Questions and Answers
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Questions and Answers
A 7SIM Head Coach can answer your questions about the 7SIM method and how it can benefit your business.
Q: 7SIM What is it?
7SIM is Focused Systematic Improvement; team-based seven step methods to:
- Solve complex business problems.
- Improve current business processes.
- Make creative ideas a new business reality.
- Convert strategic plan initiatives into real action.
Q: Briefly walk me through how a 7SIM project might work.
Here is a typical situation.
Your business has a particular opportunity to improve its operations. A senior sponsor takes responsibility for addressing the opportunity and puts together a home-grown project team. The sponsor then scopes the opportunity with the team. Once all parties agree the project is started by communicating the project and its benefits widely.
Once the scope is complete the team, with the support of the sponsor, follows the 7SIM steps to:
- Define what success for the project will look like.
- Measure current performance.
- Seek root causes to problems.
- Design solutions to tackle the problems.
- Implement the solution.
- Monitor ongoing performance.
The outome is radically improved operations as well as a team of people confident that their efforts can actually be transformed into better business results.
Q: How will my organisation be different after 7SIM implementation?
In short, your people will think improvement.
When you train in-house teams in systematic improvement, then the energy for making positive change is spread across a wider group. Improvement becomes, not the efforts of a select few specialists or external consultants, but the responsibility of every person in the organisation. People are given tools to be creative and they are encouraged to use them every day. So organisations begin to think more systematically and are better organised so people have time to be even more resourceful about how they do their jobs.
People will see their input to improvement realised in the benefit to the organisation.
Q: What makes 7SIM so different?
- 7SIM is simple; simple to use, simple to train, simple to communicate. An improvement method should always be simple because change is not easy.
- 7SIM taps into extensive research into why most improvement and reengineering efforts fail. Within the 7SIM method are keys to address all those issues. There is no other method in the market that comprehensively deals with the cultural issues that underpin successful change.
- 7SIM is team-based improvement. Home-grown teams examining issues; home-grown teams recommending profound solutions. While not ruling out external support completely, 7SIM is about team-based improvement; the most effect way to sustain successful change.
- Finally 7SIM has integrated linkage between its steps that lead to successful, executable improvement. For example, measurable objectives in step 1 allow for an easily identified set of measures in step 3, allowing easier analysis in step 4 which precipitates clear recommendations in step 5 which convert into a simple set of implementation steps in step 6 which are monitored in step 7. No other method has such integrated linkage as 7SIM.
Q: How can I benefit personally from 7SIM?
A graduate of 7SIM training will think differently on return to the workplace. 7SIM graduates think in a more systematic way. 7SIM tools will help you to be more creative, more organised and you will make better business decisions. 7SIM is written in simple language so you can communicate improvement much more easily. You will become less inclined to 'shoot from the hip' with business decisions and more inclined to apply simple business tools to fix problems and create opportunities.
Q: What else is in this market space?
7SIM is the only method that comprehensively addresses the cultural issues that underpin successful change. Other robust improvement programs include six sigma, lean manufacturing, theory of constraints, TQM and Plan-Do-Check-Act. I encourage you to compare the 7SIM benefits with that of its competitors.
Q: Who uses 7SIM?
There are currently 273 people trained in 7SIM (Nov 08).
The following sectors have companies using 7SIM - Energy, Water, Health, Pharmaceutical, Telecommunications, Agriculture, Defence, Non-government Organisations and Furniture production.
Q: Give me a summary of the 7SIM benefits?
7SIM benefits are driven out of a number of areas. From an organisational viewpoint the methodology provides a consistent improvement approach, consistent language (from both a process and management perspective) and is highly effective in gaining the engagement and sponsorship of senior leadership. Improvement and change managers are able to mobilise more improvement efforts, with teams having the required skill sets and talking the same language (and therefore much easier to manage). 7SIM enables organisations to quickly ramp up their rate of improvement. Most importantly, 7SIM helps organisations to get more out of their people through their active participation in building and strengthening the way things are done and creating new ways to do them.
Q: How does 7SIM fit with ISO 9001:2000?
For certified organisations that use the ISO standard seriously to improve their offering to the customer, 7SIM should be the method of choice to deliver Clause 8 that requires the systematic measurement, analysis and improvement of important processes.
Q: I don't want any more external 'experts'; how can minimise that overhead?
It is worth noting that 7SIM requires little or no external consulting support. Once staff has reached the appropriate level of training and experience, organisations can grow the capability within the business (including training) without external support.
Q: Will 7SIM cost me the Earth?
No. 7SIM is an investment!
Firstly, 7SIM encourages home-grown teams to examine and implement improvement so the benefit goes straight to the bottom-line.
Secondly, the cost of training teams and conducting 7SIM projects pales in significance when the benefit of the cultural change occurs and people realise their input will result in sustained success for the organisation.