There are two Lean implementations the first is the normal high level management Lean Team and the second is the Lean teams at the organizations functional level. It is the second implementation which this article addresses.

The roles of Facilitator and Budget Analyst play a very important part in the implementation of Lean Teams at the functional level. This role is different from the normal implementation of Lean which is at the management level of the organization. This implementation of Lean starts the same but ends in the transformation of the organization from the 19th century bureaucratic structure with a downsized streamlined 21st century organization with fewer levels of management that encourages innovation by empowering both management and employees.

The implementation of Lean Teams begins with an agency’s development of a new Mission Statement reflecting the change in the organizations goals and policies incorporating the Lean philosophy of process quality. This step should reflect the input of as many of the agency’s personnel as possible with open discussions of what the new direction of the agency should be. See the example of this in my Article 116.

The facilitators are selected from the current training staff and the budget analysts are selected from the budgeting staff. The facilitators and budget analysts are given special training in Lean and analysis of Flow Process Charts. When the training is completed a facilitator and a budget analyst are selected to work together as a team in identifying each of the organization’s Functions. A Function is a standalone budgeted entity which produces a product or performs some service for the public. Each Function will have its own Lean Team made up of all the personnel who work in the Function.

The facilitator will organize the Lean Team and provide training at the it’s weekly meetings. At the first meeting the Team will elect its own leader. Subsequent meetings will involve finding the best way to do the work of the Function through the development of a Process Flow Chart. The budget analyst will assist the Team in the development of the process Flow Chart. When the new and best method has been documented in the Process Flow Chart it is presented to the top management. This is an important step which signifies top management’s support and recognition of the Team’s accomplishments. Upon approval of the new method the Process Flow Chart is given over to the budget analyst to cost out the savings of the new method and to identify the proper staffing for the function. The budget analyst then documents the new method and its costs in a spread sheet which will provide input to the next budget.

It is important to understand what is actually happening in the agency during this process. First the top management must support the Lean implementation in the development of the new mission statement, the training of the facilitators and budget analysts and the organization and recognition of the Team’s accomplishments. Support from much of the rest of the organization’s personnel may be negative but this can be ignored for the time being. You can think of this process as the facilitator and budget analyst team reaching into the organization and pulling out (identifying) a function and its personnel. The key here is that the team interviews workers in the function to find out the names of those who actually work in the function. This saves some time later when personnel who find that they do not have a functional job may be assigned to a function. This is a little like musical chairs for those who do not work on a function may find themselves redundant.

At the same time when functions and their personnel are being identified the facilitator and budget analyst will meet once a week with top management to coordinate the implementation at the functional level.

The management level Lean Team is the beginning of what will eventually become the Steering Management Team and Functional teams become the Functional Management for each function.

All that remains now is to identify the support functions and their personnel who support the agency. Now is time to decide how to organize support organizations. Human Resources, Facilities, Information Technology and Purchasing should have only a single representative as a coordinator on the Steering Management Team. These functions should be centralized in state government.

Now we turn our attention to all those left in the organization those deemed as redundant. Under the current difficult budgeting time these personnel will be laid off. In better times they could be retrained for new jobs. In any case we now know what the proper staffing should be for each function and unless the work actually changes the staffing should not change. See my article 106. for the minimum savings for each state.

Please note the analysis of Process Flow Charts are not as straight forward as I have presented. The difficulty occurs when the amount time to do a process is the same or varies each time it is done. When the time is the same the method is easily calculated but when the process varies as most do, other special methods must be invoked.

Each of the function’s processes must be examined to determine which are varying and by how much. Those that vary no more than 10% should be averaged (from historical data) and treated the same as a non-varying function. But if the function varies significantly for example a process which varies as much as 100% involves decision making and should be approached as a decision making process. This involves breaking the decision making process down into parts those that are common repeatable decisions which can be assigned a time allowance and the part which is unpredictable. This smaller part of the decision is estimated and the total is summed for the proper staffing. The goal is to establish a staffing base for the Function’s budget. You should not make something difficult out of this process just because you are unable to get the exact number of hours required for the process. The reason is you are staffing with the work of a full time person. The establishment of a staffing base may sound difficult but I think that it is not beyond the capabilities of a budget analyst. See my articles 121 and 122.

See also the following Articles:
Article 19. Assumptions in work Measurement for Staffing
Article 20. Approaches for Different Types of Organizations
Article 21. Centralized Purchasing- The Best Way to Balance State Budgets
Article 22. Functional Restructuring of State Government rather than Departmental Restructuring.
Article 23. The Relationship between Needs, Functions, Funding Formulas, and Performance Budgeting
Article 24. Establishing a Funding Formula for Performance Budgeting.
Article 28. Making Centralized Purchasing Work using Aggressive Negotiation
Article 29. Rethinking Performance Budgeting
Article 30. Example of Current Versus Proposed Performance Budgeting
Article 32. How to Bring a Bureaucracy under Control
Article 42. Declaring War on Bureaucratic Complexity
Article 62. Enhanced Auditing a Tool for Government Reform
Article 64. Getting Efficient Government Through Enhanced Auditing
Article 103. Reforming Bureaucratic Government the Subtle way by Bringing Innovation to Government
Article 104. Down Sizing State Government the Easy and Safe Way
Article 106. Where do the Government Reform Savings Come From?
Article 113. Private Versus Public Budgeting Practices
Article 116. Private Industry Example of Lean Teams
Article 117. Overcoming Bureaucratic Resistance to Government Reform
Article 121. Setting Standards and developing a Staffing Base
Article 122. How to get Efficiency in Making Decisions