Lean Business Ireland - Methods & Systems

Our friends at Lean Business Ireland have allowed us to share our very own Joanna's talk at the Lean Business Ireland conference about Methods & Systems. 

Stream Facilitator: Ciarán Crosbie - Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. 
Speaker 1: Seamus Doran - Assistant Head of Economic Development & Enterprise - Carlow LEO 
Speaker 2: Dr. Eileen Diskin - Innovation Academy - UCD 
Speaker 3: Joanna Koprowicz – Founder - Agile Lean Ireland 

Find us here: www.agileleanireland.org

Transcript

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome back to the afternoon session of today's conference. So my name is Kieran Crosby and I am the head of innovation and learning for Alexia on in our College Park facility in Dublin. I'm delighted to be chairing this this stream 5 on methods and system. Today, so just before we start a couple of reminders, I want to thank the sponsors for today. So our sponsors today are Dell Technologies, Enterprise Ireland, Ida Ireland, IBEC, Leading Edge Group and Ibe and without whom support in today's session wouldn't be possible. So that's fantastic. I wouldn't encourage all the. All the attendees to engage with each other. Through the through the app and through the system and and take this time to network with your colleagues and learn and and have conversations. And also take part in our delegate challenge. So as you visit stands, you'll ask you know you can get unique identifier and then you can enter our competition for €150, one for all voucher to be very useful. And I'm delighted to have three fantastic speakers with me today. I'll introduce them very briefly and then we'll go straight into conversation. So we have Seamus Thorne. Seamus is assistant head of economic Development and enterprise with Carlo Local Enterprise Office. Now we have Eileen Diskin, who is education and innovation lead, with the UCD Innovation Academy, and we have Joanna Kapovich, who is an agile lean trainer and consultant with Agile, Lean Ireland and our three speakers will take us through fantastic examples of methods and systems that they have been working on developing. And there is a Q&A session at the end. So I would encourage you during the during the talks to enter in your questions in the Q&A chat button on the top right and we'll get a chance to have a conversation at the end. OK. So what I further do would like to introduce Sheamus. Sheamus. The floor is yours.
Thank you very much, Kieran. Hello and good afternoon everyone. My name is Shanna Thorne, and I'm the assistant head of economic Development and Enterprise and Carlow County Council's Local Enterprise Office. This afternoon, I'm going to take a few minutes to talk to you about optimization. Plus, this was a programme we developed and delivered over the past year to look at the issue of food waste in our client. Businesses and see how we could encourage them to adopt simple, lean techniques to minimise the amount of food waste that they were unnecessarily producing before I get into the programme itself, I think it would be useful if I give you some context to the issue of food waste. Globally, it's estimated that one quarter of all food produced is wasted, and that's responsible for somewhere between 8 and 10% of all human produced greenhouse gas emissions. So you can see on a global scale it's very significant. Here in Ireland, we produced 1,000,000 tonnes of food waste every year outside of the Agri sector and that's responsible for 3.6 million. Tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent again in Ireland alone. The huge environmental impact and looking at the food service sector itself, that produces 100,000 tonnes of food waste annually in Ireland at an estimated cost of €270 million. So then what impact does each individual customer within the business have on the production of food waste? I'm going to be talking throughout this presentation on the concept of avoidable and unavoidable food waste. There is some food waste which is unavoidable. That's things like potato peelings. Until we get through to a through circular economy, we won't be able to avoid that. But most food waste is unavoidable. So if you have a typical hotel function, for example, each customer attending that function will be responsible for 530 grammes of food waste, of which 87% of that. Is is completely avoidable now if you multiply that out for one function with every guest attending it and multiply it by the entire business over the course of the year, you're into substantial figures here in terms of policy governing our youth or our interaction with food waste. Then there's a huge amount of policy. On a global level, on a European level and on a national level. Which is trying to go. Our interaction with food waste here in Ireland alone, we have a national policy which aims to have the amount of food waste we're producing in the country by 20-30. That's a a huge target for us to reach and every one of us has a responsibility in that regard to weigh in forest. We've also a very strong legal framework as well, dealing with the issue of food waste. Particularly the food waste regulations, which came in in 2009. But to show the challenge that we face in terms of engaging with businesses on the issue of food waste, one of the requirements of food waste regulations is that all food waste produced must be kept separate to all other food from all other waste. But ten years after those regulations came into play in 2019, there were still over 30% of businesses who did not have a separate. Good way is. Thin. So if 1/3 of businesses after 10 years are still not meeting their minimum legal requirements for food waste, it shows the huge challenge that we have here. So in response to that challenge, then we put together the optimization plus programme. And we rolled it out over the course of the past year. We were very fortunate that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine were able to support us under the food waste reductions initiatives. And they allocated. Those a budget of €32,000 to deliver optimization plus within county car law. We had 23 businesses then from throughout the county. The part and the initial programme, so they were from a broad range of sizes, from very small to very large during the hospitality sector, the food production sector and the retail sector, they were also spread throughout the county as well geographically, so they were very much representative. Of the type of businesses in Caro and in Ireland who would be responsible for the generation of food waste? Our aim, which optimization plus was to take its three stage approach to the issue of food waste. Firstly, we wanted to assess the scale of the problem of avoidable food waste. We then wanted to assess the cause of the problems. And then we finally wanted to introduce simple, lean solutions to our clients to help them overcome the problems that were arising in their own businesses. And two and three, assessing the cause of the problems and introducing the. Solutions, we're very much undertaken based on the concept of lean principles. So the first thing we had to do was to assess the scale of the problem of voidable food waste in each for our client businesses, so that was based very much on a piece of research undertaken by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2018 called reducing commercial. Food waste in Ireland and that really quantified the problem of food waste. But in terms of volume and in terms costs, what the EPA did was they worked with 50 businesses of varying sizes and in different sectors throughout. On tree and for one day, they went into each business and every single gramme of food waste produced in that business for that day was recorded. The How, what, why, where, when. So it gave a real story of the production of food waste in businesses in Ireland. If I can give one sample that came up from this particular. Study. It'll really show you the scale of the problem of food waste and how we might not have realised just how significant it was, one of the hotels they worked with, it would have been an average size hotel. Now nothing out of the ordinary had a wedding reception. 120 guys. And that would. Be probably the typical size wedding reception in Ireland, so the business would have been the typical size. The wedding reception would have been the typical size over the course of the main course. Then there were large dishes of potatoes and vegetables left on every table and later on during the main course there was extra trays of potatoes and vegetables. Got around for seconds at the end of that night, then the EPA or the researchers undertaking this study counted how much waste arose from the wedding reception. And in potatoes and vegetables alone, there was 25 kilos wasted, and that was 9 kilogrammes from plates, which had been served to people. And they. Had not eaten. And 16 kilogrammes unserved on trays. So it was brought out to people and it wasn't. Even served out to them. Now if you take. That was 25 kilos of potatoes and vegetables. Listed in one wedding reception, a typical hotel will probably do 2 receptions in a year in a week. Sorry. Run that out over the course of the year then and you would find an average hotel would waste 2 1/2 tonnes of potatoes and vegetables every year. Now the current cost for a hotel of wasted food is 3 pound €3.50 per kilo. Between the cost of buying the food, the cost of preparing the food and the cost of binning the food. Afterwards. So for a typical hotel based on this EPA data. The cost of potatoes and vegetables wasted in wedding receptions over the course of the year would come to €8750. So when we're in the position we're in at the moment where the hospitality sector, it's really struggled to survive sustainably. If potatoes and vegetables wasted just from from wedding receptions. Will bring the cost of €8750. You can see the huge impact that unavoidable or avoidable food waste will have on a business or ecologically and economically as well. So then the. The data from the the data from this EPA research was then used to build an app called Touchstone, and