Engaging team members through an organized approach influenced by lean thinking used in the Toyota Production System philosophy can help an organization reach outstanding achievements.
Take for example Stanford Health Care with its Stanford Operating System, which over the past three years has seen 30 percent growth, raised inpatient satisfaction scores to the 95th percentile in the nation and advanced an environment where four faculty members of affiliate Stanford University received Nobel prizes in the life sciences.
The operating system includes three key divisions: Strategic Deployment, Value Stream Improvement and Active Daily Management.
Strategic alignment
Strategic Deployment involves the development and alignment around strategic and operational objectives. The process involves a review of corporate mission, vision, strategy and competencies, as well as an assessment of market, technology and competitive factors. With these factors in mind, the team members develop strategic case statements called Strategic A3s. These Strategic A3s outline current issues, provide current state assessment, lay out key objectives and goals, and then specify high-level actions to be taken.
Value Stream Improvement of operations follows
While specifying high-level strategic aims and translating those goals into specific strategic operations plans is critical, aligning operations with strategic intent is an essential next step in order to execute plans.
Stanford Health Care refers to the design and improvement of operations as Value Stream Improvement, building off lean concepts of engaging team members to improve processes that deliver value to customers.
Value Stream Improvement efforts involve engaging key stakeholders — including physicians, managers, staff and patients — to fundamentally examine processes, remove waste and design operations to increase effectiveness and reduce the likelihood of errors.
A philosophy of respect for people and continuous improvement underlies Stanford Health Care’s improvement efforts. Many “Plan-Do-Check-Act” improvement cycles are simultaneously occurring throughout the organization.
Managing every day
While defining strategic goals and then designing operational value streams to achieve goals is critical to Stanford Health Care’s pursuit of excellence, day-to-day performance is how actual results are delivered. To support performance execution and to ensure that improvement efforts are sustained into the future, Stanford Health Care deploys what it calls Active Daily Management.
Active Daily Management involves a set of regular activities leaders should undertake in order to manage operations and sustain improvements. The process begins by considering how new employees are recruited, trained and retrained.
It also focuses on assuring that there are standard approaches for carrying out work, called Standard Work in lean parlance. Visual Walls with goals and standards are displayed in departments, and daily huddles or brief meetings are conducted around the walls to engage team members.
Managers and leaders conduct regular work-site rounds to directly observe performance against standards, help coach team members and identify areas for improvement. Staff members are regularly recognized during rounds and key metrics are tracked on a daily basis.
Stanford Health Care finds that this operating system helps deliver the benefits of clinical innovation with high levels of care and compassion across hospital services, specialty health centers, physician offices, virtual care offerings and health plan programs.