"The key to competitiveness in an increasingly competitive world of accelerated change — continuous quality improvement"
The Performance Team Lab (PTL) engages everyone in the organization in the pursuit of continuous improvement. All departments, disciplines and individuals accept as a part of their job the improvement of their work process and the final outcome of the work, not just getting it handed off, so you have everyone engaged in the management of business. Performance Team Lab is not just another program. It is a new way of life in your organization. PTL assumes that every member of the organization is capable of sharing responsibility for the management of their work and the improvement of their processes. Performance Team Lab redefines the role of the manager to that of a genuine leader, stimulating improvement through vision and leadership, not just controlling people and processes. The leader's new role is that of encourager, coach, mentor, empowering and bringing out the best in all team members.
PTL is "total employee involvement." All involvement efforts can be divided into two basic types: Problem-Solving Groups and Performance Teams. The differences can be summarized as follows:
| PROBLEM-SOLVING GROUPS | PERFORMANCE TEAMS |
|---|---|
| Work with Processes | Improve Processes |
| Voluntary | Not Voluntary |
| Partial Involvement | Total Involvement |
| Work on Problems | Manage Performance |
| Recommend | Decision Making |
| Temporary Structure | Permanent Structure |
All members of the organization participate directly or indirectly in the program. There are no secrets. Everyone needs to understand process thinking, how to analyze to improve processes, and the techniques that ensure the success of changes either in their team and/or with their upstream suppliers and downstream customers.
Each session builds on the former. Everyone begins to make the 90 shift from north to south compliance thinking to east to west custom focused thinking, seeing each others needs and commitment to the team. As we build on these commitments, a real sense of team evolves, and the goal of shortening cycle times, improving through put, and enhancing performance. This requires stepping out of our comfort zones, changing roles, responsibilities, work processes, and a willingness to try something new.
Each of the ten sessions gives you practical action steps to take as you begin to analyze to improve your processes. It is through this continuous application work that real knowledge is acquired, and we learn what really works.
The Performance Team Lab begins with a focus on the customer and quality. Every performance team must know their customer requirements and establish feedback and measurement systems so they can track their performance against their customer's requirements. Teams know that their reason for existence is to improve their processes to better serve their customers.
The Performance Team Lab brings employee involvement into the mainstream of the management process. Performance teams make decisions about their work, their performance, their customers and their suppliers. They manage their business.
We all enjoy playing on teams, being part of a group that is proud of its work and feels like winners. We all want to know that we make an important contribution to our company and to the work of others. Work can be fun when we feel that we can make a difference and participate in managing our own work. This is the Performance Team Lab.
Photos taken at their plant a week after the LTA