this that has been made available to businesses throughout the country to allow them to analyse the cost of food waste to their business. And also the volume of avoidable food waste which you're generating. So that was very much the corner piece of our. Of optimization plus particularly the first part of it, quantifying the cost of this avoidable food waste to our business clients. So each business. Who took part in optimization plus submitted 12 months refuge bills to us. So we then used that to input into the Touchstone app. So we imported two types of data. Firstly, the type, the sector type, the business came from because each different sector will have a different cost. Secondly, the weight per weight for each bin type as well. So how much of each type of waste were they producing over the course of the year in terms of their bins? Arising out of that, then we got three pieces of data output to us. The annual cost per waste type. So how much did food waste cost the business more importantly than the waste of the avoidable food waste which separated out from the unavoidable and then the cost of that? And when we have brought forward that data then to our clients. The cost of it was absolutely astronomical, and I think it's staggered. A lot of the clients taking part in it. So rather than going to each of them individually just to aggregate the cost of us and bearing in mind now this is just 23 typical businesses in county cargo. What we found for them was. Over the course of the year, they were generating 81.6 tonnes of completely avoidable food waste, and that was at a cost of €410,990.00. So almost half €1,000,000 of food way has been produced by a small amount of businesses every year. And again, those businesses are primarily operating. In a sector which is struggling financially at the moment, so if if you can reduce in any way that Bill of. 490. €410,000 to them. On an aggregate bill. By the use of. Simple mean techniques. It will add very much not only to a more efficient operation but a more financially sustainable operation for them as well. So then arising out of the research we have done with the Touchstone app. We held a number of on site meetings, which the clients are rather the consultants who delivered optimization, plus held those meetings and again there was a number of reasons behind this to assess the cause of the. Problems and to introduce simple solutions to the problems of avoidable food waste which were being produced. So at those meetings what we did was we first. Of all discussed. The cost findings rising from Touchstone and made sure the businesses were very aware of the financial and environmental impact dash food waste was having on their business. Gender premises audited and there was an analysis done of their procedures as well and finally there was simple solutions brought forward and based on lean principle. To allow them to overcome many of these challenges which they were facing and as of an endpoint to the programme, then what we also did was support each of those clients to engage with further local Enterprise Office supports, particularly the lean for micro and the green for micro programmes so that they could continue the learning they got out of optimization. For us and look at. Other procedural and efficiencies that they could bring about through lean techniques. So I might take a minute then to look at some of the learning we got and some of the problems that arose over the course of optimization plus. And if you can see some of the causes of the problems, you can also see some of the solutions very easily. So a very common one for us are roles in deli counters. And we saw very strong. Correlation between deli counters in retail shop. Which had a a huge range of food available for customers to eat late in the afternoon, and those who are also producing a huge amount of avoidable food waste at the end of today or at the end of the week. And the reason for that was quite simple because most of us when we go to a deli counter, we do not buy from it after half two. So if a business. Is have has a full range of stock available to. Them in late in the afternoon, customers by and large aren't going to be buying that. So it's going to be wasted. So what we had to do firstly was encourage those clients.
To to look.
At their stock ordering systems and to order in terms of what the customer would want and the customer would buy, not necessarily what would look good on the shelf. But we also then encourage. Them to look at other alternatives that could be made use of in their deli counter. So it was encouraging things like pizza bars whereby you could encourage your clients to buy pizza and bring it home in the evening. So it's a a different food offering which would help their financial sustainability as well. Another very interesting example that came up and it really shows a problem with process. Was in one business and I thought up there 4 jars of coleslaw, each jar wearing weighing 1K. That's 4 kilos of coleslaw. You're looking at the moment now. Animals who go shopping for groceries will know. Coleslaw. It can be a pricey enough food. And we were dealing with one business who were dumping 4 kilogrammes of coleslaw on a daily basis, a huge volume. You you multiply that. Out then, over the course of a year, and there's a huge financial cost to that. The reason why they were dumping so much was because the Food service staff who were clearing the plates were dumping food in an area away from the food preparation area. So the chef who was making the food and was serving a very generous helping of. All slaves of side salad wasn't aware that customers didn't want it and that it was being dumped. So what we had to do here was, first of all, look at the communications process in place so that the chef would become aware in future that this was going on. So then arising out of that the chef puts her far, far fewer servings. There was an immediate impact in terms of the reduction of food waste. The processes were also put in place. To make sure that if something like this loads again in the future, there was a clear line of communications in place that the chef would know well. Your customers do not want this particular. Product another area where we saw a huge amount of food waste came through Carvery, which most Irish people will recognise. Carvery is something which which we as a nation love, but we have a huge psychological problem with the Carvery in terms of we order to fill the entire plate because we believe that's what we're paying for. So. What happens is people order more food than they want simply because they believe this is what they're paying for, and it is. Then don't do you to overcome that. What we encourage our clients to do was to reduce the plate size that is served CARVERY on. And those that didn't engage with that, what they found was firstly, the amount of food being wasted at the end of the day was vastly reduced. But still the customers were happy because they were by and large eating the same amount of food. So there's no negative feedback from customers in terms of a smaller portion being served because they were still eating the same amount. Just with less being served. Other areas then where we fail. Own unnecessary waste and could work with our. Clients tended to revolve around the serving of sides on plates, so. If you have instances where. Businesses are leaving out bowls or jugs of ketchup. Most of that goes to waste because you're not going to serve that from customer to customer, and it is very common practise. So we were encouraging people to. Look at serving as sachets instead. Milk is another area that has huge waste simply because the drugs that served in are too big and you're ending up with a lot being wasted at. The end of. The day so we. Encouraged our clients to solve milk in small. For jokes, we also saw a huge problem in terms of the list of bread in restaurants. The reason for that being that the restaurants will leave out a portion of bread at the start of every meal, irrespective of whether the customer wants it or not. And anything that goes back at the end is binned, leading to a huge amount of waste. So what we encouraged our clients to do in the restaurant. Sector rather than leave out a. Bowl or a plate of. Bread. Ask the. Customer, do they want bread doors that engage with that sort of practise, then found an immediate reduction in the amount of bread that they were waste. So that's just some example of the simple solutions we were able to bring in to our client businesses and probably probably only touching the surface there. But to give you an idea of how some techniques using lean tinking can bring about an immediate easy win for clients to reduce the amount of avoidable. Good way as to what? After we finished with the programme then we wanted to keep the learning from it going forward and encourage other businesses to take part in an analysis of the food waste that we're producing. So we held a very successful online seminar to discuss the issue of food waste arising from the optimization programme and the the success of that. Was very much based on bringing in some of the trying businesses who took part in optimization plus and getting them to talk about. Their experiences and how introducing the learning that they got from authorization plus helps their business. We've also been delivering out a series of social media videos lately, aimed very much at the hospitality and food service sector again, and each of those taking a different team in terms of the issue of food waste. So this is something we've seen. Feel an immediate impact from and it's something we want to continue. Going forward and on that basis then, we plan to run the programme again later in 2022 and we've been very fortunate to secure an additional round of funding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to. Run that so. We'd hope to engage with a whole new set of clients within County Carlo and get them on the journey of introducing lean techniques to. Reduce or eliminate unnecessary food waste from their business. So on that. Thank you very much for your time today.
