As some of you know, a few years ago I was asked by a client to develop something for his call center that would demonstrate he had acted on the lean manufacturing model being incorporated into his company. It was Kaizen's Lean Manufacturing Model. Over the last four years, our product development team has been working to create a robust performance improvement program based on Kaizen's 20 Keys and we added a twist with The Levels of Action which we were already using both internally and externally with our clients.
I am happy to announce that we have successfully launched this program in several call centers and have engagements booked to develop and implement this program into five more!!! But what's really interesting is how this process impacts the associates and management in the organizations that commit to it. First of all, it makes crystal clear what it takes to just "meet" in each "key" and by definition - it raises the bar on performance, even at the minimum level of acceptable performance. Second, associates and managers finally have a means to communicate accurately what level of performance someone has achieved in each key. Third, associates seem to understand and appreciate that they are now responsible for driving their own performance level and careers. They feel it gives them more control. In one organization, when we were reviewing the self-assessment with the CSRs, even the most historically difficult CSRs looked at the definition of each level and said out loud, "I'm clearly not performing at a three yet." Keep in mind, these were those individuals who think their performance is way better than their manager thinks! How cool is that?
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