If ten years ago public sector organizations that decided to apply LEAN methods in their activities were looked upon with skepticism, now they are already well known and tested by many. However, what should public sector professionals who are new to the field know? Antanas Dubikaitis, partner of the organization development company "LEANERS", shares his insights.
In the world, public sector organizations widely use such improvement methods as "LEAN management", "Six Sigma", "Total Quality Management", "Process Reengineering", "Theory of Constraints", "Agile" and "Scrum", "Design Thinking" to improve their operations. ". If they can be applied by an institution in one country, then an analogous institution in another country will be able to apply them on a mirror basis. Lithuanian public sector organizations can also learn from the international experience we have accumulated.
Improving your organization always starts with yourself. You can get acquainted with procedural management and efficiency improvement methodologies in training, reading books, and the latest scientific articles. In the trainings we conduct, we help to do this not only in theory, but also in practice by improving the real processes of the organization.
Working with consultants helping to improve the organization begins with a clear alignment of the project's goals and the desired result. After doing this, it will always be possible to assess whether the client's expectations have been met.
At the beginning of the project, it is important to define the problems from which the process improvement will begin. Often they are just the tip of the iceberg, with a huge, invisible part of the problem underneath. It needs to be examined and only then to think about solutions. All so that the same problems do not happen again and again.
The value created by improving process efficiency is defined differently in different projects. Some organizations reduce the cost of their services, save the working time of employees, others increase the transparency of their activities, accountability, etc. All of them are united by tangible benefits enjoyed by managers, colleagues, stakeholders, customers and founders.
When projects are finished, victory should be celebrated. This is an important part of the whole project, because small and big wins should always be celebrated with the team. Another important thing is customer feedback, which we ask for in order to continuously improve our services. In this way, we apply the same improvement concepts in our activities that we encourage our customers to apply as well.