is that any innovation shown by one organization simply feeds more funds to those organizations that don’t innovate.

The problem is how to change the workplace environment across all state government agencies at the same time and yet keep the changes small enough to avoid a major failure and political embarrassment. I recommend that the governor implement a Lean Team as a test team in a workplace environment where success is most likely. When the WIT test implementation is successful he should then form a WIT Implementation Task Force for statewide implementation of Team’s. Each agency head must support the implementation within his organization failure to do this will lead to the failure of the team. The governor’s Team Implementation Task Force will travel throughout the state visiting each Team and report weekly on the progress of statewide WITs. Successes should be published in the state’s newsletter showing support from the governor’s office. Total change comes in small successful steps the first of which is with the implementation of Teams.

Besides the innovation at the workplace there is also personal innovation aimed at reinventing oneself. State government leaders should be encouraged to attend seminars on this subject. I only mention this as a possible way of softening the implementation of the Teams and preventing the appearance that they are being crammed down managements throats.

Practices that Encourage Teamwork and Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement comes from teamwork and small steps in improvement in their work processes. However some practices can get in the way. One of these is performance measurement. The rule here is “what you measure is what you get”. You should never measure individual performance or its corollary pay individual incentive pay it pits employees against each other causing them to horde information about the work being done stifling continuous improvement. The converse is to always measure group productivity and reward group performance. But make sure that what you are measuring and what you are rewarding are what you want as a result. A second example is don’t measure vehicle or machine utilization they may driven or used just to collect the miles or hours to meet the standard for performance a waste of equipment and employee’s time. Also measure only a few items needed for improvement other measures can be used just for monitoring activities but don’t have too many performance measures they will be confusing and get employees working at cross purposes.

Change the role of supervisors from directing activities to becoming coaches supporting individuals and groups. Reduce or eliminate the practice of “toll gating” making personnel wait until approval is granted. Supervisors should be close enough to the work activities to grant immediate approval. They should encourage innovation and allow small failures so that a few successes can be found and adopted throughout the organization. This is a tough role change so its up to senior management staffs to provide role models. Actions speak louder than words managers can’t fool employees. They watch for patterns in the manager’s most minute actions, and are able to distrust words that mismatch deeds. This is why in being a role model for change means that the manager must truly believe in the process and his actions must demonstrate his words.

Continuous improvement may be thought of as being done in small steps and usually involves those improvements that an individual or group can change in their work processes. Innovation is generally thought of as bringing bigger and more dramatic change to work processes. This is usually through the way that an entire process is performed and can be through technological breakthrough. Innovation can also bring more disruption to the work place eliminating some jobs adding new jobs but when warranted can bring significant productivity improvement in a shorter time.

As I have stated elsewhere you should tear down office walls and put in more conference rooms just in case people want to get together to solve problems. Introduce what some call “tight coupling” between different disciplines. It all means that people talk about their problems and get them solved rather than posturing and debating and causing delay. This is also an added benefit for Teams when they meet with other disciplines.