Customer Reviews

Office Kaizen: Transforming Office Operations into a Strategic Competitive Advantage

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After nearly 4 years experience as a 6 Sigma Black-belt leading projects centered on the commercial side of a Fortune-500 enterprise---sales, marketing, marketing services, customer service, HR, etc.-I was pleased to see the emphasis on implementation tactics at the level where most of the detailed work of an organization gets done. It fills the gap left by bigger programs.
It is not so much a "How to" book as it is a "WHY to" book of logic meant to motivate and provoke thought. It fills a gap where other, bigger name programs can fail to deal with the sustaining power of changing human behavior. But with Office Kaizen there appears to be a proven path forward.
Much of the 6 Sigma work I have seen in transactional projects often fails to meet expectations and truly improve outputs in ways that last longer than the `official' measurement period. Such projects often encompass arenas of business activity in which no formal process map has ever existed, even less the mere idea that a process exists. Lacking a consensus understanding of work flow, it follows that NO standards for output exist; NO metrics are captured to qualify those standards; little consideration for the customer's expectations of quality is built into the process; and clearly NO discipline is needed where there is NO process structure. Not surprisingly, little sense of ownership is evident. It's a steep slope that only leads to status quo and mild, but constant chaos!
Modifying the human aspects of process change is often challenging for 6 Sigma methodologies that better fit finite manufacturing, logistical and similarly tangible processes. In my experience of completing `soft' projects, 6 Sigma methods simply don't have as many tools for dealing with the level of granularity and immediate application at the individual behavior level as are found in Office Kaizen. The proposed methods directly treat the realities of getting work done at the molecular level. Regardless of all else done to improve business process, there is still a key implementation step remaining- changing the human behaviors embedded in work processes.
Visual displays (PVD's), Lean Daily Management Systems (LDMS), 20 Keys and the whole treatment of `surface waste' are very instructive for the business leader seriously pursuing process improvement. That leader will greatly benefit by reading the logic, described by Mr. Lareau in "Office Kaizen", that clarifies the reality that the enabling key to all change in business process is leadership.
Sustainability only derives from leadership---leaders who understand that improvement really comes from the bottom up; and that procedure by procedure, paper by paper, person by person, load by load, part by part, and day by day improvements converge to yield sustainable gains. The LDMS assures that change endures. And leadership assures that LDMS and other LEAN office procedures endure. Their focus on reducing waste via correct structure, discipline and power of ownership, all fixed first at the granular level of an enterprise, will produce sustainable gains. And that is the detail most difficult to implement in other programs -- the human behavior at the core of business activity. Changes to machines, flow patterns, wire diagrams, office layouts, floor arrangements, schematics, etc. all can help; but changing the human processes is most difficult. From page 7: "Office Kaizen is an implementation path, management philosophy, leadership structure, and set of tools, all wrapped into one consistent package." That is a great recipe for sustainability.
I recommend the book highly, especially for application in business functions not traditionally viewed through `process eyes'. While it seems to have plenty of strength to stand alone, PVD's, LDMS and the other adminstrative LEAN ideas could also be great companion pieces to the more general tools like 6 Sigma. At least that's the opinion of one who has practiced some of the popular methods and only now has read about Office Kaizen. I look forward to seeing it first-hand. It fills a serious gap.

I found the real value of this book for me was in the identifying of the 26 different transactional wastes. Most Lean training only identifies 7 but it is great for the non-manufacturing sector to see how waste can be identified. I ignored the "slim it" concepts, etc as another review points out that it seem s plug for another "flavor of the month" and his consulting business. Sticking to the traditional Lean approach to transactional processes this book added real value to me in the section on waste, including the examples.

Though written for the office, I found this book to be a useful tool to understand how to execute and sustain change in an organization, especially one implementing lean.

The initial descripton of "office wastes" was interesting, but the meat of the book in my opinion is its description of the process tools that can be used to eliminate the wastes and improve an organizaiton's ability to execute, namely Slim-It and Lean Daily Management System (LDMS). Our organizaiton has struggled with how to sustain lean gains once initial implementation is done, whether by kaizen or project team. We have also struggled with how to build the continuous improvement culture necessary to expand lean gains. LDMS seems to be the kind of "tool" that can help build this culture, whether used in the office, as described here, or the plant.

I plan to try and apply lean in our office operations using the techniques described in Office Kaizen. I am also applying LDMS in factory areas we have already leaned out, to build and sustain the culture we need to keep improving. Initial results with this approach have been very encouraging.

Finally, someone has written an understandable, comprehensive, and useful guide to implementing lean manufacturing methods, tools, and tachniques in white collar environments! Waste is just as rampant in paper-based and automation-driven office work processes as it is on factory floors, but not nearly as visible. And there is far less experience in designing and implementing lasting and effective productivity improvement programs (lean-based or not) among professional management in such environments. Thus the challenges of running successful lean improvement programs in offices are significantly greater than in manufacturing. Thank you, Dr. Lareau, for writing a book that explains well how to plan and make the journey from the philosophical to the practical in lean office projects. The author does a good job of establishing a foundation for lean thinking by first describing the strategic philosophy of lean in the context of such office workplaces. Building on that foundation, he then takes the reader through a well-reasoned "how to" exercise in constructing the real world elements required to design, launch, and drive a lean white collar program to be successful. As in his previous book, LEAN LEADERSHIP, Lareau stresses the importance of an executive oversight committee that is directly and continuously involved from start to finish. If anything, his imperative that such strong leadership involvement is critical for success rings truer in discussing office-based lean efforts than in manufacturing environments. This book is a "MUST READ" for anyone contemplating the migration of lean tools and techniques to white collar work groups, and I highly recommend it.

