The key to running an efficient operation and enabling leaders to be free to work on growing the business is to make the people running the process autonomous. Make them true Process Owners and build the entire process around making them “the star of the show.” Develop the entire organization to fully respect the autonomy of the Process Owner by ensuring:

• Nothing is changed or even “dropped off” at their process without the Process Owner being involved and approving it
• Leaders understand that the Process Owner is critically important and the success of the business depends on them to be at their best
• Leaders are there to set up the Process Owners for success. If they are successful, then the team will be successful

Trust the Process Owner by:

• Enabling and Empowering them to develop and track their own targets each day
  • This might seem foreign to most leaders, but the concept is rooted in the fact that the Process Owner, along with support from their leadership and technical team, create their own standard work and determine what the process is capable of, so therefore, it is not a stretch to say that the Process Owner knows what their targets should be
  • By doing this, you free up the front-line leaders to focus on supporting the processes and improving them, thus avoiding the time consuming task of updating metrics or actual performance on the operations floor or in the process
  • Also, you instill a sense of ownership within those operating the process

NOTE: A common misconception is that the Process Owners will “sand-bag” the targets and that you will actually see a reduction in output.  The opposite is most often the case.  As Process Owners learn to understand their process and set their own targets, they tend to try to go “too fast” and need to be pulled back a bit to ensure safety and quality standards are maintained. 

• Accepting when things go wrong or don’t match expectations, as long as, the Process Owner is following the standard work and is working to solve the problem
  • Oftentimes, leaders will overreact to upset conditions and either send in resources to “take over” and solve the problem or they will come down hard on the process owner, creating a high sense of anxiety within the team
  • Leaders need to build TRUST within the teams by supporting them with resources to solve problems on their own and always showing respect for their autonomy

Collaborate with the Process Owner by:

• Partnering directly with the Process Owner to develop the standard work for the process and therefore building TRUST and a mutual understanding of what the output or the expectation of the process should be
  • The leader will see the challenges the Process Owner faces and will be aligned to not only what is possible, but what needs to be done to make the process better
  • The Process Owner will know that the leader knows the process and this knowledge will limit the “BS” factor
    • The BS Factor is when a leader does not know the process and the Process Owners know it
    • The Process Owners can then create any scenario they want for running the line and the leader will have no way of knowing what is truly possible
• Making everything visible and communicating up the challenges of the process to the next level of leadership.
  • The collaboration to develop the standard work, along with the open communication ensures that the team is always pushing to get to the next level, but always in harmony with those running the process

NOTE: Teach Process Owners tools only as they need them.  Sending large groups to training classes for tools is good for awareness, but not for practical application.  There needs to be a genuine need for that tool at the individual person level

At Creativity with Boundaries (CwB), we lead our clients through a proven process to build autonomous process owners from the process up.  We ensure that everyone is working to the same objective whether its on a production floor, in an operations team meeting or in a conference room discussing projects.  The goal is always the same: Ensure the process is fully supported and those running it, process owners, are the number one priority of the team at all times.