acceltage consulting

ATTENTION SCHOOL OWNERS: IMPROVE EFFICIENCY OF YOUR SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION USING LEAN PRINCIPLES!

School business has become very challenging today in Nigeria. Though, one can hardly see any street without a school in the cities, majority of these schools are running on losses year in and year out. This, along with inadequate funding, poor infrastructure, low teacher quality, are key challenges school owners are facing today.

More worrisome is the fact that the financial conditions of parents have worsened due to the economic hardship in the country; amidst Nigeria’s rising inflation, School fees and related costs have surged dramatically, many parents are not able to keep up, schools these days now witness massive student and staff attrition!

Schools need to continually find ways to rebalance capacity to match demand and eliminate unnecessary operating cost in order to maintain or increase profitability. However, trying to do this may do more harm than good if poorly thought out, and without careful analysis and understanding of the drivers of cost, the outcomes can be hit and miss or at best yield some small savings. It might lead to poor service levels, inattention to parents and students’ priorities and poor ex*****on thereby leading to eroded loyalty, market share and brand perception.

In response to these challenges, one prominent improvement method used globally is LEAN as it promises enhanced quality, capacity, and safety, while containing costs.

WHAT IS LEAN?
Lean is employing minimum resources to realize maximum output and provide customers with exactly what they want (Value) without accumulating unnecessary inventory. It is simply doing more with less
The objective of Lean is to incorporate less effort, less inventory, less response time, and less space in order to become highly responsive to actual Customer Demand and to produce high Quality Product/Service in the most timely, efficient and economical manner possible!
In order to appreciate how lean works, we need to have a clear understanding of Customer and Value.

CUSTOMERS:
In a school system, your Customers are your Pupils, their Parents/ Guardians and your Personnel (employees like teachers, admin, security staff etc.)

The pupils and parents are referred to as External Customers because they are the ones that provide payment for our services.
The Parents pay the school for educating their children and instilling a lifelong passion for learning; The students are the critical source for feedback on results.

The school’s Personnel are regarded as Internal Customers. They individuals or departments within an organization who rely on the support and services of other parts of the same organization to do their job effectively. Their requirements need to be satisfied in order for them to deliver value to the external customers.

VALUE:
The customer's perception of the worth of your product or service. It is the customer’s overall assessment of the usefulness of a product based on perceptions of what is received and what is paid or given.
To truly understand value from the standpoint of your customers (Parents, Pupils and Personnel), the school management need to have regular, meaningful conversations with them in a structured way in an environment that they will feel completely free to share their true feelings, perceptions and their concerns which are often unstated.

Below are some of the areas that schools must consider as they try to understand value:

- Safety: physical safety, and emotional safety of the pupils. This includes safe facilities, emergency protocols, bullying and violence prevention, health and hygiene, supportive relationships, mental health support and inclusive environment

- Quality of Learning: This includes effective teaching with skilled teachers, innovative methods, feedback and assessment. Providing engaging curriculum with relevant content, balanced subjects. Use or modern resources and technologies that facilitate learning and exploration

- Student Engagement: with active learning, motivation in a safe and supportive atmosphere. The more students are interested and engaged in what they are learning, the more they learn. Student support services, extracurricular activities, and career readiness programs should be prioritized

- Convenience: This includes opening and closing times, and the extra services and policy modifications that the school offers to provide flexibility for the parents make it easier for parents.

- Cost / Fees: school fees are a critical element to parents. There must be sensitivity, realism, flexibility and consideration on school tuition, related charges and levies.

HOW LEAN WORKS:
Lean is based on the premise that anywhere work is being done, waste is being generated … and should be minimized or removed. So, it is a relentless focus on the identification and elimination of waste.
With Lean, school operation can be run cheaper, faster and better!
There are 8 classic wastes in Lean, often referred to by the acronym DOWNTIME, and can be directly applied to school operations. These wastes are: Defects, Overproduction, Waiting, Non-utilized talent, Transportation, Inventory, Motion, and Extra processing.

I have described them below with examples.

1. DEFECTS: these are activities involved in creating errors / mistakes and the additional work required to correct the errors or mistakes
- Poor quality teaching materials: Using outdated textbooks or incorrect information, leading to poor understanding and re-teaching.
- Errors in grading: Teachers might incorrectly enter grades into a system or make calculation errors, requiring rework and creating confusion for students and parents.
- Miscommunication about schedules: Inaccurate information on exam dates or class timetables, leading to confusion and wasted time.
- Incorrect student records: Inaccurate data entry in student profiles (e.g., grades, attendance, medical information) leads to administrative delays and potential safety issues, requiring rework and corrections.
- Ill-prepared lesson plans: Teachers creating lesson plans that are not well detailed with little relevant examples and activities to be done in the class.

