LEAN transformation @ EVA community

Service excellence isn’t about ‘leaning out’ processes. It’s about people. And about finding the specific ways for service providers to deliver services efficiently and effectively and connect with our customers in ways that makes them feel like valued human beings in each and every interaction - Karyn Ross, co-author of The Toyota Way to Service Excellence: Lean Transformation in Service Organisations, with Jeffrey Liker, 2016

We have seen how true self-organising teams can greatly increase productivity, motivation and satisfaction for all concerned. This, coupled with more suitable deliverables is a true win:win scenario. However, in order for the benefits of self-organisation to take root and bear fruit, we need a conducive environment for it to flourish. We need to have a culture of “all information is good information”, an understanding that “everyone did the best they could given the circumstances” and what matters is not individual metrics but the success of the projects on which we are working and the organisation that we are a part of - Geoff Watts, The Importance of Self-Organisation, Scrum Alliance, 2011

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The current story set off on a blue Monday in the fall in 2013. In just a few years, EVA vzw, short for ethical, vegetarian, alternative, had become a household name in the thriving world of Belgian alternative foodies as well as among the broader public. Having, among much more, successfully introduced one meatless day every week ("Donderdag Veggiedag", "Thursday Veggieday") in schools, companies and public services nationwide, the EVA team was now a group of eleven extremely driven young activists/professionals, working closely together in a shared office space in the old city of Ghent. Together, this team was being lead by its charismatic founder Tobias Leenaert and catered for a community of 6000+ members, activists, volunteers and followers.

Beyond Borders' original assignment coincided with EVA's founding father expressing an ambition to move on and explore further possibilities. In this context, the team wished to analyze its pool of competencies and talents - and how it could engage its members up to the rim of their potential in order to continue EVA's successes.

Mapping the situation

Having spent a great deal of time in the workshop (the gemba), and after a first round of one-on-ones, we soon learned that EVA was facing a very particular set of root challenges. In brief, something like this:

> EVA had been established, in Y2K, as a wild idea, by a small group of idealist students, among them some with a hardcore activist background - from where it had grown, rapidly but organically, into "the mainstream". Beyond the common growing pains of a booming organisation, this meant accomodating activist dreams in a framework of exponentially engulfing normalcy.

> In trying to cope with becoming mainstream, EVA was adrift with ideas, manifestos, plans, and projects - continuously doubting, rephrasing and reassuring its identity, to the point of her personaility having become so clouded in the mysteries of semantics that nobody really could tell what EVA was actually all about.

> In its unexpected, massive grotwh, EVA had been fitted into the straightjacket of a classic legalistic framework, requiring an organisational structure quite unfit for a group of young idealists working together to make the world a better place. A vereniging zonder winstoogmerk (Dutch, abbreviated vzw) or association sans but lucratif (French, abbreviated asbl) or Vereinigung ohne Gewinnerzielungsabsicht (German, abbreviated VoG) is the legal term for a 'not-for-profit association' in Belgium. Typically, it has a managing director (on payroll) reporting to a board of directors (volunteers) - and is liable to extreme fiscal scrutiny in return for structural and project-bound subsidies, granted on an annual basis.

En-route with agility.

In this context, mapping talents, competencies and potentials surely wouldn't do. Before us lay a unique opportunity to create an organisational marriage between nonconformist social idealism and a novel spirit of project and result driven team collaboration. We took in mind a hybrid, tailor-made transformation of the organisation, turning it inside-out, moulding it and reshaping it to the point where it would be absolutely LEAN, as AGILE as can be, and hence, almost organically self-organizing.

First, with the entire team, we redefined what it was that we actually produced. What were our products? And who did we make them for? Who are our clients? For an ngo having as its mission the propagation of an idea (let's go veggie!), this first step was really hard to take. It forced us to clean up our act: no longer would there be place for babble and talk, our team would be one of creators if nothing else.

Armed with two lists, one for products and one for clients, the team then proceeded assigning product owners, suggesting a role comparable to AGILE product ownership, but with the meaningful particularity that our owners, intimately close to our clients, would each be "the EVA boss" as far as their product/client was concerned.

Ownership comes in two kinds: some of our poducts are recurrent, or rather like forever ongoing processes - others have a clear beginning and at least an MVP, a minimum viable product at the end. For both tracks, owners work together with product/project managers, who take up the role of executive officer, responsible for shipping the best possible end product to their owner and, ultimately, the client.

A group of experts is at the product/project manager's disposition. Experts (formerly known as team members) are those who are good at what they do - and they are respected as such. Every expert is responsible for her own time management - all have the right to say "no", none can ever be "overbooked". This is because, at least in theory, the pool of experts is extremely large, for it includes not just the team itself, but all EVA's members, volunteers and well-wishers, the entire community.

The nurturing proposition.

