Our General Ethos
Assessing, and then improving a process, collection of processes, or entire operation is a significant task in itself, although in the short term will be very rewarding. In our opinion, the more important requirement is the ability to sustain this change so that when the next product launches, a new business win is implemented or the requirements from a client change, the business evolves and performs just as well.
David Sweeney started Inside the Box Consulting with an aim to help organisations to unlock the potential within their own operations. On the surface the reason for doing this is obvious...to improve business performance, although the "bolt on" benefits are the real recipe for ongoing success.
At Inside the Box our approach is to teach and mentor the existing staff on how to take collective ownership of their processes, including having the ability to problem solve, make changes and improvements, while collaborating with all departments around them in a structured way. In this way the current problems are resolved and performance improves, but in fixing the issues, the team have learnt how to work in a new way. This new way of working encourages them to look for new issues to solve, and to maintain existing processes. It also lays the foundations for a continuous improvement culture that is infectious and will spread, bringing further performance improvements and most importantly employee engagement.
The Toyota style is not to create results by working hard. It is a system that says there is no limit to people's creativity.
People don't go to Toyota to 'work' they go there to 'think'.
Taiichi Ohno
Our toolkit and governance approach are important in bringing the team together, but other than that 90% of the improvement solutions will come from the people already in the business.