Lean in Alaska Blog

My team just completed an audit by the Federal Government of our Head Start Program. The auditors were in our office for 3 days and apparently look at about 800 parts of our operation. We get dinged for everything that’s not performed according to their standards. I don’t know where they get the time to think up all of the standards, or the money to monitor it in this way. It is command and control at the military level.
But I am proud to say that by all accounts, we did well. The audit of our HR records took about 1 hour and there were no exceptions. Almost everything under our control went well. Items outside our control include parent participation, which we work on constantly.
One other benefit of this audit, and a 5S in our Anchorage office has reached the office of our Head Start Program Manager. When I return from this trip, I should be impressed by the before and after photos of the 5S in her office. Then we have only one holdout left-the Executive Director. I will tackle mine when I have a couple of days to dedicate to organizing my office. I have started, but the disorganization is so pervasive that I have to do some lean process thinking on what it is I do.