Using the Lean value stream map to connect the dots.

• Author: Flumerfelt, Shannon
• Position: Solutions

A new employee in a government purchasing office was at lunch with a trusted colleague one day and described her recent interview with the management team she now works for. She explained how shocked she was that the management team fumbled when she asked about the relationship of the organization's mission to the daily work in the office. As a potential employee, she was surprised to learn during the interview that the daily work appeared separate from the mission.

Government financial offices are busy places where well-intentioned people work within complex systems, comply with accounting standards, follow legislative mandates, and meet political and societal expectations. However, as the new purchasing agent's interview experience highlights, failure to understand the organization's mission and to engage with it in the context of daily work is a common problem known as organizational drift. (1) The deviation is normalized, (2) and the mission no longer guides the enterprise, let alone individual employees' work. When this happens, work processes can quickly lose their potential for creating value and become bastions of waste. To get back on track, the management team needs to ask a critical question: "Is it possible to connect daily work to the organization's mission in a way that leads to performance improvement?" This article will demonstrate how a Lean tool, the value stream map, can be used to do just that.

MISSION-BASED IMPROVEMENT

Using the value stream map, organizations can examine and improve work processes systemically, through collaborative means. The value stream map considers two essential perspectives: what the critical stakeholders (i.e., customers, clients, beneficiaries, employees, and suppliers) need from the process, and what product or service results from the process. (3) The organization's stated mission should help identify those that are served, what they require from the government organization, and the core processes used to meet these needs. The value stream map can help the organization better articulate its mission and translate that mission into employees' day-to-day work activities.

Mission-based improvement to the organization's work can be realized through a three-step method:

* Creating a current-state value stream map.

* Conducting Kaizen (identifying improvements).

* Creating a future-state map.

Creating the current-state value stream map leads to three considerations:4

* Who is my...