Minnesota’s Lean approach to providing better public service was begun in 2008 and has grown into the organization of Lean Teams to study high level cross functional process flows and functional process flows using Lean tools at the work place. Minnesota is well ahead of most states in the wide spread use of Lean although Iowa is a close second.

Results from Minnesota’s Lean Approach
Some of the results claimed by the Department of Administration are striking:
•Birth certificate requests are now processed within 7.5 hours on average, compared with a former average of six days.
•State Soldiers’ Assistance applications are approved in 3.7 days, half the former time.
•Processing time for newborn screenings has been cut 56 percent.

Department of Administration spokesman Jim Schwartz says that’s because Lean’s top priority is better performance, with cost savings a secondary, salutary benefit. At a time when state government seems consumed with dwindling revenues and reduced expectations, Lean’s focus on serving Minnesotans well is a refreshing change.
Minnesota’s Enterprise Lean website

One of the reasons Minnesota’s Lean approach has been so successful is that it has concentrated on finding the best way to provide a service even if it adds processes or requires a more focused attention. With the cost savings calculation removed from the Lean process the “best method” of doing the function can be attained more quickly. The logic here is to identify and establish the “best method” of doing a function before looking at cost savings. Once the “best method” has been implemented in the work place we can set about developing a budget for the function.

Lawrence Rosier’s Recommendations for Government Reform in Minnesota.
The First Phase of my recommendations for government reform has already been implemented in the state of Minnesota with the implementation of its Lean teams. The Second Phase begins by having a Budget Analyst review the results of each of the Lean team’s process flows and determine the staffing required and the costs incurred by the function to establish a budget. The Third Phase is my recommended reform of the Minnesota’s boards and commissions. The Fourth Phase involves major management reform and occurs when the management becomes the Steering Team Management and the functional Lean teams become the Functional Management of the organization.

The Second Phase involves the documentation of the functional process flows developed by each of the Lean Teams. I have found that the best way to do this to lay out the process Flow on a spread sheet and identify the man hours and expenses required for each process. The budget is determined when the number of times during the budget period the function is performed (from historical data) and the calculation of expenses including a staffing base. This establishes a bottoms-up budget for every function in the state. The same functions that are done in many places in the state need only be documented once. The reason for documenting at the process level rather than the functional level is to facilitate revisions. A process that is no longer done or is changed can be easily changed since the budget is known down to the process level. This is the exact opposite of the current top-down way the budget is calculated. The state now knows the actual cost of doing a function. When all the functions’ budgets are summed within a department and the total deducted from the current department budget the result determines a rough measure of the cost of management and support.

The Third Phase is the streamlining access to Minnesota’s boards and commissions. Minnesota has managed its boards and commissions well having only 38 while most other states have more than 100. The reform begins by forming a top level Lean study initiated for the purpose of building a Customer Relations Management CRM State Centralized Portal using a 311 telephone number eliminates a significant amount of red tape. The 24 hour State Services Call Center can provide almost instant service to the public. The CRM does not eliminate the state’s Services Internet Portal but rather supplements it. The telephone portal eliminates the need for the public to search for a specific government organization services and opens the way for the reorganization of the states services system. No longer requiring public interface, boards and commissions can be consolidated into a much more responsive and efficient organizations.

In the old system each board and commission interfaced directly with the public with call takers waiting to take calls. With the CRM telephone portal call takers answer questions fill out initial forms and start any functional processes for all boards and commissions. The board or commission remains in the background but can come forward if necessary to provide services to the customer. Call takers are supported by a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) database with data provided by each board and commission. See my articles 101, 102 and 154.

The fourth Phase Finalizing the Organizational Reform
First the functional Lean Team becomes the Functional Management Team for each of the board or commission functions. Second many of the mid management levels between the Functional management and boards or commissions Management may become redundant. Each Board or commission’s Management now becomes a Steering Management Team which has the role of guiding and steering the organization while the Functional Management Team deals with the day to day operation of the functions. Steering Management is responsible for “telling” Functional Management “what to do” but not “how to do it”. This is a loose-tight organization with Steering firmly in control of the budget leaving Functional Management free to determine how best to do the job. Those in industry will recognize this as straight from the book “In Search of Excellence- Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies” by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr., Harper and Row, New York, 1982.

This reform brings a positive cultural change to the organization. Employees become members of Teams and are motivated by empowering them to improve their jobs through innovation. By bringing innovation and continuous improvement to the government’s processes the state will have savings through increased efficiency in the future. The reform amounts to a win win situation for government union employees as well as the tax payers of the state by employee empowerment and by ending bureaucratic waste.

What’s different?
The multilevel career path of the former bureaucracy is now reduced to one step from the Functional Management Teams to the Steering Management Team. Gone are the hundreds of hours of endless manipulation of employee evaluations. Gone also is the endless bickering and negotiation over the budget. Performance budgeting is no longer needed once the agency has been properly staffed because the functional teams monitor their own progress and if they start to fall behind they can take their own corrective action.

See the following articles:
Article 151. The Promise of Going ‘Lean’
Article 152. The Process of Replacing Bureaucratic Management With Lean Teams
Article 156. Getting the most out of Lean as used in Government
Article 157. Using Lean to Balance Agency work Loads
Article 160. Minnesota State Government Leads the Nation in Lean
Article 162. Bringing Virginia’s State Government Back on Track
Article 163. Solving New York State’s Roadblocks to Reform