That's fantastic. Thank you very much for that. That was really interesting. Couple of things that stood out for me really was you know it's not a sector I would be familiar with, but common themes across around identifying waste and making you visual really helps to clarify the issue for people and the voice of the customer. It's really of the more you understand the voice of your customer what the customer actually wants. The better you're able to address waste in your in your systems and your processes. So. UM, fantastic learnings from a from a different sector than than possibly I would be familiar with. So thanks very much for that. And our next speaker is Eileen Diskin. Eileen is again, just a reminder is with the UCD Innovation Academy. So over to you, Eileen.
Thank you very much and good afternoon to everybody and thank you for joining us. My name is Eileen Diskin and I work in the UCD Innovation Academy. And what I'm going to share with you this afternoon maybe. A little bit. Of a whirlwind tour. 10 tips, hints and approaches to design. A better tomorrow. First, though, a little bit about me. Just so you know where I'm coming from and some of these themes are things that I'll be talking about later in the presentation. And so I was a very creative child. I loved doing artwork. So I was lucky that my grandmother, my nanny, was an art teacher. I I also love to tell stories. When I was 7 or 8. I thought that. I was going to grow up and be an author. Love spending time outside also had an interest in being a park Ranger. At some stage you can see their double denim. I think it's coming back into fashion now, but that was me as a kid exploring the great outdoors. Fast forward a few years or perhaps more than a few years and I did a Masters dissertation on human. Dead life conflicts and trying to come up with solutions for that, and I did some research for my PhD on Environmental health links between wildlife, health, environmental, health and. Health. That's me with a Flamingo, baby. Flamingos are born grey. That's a little fun. Fact for you? And and then as I was progressing through my PhD, I became interested in communication and science communication. So this was a project that a few friends and I did called biodiversity in our lives where we worked with an illustrator. Create a set of beer mats that shared fun factoids about our research. Again, Fast forward a couple of years. A more recent project that I launched with a friend of social enterprise called the Wild Postcard Project and we run competitions around the world where we ask kids to depict their favourite biodiversity. We have a judging panel, select the 10 best, which we convert. Into postcards that can then be sent around the world. And of course, we have award ceremonies. Art exhibitions of the kids artworks. So that's a little bit about me. And then I more recently I guess. For the past. Nearly ten years now, I've worked in the Innovation Academy we. Worked with all sorts of. Groups of people from undergrads through to professionals. Every summer we've run a summer camp, so. In about a month's time, we'll have one or two hundred teenagers running around UCD's campus, which is always a bit of a it's an experience, we'll say. So here we are, 10 tips, hints and approaches to design A better tomorrow. And the first is to say and to acknowledge that it's all about the humans. And I think a lot of times when we're starting a project or working in a team, we tend to like working with people who are a lot like us who think like us, who maybe approach problem solving like us research, though, shows that diverse teams. Are much more successful. Tend to come up with better solutions, and they're various teamwork frameworks. Kind of design to address this, but I think it is an important one to to consider. And I was recently doing an audit of a reading list for one of our courses for one of our postgrad courses, and in this audit I realised that of the 21 kind of breed watch listings that we recommended of those 2120 were European or North American. And 15 of the 21 were white men. So I said to my colleagues, we need to do better and I guess. I would say it is a a difficult conversation, maybe to have I think a lot of people have a fear around talking about diversity, about about diversity, but a few tips from this article ask better questions, speed up learning to be uncomfortable, and I think most importantly, just get started so. Whether teaching a class like I do in Innovation Academy, assembling A-Team for a project, organising a conference, I would encourage you to keep in mind the the importance of diversity within a team. Second tip is that it's also about the work. Element and I do mean in some cases the physical space, the physical environment within which we work, but I also think it's important to consider the psychological space and a lot of our courses, we encourage gently encourage our students to get out of their comfort zones. But I think looking at this photo of this. Unfortunate at dog, he's uncomfortable, but his little feet are still firmly on the ground, so that area where you're kind of in the learning zone just outside of your comfort zone and producing good results. And with a few things that we do in the Innovation Academy to to help with this. On the first day of the course, we have everybody bring in a personal object that they can speak to and it's a way of humans connecting with one another, informing that safe psychological space and of. Course in a team process to make sure that you are having. It's a fine throughout as well. The third tip at go get solutions don't necessarily start with good ideas what? I mean by. This, Theodore Levitt said people don't want to buy 1/4 inch drill. They want 1/4 inch cold. Good solutions start with good problems. Newspapers, great daily source of problems. Look through it with a mindset of trying to identify problems to be solved or opportunities and. Burnt toast. Not very nice. We do a game called. What bugs you want? You have to come up with all of the things in a given morning. Your morning, your team that frustrate you. Once you have those problems identified, solutions can follow on. And a lot of people talk about keeping ideas journals. I would contend that it is. Better to keep. A problems journal, so list of problems to be solved. Henry Ford said if I. Had asked people what they wanted. They would have said faster horses. So again, it's all about drilling down into. Problems to be solved. My 4th tip is to challenge yourself to see with fresh eyes. This is installation of phone box back in the 1920s and back then it was said that if this experiment succeeds, many more kiosks like this will be erected all around the city. So imagine these guys installing it if they were to come to 2022 and see everybody with their mobile phones everywhere, slipping and doing, who knows what I. Think they'd be very surprised? And of course, some boxes now, not really very common. I tend to look like the the image there on the left, and are used for anything and everything, but making phone calls. So how does this relate to seeing with fresh eyes? Well, I would encourage you maybe this afternoon or the next day as you're walking around. If you're in Dublin or wherever you are, if you see a phone. Challenge yourselves to think what else? What could be? Various examples around the world of people using phone boxes in creative ways, from libraries to fish tank with real live fish swimming around in there to try to get into this mindset of seeing opportunities where you otherwise might not kids very, very. Good at this. And they can turn a cardboard box into dozens of different things. Possibly even within. The space of an hour, so do as you're out and. About to look. At old things like phone boxes in new ways lol, Dal said. Above all watch. With glittering eyes, the whole world around. Because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places, those who don't live in magic will never find it. So do try to get into that mindset of seeing with fresh eyes my next top tip #5 empathy is a key process in understanding. Problems and needs and so if. I were to. Ask you what do you see in this photo. Take a second. What do you see? That would consider which of the things that you are seeing are observations and which are assumptions a lot of times when we go out and try to try to find a problem to solve or start coming up with solutions, we let our own biases our own preconceived ideas. Previous experiences influence. What it is that we're seeing? Any someone said we don't see things as they are. We see them as we are. And when you're engaging in a process trying to come. Up with a. Solutions. It's really important to make sure that you're trying to not let your own biases influence the process. There's a great example of this. And the importance of of making observations from the hospital they'd approached the design firm, and because they were looking for a new device on which nurses could record patient information. So as a nurse was at a patients bedside, they wanted something sleek and sexy. Kind of like this device in. The photo that. The nurses could use to record information. So the designers went into the hospital and started making observations and. Something that they saw. Was that a lot of times the nurses were using one of their? Hands to hold. The patient's hand to comfort them, to relax them, to reassure them. So what these designers realised is that whereas the hospital thought they wanted something. Cool looking like this device and what the nurses actually needed was a device that could be held and controlled, and the information entered with just one hand. So hospitals kind of like.
