The Convoluted Gemba

I have done process improvement for quite some time, in a wide variety of industries. This includes some enterprises infamous for their bureaucracy;

• Department of Defense
• Federal Government Agencies
• Medical Device Manufacturers
• Hospitals

But the worst, most convoluted process I’ve ever come across was not at any of those. Rather, it was at an organization that I thought would have the smarts to address problems in an orderly fashion…it was a university.

Some years ago, I was hired as a CPI consultant at a state’s flagship university. They were a large school, a very large school, that did a lot of research. In fact, the university was second only to John Hopkins to the amount of research done in the United States.

A big part of academic research is getting money, and most of the money comes from grants. I was soon to discover that there is quite a bit to getting grants. There’s scouring the numerous offerings from a wide variety of sources: the myriad of federal government agencies, some philanthropic organizations, and a smattering of other places. Just hunting down opportunities is a handful.

Grants come with conditions…lots of them. The money can only be used for certain things. The grant must support research in a certain area. The project must meet certain deadlines. And there are always metrics to report and status updates to be made. There’s an entire lifecycle to a grant. One that had never been documented.

So as part of a university-wide improvement initiative, somebody suggested taking a look at the grants process. Various leaders thought it was too slow, that too many labor hours were spent on the process, and that more grants could be won…if only the process improved.

I got assigned to work on the grants project. And initially, I was excited. I would seem to be a pretty straightforward event, albeit a very large one. And so I jumped into the rabbit hole of grants…

At the start I figured it would be a matter of understanding the grant-giving side…organizing it, making sense of it, and documenting it so research teams could understand it. But what I didn’t realize was the mess really lay on the university side.

The university had internal processes regarding grants that were nothing I’d ever encountered. The university’s administrative leadership had to provide input, there was an Institutional Review Board (IRB) review, and then there was the hierarchy. Universities are made of colleges, which have various schools and departments. Each of these levels wanted a say in things. Then there were the unions. The administrative staff had a union, various support teams had unions, and there were “quasi-unions,” groups that held administrative power of some sort.

All of this is what the team faced as we began our Gemba walk…

The team assigned to help with this was solid. There was a good cross-section of various departments and functions. Everyone was a worker…somebody who actually did something to get grants, or had to maintain the grants once awarded. But nobody had a big picture. Everyone knew there was a problem, but nobody knew what it was. That’s when I suggested a Gemba walk.

A Gemba walk is done to observe a process, following the work to see how it’s done. Along the way talking with employees and getting a feel for the work. This helps determine where problems are, and what solutions might be and helps develop an understanding of the process.

For a manufacturing process, Gemba walks are straightforward; start at the beginning of the line and end with the finished product. But service processes…well, they can be a bit tricky. We “walked” the process, from the time a potential grant was identified, to when it was awarded. (The support of an ongoing grant to its completion was considered a separate process). A lot of the award process involved emails…lots and lots of emails. I insisted the team actually visit the people…not just email them. I’m not sure if this was a mistake or an act of brilliance.

It caused a lot of leg work…trying to physically track down and connect with Deans, Vice Deans, Associate Deans, Interim Deans, and all the Deans’ assistants. Then there was various Grant Administrators, and their assistants as well as professors and many many more… In that regard I felt bad for having them spend so much time running around. But it worked out in our favor as in-person meetings encouraged more discussion and openness. The team found out much more from talking than they would from an email. The most important was the recurring finding that many of the folks admitted the steps were not needed.

Over 90% of the requests for approvals were not needed. They has 100% yield rate, and the folks admitted they just approved without really reading. A similar story with many of the emails were just to “inform” somebody of some action on the grant. No action needed. Nothing was done with the information. All throughout the process were what I like to call “just because waste.” Various steps were added over the year “just because” somebody wanted something at some time. So it was added as a checklist item somewhere. The person never did anything with the information…but it had become institutionalized.

Then there were the steps that had wastes inside of them…but trying to tackle them was beyond the capability of the team. The perfect example of this was The Faculty Senate.?

The faculty senate was an organization with the mission to promote and protect professors. Ideally, it was to be a liaison between professors and administrators. But over the years it morphed into a weird dystopian troupe of what I can only describe as mischief makers of the highest level. Most professors were too busy to participate in the senate. So those who rose to power in the senate were those not engaged in research, had light class loads, were not published, and often not on a tenure track; those with more time on their hands. This seemed to put large chips on the shoulders of the senate leaders, and they would often disrupt the most simple of things. Due to some archaic bylaws, many administrative actions had to be blessed by the senate, including grants. While it did not benefit anyone for the Senate to turn down money, they did use this power to draw attention to themselves or some cause they were championing at the time. Instead of blanket approvals, or even a just and fair review of grant proposals, the Senate would table discussions on grants for weeks. And, if the Senate was angling for something, it could go on for months. Ultimately, they passed 100% of grant proposals…but at an aggravatingly slow pace.

The team uncovered this during the Gemba, but was powerless to address it. The best we could do was note it and flag it for a future improvement event.

A unique aspect that came out of this Gemba walk was seeing the connections, or lack thereof. We’d stop to talk with an assistant who’d inform us they would forward the approval to their boss and others as directed. When we’d ask about the others, the assistant would have no idea of who they were (well, they’d know their name and title, but not their function) and have no idea of why they were being copied. We had several instances where the forwarded emails would get returned as the recipient no longer worked with the University. And some assistants continued to send the emails because they were waiting to hear about replacements that were never made or announced, and the bosses insisted that the departments needed to be made aware.?

As you might guess, as we worked on developing a process map of the current state, it was quite a mess. The Gemba was taking longer than expected, and we began mapping as it was ongoing. That actually helped as the team had a lot of “I think this is what happens…” and then we were able to confirm, or deny, if the step actually happened. But that also led to a lot of revisions to the map. Lucky, I was taught to draft a map using sticky notes on a wall…that allowed us to easily move things around and make changes. But after awhile it became a running joke about what changes are happening today.

Ultimately the team mapped the process, identified some great improvement opportunities, and the University saw increases in grant applications and awards, with decreased time and labor. It was a win, but it was very memorable. And makes for

#quality #lean #leansixsigma #operationalexcellence #processimprovement #totalqualitymanagement #storytelling innovation? #lean #leantraining? #leanthinking?