Transform Your Organization with Lean

Charanjit Singh (CJ) Bawa, Lean Coach and QCDMS Consultants founder, believes that every sector, every organization should engage their staff, because the staff has all the answers that they need. 70% to 80% of people want challenge, they want to feel good at the end of the day, they want to wake up in the morning and they want to do something bigger than themselves, but if you don’t give them initiative you don’t challenge them, you are going to get mediocre.

Julia Novik, Innovation Coach and Canada Health Net founder, described CJ as a very committed Lean coach. “He strongly believes in applying dedication and passion in the workforce and that if you can engage your employees in the most purposeful way you will have huge improvements in your organization,” she says.

“We embarked on the Lean process about a year ago and what we found was that there was a lot of unnecessary work being done,” says Dr. Yaariv Khaykin, Director and Physician Leader in PACE Cardiology Clinic. “For instance, patients who were scheduled to have certain investigations did not have them done before their next scheduled visit. We didn’t realize that they didn’t have it done until very close to that visit and in some cases had to cancel the visit in order to get those investigations done resulting in significant problems for the patients and in some cases for cardiologists to make sure that their clinics were full.’

“I think any organization that considers bringing in Lean coach, would really benefit from a coach like CJ, who is very passionate, dedicated and committed to really making a difference in your organization, with your people,” adds Julia Novik from Canada Health Net.

Charanjit Singh Bawa explains that when they came into an organization, the first thing they did was they tried to understand the purpose. It was a number one thing. They sat down with their leaders and they tried to look at the purpose, the vision, the mission, the values, then they talked about what was customers saying about them. Then they would try to find out if they had even converted their purpose, the voice of the customer into their key objectives, into key performance measures. Once they understood that, then they asked them “Do you even measure?”, “Do you even have targets?”. After that they asked, “Okay, let’s create a structure. Where do you focus on, your purpose and your key objectives on a daily basis?”.

That was it. That was the process change. Four months changed into one day.

“As soon as we asked them “Why”, inefficiencies, pains, roadblocks started to come up and then we started to teach them how to do problem-solving and how to do process improvement. So please remember Lean is not about jumping straight into the problem, Lean is about creating a culture of continuous improvement where everybody is accountable,” says Charanjit Singh Bawa.

“CJ has over 23 years of experience applying Lean methodologies across many sectors,” concludes Julia Novik. “What I really like about his experience is that he worked for Japanese company Honda and that’s where a lot of the Lean principles have come from. It’s Toyota production manufacturing system that’s applied in a lot of Japanese companies so he lived and breathed the culture and the know-how of how to implement and transform organization with Lean. If you are really looking for a real change, you want to think about CJ as your Lean coach. He’s fearless, he will push and challenge you to move forward, he won’t let you move back because he is always going to be a few steps ahead and moving everybody along.”