Not quite as cool as what we thought we.
We needed but. Actually it really worked well for the. Nurses so that. Importance of making observations is very very key. Another important part of understanding problems of empathy is. This is an example from the renovation of. I think it was Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 loads and loads of work in there and the designers went in doing their their due diligence and the first thing that they did was make observations and what they saw was that. The toilets. The restrooms were overcrowded. And in particular, they are overcrowded with elderly. People very, very, very. Full, very overcrowded, so they said. Aha, in this renovation. Might cost a lot, but we're going to make sure that the new design has lots and lots of extra toilets. Wasn't until one of the designers said hang on a second here, great observation, but let's actually go in and talk to some of these elderly people. Let's ask them why they're in here. So kind of an awkward question to be going into the toilet and asking an 80 year old woman what she's doing. In there, but through those interviews, what they learned was it, the elderly people learned and married to actually, like, go to the toilets that they were in there because it was much quieter than the noisy busy terminal where they couldn't hear the announcements. So they were going into the toilets. Is to make sure that they heard any announcements about delayed flights or date changes. So the designers realise we don't actually need lots of extra toilets. That's gonna be really expensive. What we actually need are more information screens. So that's a lesson in the importance of interviewing, of asking questions. I think they say that like a three or four year old asked 2 or 300 questions a day, a lot of which are why that why question is. Another thing that you might do if you're trying to understand a problem to be solved is to body sort and this is when you put yourself in the place of the user or the person that you're designing for. MIT has designed this really cool suit called Agnes. It's the age game now empathy system, and it has a few different. Moments that mimic the experience of being. An older person. Your plugs to reduce hearing goggles to make it. Harder to see. How different bungee cords that make it harder to? Move so that if. You are designing a product for an older person. You might put this on to really get a sense of what their lived experience is actually like. Einstein said I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only. Very very curious. Tip #6 good solutions might actually. Start with bad ideas. What do I mean by this? If I were to ask you, take a few. Seconds and try to. Come up with the worst idea. Worst idea for a breakfast cereal, whether it's. What it's made of, how it's shipped, how it's packaged and whatever it might be your worst idea for a breakfast cereal. And why am I asking you to? Do this and what is this what? Is this all about? As adults, we tend to self edit return to come up with solutions trying to come up with a way to solve the problem. A lot of times you might come up with something and then first thing you say don't actually know. I don't think that would ever. Really work. I won't say that idea out loud. I think you know kids, they'll do anything. They'll say anything. They'll give anything a go. But as adults we self edit. So if you engage in this process of starting with worst ideas, you get those creative juices flowing and who knows, a worst idea could actually be flipped around a little bit and become a best idea. So worst ideas is a great. Way to start. A brainstorming process. I love this photo. This little girl in a photo from a Lego advertisement from the early 1980s. Younger children built for fun kids tend to be willing just to give things a go, and I think it's an important lesson that we can take away ourselves. Top tip #7 go for volume. So again, if you're in a brainstorming process trying to come up with solutions way to solve problems. Is to keep in mind the difference, the distinction between idea generation, which is the brainstorming coming up with idea solutions versus idea selection. Idea generation is a very distinct process from idea selection. So when you're first coming up with ideas, anything. Is OK grounded ideas, blue sky Ideas, Moon shot ideas? The wackier, the weirder, the more wonderful, the better idea of the design firm encourages their their teams to use bells. And if you're sharing ideas and somebody says, I don't think that would work, you ring the bell on them. So it's to keep it positive, at least in the idea generation stage. Before you move into idea selection. So again, maybe just take 10 or 15 seconds as many as you can. Try to come up with yourselves different uses for a paper clip. Print uses for a paper clip besides holding paper together. Give you a few seconds to see if you can come up. With a few. And then select one, select whichever one you think is the wackiest, the weirdest, the most wonderful, and maybe tell a friend or colleague later this afternoon. My next tip, my next method is to consider what is old that can be new again. And this is all about connecting the dots, mixing and matching, combining and recombining associating. There are loads of different kind of words to describe this process, and it's all about mixing and matching. For example, a screwdriver and a flashlight to create this, which you could use in a dark kind of space. Flashlight and screwdriver put together mix and match the idea of holiday with doing yoga. And you get yoga retreats. Of course, very big business nowadays, mix and match a dog and a backpack. You get a backpack for a dog. So it's like combining connecting dots is a really useful approach and in some cases with the the croissant and the doughnut can actually lead to a product that makes you lots and lots of money. And that's the queue to get those cronuts in New York City back when they were first introduced. And this is one of my favourites, origami inspired clothing that grows with your child's origami. Again, this is actually a microscope. This is a microscope work on the microscope. So what I would suggest you do now if you're interested, is to take a screenshot of this. Lots of different random objects and items. Take a screenshot and maybe later this afternoon pick two and see if you can come up with different ways to combine them, different ways to mix and match two of these. By a tip #9 nearly to the 10 hidden idea will never become a good idea. And what I mean by this is to acknowledge the value, to embrace the value of going out and talking to people about your idea, your potential solution, and not just people who love you not. Just your family or your mom. Will say that's really great. Sweetie, I love it. I would definitely buy it for your friends and go out and talk to strangers about your idea. And I love this one. The only honest people in the world are small children and young people. They're great for giving feedback. But that feedback piece is key. It is essential. #10 Green is the new black. And of course, I think actually nice. Following on from the last talk on. Food waste is to consider the world we're living in now. The climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, and as you're coming. Up with solutions. Is to ensure that what you are designing, what you are creating addresses in some way, or at least takes into consideration the importance of sustainability, Greta Thunberg said. We can't save the world by playing by the rules because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change and it has to start today. The SDF's, of course great framework to use. I like this. This is sort of an older version of things to consider in relation to innovation, feasibility, viability, desirability and of course nowadays sustainability is a key element of innovation. The innovation sweet spot where those four. Uh, things need. And then I have a bonus one for you. Top tip #11. I'm getting just enough time. One more minute left. Top tip #11 is to practise gratitude and practise kindness. Now we're all humans. We're trying to work together. You're working in teams. You're working with colleagues, as I think, to acknowledge the humanist. And all of it. Mr. Rogers, who had a TV show back in the states where I grew up. Said there are three ways to ultimate success. The 1st way is to be kind. 2nd way is to be kind and the 3rd way is to be kind. So do embrace that mindset and that approach and I. Think as well. To to acknowledge the value of working together with one another. As we try to design solutions to create a better tomorrow. And that is it for me.
OK.
