APQC chatted with Dr. Angela Johnson, CI Manager at DTE Energy, and Carmen Bender about how creating a culture of change in process takes engaging leaders and focusing on small group success.
Angela and Carmen will be leading the breakout session Engaging Leaders and Employees Through the Journey of Change at APQC’s 2016 Process Conference Oct. 3-7.
Q. What was the challenge which made more employee engagement a priority for DTE Energy?
DTE set a corporate priority to mature its application of continuous improvement (CI) in a way that enables all employees to feel that CI is contributing to their success. Previously our executive vice president set organizational targets to increase our maturity in CI, yet employees felt that CI was more of a hindrance than a help to their daily work. Without employee engagement, buy-in, and participation to advance the maturity of CI was not viable.
Q. What role did leadership have in building and supporting your employee engagement approach?
Our executive vice president set the vision, target and desired true north, while establishing the sense of urgency amongst his Center of Excellence (COE) leadership team. He also allocated resources to achieve the vision by establishing a dedicated team to drive the vision. Monthly meetings were held to check-in and provide guidance on the progress of the effort. These meetings served as an opportunity to address roadblocks and escalate concerns regarding engagement of the COE leadership team. He made a personal investment of his time and energy to make sure that the effort moved forward and was successful.
Q. Why did you use continuous improvement tools as part of your employee engagement approach for change?
Continuous improvement (CI) and employee engagement are critical parts of the DTE Energy’s priorities and values. We saw this as an opportunity to make CI real for the employees in our organization and make CI a part of their everyday work life to solve a variety of problems. Ultimately, we were seeking to support our core value, “We believe that improvement is our daily responsibility...and know those we serve have the right to expect that from us.” The combination of CI and employee engagement accelerates our journey to becoming the best-operated energy company in North America.
Q. Why did you start your initial plan with a small group within DTE Energy? What were some of the tools and strategies you used?
The initial plan was not to start with a small group. The small group approach was the third iteration of trying to answer the challenge set forth by our executive vice president. The initial plan included using standard, strategic methodologies and developing lists. Eventually we realized we did not have the ‘right’ resources behind it. We also realized the change was a cultural issue. Therefore, a different approach ensued and our executive vice Ppresident began using this for his improvement and coaching Kata. Taking this approach, he then led us to use other continuous improvement tools such as the fishbone diagrams and scientific method..
Q. How did you roll out the successful changes throughout the organization?
We are a project management organization; therefore we created a project plan that included innovative and creative methodologies to engage employees around continuous improvement (CI). Our key focus was improving the culture around CI and increasing the awareness and basic application of CI. By focusing on these principles, our overall CI maturity rating increased from 2.75 to 3.25 over a one year period. We engaged the employees with things like hands on PRT Huddle exercises to improve how we taught identifying problems. We also modified games such as Jeopardy and BINGO to make learning CI terms fun. A communication plan was developed to help strategically communicate the activities of the project plan. “Brown Bag” and “Work It Wednesday” sessions were held every Wednesday to provide office hours for employees to come ask questions around CI and other key initiatives our organization was working on. These efforts and plans resulted in 10 of the 13 components in the CI Maturity rating scale improvement.