DOING MORE WITH LESS

Adopting the lean process culture in the civil service will reduce waste and enhance productivity, writes Akintola Benson-Oke

It has been said that, “since the onset of the Great Recession, doing more with less” has become a policy mantra. However, the mantra has not translated into actual implementable policies in most segments of the public service in Nigeria. Echoing this sentiment, Daniel Egbunu, in an online article published on March 12, 2017 noted that, the “impact of today’s rapidly changing economic and technological landscape has made government’s task of delivering public service more complex. More than ever before, governments all over the world have increasingly come under serious public scrutiny and fiscal pressure to deliver better outcomes to citizens, and to do so more efficiently. As is evident, Nigeria has not been spared from this in recent times. On the one hand, the dynamism presented by the impact of the interaction of economic, technological and other superintending elements in these scenarios have no doubt made governments’ public service delivery duties onerous. On the other hand, however, it has also opened up opportunities for the exploration of out-ofthe-box strategies that governments can adopt if found to better the lot of their citizens.”

It is delightful to note, however, that the Lagos State Civil Service has come a long way and has led the way in reducing waste while increasing productivity. This is partly the result of the extensive investments in knowledge and skills by the administration of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode. For these investments, the Lagos State Civil Service remains grateful.

The importance of eliminating waste cannot be overemphasised. Countless studies have shown that with good and sound processes relating to management of time and resources, one finds that meagre resources can be extended to produce outstanding results. In other words, organisations and individuals can achieve more with less.

The ultimate objective of the training is to identify and codify the methods, means, and strategies for ensuring that the Lagos State Civil Service is positioned to do more with less. The ultimate objective is productivity. Furthermore, it frees up resources, both human and capital, for investment in other competing fronts for the benefit of the good people of Lagos State.

Explaining the rationale for such an objective as described above, an article by McKinsey & Company states: “Governments around the world want to deliver better education, better health care, better pensions, and better transportation services. They know that impatient electorate expects to see change, and fast. But the funds required to meet such expectations are enormous—particularly in the many developed economies where populations are aging and the public sector’s productivity hasn’t kept pace with that of the private sector. The need to get value for money from governments at all levels is therefore under the spotlight as never before. But cost-cutting programmes that seek savings of one to three percent a year will not be enough and in some cases, may even weaken the quality of service.”[1]

The author of the article then stated that in order to “address the problem, public-sector leaders are looking with growing interest at ‘lean’ techniques long used in private industry. From the repair of military vehicles to the processing of income tax returns, from surgery to urban planning, lean is showing that it cannot only improve public services but also transform them for the better. Crucially for the public sector, a lean approach breaks with the prevailing view that there has to be a trade-off between the quality of public services and the cost of providing them.”

I fully agree with the viewpoints expressed above. Indeed, it would be a great achievement if the Lagos State Civil Service is able to import the principles of lean operations from the private sector and apply them, mutatis mutandis, to the operations of the public sector.

It has been rightly noted that the lean management and production techniques have their roots in the manufacturing sector. In this vein, the author earlier cited also stated that, “on a more pragmatic note, there are privatesector-inspired systems, strategies, know-how, processes and measures that can be learned and applied in ways that are adaptive to the public sector environment. These models and principles are generic and adaptive to different scenarios that pursue an end of effective and efficient service delivery. This is a shift from the old style wherein one lone technocrat is plucked from the private sector and planted as head of a government project.”

With respect to copying and domesticating systems, the car manufacturer, Toyota, has been singled out as demonstrating the profitability of the techniques over the years. This is why, according to the article cited, many “businesses have followed Toyota’s lead and undergone a lean transformation. A major European telecommunications company, for example, successfully applied lean techniques to a problem that was leading many of its customers to switch to competitors: the repair of faulty telephone lines. The company found that its call centre operators, diagnostics experts, and repair technicians operated as though they actually worked for rival employers. As a result, it took an average of 19 hours to repair a line. Using lean principles, the company realigned its organisation and invested in the development of team leaders. In the first few months of its pilot project, productivity increased by 40 per cent and recurring failures fell by 50 per cent. The programme was then rolled out across the company’s national network, where it achieved similar success. Likewise, a major European bank used lean techniques to reduce the processing time for mortgage applications to five days, from 35 days. Because fewer applicants dropped out of the process, the bank’s revenues grew by five per cent even as processing costs fell by 35 per cent.”

The question, of course, is whether any of this is relevant to the public sector. As noted, it is not surprising that the concept and language of lean, rooted as they are in manufacturing, spark cynicism among many civil servants. Some feel that their priority should be matters of policy, not operations; others resent the notion that they are somehow part of a production line. Moreover, without the incentive of the profit motive, these government managers may believe they have neither a reason nor the levers to pursue a lean approach.

Yet practical experience suggests that they can. A study has shown that in a UK government office processing large volumes of standard documents, lean techniques achieved double-digit productivity gains in the number of documents processed per hour and improved customer service by slashing lead times to fewer than 12 days, from about 40 days, thus eliminating backlogs. The proportion of documents processed correctly the first time increased by roughly 30 per cent; lead times to process incoming mail decreased to two days, from 15 days; and the staff occasionally attains the nirvana of an unprecedented zero backlog.

Also, in a UK Military Armoured-Vehicle Repair Shop, a lean transformation generated a 44 per cent increase in the availability of equipment, a 16 per cent reduction in turnaround times, and a more than 40 per cent increase in “right the first time” production. This achievement puts about 40 more vehicles into operation at any one time. Moreover, the repair shop progressed from constantly missing its vehicle delivery deadlines to never missing them.

Now, I will be the first to acknowledge that, as has been well documented, persuading people to embark on the lean journey, where the last stop may be their own removal or reassignment, is not easy. To succeed, public-sector organisations must find a way to align their growth strategy—providing new and better services at limited cost—with a regard for the interests of their workers. Although lean programmes may cut the number of public-sector jobs, the goal is to make the remaining ones more rewarding. Incentives come from the prospect of more meaningful work, potentially with room for greater autonomy or a chance to develop new skills.