End of an era

Today is my final day in the Lean Team office with Mark and Steve. It’s also Steve’s last day in St Andrews before heading off to work in Edinburgh – a sad day for the university, but an excellent day for Mark as he will no doubt come to the realisation that the biscuits are now in safe hands.

We’re about to head off to the Dolls House for a bit of a celebratory lunch (for me, not Steve). It’s probably a good idea for me to reflect on 4 weeks of apathy and free food.

I applied for the job at the Lean Team primarily because I had nothing else to do over the summer (just kidding…). However, there was at least a glimmer of interest from the outset. Throughout my time as a student here in St Andrews I’ve had a fantastic experience – yet I’ve always thought we can be so much better as a university. We are now universally recognised as being the top university in Scotland and the third best university in the United Kingdom – yet on the surface this seems ludicrous. The History department I’m a member of is allegedly streets ahead of the University of Oxford according to The Guardian. Maybe we are, but from my perspective we can still be so much better. I never intended to change anything – but I loved the Lean Team way of thinking, and was interested in how it could be applied across the university.

I set out with generic work experience goals – soft skills, practical knowledge and office experience. I’ve learnt how people work together in the  university (through workshops and visits to different departments) and I’ve picked up practical skills including the use of different pieces of software (most notably prezzi, which was quite possibly the Eureka moment of my life) in addition to experiencing an office environment with two highly dysfunctional people. I also managed to practice my presentation skills to an audience of university managers, building on previous experience chatting nonsense in the debating society at St Andrews.

I’ve learnt all about Lean and their principles. I’ve seen them applied in practical situations through workshops and training, and I compiled a case study to highlight how successful Lean has been across the university.

My other aim was to provide a student perspective on Lean work. From registry to admissions, through to our external work I’ve tried to give my opinion where possible. After all the Lean Team is here to improve the university, which in turn is here to serve me – the student. Members of staff seem to have found this valuable – and hopefully I can continue working with Lean on a part time basis to give them a bit more of an insight into improving the university.

It would have been nice to have tried to make a difference – and so my project centred around my work with the university ambassadors when they lead tours around the town and university. My aim was to improve the content of tours and formulate a training programme so that university ambassadors are outstanding representatives of the university who are both entertaining, informative  and really show prospective students what a great place this is. On completion of the project I’m happy that when our new cohort of ambassadors are ready to go in September we will have improved an already outstanding service.

As a history student, it always seems a good idea to look at the bigger picture, and it was actually the Lean Team’s work in external circumstances that I learnt the most from. Visiting London, Edinburgh and Perth for consultancy work was a fantastic experience, primarily because we travelled first class and stayed in plush hotels.

It is the use of Lean in a wider context which interests me the most, whether that’s in the public sector, services, industry or education.  Lean doesn’t have to be called ‘Lean’. In fact often the management jargon associated with Lean can put people off – however continuous improvement, respect for people and efficiency are quite obviously positive attributes which any organisation should emulate. Yet through travelling around the country with the Lean Team, it is still apparent that people often still refuse to accept that there is a better was of doing things. Often this has wider connotations linked to politics with a big ‘P’ as well as a small ‘p’ (the misplaced assumption that Lean=cuts), or just cultural issues with institutionalisation and office relationships.

So, to sum up – at the outset, it was very easy for me to assume that problems with the public sector, and even business very often result from waste. After working with the Lean Team for a month, I can now see there can be better ways of improving organisations. It’s not less for less, or even more for less – but more with what you’ve already got! Should the situation arise (which it already is doing) that we get less resources, having a positive cultural attitude to look at what you’re doing, and to make it better will only be a good thing – therefore enabling you to actually do ‘more for less’ should the necessity arise.

It’s a philosophy that should really be embodied in all organisations.

“Ever to excel (αἰὲν ἀριστεύειν), to do better than others, and to bring glory to your forebears, who indeed were very great … This is my ancestry; this is the blood I am proud to inherit.” – Glaucus (Iliad 6. 208)

A bit dramatic – we don’t always have to be better than others, but continuous improvement is something which organisations in this country don’t often achieve.

On a lighter note, I’ll miss the Lean Office, and the travelling. In particular I’ll miss Steve’s crude insinuations and my chats with Mark about history. It has certainly been the most entertaining work experience I’ve ever done, and it could well be the most valuable.

Lean History with Mike

Today was the day of reckoning, no it wasn’t the day when I would be left with only Viennese Whirls and Oatmeals in the biscuit selection – but the day where I would take a leading part in a Lean training session for university managers. Steve tried to rope me into leading the whole session, but I was having none of it. I opted to lead the section on the history and background of Lean thinking – detailing the methodology and theory of leading industrial entrepreneurs including Adam Smith, Henry Ford and Eiji Toyoda throughout the 20th century. Lean thinking, business improvement and management techniques couldn’t be further from my academic love affair with history – although it’s still amazing how much we can learn from the past, even in a Lean context. Innovation, planning, organisation, work ethic and engagement have worked for so many companies throughout history- Toyota and Ford included. It’s great to see staff at St Andrews carrying on that legacy, always striving for continuous improvement. It couldn’t be more fitting that we have a university motto based on that very concept – “Ever to be the best”

Edinburgh Conference

So ends my final trip away with the Lean Team. No more complimentary perks unfortunately, apart from the Lean Team’s rather extensive biscuit selection (sufficiently depleted by Steve and Mark in particular since our last delivery – I’m struggling to get my hands on the chocolate chip shortbread, and I’ve been left with less than satisfactory oatmeals…). Yesterday we were in Edinburgh, ‘the Athens of the North’, ‘Auld Reekie’, ‘das capital’, ‘Edina’, the ‘Empress of the North’, ‘the city that’s much better than Glasgow, but not quite as good as anywhere in England’ etc.

