Continuous Improvement Leadership Training With L&Q
L&Q is one of the largest social housing providers in the UK. They own and manage more than 105K homes primarily across London, the South East and North West of England. Laurence Khellas is the Head of Improvement & Change at L&Q, responsible for project management, process work, change management and Lean continuous improvement. Back in 2015, Laurence was the head of customer accounts, rents & service charges, and welfare & benefits at East Thames before they merged with L&Q.
In this conversation, Laurence Khellas shares her continuous improvement journey at East Thames through to her current role now at L&Q, and how Ad Esse Consulting have helped to raise awareness of Lean continuous improvement within the organisation and supported the development of in-house capability. Read Laurence’s thoughts below.
Continuous improvement at East Thames
At the time, East Thames was expensive to run, customers were dissatisfied, and governance ratings were poor. The final straw in 2015 was the rent cuts, where we had to reduce our rents by 1% for a period of four years which negatively impacted our financial planning. In a nutshell, we had to change.
A new Chief Executive defined a new vision and set of objectives which included being in the top quartile, becoming a continuous improvement organisation, having an engaged workforce who were passionate about the services East Thames delivered, excellent customer service, and an improved financial & business performance. To meet these objectives, the transformation would be people-empowered and data-driven. We did two things to make this happen; everyone completed a customer service course, and we hired Ad Esse Consulting.
We wanted to be a continuous improvement Lean organisation, but we didn’t know where to start. Ad Esse helped us to develop in-house capability and tackled any urgent performance issues we had. At the time, I was in operations and running a team that was high performing within the business and benchmarking well.
Training at East Thames
When I heard about Lean continuous improvement and what we aimed to do with the transformation, I wanted to be involved. So, I was trained by G at Ad Esse for 4-5 days. The learning was an eye opener and demand & capacity was a key takeaway for me, as well as the approach to KPIs. After the learning, I took part in a gas process review where I shadowed and assisted an Ad Esse consultant who was leading the review. It was a really good experience of working with Ad Esse and implementing continuous improvement at East Thames.
Measuring what matters, not arbitrary Key Performance Indicators
Throughout my career, I’d been focused on performance. In my team, a particular problem was income management. Despite being a top performing team in terms of benchmarking, the internal audits kept pulling up issues. In response, I standardised processes and ensured that everyone was clear on how to follow the process, and we implemented the huddles. As someone who was very performance driven, I began not to care so much about the KPIs.
Suddenly there was a reduction of approximately one percent in rent arrears in two years, very good for a well performing team, but I wanted 0%. My mindset changed. Instead of being restricted by the KPIs, I was open to more possibilities and improvements than the arbitrary KPIs were setting for ourselves.
Information Centres and huddles
At East Thames, everyone received training around Lean awareness at a minimum. One of the key things introduced was huddles throughout the business. In 2015, we were all in the office and everywhere had whiteboards. Suddenly, if you didn’t have an Information Centre for your team, you felt left out. The people from East Thames who stayed after the merger with L&Q shared the benefits of having Information Centres and some even re-established them.
If you do nothing else, do huddles. Be careful not to confuse a huddle with a team meeting – huddles are short, structured gatherings to allow people to voice what they’re working on, ideas, take ownership of problems, etc. Since the pandemic, most people are working remotely so whiteboards are no longer practical. At the moment, we’re working an interactive online version using Sharepoint.
“I was going on holiday with complete peace of mind because I knew the service could run without me, as it had become everyone’s responsibility to make sure the service was running, coming up with new ideas, and sorting out problems.”
Continuous improvement at L&Q
With the merger, I applied for a role in a team that is now called Planning, Strategy & Change. It was difficult in the beginning and expectations were not set on continuous improvement. Now, L&Q view continuous improvement as a must-have to succeed with our current transformation, which involves revisiting our target operating model, processes, people & culture, and tools (technology-heavy). We recognise that a continuous improvement culture and mindset needs to be in place. Otherwise, the change we deliver will become outdated very quickly. We have support from our executives and group board, and a big appetite from colleagues amongst the business. Part of my role is to embed continuous improvement in L&Q ways of working; with a workforce of 3,000 people, we recognise this is not going to happen overnight. We are currently on year two of a five-year journey.
Training Executive Leaders in Continuous Improvement
Last year, Ad Esse came in to train our executive group because I recognised that an external experienced professional in Lean continuous improvement could leave a significant impression and secure buy-in from the top. We asked Ad Esse to come because they had done a brilliant job at East Thames. This time, we wanted Ad Esse to help us with our senior group, and for the senior group to understand what it means to be a Lean continuous improvement organisation and what the expectations are of senior leadership.
We then had 50 directors that went through similar training that Ad Esse led with the executive group. Rhiannon was great and the feedback from those sessions was incredible; everyone felt energised and understood it. Here is some immediate feedback following the training:
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"An excellent, insightful session delivered on point. I have a huge number of takeaways, a positive sign.”
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“This was brilliant. Out of all of the five leadership sessions, it made me think the most. I have arranged for a short session on CI to be delivered to my team and we will be looking to map failure demand/value adding activities and introducing the 'information board' concept.”
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“I thought the session was excellently structured and well delivered. It hit the right mix between theory and practical experience and created a great deal of discussion. A really excellent session and one that would be great to roll out more widely.”
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“I really enjoyed this session and can see how this is essential for L&Q as we move into the new financial year.”
I then took over the baton from Ad Esse and continued rolling out this training with localised improvement projects and training front line colleagues. So far, we’ve trained approximately 250 people and we want to have 10% of the entire workforce at a level where they can lead bigger improvements.
With continuous improvement, you have the tiny ones that happen on a daily basis that you make happen instantly. Then you have medium-sized improvements that you need to approach with some sort of structure, and that’s what I want Champions, the 10% of the trained workforce to do. And of course, then you have the large improvement projects that are for a specialist skill set. Champions should be able to manage small to mid-size projects. We also expect them to spread the word more about the positive impact of continuous improvement. You need to keep your foot on the accelerator all the time, because people will forget about it. We want to continue with the training and focus on champions so we’re able to deliver service improvement and talk about Lean continuous improvement all the time.
“I would 100% recommend Ad Esse Consulting. To other organisations, I would say, if you think your performance is good, think again – it could be better. With continuous improvement, people always think it’s the cherry on the cake. They’ve got it wrong. Continuous improvement is the cake and you’ve got the cherry. It’s important to prioritise continuous improvement.”
The team at Ad Esse Consulting are proud to have supported L&Q in their improvement journey and continuous improvement leadership training.
At Ad Esse, we work with social purpose organisations, like charities, social housing, healthcare, hospices, local authorities, and more. Let’s have a chat about how we can help you to improve performance in your organisation. Email hello@ad-esse.com to get started today.
Laurence Khellas,
Head of Improvement & Change at L&Q
