Great work systems drive operational excellence.
Hi! I’m Kevin McManus. Welcome to the Great Systems best practice work systems website. My personal goal as sole proprietor of Great Systems is to make work a much better place. To do so, we need great work systems that drive operational excellence. This site provides work team leaders with proven best practice tools, blueprints, workflows, and models to help make that possible.
Over 20 years ago, I started Great Systems with one goal. That goal was to make work a better place. We should spend our work time in a workplace that is fair, fun, and focused. Instead, our workplaces are autocratic, chaotic, and a drudge to be at each day. To create great workplaces, we must upgrade our vintage 20th century work systems. Too many of our core work systems need such upgrades to work effectively in the 21st century.
Great Systems News for May 2023!
- 2023 TapRooT Summit ‘Use Advanced Root Cause Analysis to Improve Your CAPA Program’ PDF DOWNLOAD
- Bring my VIRTUAL Mistake Proofing Best Practices workshop to your organization!
- Full color, 156-page Mistake Proofing Best Practices workbook now for sale on amazon.com
- My ‘Real Life Work’ podcast is now LIVE! PLEASE SUBSCRIBE today!!
FRESH Operational Excellence Content!
- Kevin’s NEW “Five Essentials of Operational Excellence” article is on the opexsociety.org website!
- April 2, 2023: Catch up on last week’s Real Life Work ‘New Ways to Change Work Culture’ podcast
- April 15, 2023: My newest Real Life Work ‘Seven Virtual Workshop Facilitation Tips’ podcast is now out!
- Over 10 NEW hours of video CONTENT posted on the Great Systems YouTube channel
Most Popular Posts – April 2023
Customer feedback is the best barometer of what is popular in the operational excellence arena. Here are my top five posts for the most recent month from a ‘visits per day’ perspective. How consistent is the population’s interest with yours?
Great Systems ‘Teach Your Teams’ Workbooks and Workshops
I created each of my workbooks and methods through experience, practice, and experimentation. The content worked for me. So, I want to share it with you. I design my learning events to be highly interactive. Primarily, I want to help you learn to effectively teach my content, plus other content you see as a value add.
As of mid-April 2023, three courses are live on my Great Systems YouTube channel. Each ‘Team Your Teams’ course contains full audio and video content to complement the print and eBook workbooks I sell on amazon.com. Plus, we can set up a virtual event to help you integrate use of this content into your leadership and team development plans.
CLICK HERE to Buy Great Systems Workbooks at Amazon.com!
Please keep me in mind for your work system improvement needs. I am happy to facilitate a virtual 2-day workshop that utilizes any of the workbooks I offer in the Great Systems Shop. There are no travel costs.
Plus, my workshop cost per participant is very reasonable. Send me an email at kevin@greatsystems.com, if you want to learn more about my ‘teach it yourself’ workbooks and workshops.
Stay Current With My Real Life Work Podcast
I know that my customers have little time to invest in work systems research. That’s why I do it for them! Each week, my ‘Real Life Work’ weekly podcast explores current operational excellence best practices and challenges with a ‘real life work’ and ‘how to make work better’ focus.
The podcast is now live, with more episodes in queue. Expect to see future episodes that focus on the key elements of operational excellence. Such elements include Leader Standard Work, total team engagement, work system measurement, and proactive process improvement.
Plus, I plan to include safety and risk management best practices in the mix, along with root cause analysis. If you would like to be part of the show, drop me a line at kevin@greatsystems.com.
Recent 2023 Podcasts:
April 2: ‘How to Change a Work Culture’
March 24: ‘Ten Ways to Measure Workplace Training Effectiveness’
Root Cause Analysis Best Practices
Effective root cause analysis is a ‘must have’ tool that all work team members should use to reduce daily errors, failures, and waste. Unfortunately, most root cause analysis tools rely on opinion. For almost 20 years however, my teaching and investigative experiences have shown me how the research-driven TapRooT® root cause analysis process consistently produces different, and better, results.
Four pages on my site have a root cause analysis-specific focus. If their content does not answer all of your questions, just drop me a note!
Do Your Existing Work System Designs Promote Operational Excellence?
Do you want to both satisfy staff expectations and minimize costs and waste? If so, keep in mind that an effective operational excellence strategy includes five essential elements:
NEXTGEN LEADER STANDARD WORK
Work system design most affects how people in formal leadership roles spend time. A foundation of effective NextGen Leader Standard Work job designs determines how leaders spend their time, each day, at work. In turn, operational excellence begins with great NextGen Leader Standard Work job designs.
Unfortunately, few organizations measure, trend, and improve how they manage meetings, communicate with their teams, or develop themselves or others. NextGen Leader Standard Work is a ‘must’ if you want to reduce waste, let alone sustain operational excellence.
Plus, our work system designs determine WHO we engage with and HOW we engage with them. Consistent, meaningful collaboration is a must in the NextGen workplace.