Steve gave Mark and I a lift to Edinburgh on Monday, we could only hope for the best –  but surprisingly we managed to make it to the New Town in one piece. After we checked in to our hotel, we met up with Tim – a partner in the Bourton Group which is associated with the Lean Team in St Andrews and provides consultancy(ish) services to other organisations. The weather was glorious, so we took a wander down Rose Street – we thought it only appropriate that we should have a few drinks after a long an arduous days work… I was then introduced to Alan, who was formerly the CEO of the UK Post Office and National Savings and Investments whereby he managed to turn around both organisations (particularly the ailing post office) financially. I didn’t really care too much about that, I was just endeavouring to get a visit to his villa in Spain.

The conference itself was provided by St Andrews in association with the Bourton Group to ‘Scotland’s Colleges’ – an umbrella organisation catering for numerous Further Educational establishments across Scotland. The idea of the conference was to give an overview of Lean (by Bourton), how Lean can be applied across industry (by Alan) and finally how Lean can be applied in education (by the St Andrews Lean Team). It was interesting seeing the dynamics between the speakers and the audience – particularly when the audience weren’t all that enthused by the concept of Lean. By the end I had learnt that sometimes the terminology and the perception of Lean can never be overcome by certain people who will consistently assume that ‘if it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it’.

I was particularly impressed with Alan’s talk on how Lean can be applied to industry. I applied to work with the Lean Team because I wanted to help make the University be the best it can be – however I also recognise that the same values of continuous improvement can and do work in other aspects of the private, and particularly public sector – especially when people convey the clichéd remarks about the economic situation and efficiency. Alan has worked for a plethora of public and private organisations, and in the case of the UK Post Office, Alan was appointed when there was a weekly loss of £3.5m each week and there was no clear government policy on its future. Alan implemented a five-year plan and a bold refinancing programme; at the time he stepped down in 2010 the plan remained on schedule and the organisation was generating a £73m operating profit.

Alan was keen to emphasis that ‘less for less’ is too defeatist – and that ‘more for less’ can actually be achieved with the right culture.

Profound…

Project Work!

So we’ve had a few quiet days in the office, which is a change for me – but less so for Mark and Steve. It’s given me some time to crack on with my Ambassador project to try and improve the experience visitors get when they have a tour around St Andrews on visiting days or otherwise. I’ve created a comprehensive tour guide for trainee ambassadors online which will enable them to revise the tour route whenever they so desire. Take a look here at: http://prezi.com/1thuhrmsbrdn/st-andrews-virtual-tour/

The next stage is working out how to deliver training to ensure that Ambassadors are engaged with prospective students in addition to providing the informative and entertaining tours they have been doing previously.

Lean Successes

From my perspective sat in the Lean Office, it seems blindingly obvious that Lean principles can only be beneficial to the university in addition to many other organisations and institutions. Some have gone as far to say that whole industrial systems attribute their success to Lean thinking (in practice, rather than theory). I’m currently sat next to a book which documents Japan’s post war success – and attributes it to Lean thinking. It is this supposed thinking which allegedly is receding from the Western world, causing our inherent structural decline (then again watching Mark and Steve in the office, I think that assumptions about decline are well founded). Yet despite Lean’s apparent success in emboldening industriousness and civilisation, it is still  relatively peripheral in a lot of organisations. Even here at the university Lean isn’t compulsory, and so we have to try and spread the word through evidence of our previous successes. On our website we have collected engaging case studies (for students and staff)  to illustrate our methods and successes. I’ve just finished a case study detailing the work done with CAPOD (The university’s Centre for Academic Professional and Organisational Development) which can be found here: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/lean/Whatwedo/CaseStudies/CAPODCourseAdmin/

A Day in the Office

Yesterday was a little less hectic than usual – all rested and recovered from our escapades south of the border, I was ready for a fresh challenge and new horizons. Tony Blair said in 1997 that “a new dawn has broken, has it not?” – By 9am I was hoping to shape that new world. Reality is always far less glamorous, and instead of charging to Admissions with our heads held high and ready to be change makers, it turned out that the outlook diary system for appointments had spectacularly failed and Admissions weren’t even expecting us… We got to have a chat anyway – we were looking at how Lean could possibly help Admissions in a very general sense. It was nice to bring in my Ambassador role within Admissions to see how Admissions can be the best it can be, particularly in light of the dubious press coverage about the university recently.