That was fantastic. Arlene, thanks very much. That was really interesting and and and very thought provoking actually because when I think about lean and and and how we interpret lean and how we interpret improvements, couple of things really struck stuck out for me in your thought. There was around one was empathy. It's not a word you'd normally. They're using these forms, but have an empty with your process users and understanding you know, it's another way of looking at a voice customer question, but really is very powerful. And the second one is that innovation around idea generation, I think. Stepping out of our comfort zones in terms of how we think in our own inbuilt biases, when it comes to solutions can also hold us back when it comes to lean because we're very straight. You know, we're very confined within our thought processes. So bringing that element of out-of-the-box thinking I know we say. It a lot, but really. Useful tips there to try and help us down that road, so thank you very much and just reminder to everyone, please keep your questions coming and we'll we'll have a good bit of time for question and answers. So finally, our last speaker today is Joanna and I'll hand over to you now. Joanna, thanks very much.
Thank you very much. Sorry, let me unmute myself. OK, so welcome to my talk to be successful, it takes much more than my talks at all my thoughts to be specific and why I I decided to talk about this topic today. So unfortunately through my career. I observe frequently organisation obsessing about agile methods and sadly focusing mainly on mechanics of agile is very counterproductive and can actually create an organisational way. And for that reason, I would like to make you a little bit more aware of what to what to pay attention to, because if actual is understood incorrectly, it can actually be become one of the form of waste and become an impediment into. The organisational success. But before we dive into the. Talk, let me introduce myself briefly. So and I'm an adult coach, trainer and consultant and my background is in a traditional project management and around 10 years ago my journey with Agility has started predominantly. I work in IT sector. Across many industries from aviation, tourism, travel and digital gambling. Two very highly regulated industries like finance, including banking investment, payment gateways and insurance. So a broad, a broad, you know experience across many, many different industries. And why am I saying that because regardless of the industry. Literature organisations actually encounter very similar problems and that's very interesting so. Just be open minded and don't think ohh we cannot do something because we are this or that industry like look from different ankle try to look you. Know through different lenses. And and having work in IT, I came up to this. It became very transparent that many agile transformations fail because they are applied. The agile transformations applied just in one Sector 1 area for example IT. And you know, this is this is very limiting and you cannot succeed doing something in isolation. So the last three years I spent outside of mainly outside of IT sector and trying to bring agility at. The organisational level. And also I'm very passionate about agile the concept and I am. One of the. Organisers, organisers of agile Lean community here in Ireland. So back to the top. And so let's look at what I mean by saying that to be successful, it takes much more than agile method. So looking at one of adult practises school, one of the most common use practises at our practises around 80% of organisations who refer who say they are agile, they actually do school so big, big chunk of population practise Chrome. And many organisations focus all day energy or mechanics of agile and blindly implement different techniques and practises. And as I mentioned before, that frequently leads to agile becoming one of the forms of waste from lean thinking. And without a deeper understanding of the purpose behind those specifics, no specific ways of working the meaningful changes laws, the behavioural change, never happens. So to a ball of true. Opportunities Agile offers it is essential that an organisation move beyond doing and implementing agile and understand why behind we do something this way not the other. And they do not blindly follow follow a process. So back to scroll. So one of the common pitfalls is to apply scroll everywhere within the organisation without understanding what we are trying to achieve here. So scroll taken from rugby is a team sport and the team needs to have a common. Objective so. For example, applying screw framework to functional areas. We'll bring lots of challenges. And for example, applying scroll to functional area will result in a huge overhead in for for example too many meetings. Scroll uh scrum events meant to replace the need for most of the other meetings. However, if applying Chrome into social area, it might be not possible to replace the usual meeting with stream events and we are just adding another layer of meetings at the top of already. Existing meetings. Another another possible negative results would be too long meetings and realistic expectations as the teams unable to deliver incremental value or the teams unable to set the SPRINGLE and or you know the team is experiencing lots of. Delays because there are many hands off and handlers. So if we take a. Sorry if we take into into. As an example, daily scroll. The main purpose of daily scrum is to align the team towards the common deliver deliverable. So to make sure the team aligns to achieve their Sprint goal. And today this goal is a short term because it covers 24 hour period planning. On how we are going to collaborate together to progress with the work towards the successful delivery of the spring. Making a meeting 15 minutes doesn't make it daily screw or having a meeting every morning doesn't make it daily scrum either. There has there is a purpose of collaboration and alignment of us as a team. How we are going to progress with the work. And this is something what very frequently is misunderstood. And if we apply scrum. To a functional group. Then everybody is working on something different. There is no no common deliverable. There is no common goal, no the team is not pulling in One Direction and it is basically impossible to set the sprinkle. And as a result of. That each team, each team member then talks about the own activities, which frequently are completely irrelevant to other. You know members of. That group. And as a result of that, many people get disengaged and, you know, frustrated and and and just don't see the value of that meeting. And then very, very often, that meeting turns into status update meeting and frequently runs over 15 minutes. So a question for you just for reflection maybe later on what's the value of having a status update meeting every single day? And you know, very frequently that meeting becomes an overhead. Because it brings absolutely no value and it actually costs a lot of. Money. So as I mentioned before, my background is 19, so to give you an example for for IT a 15 minute daily scrum for an IT team based in Ireland roughly cost between 30 to 50,000. Euro per annum. So if you stretch it to half an hour, if you double up the time, you suddenly get 100,000 per just one minute meeting, and then if you multiply it per number of teams which are within an organisation, the the cost acts absolutely is massive. So I would actually encourage you to look critically at the daily scrum in your own teams if you if you do them and ask yourself. Is this meeting actually meeting the purpose? You know the original purpose it was designed. And isn't value art activity? Are you getting? What's the purpose of it? Why are we gathering here? And are you meeting that that, that that purpose? So now let's. Talk now about the eight waste, the unutilized talent. Screw master meant to be. It's a agile role in the scrum framework and screw master meant to be a servant leader, a process Master, A-Team, coach, team builder, a trainer and educator. It's actually a really, really important role because that person is responsible for bringing. Helping the team and assisting the team with their growth and development so the team you know, to ensure the team is getting better and better in whatever they do. However, in many organisation this role is completely misunderstood and underappreciated and frequently schoolmaster. Acts as a. Team Secretary or release manager or, you know, purely a project manager. So let's agree here on one thing. Challenging somebody's title without actually changing their responsibilities won't make any difference. Another another another practise I would like to bring your awareness to is retrospectives. In in actual environment posing and reflecting how we are doing, how we can improve is absolutely crucial for a natural organisation that's not optional. This is a must have for agile organisation. And there is a time and. Effort allocated for that activity through retrospective. Kaisen it's a, you know, continuous. It's a concept of continuous learning and improvement and it's a continuous effort to get better and better in what we are doing. And you know it's continuous excellence. Or, you know, at least you know. Trying to get to get there. And retrospective is a cornerstone to this principle. However, very, very, very, very. You know often and it's very sad in many organisation we actually observed the complete opposite. This cycle of continuous non improvement and repeating same mistakes over and over over again never making a time to fix you know. Issues and observing the same patterns and malfunctions and negative trends over and over again.
Right.