2. OVERPRODUCTION: Producing some type of work too early prior to it being required or providing more than needed, leading to waste or unnecessary work.
- Unnecessary paperwork: Teachers or administrators generate reports that are not useful, needed or requested but are produced out of routine, leading to wasted time and effort.
- Excessive assignments: Giving students more homework than necessary without clear educational benefits, can lead to stress and reduced quality of learning without adding value to the educational process.
- Over-preparing lessons: Teachers creating lesson plans with more content than can reasonably be covered in class, leading to rushed lessons.
- Duplicating forms: Requiring students and parents to repeatedly fill out the same forms during enrollment or other processes leads to redundant paperwork.

3. WAITING: excess time spent waiting for resources, information, or approvals etc., which slows down progress.
- Waiting for supplies: Teachers or students waiting for textbooks, chalk, or other classroom materials, delaying lessons.
- Administrative delays: Students waiting for approval of applications, exam results, or administrative processes like fee payments or registration. Teachers and staff wait for approval from administrators and proprietors to proceed with classroom changes, extracurricular activities, or funding requests, delaying progress.
- Students waiting for resources: Students wait for books, computers, or feedback from teachers, slowing down their learning and engagement.
- Delays in teacher availability: Teachers being late to class or not arriving on time due to other commitments or inefficiencies.
- Teacher waiting for admin and tech support: Teachers experience delays when appliances or technology breaks down (e.g., fans, projectors, computers), waiting for IT staff to resolve the issue, which disrupts classes.

4. NON-UTILIZED TALENT: underuse of skills, not making the most of people’s abilities or talents, leading to missed opportunities and inefficiencies. Not placing people where they can (and will) use their knowledge, skills, and abilities to their fullest in providing value-added work and services
- One way staff meetings and strategy sessions: School management not engaging the teachers and staff members for feedbacks and ideas (as they relate more with the pupils and parents) that would be beneficial for the school when taking decisions.
- Underutilized staff skills: Teachers or staff members who have specialized skills (e.g., technology, arts, languages) are not given opportunities to develop or use these talents, limiting their contribution to the school’s success.
- Parents Teachers Associations: School management not holding PTA meetings or not taking advantage of such meetings to genuinely understand and address the real the issues, complaints and recommendations of the Parents and also involve them when they take major decisions for the schools.
- Failure to involve students: Not giving students leadership roles or chances to contribute ideas, thereby wasting their potential for responsibility and innovation.
- Lack of professional development: Teachers not receiving proper training or opportunities to upgrade their skills, limiting their effectiveness.

5. TRANSPORTATION: Unnecessary movement of materials, people, documents, information, etc more than needed, which wastes time and energy.
- Manual transportation of materials: Teachers and staff physically moving paper documents, books, or materials between offices and classrooms, when digital systems could be used.
- Poor Road Network and Scheduling for School Bus: Schools that do not plan a realistic and updated road schedule and routes for their school buses and regularly updated based on the current locations of students that use the school buses and the road infrastructure of their states, will waste more time and fuel on the road than necessary.
- Inter-house Sporting Events/ Inefficient field trip planning: holding school events like inter-house sports, proms etc. in locations very far from the school. Uncoordinated transportation for field trips or events, resulting in delays, confusion, or wasted time for students and chaperones.
- Inefficient school layout: Poorly designed school layouts that force excessive walking or travel between buildings.

6. INVENTORY: Excess stock, holding more supplies or products than needed, leading to storage issues and potential waste.
- Over-ordering supplies: Buying too many materials like pens, chalk, or notebooks, resulting in waste if they aren’t used.
- Excessive textbooks or supplies: Stockpiling textbooks, teaching materials, or office supplies that are outdated or unused, tying up storage space and school funds.
- Excess school uniforms or merchandise: Over-ordering school uniforms, materials, or sport wears that end up going unsold or unused.
- Unused equipment: Purchasing expensive lab equipment or technology that isn’t used frequently or doesn’t meet the current needs of students and staff.

7. MOTION: Unnecessary, Unneeded movement and physical actions by people, like searching for tools or walking long distances, that don’t add value.
- Unnecessary staff movement: Teachers having to repeatedly go to a central office or supply room to get materials or make copies, leading to wasted effort and time.
- Disorganized classrooms: Teachers or students wasting time looking for materials, books, or supplies during lessons due to poor classroom setup.
- Inconsistent office layout: Tuck shops, canteen, Labs, toilets not well positioned near the class rooms causing frequent movement of students. Administrative staff having to walk across the building frequently for routine tasks (e.g., printing, filing), rather than centralizing processes, thereby wasting time and creating inefficiencies.
- Disorganized classrooms:
- Excessive teacher movement: Teachers having to move between classrooms frequently, wasting time and energy in transition.

