In my post “The Kanban change team” I shared the experience that it’s often useful to build a cross functional and hierarchy-bridging team who is driving the change. But what is this change team actually doing when they are “driving” the change? Well, the short answer is “everything that is needed to successfully start with Kanban.” This might include (but is of course not limited to) tasks like the following:

• devote enough time to the process of becoming a powerful team
• lead by example
• perform a retrospective of past change initiatives
• identify and involve all relevant stakeholders of the change process
• gather all the needed data so that a tailor-made kanban system can be designed
• provide everything necessary for the system design 
• provide the infrastructure and materials to kick-off Kanban in your daily business
• proactively address and resolve any blockers of change

Lead by example

I find it important that the members of the Kanban change team understand themselves as role models for the continuous improvement they want to see in place, e.g. by applying Kanban principles and practices such as visualizing the change process, limiting change in progress or using regular feedback loops like stand-ups or retrospectives. How would you convince people that Kanban is is a good thing if you are not using it? It’s about eating your own dog food or as I prefere to say “drink your own champagne”. Sigi Kaltenecker explained very well how you could use Kanban practices in your change process in his article “Change Management with Kanban”. Give it a try and “lead by example”.

Retrospective of past change initiatives

Another totally underrated practice is to do a retrospective of your past change initiatives. When we are talking about improvements we are usually only thinking about improving our work. However, if you want to create a culture of continuous improvement there is no alternative to continuous change. So change becomes “standard work” and therefore, we have to continuously change the way we change in order to improve the way we change. An obvious and wide spread way to improve is to do a retrospective which is usually no rocket science. The easy way would be something like: “Let’s reflect on our last change initiatives. What went well? What should we improve this time?” Although it’s so easy and obvious, my observation is that only very few companies are using this powerful practice for their change processes. Give it a try!