So step one. And the image here provided on the right, you know it provides us with a you know some dose of love. It's quite it's quite funny because it's so ridiculous. It's absolutely it's absolutely ridiculous, however. Upon reflection, how many organisations function exactly in that way, too busy with firefighting and reacting to crisis which you know which occurs quite frequently? UM. And never prioritising posing and reflecting. And, you know, finding the ways, how proactively actually prevents from those incidents happening in the future. And, you know, posing and thinking how we could do things more efficiently next time. So talking about common sense and you know. Actually, it's a common sense. It's like it's if you understand why you are following some practise, you will be able to understand the best, the most efficient way of doing it. If you blindly just follow the practise because somebody else is doing that, then without understanding the meaning behind it, you probably. Will get lost. And now another talking about common sense and efficiencies. And I'd like to mention another quite frequent anti pattern and that's related to Agile coaching, something which has been very trendy at the moment and many organisations are looking for. Coaches, you know, an Angel coach like any other team coach, meant to support the team, support the team who is aligned towards a common delivery. Uh, so the auto code provides the support and guidance to all team members who role. Who wrote in the same direction? So I think I believe we can all agree here. Then when coaches goals are aligned with the teams goals then they all pull in the same direction and agile coach can then support the team in a very meaningful way. Wait. However, very often a misalignment of goals can be observed between, you know, a personal adult coaches goals and your teams, teams, teams, goals and frequently agile coaches goals are set up in complete isolation. From the team problems and challenges they face, and for example, to give you some examples. That for that quarter, an agile coach might be tasked with implementing some agile practises and for example, focusing on implementing the initial thread on definition of done on all teams. All you know, regardless of the nature of the problems. Or they can, you know, they might be tasked with the job. Of ensuring that each team runs with the scrum and implements the screw framework. Regardless if that's the best framework for the for them or not. And in that case, when agile coaches goals are not aligned with the team goals, then the agile coach actually becomes another distraction and organisational implement because instead of focusing on supporting the team in resolving their real problems and challenges and resolving the. Impediments they just cause additional pressure and frustration, making absolutely no positive change and often creating non value activities. So summarising, if I could leave you today with three takeaways from this session, I would say Please remember that agile is not about mechanics. Agile is a behavioural change. It's a shift in organisational culture and to successfully get there. You need to understand why behind different practises work rather than just blindly implementing them, because the Scrum guide says so. And finally, agile is not the goal. Agile is the journey. Agile is the vehicle which meant to help you to fix the organisational problems. If you focus on agile. As a destination. Most likely you will lose the whole essence of the whole transformation and very likely you will lose the, you know, majority of the benefits. And it's highly probable that you will create lots of waste on that journey. Thank you very much.
Fantastic, Joanna, thank you very much for that very interesting and and again couple of things that stood out for me is around being clear on on what the common goal is to facilitate success. If we're not clear on what we're all trying to achieve then any methodology will fail. So and so we move now into Q&A session. So we have our four or three. Speakers with me and so I'm not. I'm not open with a quite a general question, just to start the conversation. And just listen. To the to three talks there. It's like just just get your thoughts on. You want major obstacles. You see whether you're implementing, whether it's an agile implementation or lean or or in the innovation space, what major obstacles do you see and and? And really, you know what? What is the biggest advice of the biggest piece of advice you've given around around easing that resistance to change? If you do see it? And I might start with might start with Eileen. That's OK.
Yeah. Thanks very much, Karen. And yeah, and really interesting question around. The challenge is, I think one thing that we've seen, you know, in our students and graduates of our course, I'm especially in recent years is just around the pandemic and, you know, people's lives being disrupted, people who have been going to work for the day, working from home. And I think I'm a challenger. Plays around keeping up the motivation. When you know there's a a. A lot of other pressures on people and. On people's. Lives. So I think trying to find ways like, I think an interesting problem to be solved really is trying to find ways to keep people motivated and to keep people working together and feeling connected to to one another as people and and feeling like they are working towards a a common goal and are are making progress. Was interested in some of the things that I Joanna was saying around that in in particular.
Absolutely, John, how do you how? How best do you think we can? We can facilitate that. Common goal I'm understanding of a common goal.
It's basically, you know, starting from the top. So having a vision. And then aligning. Everything to outcomes and you know driving from, from, from leadership. So leaders need to understand what we are going to achieve in terms of outcomes, not activities and then clearly communicated towards the expectation because this is it's. It's actually very interesting, but recently I've been doing some exercise for an organisation and I asked everybody to put what's the outcome, expected outcome and around that everybody on the team had different interpretation of that. So communicated it clearly. That's a very starting point.
Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's sometimes we we we embark on the journey before we even know our destination is and and I'm surprised I surprised when we get lost. James, from your perspective, slightly different type of model, but in terms of in terms of engaging with your with your your providers which are which are catering out for say your hotels what what was their how what was their initial was their initial reluctance there or what was was their point when they actually. Really got the problem or what would you say?
I suppose engagement is always a big challenge here on in any programme you're bringing forward the optimization plus programme, which I spoke about earlier, is is one of a broad suite of programmes that we would run in the whole area of continuous improvement and we would also have to lean for micro and green. Micro programmes as well. And you, you get a kind of a common team coming through at the initial engagement and the cartoon Joanna put up in her presentation really hit at home when you had the the Cavemen dragging the and and and not to compare clients with Cavemen, but. You had the the Cavemen dragging the the trailer of stone, someone coming behind them with a wheel. And the response being, sorry, we don't have time. We're too busy and you do find an element of that in terms of initial engagement and it it, it would have been a problem particularly with optimization plus because dealing dealing with the hospitality sector at a time when they were coming. Out of two years. Of a huge A. Huge change to their business as a result of COVID-19 and also a lot of them had huge staffing problems at the time. So there was. A huge issue in terms of getting the key decision makers, be it the the owner or the chef or the the food manager, to engage in the programme. And a lot of it came down to they just did not have the time to do it. So a big part of what we were trying to do was to explain the long term benefit to us and to see this as an investment which.
I I know.
It will take an investment now, not so much financial, but of time, but down the line, the payback from that would be quite bigger. So you had to take a number of different approaches to it, but once they could get the concept and could see a real tangible benefit to them at the end point, you got that engagement then. And they, as they went further along in the process, they could really see where this would make a difference. To their business.
Absolutely, absolutely. And the common theme again, especially between Eileen and Shamus, the common team is sustainability, and it's becoming, obviously. Uh, more and more important, more and more crucial to to everything we do is is building sustainability into our programmes and and that interface between our lean or innovation or proven activities, or agile, whatever moniker or whatever process we want to use and sustainability, what guidance is out there for people. Maybe who aren't? Fire down that journey on sustainability journey or even for those who are well into what? What type of guidance is out there to help inform our our companies and our our practitioners, Jim. So I start with. You actually this sort of.
