Bending the Curve

Applying Lean Systems Thinking to Government and Service Organizations

Walter Lowell, Arthur Davis

• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781649901729
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Writing
• Index: Business

Our book, Bending the Curve provides the practitioner, and the leader, a roadmap to success. Our implementation method has been thoroughly tested. Thus, achieving your outcomes is a good bet.

This book is applicable to, federal, state, and local governments, service sector entities such as law firms, businesses, small and/or large, independent of their products and/or outcomes.It is rare that you get the level of detail that we share. As well, you will get more than a sense of what it likely costs and an estimation of what you should expect is outcomes.

Although we had a "burning platform" (we would have had to lay-off employees.... a bad practice if you want to maintain the loyalty of your workforce). It is not a requirement to have a burning platform. We argue that you already have a burning platform. That is, if you are a government, the citizenry is and has been dissatisfied with your performance; you cost too much, you are too slow in delivering product/service and/or the form and function of what to deliver is often not what your customer (yes, your customer!) desires. If you are in a private institution, a practice or a business, your invisible "burning platform" is the same as above, and, your competitor is reading this book and is (or will be) 'readying ' her or himself to put you out of "business".

We wish you happy reading. We are convinced that you will be more then pleased with your outcomes. THANKS!

Management’s job is to improve the system.

—W. Edwards Deming

Chapter 1: Introduction

Maine is a small state sitting in the northeast corner of New England. It borders Canada to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and New Hampshire to the south and west. Maine has a small, aging population of approximately 1.3 million people, mostly living in its urban centers and southern counties. Historically, its economy was based on forestry and fishing, with a small manufacturing sector; all contribute significantly to the state’s tax base and budget. Maine is called “Vacationland” because of its vast forests, many lakes and rivers, and its extensive and beautiful coastline. As a result, a significant percentage of its economy is also based on tourism. Over the last three decades, Maine’s economy has suffered considerably with significant losses due to globalization in the paper industry, high tech, and reductions in fishing due to overfishing and a warming ocean. As of this writing, the shutdown imposed by the Corona virus has further devastated Maine’s economy. As a result, state government has and is currently seeing a loss of revenue that requires hard choices by government administrators to reduce taxes, budgets, and programs while demand for services has remain unabated or increased. Several strategies have been deployed to meet these challenges, including reductions in the state workforce, pay freezes, and furloughs—all done to help manage the loss of revenue.

There have also been efforts to manage the state’s budget by attempting innovative strategies used in the business sector and applied to government operations. Over the last three decades, spanning four different government administrations, there has been some form of improvement methodology deployed in government operations. In the early 80s, a time when the economy in Maine was suffering considerably, the McKernan administration, in order to balance the state budget, began by furloughing the state workforce as well as ordering across-the-board budget reductions. In addition, a statewide total quality management (TQM) program for government was instituted. The central focus of the program was to reduce costs by removing waste in government services. TQM was an “all hands-on deck” initiative involving the hiring of TQM consultants, a W. Edwards Deming four-day workshop for managers, and the training of staff on TQM principles and methods. TQM was implemented across all state departments with each department designating a TQM lead and creating a TQM plan of action, with responsibility for the plan resting with the department director or commissioner. The governor chaired a statewide quality council, consisting of the line staff designated as TQM leads and their respective directors or commissioners, which met regularly to check on progress. This was a very exciting time for state employees.

Typical Government Improvement Strategies

Ken Miller, in We Don’t Make Widgets: Overcoming the Myths that Keep Government from Radically Improving, notes some of the strategies government typically deploys to improve its operations:

• The Blue Ribbon Commission
• Centralization/decentralization
• Reorganization
• Blame the Individual (i.e., performance management)
• More technology

These are strategies we have become familiar with over our years in state service. We agree with Miller’s assessment that generally “they never actually work.”

They received a lot of TQM training, were engaged with their work, were listened to by management, and had opportunities to work across different departments on quality improvement projects. It was encouraging to the workforce to see the governor take an active and visible role in promoting their participation and seeking to improve state operations. This effort occurred in the last two years of the McKernan administration, and unfortunately, there was not enough time to build or embed a solid internal administrative infrastructure to support TQM. The TQM consultant was only on board for a little more than a year, and the Lean and Continuous Improvement literature at that time was not robust enough to fully articulate for government some of the very important improvement tools/methodologies such as visual management, value stream mapping, and hoshin planning—to name a few—that would help to sustain an ongoing improvement effort.

