20 Strategies for Change: Gain Knowledge

Dr. Mikel Harry, author of Six Sigma: The Breakthrough Management Strategy Revolutionizing the World’s Top Corporations tells us that we don’t know what we don’t know. So, how do we learn what we don’t know? That is the heart of our fourth strategy for change in your organization.

Understand that continuous process improvement is how we gain knowledge. It means we take definitive steps to find answers to our problems. It means that we take definitive steps to gain an understanding on how our processes and thus our organization’s function. We can do that through several specific steps:

Read – Go to Amazon.com or BN.com and search for titles pertaining to change, six sigma, and lean. Start with a few that seem to be of interest to you. You can also visit https://dbaiconsulting.com and run your mouse over the tab labeled resources and check out the drop-down menus. You will find by category the titles of books that I recommend and are in our own library.

Listen – Interact with your internal and external customers. Take them to lunch and actively listen to their concerns regarding your organizational problems and the effect that they have on their business.

Watch – Take the Gemba Walk. Complete a Taiichi Ohno’s Stand in the Circle exercise. Observe what is really going on in your processes. Watch how your human capital assets perform their responsibilities. Anything look out of the ordinary? Are there signs of excess work that could be eliminated through some simple changes?

Microlearning – Consider taking available online courses pertaining to change management and process improvement. Look for the opportunity to get your hands dirty by immersing yourself in different strategies to perform your duties.

Constant new experiences – Actively participate on cross-functional teams. Don’t just sit there like a turtle on a log. Actively participate. Check with your local colleges and see if they offer certification courses in project management or six sigma.

Find out if you can participate in a Toyota Leadership training program in your area. Goal is to learn the basics and then expand on the basics through further investigations. There are three stages to the leadership program referred to as Shu Ha Ri. At the initial stage or Shu, the individual is shown the process and follows the process exactly the way it is presented. The teacher does not rule as control and command but rather allows space for you to learn the process through self-development. You get to make mistakes and then have the opportunity to correct those mistakes. In the HA stage, you feel comfortable with the process to begin to explore ways you might modify the process in the name of improvement. You can begin to learn from others in the organization who may have developed different ways to resolve the same problem. You begin to integrate those lessons into your methods of operations. Finally in the RI stage you begin to experiment. You begin to operate on your own with the benefit of the newly gained knowledge/ You take this new knowledge and adapt it to your specific circumstance.

Collaboration – Gain knowledge by working with others in teams or through your sphere of influence. Openly discuss alternatives to problems. Actively engage full spectrum thinking and open up to others’ ideas both internally and on the world marketplace through social media sites like LI groups/

Coach others – Talk to your Continuous process improvement professionals and they will tell you that one of their best ways to gain knowledge is to coach others. The interaction between the coach and the coached is priceless. You learn from teaching them and you learn from their interaction back to you. The interaction is likely to create new avenues for gaining knowledge.

Of all the 20 strategies Gaining Knowledge maybe one of the most important. Continuous Process Improvement is an experiment in every sense of the word. When we conduct experiments we learn new ideas, new processes, and new understanding. We can’t have successful change if we function from a perspective of what we don’t know we don’t know. The gaining of knowledge therefore is the critical piece in resolving our problems. We need to understand when, why and how the problems are arising and what we need to do to resolve the issues. We do that by gaining knowledge about our operations and our stakeholder’s operations.

We outlined in this segment some basic steps to accomplish the gaining of knowledge but feel free to explore other sources of gaining the knowledge you require.

Next week we will look strategies for Changing Managers into Leaders

About the author:?Daniel Bloom?knows HR and Change Management. He’s a speaker on transformational HR, a strategic HR consultant and trainer. He is certified as both a Senior Professional in HR and as a Six Sigma Black Belt. Dan has written 7 books, more than 40 articles and has been in the HR social media space since 2006. Dan is currently the CEO and Change Maestro of?Daniel Bloom & Associates Inc., where?he helps organizations empower organizational change within their organizations.