Illustrative Projects

(information sanitized to maintain confidentiality)

A combination of some of the work undertaken, more recently, as a consultant, and, in the past, for my employers.

Change Management in an IT Environment

A government ministry is looking to improve how it creates, accesses, stores and destroys its records (documents, files, communications with citizens, etc.) but also wants to make sure that the service providers (staff) are supported throughout the change to an electronic content management system.

We created and are executing a Change Plan that has three essential elements:

Sponsor engagement with all staff impacted by the change by presenting the “why” of the change, to build initial staff awareness of, and desire for, the change to the electronic system.
Needs Assessment of each segment of the major stakeholders (Users, Stakeholders and Managers) and metrics to determine comfort with change.
Training of each stakeholder segment using a mix of in-person and video tutorials with continuous evaluation of the staff capability to use the new system.

Medication Management in Long Term Care

A large Canadian Healthcare Organization desires an even higher-order capability in the area of medication management for residents in long-term care.

We are a part of the specialized engagement team selected to deliver the desired outcomes in a phased manner across many care-giving facilities. The approach best suited to this project is to first partner with some diverse facilities, identify their specific problems, and deliver custom solutions of maximum impact with the help of their on-site care-givers. The next step, would be to combine the learnings from these early sites to rapidly identify specific problems and implement custom solutions at the other facilities. And, of course, to have an ongoing program of continuous education and capability development all through this project, while maintaining high sensitivity about the busy schedules of the care-givers.

On-Time Performance

An electronics manufacturing company, requires key improvements in its planning and scheduling processes to thereby improve its on-time performance even more.

A classic engagement in the area of lean productivity!

Business Case Development

A not-for-profit organisation working in the area of healthcare requires assistance in drafting a ‘winner’ of a business case and business plan in order to take up some work hitherto done by public organisations.

The success of the case is quite dependent on the credibility of the ideas and proposals for reduced wait times and reduced costs.

Investor Attractiveness

An engineering services firm is ready to make a jump to the next level with a growing order-book and an improving client-profile. It is the appropriate time for them to rope in a strategic domain partner or investor.

We are assisting their leadership team in crafting the appropriate business case, and the collaterals of communication and information for attracting prospective strategic investors. We are also helping to cascade their management objectives in order to improve the organisation’s effectiveness even further.

Policy Advocacy

A government department wants to effectively present its point of view to add substantively to the current debate around an impending policy change in an important matter.

We’re studying parallels in other departments and geographies to establish the objective arguments for and against the proposed change. And assisting the stakeholder authorities in identifying scenario-based solutions and action-plans, whichever way the policy change goes.

Capacity Increase

In a large organisation, managers at all levels were being subjected to increasing, and sometimes, conflicting organizational demands. Simultaneously, they were also pressured to deepen engagement with clients, stakeholders and staff.

I led the design and implementation of a “Management/Leadership System” from first principles, and also set up visual dashboards, targets, meeting structures, etc., to ensure that the prioritised and re-aligned KPIs were ‘alive’ and ‘in control’. Where necessary, I took accountability for the strategic improvement initiatives whose KPIs were trending in the wrong direction. There was a measurable increase in the quantifiable results achieved by these Managers and their teams, and also an increase in their job-satisfaction scores.

Quality Improvement

A leading healthcare organisation, which was created by the amalgamation of nine healthcare regions, each with its own processes, systems and cultures, wanted a unified quality improvement system that delivered tangible business results.

I put together a core team of about 20 ‘improvement specialists’ with proven track-records in diverse fields, rather than of quality professionals only from healthcare. Thereafter, we designed and implemented an organic program customised to our priority needs, useful to our stakeholders, and one which unified the three lean dimensions of training, certification and improvement projects.

Besides delivering real results at low costs and in optimal time, our team was awarded the President’s Excellence Award for Quality three times.

Crowd Optimisation & Queue Management

A hospital with chronic overcrowding and excessive patient wait times was in need of effective and sustainable solutions without an increase in staffing or infrastructure, and that too, in a unionised environment.

My team and I ‘walked the patient flow’ to identify bottlenecks and pragmatic solutions. We created ‘caregiver pods’ so that the nursing and other staff walked less and served more. We realigned shift staffing to patient flow valleys and troughs, and drastically reduced lab-testing times. Basically, a much recognised resource optimisation, change management and capability building program that later served as a template for the emergency departments of several hospitals.

Capability Development

Working professionals, employees and students, either on their own, or at the behest of their organisations and institutions, seek to build personal and professional capability. There’s also a large element of capability building, training and communication in any improvement initiative or change management program.

Either as a part of ongoing work in organisations, or as a part of the education and training work at institutions, my teams, and I, over the years, have designed and implemented several training, communication and capability development programs in the following areas :

change management & leadership
performance improvement & problem solving
lean six sigma
operations management

Cost Reduction

In an oilfield service business, the large trucks used to carry specialised equipment were overweight and in constant need of repairs, leading to increased financial and operational liability.

We formed three teams to look at different angles of the problem, and get more diverse solutions. One looked from the lens of improving the design and functionality based on user feedback. One looked from the lens of reducing the weight and manufacturing cycle times of the trucks. Another looked at reducing the need for repairs. We did achieve our desired results, but some of the truck operators even termed our unit as ‘the cadillac’ whose operations and ideas other manufacturers would seek to emulate.

Real-Estate Optimisation

An Essential Public Services organisation, needed to reduce its real-estate costs.

We executed on two simple ideas, of which one was counter-intuitive but worked out well :

that we could back track a bit on our advanced set-up for priority services (which used lots of space but was utilised for only a few hours in a day) and return to slightly older, but less space consuming technology to better sync the demand rate and the speed of service
that we could merge two operational facilities for increased efficiencies and effectiveness, and reduce the need for more real-estate with an uptick in demand