Form groups of three to five people and discuss the following scenario:
You are a group of software engineers meeting to discuss how to implement a kaizen program to reduce the number of mistakes made in the developing and writing of computer code.
Presently, your employees are each responsible for a different section of the code and they typically just hand off their work to the person next in line—which is the point where errors often creep in. You are contemplating introducing a computer-aided design process that will make each employee’s code-writing activities visible to everyone else and that will alert employees when changes they make impact other employees’ code-writing activities. This will likely cause considerable conflict among employees because it will complicate their work activities.
1. How can you manage the change process to reduce employees’ likely resistance to the changes that will take place in the work process?
2. What kind of reward system could you devise to motivate employees to contribute and make suggestions for improving the new system?