Befittingly for a vegetarian food-related organisation such as EVA, it was the Japanese organic gardener and agriculturist 福岡 正信 (Masanobu Fukuoka) who inspired us in how to nurture the agile team(s) we had thus created. Fukuoka's agricultural philosophy is commonly referred to as 自然農法 (shizen nōhō), in English natural farming or, more correctly, the do-nothing method. Just as the Fukuoka method is based on unconditional recognition of the complexity of living organisms that shape the soil and turn it into an inherently rich ecosystem, we take it for granted that the agile organisational soil with which the EVA team is now at work, is best left to its own - gathering organic wealth and generating seasonal improvement as it proceeds.

Operating quietly in the background we tolerate a minimum of shared services - processes such as team coaching, personal kaizen facilitation, legal, finance and payroll: activities that guarantee and safeguard the existence of the team(s) in action.

Value stream and flow.

Of course, building a fine and inspirational organisational framework in which to operate isn't nearly enough: from day one, and most of all, we have realised that our operations themselves need to be submitted to relentless scrutiny - carefully weeding out the tedious, the boring, the ineffective, the erronous and the unpleasant. With our own definition of products and projects and clients at hand, we were able to define value and went on to leanify our work processes into gently flowing value streams - thus further irrigating and nurturing our organisational culture, our soil.

Creating flow might at first sight have been hard, but once a true spirit of kaizen was instilled into our minds, perfect flow became an inherent, natural true North.

Tools and methods.

Having thus created a self-organizing, agile organisation, with lean work processes, and with an unconditional drive for kaizen (self development) and kairyo (continuous improvement) - we have soon discovered that we are well served by a particular set of approaches, methods and tools to implement our ideals.

In this framework, we introduced for instance:

> working with KANBAN: giant whiteboards allowing visualisation of growing value streams, swiftly moving from to do over ongoing to done and shipped product,

> other means of visual management, including visualisation of misses and hits - because misses are the basis of continuous learning and hits are a team's best motivator,

> working with backlogs and sprints: enabling smooth generation of ideas and swift prioritisation of things needing to be done,

>SCRUM and other standup meetings: meeting techniques powering effective teamwork and flow as well as an idea of incrementalism in work done and near-permanent shippability of products,

> sprint review meetings and retrospectives: generating a faultless learning culture and fueling a mindset of relentless drive towards continuous improvement,

> improvement KATA and coaching KATA: techniques developed by Toyota to ensure that every process and every individual can blossom to its fullest potential,

> the Kano matrix: a practical tool based on Noriaki Kano's theory of product development and customer satisfaction, helping the team(s) to top up their MVPs (minimum viable products) with customer delighters,

> 5S workplace organisation: one of the simplest means of determining an organisation's approach to its business, using a five-fold housekeeping and visual management system.

> co-operative learning: nurturing kaizen and kairyo through short, interactive and participative learning sessions, based on a learning with, from and among each other format.

Getting better with all these and other tools is a permanent preoccupation and a great source of drive and fun for everyone involved.

The road ahead.

And so, we have reshaped the EVA team. But the work is not done. EVA is not merely the office team. EVA is an ever-growing community of people believing that the world can be made a better place, and that one way to do this is to reduce our consumption of animal products.

EVA is first and foremost this large pool of well-wishers. They are what matters - and the office team is merely at their service. Rather than volunteers reaching out and helping the organisation, we are empowering a 6000+ community of able and capable veggie campaigners, in self-organizing teams, which can rely on the office team's support and services when needed. Thus, we are turning around the entire set-up, from office team to volunteers, from push to pull.

Energizing this community transformation is our prime focus today, and will remain our main concern in the months and years ahead.

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This article was co-authored by Francis Laleman and Michaela Broeckx on behalf of Beyond Borders, August 2017.

We could not possibly continue the present transformation journey without the financial support of the Venture Philantropy Fund of the King Baudouin Foundation.

For their enthusiasm and their key role in this transformation project, which in fact is their transformation project, we would like to thank and congratulate: Tobias Leenaert, Isabelle Poppe, Isabel Rainchon, Melanie Jaecques, Nena Baeyens, Anna Bernburg, Fien Louwagie, Annemarie IJkema, Pauline Dutron, Jessica Iriza Michelante, Arne Sansen, Laure Verschraegen, Galina Golubeva, Birgit Segal, Maureen Vande Cappelle, Ci?lle van Dooren, Emily De Padt, Giorgos Petridis, Lieven Farkas, Bart Franck, An Rosiers, Mieke Loncke, Jan Orbie, Katrien Barrat, Katrien Spruyt, Sandra Stockman, Els De Mol, Peter De Groof, Gwen Fontenoy, Gitte Van Den Bergh, Griet Denys, Melissa Hodza, Zjef De Loose, Wim Teughels, Jana Meevis, Dagmar Garston, Stijn Le Page, Wendy Dresen, the EVA office dogs Munda, Farah, Guancha & Tyson, and every single other person of the 6000+ member EVA community.