Using Practitioner-Mentors to Seed Service Industrialization

None of the tools or methodologies associated with industrialization are difficult to acquire for the average non-industrial sector manager or worker.

Where necessary many of the particular skills can be bought in in the form of experienced staff from organizations already proficient in developing an industrialized organization.

By far the biggest challenge to overcome however is the inertia that is associated with any change program.

For industrialization to work it must become owned by the majority of the management and staff, in particular the senior management teams.

Assuming that the appropriate level of ownership and sponsorship is available from the Senior Management Teams, it is my experience that the quickest and most sustainable way in which to deploy industrialization is to seed the business units with a small number of practitioner- mentors who are experienced in deploying and working in industrialized processes.

The role of the practitioner-mentor is to work 2-in-a-box with the team and team leaders so as to train and demonstrate the deployment and use of industrialized methodologies in the day to environment of the team.

As pioneers of practitioner-mentor deployment we (www.mclaw.ie) have achieved significant successes for our clients using this approach, significantly accelerating the deployment of industrialization while winning the hearts and minds of those involved in making the necessary changes.

Indeed by focusing on delivering immediate benefits to staff and managers in this new environment it becomes possible to create a sustainable platform of change agents who will act as advocates for the new approach to business.

This in turn creates a virtuous circle whereby staff and managers from other areas outside the immediate improvement zones seek out the opportunity to join the program and benefit in the same manner in which their colleagues are benefitting.

While this approach significantly shortens the industrialization process it still takes a number of years for an organization of any significant size to achieve industrialization maturity.