In this book, as well as "Lean Leadership: From Chaos to Carrots to Commitment," William Lareau provides some of the rudimentary tools and theories of Lean practices. However, both books fall seriously short of providing the comprehensive, straight-forward lean techniques and philosophies that both management and their employees require to introduce, improve and sustain lean processes over the long-term. In short, I found that his books actually violate Lean principles in that they contain hundreds of pages of "Munda" (waste)!

Lareau correctly argues that for any business to successfully integrate a Lean program into its structure, it needs to develop and sustain overwhelming employee acceptance and involvement in the program. Unfortunately, Lareau's psychological foundations for his theories on human motivations are outdated. Much has been revealed in the field of psychology in the past 15-20 years with which Lareau clearly needs to acquaint himself.

Lareau makes repetitive attempts to motivate the reader to his way of thinking through tiresome war characterization analogies and often unfounded attacks to minimize or discredit past business improvement programs and their proponents in favor of his own.

He attempts to develop and reinforce the belief that Lean requires such levels of training and business restructuring, that the reader must conclude that to successfully implement and sustain Lean, they must invest heavily and for a lengthy duration, in an outside Lean consultant. His books are essentially marketing tools for his own consultant firm.

Office Kaizen: Transforming Office Operations Into A Strategic Competitive Advantage by William Lareau (co-owner of Implementation Services, a management consulting firm specializing in implementation) is a solid and imminently practical guide to streamlining and maximizing the efficiency of routine and exceptional office operations. Individual chapters adroitly address minimizing and eliminating wasteful redundancy, provide pointers to keep in mind when planning mentorship and training programs, and descriptively explain the SLIM-IT system for achieving positive change. An excellent all-around cost-cutter, in terms of both time and money, Office Kaizen is especially recommended for the novice office manager, and has a great deal of value to offer even the more experienced business administrator or supervisor.

Dr. Lareau's book is clear, readable, strategically oriented and detailed enough to get anyone with common sense off and running. Lean management, including lean office management, requires a discipline that can only come from confidence that the approach is on target - right management structure, right information to the right people at the right time, right teamwork and tools and metrics, etc. Office Kaizen provides that confidence, showing how to get the fat off and keep it off.

William Lareau's "Office Kaizen - Transforming Office Operations into a Strategic Competitive Advantage" doesn't focus on the lean tools most books written on lean transformations focus on. Instead of rehashing the core lean concepts of process mapping, 5S, etc. which dozens of other books are dedicated to, it gives a very comprehensive explanation of how to create a lean culture through the restructuring of management teams to maximize the effectiveness of other lean tools, like visual controls and a daily accountability process. While most companies grasp the advantages of value stream mapping and kaizens and see quick improvements once they utilize these tools, the results they achieve typically don't last because they haven't put in place a management system to sustain those improvements, much less drive additional daily incremental improvements.

I was particularly drawn to Mr. Lareau's approach because it was very similar to one of the best lean books I've ever read - "Creating a Lean Culture - Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions" by David Mann (if you haven't read this book yet - I strongly recommend it); hence the name of my review. It seems that Mr. Lareau has adopted Mr. Mann's theories on how to create a lean culture on the shop floor through the adoption of a new system of management to the office. He even expands on Mr. Mann's concepts by using his degrees in Clinical Psychology and Applied Psychology to explain in Chapter Five how to get human nature on your side when trying to create a lean culture. However, there are key concepts in Mr. Mann's book that Mr. Lareau doesn't include that I think are just as applicable in the office environment as they are on the factory floor. The most important is the concept of "Leader Standard Work", which are the tasks that the leaders at each layer of an organization do on a regular (typically daily) basis.

While I highly recommend this book, I strongly suggest you read it in conjunction with Mr. Mann's book to get an even more comprehensive overview of how to create a management structure to support an organization's cultural transformation into a lean, learning enterprise.

I was disappointed when I got this book since I was hoping to see more examples of actual office kaizens. I was also looking for forms or templates that could be used for conducting kaizens in the office myself. What is offered is some general suggestions on how to approach office kaizens and how they are similar to manufacturing kaizens. Show me the data! Where are the actual results?

Of the six books on lean concepts I have started to read, this is the worst and one of only two that were not worth finishing. I completely lost respect for the authors by page 17 when they presented a ridiculous graphic called "The Office Kaisen Cube". On the same page, they introduce a concept called "Structure, Lean daily management system, Mentoring, Tools, Technology and Teamwork" and refer to it as "SLIM-IT" (Where did the two I's come from?). The book is full of goofy graphics and advice that seems to generate more work than actual process improvement. I didn't make it past page 44. Consider reading "Lean Thinking" or any of "The Toyota Way" books instead.