During the afternoon I was compiling my CAPOD case study, while the three of us would each give a suggestion for music to be played on our brand new speaker system (needed for Lean Work). The Bute Annexe was truly pumping with some crooner classics – Fleetwood Mac, Simon and Garfunkel, and Men at Work…oh the irony.

 

 

London Trip!

Just arrived back from a two day jaunt to the capital to help the City University Of London sort out their admissions process for new students.

Mark and Steve were taking full advantage of the complimentary food and drink available on our train down to Kings Cross. I felt I was a restraining influence on the two of them, giving them an illustrative description of the problems of drinking on public transport. Despite taking full advantage of East Coast’s fantastic array of sumptuous products (Steve and Mark, not me), we did manage to get some work done. Steve and I had a brief scoping session on my admissions work with tours and visiting days and we even managed to design a survey to ask a sample of students what they thought of the visiting day experience and how it can be improved. On arrival at Kings Cross Mark went to visit his daughter, and Steve and I checked into our hotel in Clerkenwell. Steve then went to watch a film in a boiler suit, while I met a few friends and headed into the city.

On Wednesday we were up bright and early for our day with City University. In the morning we had a very long chat with some of the staff at admissions and came up with a concise timetable for the afternoon whereby members from across the university would sit in to see what the Lean Team at St Andrews could offer. Once again the same problems in business management and potential improvement cropped up at City University as they have already done at Scottish Autism and the Scottish Parliament. Lack of clarity over processes and job roles seemed to be the primary concerns – with the negative corollary being that the university wasn’t meeting its target for student admissions, due to perceived inefficiencies in the system. At the start of the day I just assumed that  business improvement at City University was there to make things more efficient and to ensure job satisfaction – it sometimes takes a statistic or brain-fart moment to realise that such improvements are integral to the bigger picture – University performance.

After having a long afternoon discussion with academics, admissions staff and administrators it became increasingly clear that previous business improvement and management consultancy schemes had failed to impress an indelible plan onto the structure of admissions at City University. By the end of the session I got a real sense that although there was not a lot of concrete change (however it was agreed that the burden of UCAS tariff screening and administration  should be shouldered by administrators and not academics) I did feel that people’s perceptions about success and change had be drastically altered. There was a real feeling that something could be done. I also picked up that Mark and Steve don’t actually do anything in these meetings (no change there then)…almost all of the discussion comes from the front of house. Mark and Steve provide a simple framework for discussion, and get everybody together to talk about things. Having been here for a few days, it is obvious now that the problems, and often the solutions are to be found within the staff themselves. Steve and Mark do a fantastic job at ascertaining problems, mainly because they are endemic across all institutions and even companies – but it is less management consultancy than management facilitation – and it is a method which seems to work.

Scottish Parliament Visit

Today the Lean Team were gracing the corridors of power…or a least the committee rooms of power. We were asked to come down to the parliament to give a brief presentation and discussion on what the team does, and how the Scottish Parliament could perhaps implement lean business thinking in practice. Apparently the Scottish Parliament team were meant to come to St Andrews, but Steve and Mark wanted a free tour of the parliament building, and so in return for the aforementioned favour – we visited them.

It was interesting seeing some of the possible tensions with regards to business improvement, and when we say that politics (with a small ‘p’) can sometimes affect a business environment, in the parliament that small ‘p’ can often be transformed in to a big ‘P’ considering how much the parliament (here and at Westminster) is scrutinised for its practices in the current economic climate.

After the meeting our tour commenced and we managed to get a sneaky look around the debating chamber:

To top it all off, we were shown some of the oldest surviving documents relating to Scottish legislation in the 17th century (before the parliament moved to London in 1707). We even found St Andrews had a shout out!

                                             

Visit to Scottish Autism, Alloa.

I’ve been at the Lean Team for a week now…so time for another update!

Thursday saw Mark and I travel to Scottish Autism HQ in Alloa, near Stirling. This was my first experience of some of the consultancy work the Lean Team undertake throughout Public Sector and charitable organsations. I got the opportunity to sit through a lengthy meeting delineating the management problems that Scottish Autism faces, particularly in regards to their training programme. Mark went through BOSCARD (Background, Objectives, Scoping, Constraints, Assumptions, Risks and Deliverables) to ascertain what kind of approach was needed to solve some of the problems. From my perspective, some of the generic problems that transcend many organisations are becoming clearer – some of which are as simplistic as basic inefficiency and waste, in addition to a lack of clarity over processes and job roles. The scoping session was a success (I think), and Mark is going to be contacting Scottish Autism later on next week to see if we can help!

Student Input

Yesterday was a good day, in addition to going through some objectives for this month we had a meeting with a business analyst from the university. We were discussing the process of student module advising and its complications for Registry. It was great to have an input into some of the ideas floating around – but it was the student perspective on the current system which the team felt was most valuable. Module choices and the process of advising seems to be a major shortfall of the university, and hopefully when we have another meeting on Monday, we can try and apply some lean thinking to make the process less complicated for both students and staff.