'Lean Journey' Makes Everyone an Innovator

Abstract

Since inviting its employees to "fix what bugs you," $59 million VA Desert Pacific Federal Credit Union has benefited from improvements ranging from the elimination of paper forms in many processes to a change in email extensions to make them easier to share. You don't need an outside expert to come in and recommend new efficiencies, contends Cindy Glessner, CEO and Certified Effectiveness Coach of the Long Beach, CA, credit union with 4,600 members. Your staff has all the genius you need.

Since inviting its employees to "fix what bugs you," $59 million VA Desert Pacific Federal Credit Union {www.vadpfcu.org) has benefited from improvements ranging from the elimination of paper forms in many processes to a change in email extensions to make them easier to share.

"You don't need an outside expert to come in and recommend new efficiencies," contends Cindy Glessner, CEO and Certified Effectiveness Coach of the Long Beach, Calif., credit union with 4,600 members. "Your staff has all the genius you need."

The credit union's "lean journey" was inspired by the work of Paul Akers, a business owner and author of 2 Second Lean: How to Grow People and Build a Fun Lean Culture. Akers identifies eight common areas where waste may impair efficiency: overproduction, transportation, inventory, defects, over-processing, waiting, wasted motion and wasted human potential.

VA Desert Pacific FCU applied that model initially to replacing paper with digital forms to improve member service and document management, but employees empowered to identify and eliminate waste have implemented and shared a variety of other improvements as well. When they see an opportunity for improvement, they make the change and create a short before-and-after "lean video" to share with fellow employees in staff meetings, explains Glessner, a CUES member.

For example, a member service representative rearranged the equipment in her small branch to put the devices she used most frequently in easy reach. The credit union is also changing its email extension from its initials to the leaner "desertpacific.org" after employees shared a funny video {http://tinyurl.com/vforvictor) to make their point, with a string of staff members laboriously trying to convey the email address in a phone conversation: "No, no, it's v as in Victor, a as in apple..."

The idea is to implement changes that save as little as two seconds of work time, but Glessner says the more than 50 improvements at VA Desert Pacific FCU since November 2013 have done a lot more than that-and enhanced teamwork as well. "This process gives staff the authority and responsibility to fix things, and sharing the videos highlights their creativity and autonomy."