Lean Government

Lean Office, Lean Project Management and Lean Service.

Lean Online (Productivity Australia) has been at the cutting edge in applying Lean Office within government, working extensively with state and federal government agencies to drive efficiencies, improving current capacity and delivery times without additional resources. The results have been outstanding with  high levels of employee engagement and excellent morale outcomes exceeding our expectations.

As you would no doubt be aware, government services are under increasing pressure to supply increased services with smaller budgets. It is almost impossible to improve efficiency by doing things the same way, and it is limited just how much more you can get your staff to do without changing and improving the process. New technology pushed down onto traditional ways of doing work will not reach their full potential, so we have to change the way we work and have an increased acceptance of change. Lean Thinking Principles and Practices are the most proven, sustainable productivity improvement methodology you can employ in government today and into the future        See Lean Office

The most successful approach is being onsite part time each week working with front line managers and most senior operational managers, gathering the facts about how work is really carried out, advising management and taking a leading hands on support role with staff and in change, whilst simultaneously implementing key lean tools to gain orderliness and to make work flow highly visual and obvious. Adding team visual performance boards in each work area with improvement stretch goals agreed, clearly shared and communicated. The team leaders and their managers are encouraged to be responsible to maintain performance information in a timely manner and plan daily activities.  This engages staff more from a shared process focused and team perspective shifting the focus to outcomes and issue resolution by encouraging questions of what went wrong today? And what can we do to make sure we improve tomorrow?

Government work areas are generally functionally focused and often disconnected in some way from the service flow and overall service performance. Performance measurement tends to be top down and linked to backlogs of work being adversely publicised, rather than linked to short interval control of output to demand. This is commonly called treating the symptom rather than the cause. By applying the lean office techniques in offices and the lean service / manufacturing techniques in government workshop areas, we assist the staff and teams to align and balance their output capacity to demand, which radically reduces backlogs, bottlenecks, constraints, frustration and risk of adverse publicity.  

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Our Graham Eagles has been at the forefront of Lean Government Implementation a keynote speaker and MC at the inaugural Lean in Government conference in Canberra, and at several Lean Office conferences with international guests.

Go to our Lean Office page for more about how it can work for you.  For further information and specific services please contact us.
 

We have worked with Department of Trade & Economic Development, Centre for Innovation, Department of Transport, Energy & Infrastructure, Lands Services Group, Department of Health, Australia Post, Department for Families and Communities, Homestart Finance and many more