The lean transformation from the board's perspective

Lean Institute Brasil: Cristiano, could you tell us a little about your career at Ânima?

Cristiano: Of course. I joined Ânima in 2005 as a professor, a position I still hold today. In 2006, I began my administrative career in the group as a program coordinator. Since then, I have taken over the management of some campuses and some colleges, and I currently hold the position of director in the academic services and processes directorate, which belongs to the group's academic vice presidency.

LIB: LIB has already published some articles about the success of lean at the Ânima group, with many positive results achieved. As a director, you have a broader view of the whole. With that view, which results do you consider the most significant for the group?

C: The immediate and most tangible results are related to the objectives of each project. For example, we had a significant improvement in the re-enrollment process. Previously, 40% of our students needed to open support tickets during this process; today, only 22.1% of students open tickets related to it. It is easy to see several of these tangible results in the other published articles.

However, the biggest result we have achieved is the transformation itself that is taking place in the company as a whole. We started this movement in the student relations directorate, and now the entire group is already speaking in more advanced terms, such as digital transformation and agile development. We can see a sustainable transformation in which the team works for everyone, and everyone strives to do their best. Today, we have a true north, a purpose; people know the why behind each action. Another thing we managed to change is the way of thinking about the value stream, instead of thinking about processes in isolation. Thinking in terms of value creation has made a huge difference in our students' journey within the institution.

So, when we assess the transformation of people inside and outside the organization, we realize that today we have more respect for others and more autonomy. People in the group today are not afraid of making mistakes; on the contrary, they learn from their mistakes. This intangible part is, for me, the most important part of the transformation.

LIB: The group seems to have gone through a very significant cultural transformation. How did this process happen? Was it difficult for people to change and adapt to this new culture?

C: Taking people out of their comfort zone and changing the way things are done always generates great resistance. In the beginning, it was common to hear people whispering: “What are these people doing here with all these post-its on the wall?”. It was also common to see people give up on going to the meetings. We would start with a group of twelve people, but by the end of the month only five were still showing up. We learned and transformed ourselves little by little. First we had to transform the leaders, so that only then could they gradually transform their teams and the other people working around them.

When we actually began collective construction, from start to finish, we increased people's engagement and sense of belonging. For me, the big turning point came when we closed the exam management cycle, and Robson (an LIB consultant) left us with a challenge. He said: “All of this you are doing is very nice, the results and so on. But don't forget one very important thing: at the end of every process we must do hansei”. He wrote this on the board and left.

After that, we did hansei with everyone on the team and there we reaffirmed the true north, the purpose and the challenges. We began using collective intelligence techniques. And by involving everyone, with a diverse team, in the same room, we were able to build this spirit, this force that drives us to always look at the student, at what creates value. This was fundamental to our turnaround.

When I look today at people's maturity and the transformation in each of them compared to what they were a year ago, I know that every day we left home to implement lean was worth it. Seeing people with a purpose, a sparkle in their eyes and with autonomy and lightness to do things, achieving results we never imagined, is very rewarding.

LIB: We can see a very strong focus by the group on Daily Management. What do you think is the importance of DM?

C: Contrary to what some people think, DM is not simply a board with information to assist in the decision-making process. For me, the greatest importance of DM is its ability to bring together the people related to the same subject to discuss, dialogue and contribute toward a given purpose.

Seen from the outside, DM appears to be just a management board with numbers indicating where we are and where we want to go. Fine, there is this board with these data, facts and information. But the practice of bringing people together to foster dialogue and the opportunity to learn to ask questions is much more important.

In the group, to encourage participation, we adopted a practice in which each day a different team member gives the presentation. This ensures that everyone knows what is happening and that one person can contribute to another's challenge. This is a materialization of collective construction with collective follow-up. DM has to make sense for everyone who is there, and not just present numbers and post-its without explaining why.

We achieved this new view little by little. Today, DM, which used to cause reactions like “Oh no, today I have to go there at 11”, has become something natural, and people's reactions have become: “What time is DM?”. Now people seek out DM instead of running away from it, as they used to.

LIB: What is the role of leadership in DM?

C: Leadership has to take advantage of every situation to teach and mentor people. So I think the role of leadership in DM is to support each of the employees who are there and to effectively make the team work together. In addition, I think it is important for leadership to challenge people and know how to ask the questions that will guide the work, because only through questions is it possible to provoke reflection and develop people's autonomy.

So, at the end of the day, I think the great role of the leader is to support and lead with respect, trying to help each person achieve their success. I learned the term “lead with respect” from the Ballés' book, which taught us that lean is about people, and is not just a technique for solving problems. This was an important mindset change that led us to value the methodology more.

LIB: Considering that Ânima is an educational group, how can lean contribute to the education of students in the classroom?

C: Initially, we started lean in the operational part of the institution, in the service channels, to eliminate errors in billing for payment slips and other academic services and in the administration of exams. But today we also use lean to ensure the continuous improvement cycle in our Ânima learning ecosystem. Today we also use lean to develop projects that support the professors' journey with regard both to the service provision side and to the academic side itself. Up to this point, we are talking about using lean from the perspective of process improvement within the institution, which indirectly is reflected in better provision of educational services.

However, we recently began a movement to apply lean in the curriculum as well. The people who work in the processes are also professors, and they have already begun to bring the premises of the methodology into preparing a class or presenting a case. In fact, we believe so much in this curricular transformation that we are going to launch a graduate program focused on the lean methodology. I think this will be our great initiative to contribute to the education of graduates who have this universal competence established by lean.

In the short or medium term, we intend to establish a lean competence within Ânima's curriculum. This is already almost a reality; the LDB (Brazil's National Education Guidelines and Framework Law) itself already advocates that students must have the ability to solve problems. So, indirectly, we can already use this methodology to support what the LDB advocates. And this is important, because we want our students to be agents of transformation in our country. After all, our mission is to transform the country through education.