Dream and the Lean Future State – Visioning Success

Strategic Lean Six Sigma and Appreciative Inquiry are powerful change agents within organizations. Mapping the Future State and the Appreciative Inquiry process (4D) step of dream forms a vision of successful change. This new emerging process is called Appreciative Lean.

The Dream element in the 4D model focuses on identifying what the organization desires more of and how that might look. The dream phase of the AI change process is a powerful step. It facilitates clarity and ownership of the future state. This complements the lean six sigma process with focus on looping the change process continuously, creating successive modified future states. The dream questions and resulting broad picture of success affirm the organization and participating individuals.

Lean six sigma and business process mapping implementation can become event oriented causing organizations to lose sight of the vision for the change. Continuous improvement without this firm vision of the future results in organizations working the change process, creating more resistance while eliminating waste in non-strategic areas. Strategic lean and policy deployment are excellent tools to maintain an organization’s vision. Organizations utilizing strategic lean tools have an excellent opportunity to leap forward with the dream phase of AI.

Dream inquiries broaden and give strategic perspective to the plans and metrics of strategic lean organization. These added questions focus on:

•          What do we want more of?
•          How might the organization (business) look two years from now?
•          How might we know we have success in the future?

The deployment of stretch objectives from strategic lean bowling charts take on a broader strategic viewpoint with the asking of these dream questions. The challenge within an organization during this phase is for all voices to be heard and the dream to unfold over a series of sessions. This change results in greater ownership of the objectives and dream. The resultant strategic lean bowling charts allow management to hold the organization on task throughout the year.

The 4D appreciative model during the change phase of dream offers an opportunity to create a vision for the application of lean change. Through the 4D Dream appreciative questions noted above, an organization comes to know success in the future. This leads to a definition of success forming a vision to achieve long lasting continuous improvement.

Future state and strategic objectives used in lean six sigma improvement processes and business process mapping remains a powerful set of change tools. 4D Dream questions and the resulting vision provide depth to the process. This increases the ownership and excitement surrounding the collective vision.