When I started at Bupa 12 months ago, I wanted to create a clear vision of how we could use Lean tools and techniques to leverage the continuous improvement process that existed within the organisation, emphasizing the total involvement of everyone in search of the simple and the effective.

So, without a budget or staff I embarked on a journey to build the capability of the people within the organisation to help them understand Lean and how they can build a better place to work, by improving the processes they work in every day.

I started training in Melbourne and once everyone found out that it was free, the waiting list grew and the enthusiasm to learn more about “What is Lean?”, “Why do we need it?” and “Isn’t Lean just about cost cutting?” and getting to the real reason. We wanted to understand our customers and our employees, and truly understand the value proposition and know clearly what was adding value to the customer and where there was waste. And of course the greatest waste of all is the failure to utilise the abundance of talent we have within Bupa.

Then the talent was unleashed, they had learned how to solve their process problems, they were empowered to go and create a new reality for themselves and the inspiration from everyone was contagious. And what I learned as I watched people explore their process problems by listening to the voice of the customer, creating visual management systems and measuring the changes, they were engaged and enthusiastic in improving the current state.

And then, it became apparent that the customers voice needed to be louder and we redesigned the training to include Human Centred Design thinking, so that we truly understood what the customer needed, so we could build services that allow the customer to access those services when they wanted, in Lean we call them “pull” processes. By spending time observing the customer in their environment and listening to their needs we could then embark on understanding what the process and systems need to do to allow customers access to information when they needed it.

Not ground breaking I agree, but by starting with small continuous improvement steps, means we get better every single day. Remember Socrates said “The secret to change is focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old but building the new.” And that is the journey we are on, building a newly transformed Bupa where we are loved by our customers and our employees think it’s a cool place to work.

In 12 months we have trained, mentored, coached and guided more than 300 employees and reviewed hundreds of processes and made significant shifts in our thinking on what we need to Lean out and reduce the 8 sources of waste: Defects, Overproduction, Waiting, Non Utilised Talent, Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Extra Processing but if you have been on Lean training you already know that!

It’s been a BLAST getting to know everyone, learning what people do every day, and helping you to use Lean tools and techniques to build a brighter future.