Yeah, thanks, Kieran. The very good question. And I think it's something that's relevant to every business and there's a bit of a carrot and stick approach here because. There are a huge amount of regulations, if not already in place, coming down the line in terms of Ireland's obligation on these sort of sustainability issues, just even look at the issue of food waste which I spoke on, we we have new regulations coming in place in June, so only next month whereby Ireland's going to have to make. A an ongoing report to the European Commission on the issue of food waste, and that's just one of a huge amount of sustainability reports we won't have to be doing from Europe. And as these are going on, then there's going to be an obligation on Ireland to improve its numbers and the way Ireland is going to improve its numbers on any issue is by focusing on the causes of it, which in some cases is the the business sector and there are going to be carrots to help the business sector engage in these things. But there's also going to be a stick as well in terms of taxes. Levies fines which will hitch the financial sustainability of businesses. We're not engaging in it, so there are quite a lot of supports out there to to help businesses along that. And again, depending on the size of the business, whether you would be a local enterprise office size client or an enterprise Ireland size client, there are quite a number of supports that any business could engage in. If you're a smaller business would say we in in the local enterprise offices, which are spread, there's 31 of us throughout the country would have the likes of the lean. From micro programme. Which focuses on process efficiency and the green for micro programme then which takes that a step further and looking particularly at. The issue of. Sustainability within environmental sustainability within the operations of the business. So any business at all can engage with their local enterprise office and go on to one of those programmes and they'll be given expert outside advice of of someone who will go into the business, do a routine branch review, work with the owners and work with the staff. Bring forward commonplace solutions, then based on Lean concepts to to really help change their method of doing things. So there there are a lot of supports out there, but we we would need to see businesses engage in as a two way process in it.
Great. OK. Fantastic. Thank you. And maybe a question for you, Joanna. Just when you're speaking there about agile, we do question from the audience here is is agile and I'll probably give you just in two parts, that's OK. So the question was, is agile more relevant for software developers or IT team functions? And and I might add in. If, if, if that is the perception, or is that is what what similarities do you see between agile and and lean or 6 Sigma is there? Is there similarities between the two?
Yeah. OK. So the first first part first. So Agile was successfully tested and trialled through decades now because it's not even years, it's decades now in software development. So that's why it's associated mainly with it. However, it works so well in that industry. But now it's rapidly spreading across different industries and I definitely I am. I am of strong opinion that the major benefits of agile are actually for business and that's that any agile initiative should be driven by business, not by IT. And I I do. I don't think. I think there is lots of learning from my team that other industries under sections can you know can take those lessons. Learn and not to make the same mistakes, but I definitely think it's. It's beyond IT and. I think in the current you know very volatile times. Any organisation who wants to be competitive will need to look into those more adaptive ways of working, OK and my memory is very short. What was the second part? Of your question and and I said I remember.
Commonalities or similarities.
So it's very interesting because recently when I start going more outside of IT, I see people say so we do agile or lean like which way will we go? But to me that's actually a new approach because in it. Agile and clean are like brother and sister. You they go together, hunt and hunt, and the truth the runt is you don't do either agile or you know Lin because they complement each other and to be successful you have to do both and you can see it for example from Toyota which started you know the Toyota is famous for the for the. An approach and but then now they are doing better, so they need to be to be for the organisation to be successful, they need to be both implemented.
Excellent, excellent. I'm just so it's just it's not on one thing that says resonated with me and your presentation was around that concept of or that discussion around your your status update meeting not providing value. And I, I I've seen it happen where it becomes, you know just it's not a team event anymore, it's just an individual giving updates. How? Have you any tips for the? For the audience on how we try and avoid that trap, how do we how do we ensure that that meeting is is truly value adding for the organisation?
Well, I I think like again back to to understand why, because I you know like when I work with organisational leaders, I'm asked like what would you like to achieve by having that meeting because you know some some people will tell me. Well, we are working remotely now and the team now needs some touch points. I'm not OK you need virtual copy. OK, so then I would like to another leader will tell you you know, I would like to know the progress, how the you know the team is progressing. I'm like great, do you really need it every day? No. Then do it. Twice a week. Or three times a week. OK, yeah. We need the team to to work together and collaborate. OK. You need the list of them. OK, so decide. Why you have to be clear why you are doing something. And then you. Choose the practise that supports you in achieving that.
OK. Listen, listen, thank you. And just switching tax slightly there. I might turn to you, Eileen, for a second around your, your, your your talk around design thinking and and. With a question from the audience there is there anyone any company that's that are particularly good at system with learning? Any examples where perhaps companies company is more more in? Tune with it. And and you. Know the second part of the question. So a lot of a lot. Of people feel funny about being creative and work, and I think that possibly comes from a situation if we're working in an organisation that is highly regulated or or is very much process bound, it limits our creativity in a way. So have any hints on how to turn broaden that a bit or examples of where it's worked well.
Yeah, I'm some some great questions.
So I'll I'll go to.
The the first one first, which is around. And companies that are embracing this and doing doing good work with it and and what we're seeing at least in some of the organisations that are coming into the Innovation Academy is that it is becoming more and more widespread. So initially really championed by ideal in in California, but nowadays used from from small startups to. NGO's to to to multinationals. And and I think you know kind of thinking back to what I was saying around sustainability and the need for sustainability to be kind of front and centre and last year we we launched a course design thinking for sustainability kind of going back to what you were asking Shane this about. Was kind of reflecting on, you know, the course as we frame it, it's very much like it's a seven month full time course, but you don't leave like we don't promise you're going to be a sustainability expert at the end of it. But you'll have a. Skill set toolkit mindset to use design thinking to solve sustainability challenge. Changes and it's it's a conversion course. So last year we had, you know, students participants in the course and who had just graduated university with degrees in architecture and with art history and with science, with history. So it was kind of anything and everything. But I think it's acknowledging that sustainability increasingly. Is going to be a part of everybody's job and I think recognising the value of design thinking as an approach to come up with solutions to stability or I guess any kind of challenge. But increasingly now we're seeing that it's sustainability challenges that it's a framework and approach that can be used. To to address challenges, solve challenges. And the second part of the question was around.
It was around potentially, if you, you know, a lot of us may be working in organisations that are quite regulated and and therefore processes are quite. Confined or bound, how do we encourage? So you talked about it in your in your speech, and you talk about ideation and idea generation with an idea selection and how do we get people into A-frame of mind where they're they're providing the volume. So we talk about a lot in, in problem solving or the make or lean we talk about. The improved phase where we come up with ideas and increasingly what we see is. People's natural biases coming through. We get the same solutions and we tweaked them a bit and we tried them and you know they don't quite work and we so how do we break out of that cycle and and encourage creativity and perhaps in organisations that haven't valued it to now.
Yeah, I think there's a few things that can help with that. I think the first which I spoke to briefly is around the importance of the, the team environment and establishing psychological safety and a space in which people feel free to share ideas, whether they're the wacky wild kind of moon shot ideas that are never going to happen, especially in organisations that. Quite old fashioned or quite restricted, but also that grounded ideas, things that can be done tomorrow that maybe is not as well. Lacking creative idea, but that those can still provide value. So I think having that environment where people feel supported and sharing any kind of ideas is is a great first step. And then I think with that. And I didn't didn't have time really to go into some of the other ideation games, but things like mix and match recognising that not all creativity is this, you know, brand new first time seen in the world idea. But you can take something that's being done elsewhere. You can Little Mix and match and make it relevant for your own organise. But we we would with our our students and participants on our professional courses introduce a wide range of ideation games, ways to come up with solutions that that address a need. And again, I think kind of key take away as well is that, yeah, creativity doesn't necessarily mean. Why it's so? Weird and like. Shaking up everything like there is disruptive innovation and there's value in that. But you know the the value of incremental innovation as well is not to be ignored.
