Sitaram

Mental Safety Or Psychological Safety , this is a state where the Employee is free to work in his environment without any pressure, doubt, fear and looking behind his back all the while. This safety above all enable a employee to be his natural self and it agurs well for the employee to show his true potential. Before we get into the safety aspect lets us see what kinds of Psychological pressures a employee could face in his environment, My experiences has made me understand few pressures that i have written: The cases i mentioned are Service company based, Newly Joined : Training Pressure: This where the employee feels the real pressure when they are learning , because if one does not clear the training he would not be able to hit the production, He will be confused as to what level he could interact with the Trainer, to what level he could express his opinions in the training Ice breaking: When the employees becomes a part of the group for the first time it takes great effort to get to the comfort level to be a part of the unit and start working, making contribution to the group keeping in mind the sensitivities of the group Cultural barrier : getting used to the company culture making ti a part of your daily work life, every company has unique culture that is build over the years and sometimes understanding it and getting use of it is tough Processing : Meeting Expectation: Targets and deliverables pressure to meet them, and the worry associated with not meeting these Teamwork: able to talk freely, express ones opinion when the work in on hand, requires a team effort and understanding. Clear understanding regards the communication to be done. escalate: Having to escalate things when needed that could cost the co's clients and etc, sometimes one must be ready to escalate things while in action, sometimes post mortem is fine, so havign to judge the escalation needs Performance: Constant monitoring : constantly having to know where you are with regard to your peers and what level you are, always been afraid of ranked low than your peers Measured: How i am measured , what will they seek, understand the underlying maths that is used, the way ranking is carried will i be ranked without any bias what factors will be used to measure me HR: Will someone listen to me, if i need help , if i need advice , how should i ask , where should i ask is kept confidential and anonymous The pressures as written , are few of them that we get to see in the real world, while working, many companies have addressed these various ways to able the Mental safety of the employee. Few of them are written : HR : Creating unique and innovative ways to onboard new hires, make them feel comfortable ,ex: Buddy systems where new hires are assigned a buddy who will make them understand the company culture,what he could ask in the training, what he could expect in the training Train the Trainers: The trainers are regularly trained to make them understand how to make the trainees comfortable etc, take feedback on the trainers to know how they are performing on the parameters that requires making the trainees feel safe and comfortable Team building : Conduct team building activities and build bond within the team members and make them rely on each other , enhance the communication within the team Written and available procedures and protocols: Ensure there are written and available protocols for most of the issue a employee might face and ask them to use them, this will ensure that they are not in a worry of what will happen if they do this that Understand the learning Curve: The learning curve expectation set and communicated, will allow the employee to have the clarity what is expected from his work and how much is expected The said things as adopted by companies would help in ensuring mental safety of a employee, where he would be really flourish to his full potential

The question of what should i sell, that what the customer wants, or that which shall create customers, This is what according to me lies at the heart of this question.The key thing is innovations by itself are not bad, but it is the success that drives it further . The World has witnessed it in every field manufacturing to Service Industry, the innovation story how it changed the world and the company. It had been boon and bane to companies when they take the path of Innovation Examples: The Below are few example where the innovation has swayed : Apple: Apple when it started has not created what the customers wanted, they had taken what the customers needed,desired/expected made it the basic and finally designed something beyond these, it created it's customers. The US market was willing to own apple, it helped build the momentum and drive it. They had built a product that is now across the globe the gold standard. DELL: Build your own Computer, this innovative way of making customers build their own computer is in itself a service Innovation, The core is what the consumer wants/demands but it is the Service of offering to build what he desires by Dell is what caught the imagination of the customers, something that was unthinkable. While there are success stories, there are stories where innovation gone wrong and costed the companies, The examples of such tragedies are: Ex: Segway Inc, It has the self driven Balance Scooters as a product, the company failed miserably and lost a big deal, the product was innovative but the market was unwilling to spend that much for something that seemed not worthy. DIVX, the concept was you could rent a CD for movies, see it for few days , you could either dispose the CD, else pay more and get access to few days see the CD By the History of Innovation and industry , we could always sense that innovation is driven by many principles, Few coming from the "Kano Model" itself, seeing what delights the consumers and going beyond Few from either adopting problem solving solution applied else where or solutions that totally change the face of the product Few are breakthrough innovations, by the R&D of the company or funded by the company It is always a gamble to let innovation take precedence before the needs and desires of the Clients, however both are not necessary contrary to each other. The end line is we feel we have figured what the consumers want/desire and feel but eventually the conventional wisdom has proven this to wrong in many cases, and also to imagine that the consumers have the essence of what is better to them is not right , because it is not constant and changes from consumer to consumer and with the same consumer it changes with the time. But the biggest and most successful and fast assented companies where driven by Innovations in their early life and progressed to a stage where they balance between innovation and meet the current likes/dislike of the consumers So i side with the innovation

Creating a Good Knowledge base, from the experience gained out of projects done to help in decision making is one of the constraints in process excellence, The idea of capturing expert knowledge into a quantifiable guide and resource is usually not considered as high value by the management. the reasons thereof: They Feel experts are replaceable , so thinking of the future and codifying the knowledge is not seen as a necessary thing to do for future The feel that "my Issue is unique" is one barrier that has caused the managements to not seek for help and see if the same / similar problems has been solved The management silos are hard to break , so the knowledge usually stay within the each of these silos and becomes redundant These are now been slowly addressed , by the experiences i had the managements have been trying by the : Usage of platforms that will make the projects visible to everyone and then make them a part of the study for the employees in their connect study Usage of technology like Kaleo , the knowledge gained by the Projects are codified , then encourage the prospective project filed to probe the platform if no ans are found then come up with the Projects Develop teams like common platform teams, the act like wiki for the company , where the new ideas/issues are first evaluated for existing and known solved cases

The Six Sigma is a top to bottom driven approach, where usually the improvement Ideas are based on the problem statement or the desired project objective as usually taken by the leadership, while lean is a bottom to top approach where the Ideas of improvement comes from the employees and people close to the work , The traditional perception has that MBB, BB,GB and the Process Improvement teams are totally depended on Stats and methodologies that are not fully understood by the employees, while the lean followers are more likely to find improvement ideas with simple tools and techniques and changes that help processes in a far easier fashion and solve, So there was this constant cross hairs as to which was the best method, marrying both with lean six sigma has helped in the following: Making employees at all levels connect with process improvement culture and teams, with small lean events and workshops and making them better engaged with the processes improvement teams , would be a investment when bigger projects like a BB,GB projects needs their engagement Generate more idea with using some of the methodologies of Six sigma with lean, Ex: The DMAIC frame work has been successfully coupled with lean, for idea generation and Improvements The change management has been easy with lean taking the idea of Improvement into the employees , and while encouraging these lean practices it has been helpful in identifying greater Six Sigma BB,GB projects The above being the case, the management needs to be aware that encouraging one system over the other, Lean over Six Sigma , to be able to showcase more gains and Ideas, than few GB BB projects will be a mistake best avoidable

I have come across Pareto being done on, Effects of the error, than the actual error, and used for C&E