8. EXTRA PROCESSING: Unnecessary steps, doing more work than necessary, putting more effort into the work than what is required by internal or external customer.
- Excessive student assessment: Administering more tests, quizzes, or standardized assessments than necessary to measure student performance, leading to test fatigue and less time for learning.
- Redundant data entry: Requiring teachers or administrators to enter the same data on student or teacher information into multiple systems or forms, creating unnecessary administrative burdens and waste of time and resources
- Overcomplicated administrative processes: Requiring multiple approvals for simple actions, such as approving a field trip or handling fee payments. Forms pass through so many desks and individuals (who really have no business with the forms) before getting sign offs.
- Over-complicated grading systems: Teachers using overly complex grading systems, leading to wasted time in grading without adding value to student assessment.
- Excessive assessments: Giving too many tests or exams that don’t necessarily contribute to a better understanding of student performance.

LEAN Helps us to identify and address these wastes, these wastes, so that schools can become more efficient, provide a better learning environment, and ensure that resources are used more effectively to improve education quality.

The benefits of Lean in education can be profound; it will significantly contribute to improving educational outcomes and job satisfaction. It is a methodology that ultimately empowers workers to contribute ideas on how to make their work more effective and efficient. One of the central tenets of the approach is respect for people. The idea is to practice bottom-up management, giving the front-line employees, who are closest to every-day challenges, the support they need to solve problems quickly.

SOME THOUGHTS AS YOU IMPLEMENT LEAN:

- Can you consider using same school uniforms for both Junior and High Schools and the differences would just be in the position of their badges or designs of their Jackets?

- Can you make available the option of getting fabrics from outside the school and sowing uniforms by the parents? the school will just provide the specifications and ensure they are met.

- Can you hold strategy sessions with your staff and genuinely listen to ideas from them on how they can make their work easier and more fulfilling and what needs to be stopped that is not adding value among the activities you engage in?


Do let me know your thoughts on how you intend to apply and implement Lean in your schools.

- abiodun adetula

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THE COBRA EFFECT THEORY:

There was once a large population of venomous cobras plaguing the citizens of Delhi, India. The British Colonial Government implemented in India in an attempt to control these snakes, placed a bounty to be paid for every dead Cobra delivered to the Government officials.

At first, the policy initially appeared successful, courageous snake catchers claiming their bounties and fewer cobras being seen in the city. However, over time, instead of reduction of the Cobra population over time, there was a steady increase in the number of dead cobras being presented for bounty payment each month.

Nobody knew why!

In time, the government became puzzled by the discrepancy between the number of cobras seen around the city and the number of dead cobras being redeemed for bounty payments

WHAT THE GOVERNMENT DISCOVERED:

They discovered the underground breeding sites!

Realising under the new policy, that the cobra bounty converted the snakes into valuable commodities, entrepreneurial citizens started actively breeding cobras for a stable source of income. In addition, it was much easier to kill captive cobras than to hunt them in the city.

So, the snake catchers increasingly abandoned their search for wild cobras, and concentrated on their breeding programs.

Then Government Cancelled the program of offering reward for dead cobras!

The breeders were stuck with nests or worthless cobras, so they released them into the city, making the problem even worse than before!

This is what is now known as the “Cobra Effect” coined by German economist Horst Siebert; when an attempted solution results in unintended consequences, specifically by incorrectly stimulating an economy. It highlights the unintended negative consequences of public policy and government intervention in the economy.

In summary, the solution is worse than the problem!

“So, when you introduce an incentive scheme, you have to just admit to yourself that no matter how clever you think you are, there’s a pretty good chance that someone far cleverer than yourself will figure out a way to beat the incentive scheme.” —Steve Levitt

Something similar happened in Hanoi, Vietnam, under the French colonial rule.

The regime created a bounty programme that offered a reward for each rat killed. To collect the reward, people had to provide the severed tail of a rat.

However, officials began noticing rats with no tails in Hanoi. The rat catchers would capture the animals, cut their tails, then release them back so that they could procreate and produce more rats, therefore increasing rats and their potential revenue from the bounty programme.