In Maine, the governor is elected every four years and is termed out in eight. When the next administration takes over, not surprisingly it often comes with policy initiatives of its own and looks to make its own mark on state operations that is generally different from the previous administration’s. While the TQM program was still in operation with the election of the King administration, the economy had stabilized somewhat, and unfortunately, TQM was not seen as a priority by the new administration. The governor decided to relegate the overall responsibility for TQM away from the governor’s office to a Labor Relations Committee, which, in effect, killed TQM as an overall government-supported initiative. Surprisingly, this was a governor who ran on the idea of managing government as a business, and yet, when he was presented with a successful world class business strategy its potential went unrecognized.

Recent Maine State Government Administrations

John McKernan (R) 1987–1995

Angus King (I) 1995–2003

John Baldacci (D) 2003–2012

Paul LePage (R) 2012–2019

Janet Mills (D) 2019–

Although some departments continued with improvement efforts such as zero-based budgeting, the lack of executive support, particularly for TQM, was obvious to the state workforce. It seemed to many involved in the TQM effort as a betrayal, as well as an immense loss of momentum coupled with a growing cynicism and suspicion of any new government program “foisted” on the state workforce. Unfortunately, this persisted into the administration that followed as did a return of serious challenges to the economy.

A confluence of issues occurred at the start of the next administration. These included a return of significant budget deficits and unhappy citizens demanding a smaller government and more accountability. It was in this environment that the BTC initiative emerged in 2004, largely because of a few state employees who continued to follow the quality improvement literature, particularly those strategies called Lean, which were being successfully deployed in manufacturing companies around the world and were clearly articulated in the Womack and Jones book, Lean Thinking, published in 2003. Given another strained economy and considerable stress on the state budget, the new administration again resorted to the same timeworn playbook of across-the-board budget reductions, staff layoffs, and reorganizing/consolidating state departments—all designed to reduce costs.

Government services, programs, and projects greatly affect the competitive position, progress, and future of the entire society.¹ The decision to continue to ignore the problem of waste in the government service system is a decision that affects Maine’s standing not only in the state of Maine but also in the world. Even the leadership position of the United States is also adversely affected by dramatic ineffectiveness and inefficiencies at the state level.

Declining resources is not the only challenge confronting state governments; of equal consequence is the productivity of their service components. Studies have found that, from the customer’s perspective, there is 30 to 80 percent waste in government systems.² BTC, the innovative program developed in Maine state government, recognized the importance of public value specific to public institutions. A public service organization generates public value when it delivers a set of social and economic outcomes that are aligned with citizens’ priorities in a cost-effective manner. Thus, maximizing outcomes and organizational cost-effectiveness increases the value it delivers.³

BTC demonstrated that government workers can meet the challenge of declining resources and can do more with less while both delighting their customers and increasing public value to society. However, to embed a continuous improvement culture, governmental leaders and workers must study and use the twenty-first-century leadership/management systems now in use by successful manufacturing companies, hospitals, accounting firms, engineering firms, and others in the service sector.

A Different Kind of Thinking

Government does not need to invent a system. The Toyota Production System (TPS) already exists, but the adoption of this system of leadership and management requires a fundamental change in our current thinking and methods, and it requires a different kind of leadership. Leaders who believe that if manufacturers can dramatically reduce costs, radically improve customer satisfaction, and quadruple the level of quality while providing the investor (i.e. taxpayers) with an enhanced performance, so can government and other service sector entities. The inefficiency, cost, and dissatisfaction that citizens have with current go...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Getting Started
• Chapter 3: Developing Continuous Improvement Practitioners
• Chapter 4: CIP Practice
• Chapter 5: Standard Materials
• Chapter 6: Sustaining BTC
• Chapter 7: Improvement Interventions and Results
• Chapter 8: Summary and Lessons Learned
• Epilogue
• Chronological Time Frame for BTC
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Glossary of Abbreviations
• Appendices
• References