Scatter - Our Nemesis

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Big Company Disease has many causes.

One of the most subtle is our inability to ‘wrap our arms around’ the PDCA cycle.

Myriad improvement cycles begin – but they become fragmented:

• Group A develops the Plan,
• Group B deploys,
• Group C checks the Plan, and
• Group D adjusts it.

I call this Scatter, with a deep bow to the late, great Al Ward – friend, colleague & profound Lean thinker.

Al described this syndrome to me over lunch a decade ago, and then again in his splendid book Lean Product & Process Design.

Improvement, whether a Kaizen Workshop, Problem Solving cycle or Strategy A3, requires complete PDCA cycles

One person (or team) needs to wrap her arms around the cycle, and thereby develop the profound, sympathetic knowledge central to breakthrough.

Thereby, our entire brains start firing – Left, Right, prefrontal cortex etc.

The countermeasures we select are usually simple and clear.

There’s usually a sense of release. “Of course! Why didn’t we see it before!”

As opposed to the ponderous, countermeasure-by-committee stuff that blights so many report outs.

So how to reduce Scatter?

Lean fundamentals like visual management and Leader standard work are a good start.

Veteran Lean companies like Toyota have developed the Chief Engineer role in Design, and Key Thinker (aka Deployment Leader or Pacemaker) role in Strategy Deployment.

Their job is to oversee & manage broad PDCA cycles – and to record & share the learning.

There are all a good place to start in your never-ending battle with Scatter.

Best regards,

Pascal



In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

The Biggest Weakness is Contemporary Business Culture?
What Makes a Great Sensei?
Beware Prizes, Belts & Self-appointed Experts
Aikido & Lean – It’s All the Same

The Biggest Weakness is Contemporary Business Culture?

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

One of my revered senseis always talked about Big Heart.

The biggest weakness in contemporary business culture is an absence of heart.

The scandals of the past decades – Enron, Wall Street, Madoff, McKinsey-Gupta and the like reflect it.

In each case, the villains were ‘achievatrons’ at the trough, stuffing themselves at the expense of the public.

Often, something darker than greed is at play. Do people like Madoff believe they was somehow above the law, and immune to the rules that govern the rest of us?

By contrast, my sensei spent hours teaching my chums and I – at no cost.

He dedicated his life to teaching aikido, and helping us become better people.

A society is healthy when old people plant trees whose shade they know they will never enjoy.

Best regards,

Pascal



In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

What Makes a Great Sensei?
Beware Prizes, Belts & Self-appointed Experts
Aikido & Lean – It’s All the Same
The Power of Purpose

What Makes a Great Sensei?

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

My last blog (“Beware Prizes, Belts & Self-Appointed Experts”), begs the above question.

What indeed is a sensei? You’ll have heard the most common definitions: teacher, mentor, ‘one who has gone before’, and these are all fine.

I’d like to illuminate elements of the sensei mindset, at least in so far as I’ve observed & understood.

Humility is perhaps its most important element, a sense of the vastness of reality, and the finite nature of human experience. How can anybody who understands this be full of themselves?

W. Edwards Deming was famous for excoriating bozo executives, and equally famous for his kindness and sensitivity to front line workers. He would ask endless questions to understand why an associate was doing the job in a given way, trying to understand the biggest problems they faced and how they were adapting. “You’re doing such a good job,” Deming would say, before going back to the C-suite to tear strips of skin off the executives. “You own the system. Do you have any idea what it is doing to your people?”

Beginner’s mind (shoshin, in Japanese) is another common quality – a engaging freshness of thinking, and curiosity. Great senseis respond to new problems or challenges with an almost child-like quality, as if seeing them for the first time.

Last time I described Mr. Hayashi, our Toyota OMCD sensei, in his 70’s standing by the Final Assembly line of our old Toyota factory, sketching out countermeasures to problems that he’d been working on for decades.

‘Mind with no mind’ (mushin) – a state achieved when a person's mind is free from thoughts of anger, fear, or ego. The absence of discursive thought and judgment, frees you up so you can react without hesitation.

Great senseis, therefore, are not afraid of being wrong or looking foolish. Well into his 80’s, George Kissell, the legendary St. Louis Cardinals minor league manager, scout, coach and instructor would spend hours fielding ground balls with young minor leaguers.

Longevity fueled by an inner fire, is another trait common to the best senseis. Deming, Kissell, Joe Juran, Shigeo Shingo, Peter Drucker all lived very long productive lives.

George Kissell passed at the age of 88 – of a traffic accident, sadly. Had fate been kinder, he’d have been teaching baseball fundamentals well into his 90’s.

Great senseis are informed, attuned, inspired by the eternal verities. They hear, see, feel things the rest of us miss. There’s a lightness, a freshness about them. You feel good in their presence.

And when they pass, they leave empty spaces where they used to stand.

Best regards,

Pascal



In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

Beware Prizes, Belts & Self-appointed Experts
Aikido & Lean – It’s All the Same
The Power of Purpose
Why is laughter important in business?

Beware Prizes, Belts & Self-appointed Experts

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Sir Isaac Newton

Indeed, who cares if Joe Schmoe is a Master Lean Sensei (MLS) and a Super-Duper Advanced Black Belt (SDABB)?

Or if Questionable Financial has received the Mortimer Snerd Prize for RGQ (Really Great Quality)?

Ever known a chest-thumper who is also a sensei? What happens to chest-thumping companies? Jim Collins has written a fine book about it: How the Mighty Fall.

What’s the most common quality of all great senseis – and great companies?

Humility, no? A deep understanding that the world is much bigger than we are, so well expressed by Sir Isaac.

Don’t want to be misunderstood. Building a career sometimes entails achieving certain professional degrees and certifications.

And plenty of fine organizations have committed themselves to achieving some prize or other.

The best ones recognize that the prize or certificate is nothing more than a kick-start, a proxy for the hard work of building a management system & getting results.

And some awards are worth pursuing, but these are almost always based are on detailed feedback from the customer.

At TMMC, our old Toyota Cambridge site, we were lucky enough to have Mr. Hayashi, a venerable sensei from Operations Management Consulting Division (OMCD).

Hayashi-san and his small team would visit a few times per year. He’d give us homework, check on previous homework, and provide very tough feedback, (often very funny, in retrospect,).

(“You have learned nothing since my last visit, Pascal-san…”)

I remember one time, Hayashi-san standing by himself by the Final Assembly line, taking notes. I asked the great sensei how his visit was going.

He smiled, “After many years, I finally understand this important assembly problem.” He went on to explain in great depth to this lowly, not-so-bright manager.

Always practicing, always teaching.

Best regards,

Pascal



In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

Aikido & Lean – It’s All the Same
The Power of Purpose
Why is laughter important in business?
Target, Actual, Please Explain