Sure. And do you see, you know, is there engagement from process users in a stable process or do we still view innovation as purely design activity? As in, I'm coming over something new, I'm going to come up with lots of ideas. And it's gonna. Be fantastic or are we in a space yet where we view innovation within a process? You know that incremental is it is there breakdown there do you think?
I think we need a non answer, but I think it's a little bit of both. I think it depends on the organisation or the company and sort of what the culture is there and sort of what what the structure allows for and what the environment allows for. So yeah, I think it's it's a little bit dependent but under the organisation itself.
OK, OK, I'm fantastic. And we we have one more question here from from from our audience around. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna edit a small bit, but really I think what the person. Is looking to to discuss is. How do we? There may be a perception out there that we are happy to throw. Organisations are quite content to throw budgets out an IT or digital solution or. A lean implement. Patient whereas from from all your talks, the crucial one is engagement and collaboration and and getting that common goal, how do we encourage that with our, with our senior leaders? How do we, how do we convince them of not just the tangible benefits but also the? Their cultural change, and we need to bring about an organisation to facilitate these improvements. I was hoping to help with you all. Shamus, my start with you.
From 1:00 to the volunteer very good question Kieran and I'm, I'm reminded I was dropping in and out of the workshops this morning that the various workshops just to see what the other presentations were going to cover. And I I can't remember. Unfortunately, the speaker's name. But one of the speakers I saw, he. He introduced his talk by explaining the rush his company had been in just short a few years ago. How he had heard a talk on lean, not from a consultant or not. Drama an expert, but from someone in the very same position as him, one of his contemporaries, A fellow business owner who was able to map out his journey and starting from the point where the business was in a rush, the steps they took through the process of lean engaged. And to. Overcome that and where do we're at now? And the huge level of efficiencies there have been able to bring about in the space of a very short few years. And it was that which inspired him and his business so much to go down that route, which has now had further knock on impact. So it's it's that engagement. With contemporaries, and it seemed the best, the the the examples of best practise dash, other businesses, other people in your own situation can bring forward and the tangible benefits it's brought to them without having a huge financial cost necessarily or a huge cost in terms of time resource. But. An investment of whatever nature that really pay pay dividends for them, explained in a very understandable tangible way. So the more we can do in this regard of bringing in those who've who've benefited. And can can show it can show how you can then inspire others to to go down that road. I think it it's certainly one approach to to take. We certainly would have found with the seminar. We held for. Optimization plus at the end of our programme, the the most engaged. People were during that seminar was when we brought in the business owners who had gone down that road with us rather than me talking theoretically. They could they. Could really tell this is what we found was impacting our business. This is what we did to overcome it and this is where we're at now and business people relate to each other that way and that's probably one of the first approaches that that we could be looking at with any sort of approach to get people. Involved in lean or or similar methodologies.
So it's creating those networks for people can can share experiences and pitfalls and successes, and and all that. Yeah, absolutely. I agree and fantastic and. So suppose we we we come to a close soon. I just want to. Again, just to get your thoughts on. Trying to frame the question now, but it's it's it's around dash. Pathways to to success for these for these initiatives, for these change and because essentially all these are change initiatives, we want to go from from A to B, we want to bring some improvement. Ultimately we want to provide a better experience for our customers whatever the customers are. And when it comes to the voice of the customer, when it comes to understanding what your customer needs and whatever process you are working in, whatever industry you're in. What? What? How do how best or what do you think works best when it comes to those type of conversations or how how best we do, we bring that voice or customer to a process? John ideas him from an agile point of view, or from from your experience. How best do we bring the customer into the process?
Yeah. And I guess this is the biggest challenge because we are dealing here with a lot of things that Elaine mentioned earlier. You know people buy us leaderships, buy us leaderships and. Belief, you know, we know the best because we've been in it for, you know, so many years and so on and so on. So this is that. That's why, you know, Agile is a cultural shift. Agile is a shift in the mindset. So it's a step, you know, one step at a time and it just asking questions, you know, making sure that we again I I line already. Mentioned that psychological safety is needed for it, but you know if we have an environment that we can actually challenge the decisions, we can ask questions. That will help us to, you know, define if we are actually moving in the. Right directions and. Then also in agile, the evidence based management is a big thing. So if you go initiative, if you deliver something to customer, you always need to go retrospectively and look at the data and see, OK. Are we? Was it a good move or not? If it's all good, move, retrospective, think, reflect and see how not to make. The same mistake. Again, so that continues continues strive for for improvement in small steps is absolutely essential because you basically constantly ask. Ourselves, what can we? Do better. How can we do it better? And it just literally step by step.
OK, absolutely. Why don't you want to go in there?
Yeah. I think to echo Adriana on just step by step from A to B might actually have a few little letters even inserted in between. And then I think around connecting to customers, what what we say, what we suggest. I'm not so gently sometimes as to get out of the building, so get out and talk to customers. Have conversations, survey monkeys. They can be. Great, but it's. All about interacting with the customer, making the observations, doing the interviews, little bit of body storming, understanding their experience, but like. We have a a group of students and they're they're working on a business idea and doing customer discovery. Like, well, not so suddenly. Sometimes turn off the lights in the classroom and say, OK, get out now, go into town and go to the supermarket or go to the park or whatever is relevant for for their project. Like leave, go talk to your customers.
Absolutely so.
We're gentle about it, like by child.
That's the concept. Of of gambler from a lean point of view is. Is going to. The process going and talking to your process users, not not in the boardroom or a meeting room or face to face where possible. Obviously nowadays it's becoming more possible and and and really having. Two way conversations about the process which your process uses, which customers absolutely. But the similarities between the the different different methodologies, essentially they boil down to that. Do you have any thoughts from your end?
I suppose the the key thing is just is firstly told Aston and listening to Eileen's presentation. In particular there earlier. The assumption is a a killer in any process and without going and asked. Questions. You're making automatic assumptions, and they could leave you down in the very, very wrong. But as well as asking the customer another. Group that we. Could ask the question of is the prospective customer those that we're not engaging with at the? Moment and I. Suppose the the end goal. Of any process improvement is to increase the level of business you're you're doing, so that doesn't just mean increasing. Business from existing customers. It can also be perspective ones as well. So there are in many ways a key stakeholder in this entire process of improvement which we we should bring into the equation as well, shouldn't forget.
Absolutely, absolutely fantastic and that's great. I'm just conscious of time. I'm gonna bring this. Bring this to an end. And and I'd like to thank very much like to thank our three speakers. So in this can join a couple rich and and Sharon Stone for their insights. Really interesting insights for me. Diverse backgrounds, diverse fields, which for me is always so value added. You know, like sometimes we can get stuck in our own little cocoon of industry and think we know it all. It's always great to hear different voices, different different industries and that you learn so much. So I really do appreciate your time. Appreciate your your questions from the audience and they just. Remind everyone all the attendees, please continue to engage as I think we all all our speakers have mentioned that networking is so important. Talking to other people who are on this journey, starting it. At their third attempt, whatever, whatever part of their journey they're in, they all have learnings and they all have experiences that are valuable. And as do all our attendees. And so again, final, thank you. I would encourage everyone now to take a quick break and pick your next session from the agenda on the left. OK, great. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.