It also happened in Mexico with the “Hoy No Circula” policy that was introduced to reduce the circulation of vehicles in the city by 20% from Monday to Friday, based on the last digit of their license plates. Because the policy coincided with a massive influx of cheap cars in the country, people started buying more cars with different licence plates in order to circumvent the policy.

In 2005, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change launched an incentive scheme to cut down on greenhouse gases. The programme rewarded companies for destroying certain pollutants, and set the prices according to how serious the harm the pollutant could do to the environment. One of the highest bounties was attributed to HFC-23, a by-product of a common coolant.

As a result, companies began to produce more and more of this coolant in order to destroy the corresponding by-product waste gas, collecting millions of dollars in bounties in the process.

In December 2022, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) introduced the redesigned Naira banknotes and cash withdrawal limits policy. The endgame is to rid the system of counterfeited currencies, to mop up a large amount of money currently held outside the banking system and to boost the cashless economy drive.

This brought about hoarding of the same Naira by the banks, influential people getting same naira through the backdoor, endless queues and squabbles at the banks and Naira being traded at exorbitant rates in the Black Market due to its unavailability. Most small businesses are now demanding for Naira in their transactions due to the ineffectiveness of the alternate payment channels.

As it happens with government policies so it is in business and our personal lives.

HOW TO DEAL WITH THE COBRA EFFECT

1. AVOID LINEAR THINKING— Linear thinking focuses on addressing “symptoms” instead of the root causes. It is sequential in manner – like a straight line— the most efficient way to get from point A to point B. The objective is to find the best path to reach the destination and exclude possibilities and alternatives. This type of thinking is easy to repeat, replicate, and teach others. It is our default mode of thinking. It is the path of least resistance and high energy efficiency, and the brain is designed to take this path. There is little space for creativity, invention, and strategic thinking. The outcomes are predictable.

The drawback with linear thinking is that it is not particularly good at proposing and presenting alternatives. It cannot suggest alternative routes to the solution if things go wrong along the way. It is also unable to deal with the idea of 'the middle ground' and compromise. It is only about getting to A or B. It is either correct or incorrect.

Linear Thinking is not bad on its own, for some situations, linear is the way to think, but when it gets complex with several possible outcomes as a result of our decisions, then it is not practical to think linear.

2. THOROUGHLY UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEM: Before attempting to solve a problem, make sure you fully understand it. Make sure you get both expert and practical opinions on the situation. There is a Japanese term in Lean management that is very helpful here: “Gemba”. In the context of business and management, Gemba refers to the place where value is created for customers, such as a factory floor, a hospital operating room, the market place or a retail store. The idea behind Gemba is that the best way to understand and improve a process is to go to the place where it is performed and observe it firsthand. By observing processes directly where it is taking place, leaders can gain a deeper understanding of how work is actually being done, what exactly are the deeper issues and can identify ways to make improvements.


3. CONSIDER UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: When making a decision, consider how it could potentially lead to unintended consequences. It consists in laying down the second and third order consequences, taking into account our own biases, disentangling the signal from the noise, and using thinking systems to determine the most favourable decision. This forces us to consider the complex ramifications of the decisions we make. We will need to question everything; keep asking, "what happens then?" Continue to do so until you are able to generate a comprehensive list of possible outcomes, you can then compare the options.

4. GET DIVERSE PERSPECTIVES: Seek input and advice from individuals with different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences to help you identify potential unintended consequences. In doing this, be careful to avoid Groupthink, introduce the dialectical inquiry (devil’s advocate)

5. THINK LONG TERM: you should look past the immediate results of your decision and consider the impact long term; explore how the decision will play out at different time points. What might the results be in a month, or a year or ten years? Do not assume that conditions will be the same at each of these points.

6. MONITOR AND EVALUATE: After implementing a solution, continuously monitor and evaluate its impact to ensure it is having the desired effect and not creating new problems.

7. BE FLEXIBLE: Be open to adjusting your solution if it is not having the desired effect, or if new information becomes available that suggests a different approach is needed.

By following these steps, you can reduce the likelihood of creating unintended consequences and the Cobra Effect in your decision

Have U noticed Cobra Effect in some policies of the Federal and State Governments?

Have you experienced cobra effect in your business and personal life before?

- abiodun adetula

HUMANS ARE JUST SO INTERESTING:

We all know what's good for us

What will keep us healthy, maintain great relationships, fit and prosperous;

Yet somehow, we postpone all these till another time.....and do what we know deep inside us that its not the best for us today🤦‍♂️

Continuous Learning and Discipline are very important in order to have fulfilment and become all we can become in Life and Business!

See you at the top in 2023!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

- acceltage consulting