My Personal Kaizen Process Excellence certificate process is one way to help your leaders make the NextGen Leader Standard Work transition. This process has been proven to work in multiple organizations, both formally and informally. It provides a multi-faceted way to gauge daily operational excellence work habit practice.
PROACTIVE PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
Third, we want every work team, through its leader, to consistently drive down errors and waste via daily proactive process improvement. This area, like team engagement, gets little focus in too many cases.
The intent exists, but there simply is not enough time in the job. Too much daily Leader Standard WASTE exists. Plus, most people simply don’t have time in their jobs to contribute to effective process improvement beyond idea submittal.
Workplace Safety and Risk Minimization
Often, this is most obvious in the areas of workplace safety, security, and risk management. Without improvement time in their jobs to address these areas, leaders struggle to minimize error rates, injuries, and equipment failures. Instead, they react all day to problems. For true team engagement to occur, leaders must address these core engagement factors first.
Recurring Failure Reduction
Once we meet our daily team safety and security needs, we can focus on recurring failure reduction. Effective equipment reliability and asset health management practices are critical tools for daily errors and failure minimization. Leaders at all levels must track, and work to reduce, such work process challenges.
Finally, we need to develop and practice lean six sigma skills each day. For example, leaders can teach their teams how to practice 5S work habits on a daily basis. My Great Systems YouTube channel provides over 30 videos and five hours of FREE content on the basics of lean six sigma tool use.
Work System Optimization – Where Should You Start Your OPEX Journey?
Finally, the ultimate goal is to integrate our great work systems into a cohesive, complimentary infrastructure that supports our mission, vision, values, and strategic objectives. Currently, little time exists to benchmark better options. Incremental process improvement, and a few pockets of excellence, seem to be the best we can achieve.
To tie it all together, senior leaders must optimize work system design through work process integration, digital transformation, and best practice design application. You don’t have to take time to re-invent the wheel. Best practice tools, blueprints, workflows, and designs exist.
To improve, you just need to model, adapt, and utilize them. Here are some great places to start:
- The Basics of Operational Excellence
- Operational Excellence Barriers
- Use the Baldrige Award Criteria to Measure Operational Excellence
- PODCAST: Explore My Personal Profound Baldrige Performance Paradigm Shift
- NEW CONTENT: Read my ‘The Five Essentials of Operational Excellence’ article on opexsociety.org
Our operational excellence journey should not be the challenge that we make it. Remember, work system design drives work team performance. Please take the time to explore how my Great Systems best practice work systems can help you drive operational excellence.
Total Work Team Engagement – How Engaged are Your Work Teams?
To increase work team engagement, we need a team infrastructure that promotes total team engagement. All too often, our current work system designs limit consistent collaboration, relationship growth, and process change. All leader time goes to manage daily value stream and support process performance. No leader time for improvement exists.
As a result, we waste a lot of time and money each day. Daily problems and waste drive down team morale and motivation levels. Worse yet, we create a workplace where few people want to spend time. In turn, motivation and focus drift.
However, we can’t simply form teams and solve problems. First, we need effective project and focus team leaders. Then, we need an effective team infrastructure that helps minimize team waste and focus team improvement efforts.
Most importantly, we need to include time for improvement in the job designs of both of team members and leaders. No time for improvement is the primary performance restrictor in most organizations. Leaders need time to increase team engagement levels as well.
Would a Great Systems Virtual Workshop Help You Drive Operational Excellence?
Great Systems is NOW in its third year of virtual service! At little or no cost, you can bring my performance improvement content to your organization. For example, the design of my ‘Teach Your Teams’ performance improvement workbooks helps front line leaders teach process improvement basics to their work teams.
Plus, I offer both static (no live interaction) and dynamic webinars (full interaction) on a regular basis. Please let me know if there is a performance improvement topic I can help you with.
My virtual workshop model dedicates 40% or more time to breakout group work and dialogue. Also, my use of individual assignments helps increase class engagement. Assignment review helps drive learner accountability. Plus, my virtual workshop classes follow this content delivery model to make your experience more than just time spent online.
Lastly, please keep in mind that my costs are reasonable. My goal is to provide virtual courses, content, and coaching to help you maximize work team engagement and effectiveness, optimize work system results, and drive operational excellence.
Connect with Kevin to Learn How Great Best Practice Work Systems Drive Operational Excellence!
Years of work and volunteer experience taught me how to design great work systems and develop great work teams. For example, I have over 20 years of service as a National Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award Examiner.
Also, I have worked more than 18 years as an international, and now virtual, TapRooT® root cause analysis course facilitator. More than 10,000 hours of teaching and speaking in the past ten years alone has helped me discover even more Great Systems best practice work systems. Finally, I commit to consistent, continual personal improvement.
Do you want to learn more about how you can use great best practice work systems to drive operational excellence? If so, please connect with me on social media, or send me an email at kevin@greatsystems.com. I hope to see you in my virtual future!
Thanks for the visit and keep improving! Kevin McManus, Chief Excellence Officer, Great Systems LLC
Great Work Systems Drive Operational Excellence
