New Accreditations & Certifications
July 2016
National Grid has become became the first utility to be accredited read more>>> while Dutch insurer Achmea has completed its re-accreditation this month.
June 2016
HR Director of UT Joost Sluijs (right) at the sign off meeting.
Congratulations to National Australia Bank on being the first southern hemisphere accredited organisation and to the University of Twente in the Netherlands on its LCS accreditation and for being the first University to have its lean training system accredited. View a short video about UT’s lean approach – click here>>>
New training company Lean Capability Builders are also to be congratulated, having gained SME accreditation in June
April 2016:
Congratulations to KPMG and HM Revenue & Customs for their recent re-accreditations and to Angela Cox for her successful completion of the Level 3 Programme.
HMRC has been accredited since 2009 and the LCS has noted the considerable evolution of PaceSetter (the internal name for its CI programme) over the period, which has overcome several challenges and adapted its approach based on its experiences and reflections. HMRC will be sharing its journey at the European Lean Educators Conference in September.
Angela completed the L3 programme with an excellent panel presentation in March, with the assessors being particularly impressed with her operational excellence approach that focused on growth and opportunity and with case studies that demonstrated significant strategic impact.
February 2016:
Congratulations to Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking and to Isala Hospital in the Netherlands for achieving accreditation.
October 2015:
Congratulations to Legal & General for gaining accreditation in and to the UK division of global tourism services operator TUI Group for becoming newly accredited.
September 2015:
Congratulations to Panalpina Logistics for its re-accreditation. OEE Consulting and Reinvigoration have also been successful in extending their accreditations to cover Level 3.
Mo Farah to take on LCS Elite
Mo Farah, the multiple Olympic gold medal winner, world champion at 5,000 and 10,000 metres and world record holder at several distances, will be taking on the cream of the LCS running elite at this year’s IAAF World Half Marathon Championships in Cardiff on 26th March, which is being sponsored by Cardiff University.
Farah: has an impressive medal haul, but no LCS qualifications yet.
The LCS team, currently comprising of one member (Director Simon Elias) is confident that an upset could be on the cards. Commenting on his chances of glory, Simon said “we may be separated by about one hour in our half-marathon PB’s, plus I may be carrying about an extra 37 kilos in weight and be 26 years older than him, but living and working in Cardiff means I have considerably more local knowledge that Mo in terms of the course layout, climate and understanding of Welsh road signs, all of which could be deciding factors when the pressure mounts. Furthermore, I bet he doesn’t have a clue where the decent pubs are on the course.”
Please note that sponsoring opportunities for Mr Elias are still available.
New LCS Certificate Designs
New designs for LCS certificates have now been launched, which brings them in line with the new LCS identity introduced in 2015.
The new personal certificate template is a PDF document, which is considered a better format than the previous MS Word version and offers benefits in improved printing and merging with a database. As with the old version, it has a number of editable fields for name, level, date and reference number. Some wording changes are permitted and additional logos can be added in certain circumstances.
A guide to certificate production for accredited organisations is available to download >>> LCS certificate production guide.
 LCS Organisation Certificate |
 LCS Personal Certificate |
Personal Digital Award Badges Launched
The LCS has launched a set of personal digital award badges covering all seven levels that can be used by qualified practitioners to signify to the world their LCS certified status. They can be used as part of digital signatures, for example at the foot of emails or in social media, or used in printed form, for example on business cards.
The icons are in PNG file format and are approximately 27 KB in size. When downloaded, they can be simply dragged/scaled to the desired size. The badges can be downloaded from a webpage in the members’ Resources area (Promoting & Communicating LCS)
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
Leadership Success Factors Unveiled
Renowned consultants McKinsey & Company has just announced the most popular articles with mckinsey.com readers in 2015, with the winner being an article entitled Decoding leadership: What really matters. This is based on its recent leadership research, which first identified a comprehensive list of 20 distinct leadership traits and then surveyed people in organisations around the world examining the frequency that they applied these kinds of leadership behaviour.
The research concluded that there are ‘four leadership skills that matter’ (out of the 20), namely solving problems effectively, operating with a strong results orientation, seeking different perspectives and supporting others.
The article suggests that these form the ‘core leadership behaviours’ relevant to most companies and that in the development of their future leaders, prioritising these would be a sensible place to start.
Leadership has been high on the lean agenda for several years, especially since it become apparent that supportive leadership is a critical factor in the success of lean initiatives and programmes and this research provides further useful insights into the type of leadership attributes that are associated with success.
Level 3 Candidates Success
Congratulations to the latest successful Level 3 programme candidates who have been awarded the LCS Level 3 Certificate of Lean Competency, having completed their submission of evidence demonstrating their strategic implementation capability and in-depth appreciation of lean and related CI knowledge.
James Lascelles
James is a partner at Baringa and leads the Process Transformation practice. Prior to joining the company in 2012, he was an Executive Partner at IBM Global Business Services heading up their Operations Strategy practice and he has more than twelve years’ experience in operational excellence specialising in lean methodology, value stream and team process improvements, capability building and deployment.
James’s case submissions were focused on implementations in major financial services organisations and included the enterprise deployment of lean, end-to-end value stream optimisation and value stream improvement of a medium term planning process.
His reflections from the cases and observations on the development of lean thinking were insightful and illuminating, in particular relating to sustainability challenges and lean’s inherent fragility. His recommendations for future focus centred on adopting a “fractal” view of lean, deploying on three dimensions and implementing “contingency road maps”. James says that a book could emerge as a result of his deliberations, so watch this space!
Alison Bolton
Alison has been the Service Improvement Lead at Wye Valley NHS Trust since 2011 and was previously Service Development Manager at Herefordshire Primary Care Trust and ICT Training and Development Manager at Herefordshire Health Informatics Service. She has an MBA in Health and Social Care.
Alison’s cases focussed on the development of a Frailty Assessment Unit, the development of a Hospital at Home function and the development of an integrated team of multi-disciplinary health and social care professionals based around defined communities. The cases had a strong resonance with current healthcare resources pressures, where controlling demand for hospital based services and improving patient throughput are seen as critical to alleviating system pressures.
Alison’s observations and conclusions included a belief that lean principles can be used effectively within the NHS, though require some adaptation and contextualisation, and that a blend of approaches is needed, especially as there is a wide variety of audiences to impact. She believes staff empowerment is one of the key aspects for success, along with senior leadership buy-in and that “thoughtful solutions [should be] delivered in as practical a way as possible”.
Finally, Alison also concluded that proper reflection can “unearth significant treasures”, which handily reinforces the Level 3 programme focus and ethos!
