Thinking Friday | Quality Digest

“These weren’t just idle words for him,” she continued. “These were real challenges that he understood. We even had sessions to figure out how to address this internal pull we all had: Finish the task at hand quickly, move to address the next issue, meet customer requirements, excel in our tasks to get a better review, and move up the ladder.”

Published: Thursday, January 18, 2024 – 12:02

The first day of the conference was over, and most of us congregated for happy hour, relaxing, networking, and furthering our connections. We reminisced about the day, commenting about the good, the bad, and the ugly: events at work, travel, organizational policies, you name it.

Then she told us about “Thinking Friday,” a program the CEO instituted. Fridays were a day for end-of-the-week reflection, not production. Employees would reflect on how the week went. This included thinking about the tasks they accomplished, identifying how they felt, recognizing what problems they solved on their own or where someone was able to help them, and ways to improve on these tasks—even taking the time to show gratitude.

After three months of Fridays, not only did the company see more gemba walks, it saw setup reductions (at just one machine) of more than 80%, the number of parts reduced by 20% (by using TRIZ functional analysis), and departments that started working more collaboratively to bring about systemic improvements.

There may be no shortage of good ideas, but who has time to present and implement them? At one company, that’s what Thinking Friday is for. Photo by Thomas Vitali on Unsplash

However—and there is always a however—a common concern was that although the ideas were terrific, and we all wanted to implement them at our workplaces, everyone was either “running to meet their sliding deadlines” or intent on moving to the next project lest it fall behind. When would we have time to turn these ideas into reality?

Innovation

Thinking Friday

An end-of-the-week innovation and improvement opportunity

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But not all organizations function this way. One attendee said she can see the difference a CEO can have on an organization’s culture.

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Another person said, “I work for a terrific company, and our CEO is just fabulous, always encouraging us to keep on top of things, including the latest technology and trends. But where’s the time? I go back in a couple of days, and it’ll be the same old story. We get complaints and ideas from the production floor, but where’s the time to even assess them?”

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Sadly, this is nothing new. When do folks get to really sit down and think through complex problems to not only get to the root cause but also find real solutions? This is something that stresses people out.

“I recall the CEO of one organization in particular,” she said. “He very strongly believed that learning is a critical component of staying ahead of competition and on the cutting edge, but that doesn’t have much value unless it’s used. Ideally, it should help us to build self-awareness, understand and be open to an opposing perspective, as well as team members’ accomplishments and feelings. We should be able to set aside time to reflect and solve problems to come up with ideal solutions.

Her description of Thinking Friday was both interesting and exciting. Implementing some version of it would be certain to allow a free flow of ideas, improve the quality of solutions, and be the cultural envy of many.

She and her co-workers were encouraged to form small teams, with different members at different times posting these reflections on Thinking Friday bulletin boards. There, they would ask specific questions, share responses, and realize that they were all in the same boat, working together toward success. It kept their focus positive and helped them identify areas in which to improve and grow, even cross-functionally. From time to time the CEO would join in and share his own reflections, what inspired him, what bugged him, and how proud he was of them.

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What about in your organization?

Often, as I learned in this session, we don’t even define our problem clearly—even though our LSS and RCA methodologies teach us to define our problem and get to the root cause.

As one attendee pointed out, everyone has been to various training sessions, with their employers often paying for them. But do they get to use that new knowledge regularly, or does it fall by the wayside because other priorities take precedence? We all have important decisions to make, but we settle for a compromise, a trade-off, in the interest of time. We have the tools and the knowledge to come up with the best solution. However, the need for expediency doesn’t allow us the luxury to sit back and carefully analyze the situation.

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منبع: https://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/innovation-article/thinking-friday-011824.html

On top of those complaints, of course, is that we don’t take the time to reasonably reflect on and analyze the current issues we’re facing.

Interestingly, the conversation turned to the conference speakers and the new knowledge and great ideas we’d heard and planned to take back to our workplaces. The general feeling was that attending the conference was definitely worthwhile.