Ep. 6 DMAIC for Administrative Functions

Can DMAIC be deployed to enhance administrative functions? This episode of 'Learning to Manage' discusses how lean six sigma and DMAIC was used to reduce administrative burden while increasing the value that employees provide to organizations. 

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Transcript

 Welcome to Learning to Manage, the podcast where I, Aruna Seegolam, use what I've learned from my MBA and my current coursework to obtain my doctorate in business administration degree, with the concentration in strategic management to become a better manager. I currently work full-time as an operations director and I managed employees for seven years.  I've been that crappy, toxic manager and been managed by both wonderful and toxic managers myself, so I actively work on learning how to lead with intention and compassion. Whether you're leading a team, managing projects, or trying to navigate the complexities of organizational dynamics, join me as I learn strategies and get the inspiration needed to excel in a leadership role and become a better servant leader. 

This is Learning to Manage. 

Welcome back to the podcast. I am so happy to be back here.  Without getting into too much detail, I'm still grieving some personal losses and trying to heal from a toxic work environment that I was in earlier this year. 

Anyway, in the past eight weeks, I took a course called "case study research methods and consulting techniques." And I wanted to provide a bit of background on this class.  So obviously it's about how to conduct an effective case study, but I scared myself into thinking the course was much harder than it was. So I registered for this class back in March.  I lean on my undergrad experience of checking rate my professor websites before taking any class and I read up and I read that this professor was really tough. And anyone that interacted with me back in March knew that I was flat out losing my mind because I was in the middle of being quiet fired.  Anyway,  I reached the point where I couldn't take anything else because this class is the prerequisite to a course called  research concept, which moves me from being a DBA student to a doctoral candidate. Anyway. I took the class put in 20 plus hours per week of research and writing on top of my job and I'm happy to announce that I secured the "A".  

So, what did I learn from this class that helps me be a better manager and servant leader?   There are techniques that can be used for what seems to be more appropriate for other areas like manufacturing or supply chain management but they can be applied to standard operating procedures, policies, and administrative work.  And the techniques that I'm referring to specifically are lean six sigma and DMAIC tools. DMAIC stands for design, measure, analyze, improve, and control.  So as part of the assignment, I created a fictitious situation about the burden of an administrative employee, putting together a training program at an association, similar to the work that I do now.  

There were a lot of issues that I laid out,  including that the employee had to put together topics for the training, they needed to reach out to individuals separately, information was gathered piecemeal. And an issue of reprioritizing the training because the training was put together the year prior. There was definitely deprioritization from the employee side because they were planning something a year out.

Through using DMAIC and some lean six sigma tools, I determined that only one of five steps provide a true value. That meant that it was important to the customer and in this case, the customer were the individuals who are receiving the training.  And the rest of the activities, four out of the five were business non-value added activities.

Four experiments would be created.  The operating tolerances are dependent on the time it takes for someone to respond to an email and once the information is gathered, how quickly the employee acts upon the information to move the process forward. So the first experiment would remove, say, let's call a nationally recognized speaker from the list of speakers. The second experiment would condense inquiries into one email. The third experiment would be to use an automation software to sign agreements. And the fourth experiment would be to add presentation at the trainings into the responsibilities of the CEO, the parliamentarian, and the president so that topic selection would only need to be a reminder.  The solutions were as follows. The first experiment determined that wait time was cut tremendously by removing nationally recognized speakers. Because these individuals, they didn't respond in a timely manner or they had a complex means of setting up availability.  Template emails were created when requesting information, which reduced back and forth. The third experiment also reduced back and forth emails by automating reminder emails and executing contracts. I'm talking about programs like DocuSign, authentic sign, . Lastly when the CEO, parliamentarian and president knew that the training was part of their responsibilities. They needed only to confirm the date and they didn't need a signed speaker agreement.  

So, what does this all mean? Well, when I decided to start on implementing the best solution, I thought I was just going to combine everything but after thinking about it for some time and brainstorming, I ended up coming up with something different altogether. The best solution was a combination of the lessons learned from the solutions. One major change was  how about we add quarterly trainings in  instead of annual trainings. One of the issues that I had presented was that we do this training at the beginning of the year.  But a lot of the things come up throughout the year. So how about we bake in quarterly trainings? The trainings would be built in to the associations annual schedule so that they wouldn't need to be created on a case by case basis. From the data, it was determined that the associations have a list of vetted educational speakers who could add these trainings into their contracts  removing the need for nationally recognized speakers. Overall topics wouldn't change each year. So that removes another activity. The only activity that would remain is the value adding activity, where the administrative employee needs to send the reminders. Set up things like food catering room set up, et cetera.   

How does this apply to servant leadership? One big lesson learned is that you can adjust an individual's job description without removing their value. One thing I was concerned about when I wrote this paper was that there would be pushback on  what the administrative employee worked on since we removed a huge chunk of their responsibility and their involvement in the training.  But removing non-value activities from an employee's job duties does exactly that. It doesn't remove value from the employee. It's just removing activities that provide no value to anyone.

The employee now has time to work on projects that are better suited to their skillset, which help the organization reach their strategic goals. And that's really the point.  

To apply to my own life, working under a servant leader allowed me to take this insanely stressful course  and have peace of mind. During the Workday, my ideas and my work are valued. I'm given work that applies to my skillset while also I'm given just enough new things.  That allow me to grow.  So when I do work on my school assignments, that confidence carries over. And I am forever grateful that I have had the opportunity to work with my current servant leader twice now.  She always leaves me stronger than she found me. And this really reiterates the power of servant leadership and how important servant leadership is in both being a servant leader and working under a servant leader.

Thank you for joining me on this episode of Learning to Manage. If you enjoy today's episode, please be sure to subscribe to this podcast for more discussions on leadership and management. And don't forget to leave a review to let me know how I'm doing. If you have any questions, topics, suggestions, or stories to share about your own leadership journey, I would love to hear from you. Please visit the show notes for my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles and some additional resources.  Until next time I'm Aruna Seegolam signing off from Learning to Manage. Take care and keep learning, keep growing and keep leading with purpose.