Lean Laughs!

What's Wrong With NGOs? (Part 2)

By Pascal Dennis

Some time ago I asked the above question.

I've spent a good deal of time volunteering my time & energy to aid agencies.

Their response? "Just send money..."

Why are NGOs so uninterested in Continuous Improvement?

I may have found at least part of the answer.

Just finished Paul Theroux's splendid book Dark Star Safari, which chronicles the great traveller's overland trip from Cairo to Cape Town.

Theroux had worked in Uganda & Malawi as a Peace Corp teacher in the '60's & had made many friends throughout west Africa.

He is appalled by what he finds -- deterioration, despair, widespread apathy among Africans.

Things are far worse in than when he left forty years ago -- despite a trillion dollars in aid from well-meaning donors.

And he cites NGO's as a root cause.

NGOs, Theroux argues, foist untried top-down 'solutions' on Africans without grasping the situation or engaging them in any way.

Africans have been thereby infantilized, their society corrupted by "oafs driving white Range Rovers & staying in 300 dollar a night hotels".

And who are the beneficiaries of all this aid?

NGO bureaucrats on expense accounts, flying to high-level conferences in Davos, Paris & the like -- as well as, brutal dictators whose corrupt rule NGOs aid & abet.

Theroux supports his thesis with a number of damning books, including Lords of Poverty and The Road to Hell - the Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid.

Any lessons for Lean thinkers?

1. Listen to the front line.
2. Don't jump to conclusions. Grasp the situation & clearly define the problem.
3. Engage the people closest to the work. Run small pilots to confirm test countermeasures before applying them broadly.
4. Be humble, be humble, be humble.

All for now,

Pascal

Jidoka & the Tin Man

By Pascal Dennis

Building quality into the process, aka Jidoka, is a cornerstone of the Toyota Production System.

And embedded tests are a cornerstone of Jidoka.

To make a good product, or provide a good service, I need:

1. A clear picture of what good is (i.e. a Standard)
2. Quick feedback on how I'm doing right now, and
3. A way of getting back to a good condition

Embedded tests address element 2, and should be

• Simple,
• Low cost, and
• Binary (i.e. OK/Not OK)

What's the best source of embedded tests?

Wait for it...front-line team members.

Who knows the work better?

Who else has absorbed the 'nicks & knacks of the work'?

That's why Total Involvement, and a profound respect for people are, the heart of the Lean Business System.

Without it, the system is akin to the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz.

Efficient perhaps, but lacking the most important thing, a heart.

More on Jidoka next time.

Best,

Pascal

Another Mental Model - Leader as Delegator

By Al Norval

What’s wrong with this picture? Shouldn't leaders delegate to their team?

As always this is not as straightforward as it seems. On one hand leaders should delegate tasks and assignments to team members. It’s a great opportunity to develop team members and build their skills. Leaders can start with simpler tasks and assignments and as the capability of the team and individuals goes up, leaders can delegate more complex and challenging assignments. Doing so gives leaders a wonderful opportunity to coach and mentor team members. Often this is tied in with developing problem solving skills and A3 Thinking.

So what’s wrong with this?

When leaders delegate tasks they are still responsible for the outcome. Leaders can’t delegate the responsibility along with the task. Leaders who do so are not exhibiting Lean behaviors; rather they are using Lean as an abdication of their responsibilities.

Peter Ducker taught that Leaders were responsible for three things:

• Business Results
• Capability Development
• Reinforcing the values of the organization

Leaders who delegate tasks but retain responsibility for the results must coach & mentor the team member(s) and thus build the capability of their team ensuring both short and long term business results.

Leaders who delegate both the task and the responsibility for the results while not providing any coaching for the team are failing in their role as a leader of the organization.

Cheers

Building Intellectual Capital

By Pascal Dennis

What's the proper role of the Kaizen/Continuous Improvement Office?

I was taught that it was three-fold:

1. To create capability
2. To share learning
3. To create kaizen spirit

More and more though, I think about the great Taiichi Ohno.

"I am not just building cars - I am building people!"

A splendid concept from a true revolutionary.

I am building people!

Underlying this sentiment was Ohno's remarkable respect for people - expressed by challenging them to do their very best!

Tough love indeed.

I've been privileged to have such senseis, both at Toyota and in Aikido.

But how does this help the corporation? Where does this show up on the Balance Sheet?

Sadly, it doesn't - for now.

But I am hopeful that before too long Intellectual Capital will begin to appear on Balance Sheets

Intellectual Capital means people - and their capability, creativity, flexibility, sense of urgency, knowledge, relationships and camaraderie.

At companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Intellectual Capital dwarfs financial and physical assets.

So how can we continue to ignore it?

So, let me suggest that in the next decade, the Kaizen/CI Office needs to think as follows:

Our job is to create Intellectual Capital - by growing people.

Best,

Pascal

Poetry & Business?!

By Pascal Dennis

Who says there's no poetry in business?

President Akio Toyoda recently greeted 1,179 new Toyota hires, urging them to find

“the strength seen in cherry blossoms that persevere in winter..."

(Hard to imagine Bill Ford welcoming new UAW hires in this way!)

Nonetheless, a recent HBR piece suggests business and poetry are complementary.

Both entail wresting with & simplifying complex realities. Both require comfort with ambiguity.

Poetry also helps develop empathy, which is in greater demand than ever.

According the NY Times, Harman Industries founder Sidney Harman once told his staff, "Get me poets as managers. Poets are our original systems thinkers. They look at our most complex environments and reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand."

You'll get no argument from your faithful business nomad.

Best,

Pascal

Lean as a Growth Strategy

By Al Norval

There is a common misconception about Lean that I hear over and over again. In fact it’s so common I see it getting baked into the strategy of organizations. That is – Lean is all about waste reduction and by reducing waste we can meet our cost objectives. As always, there is some truth in this statement but I like to take it deeper and go to the next level which is what strategy should really be doing.

True Lean is about waste reduction but the purpose is to provide more value to our Customers. To do this we need to understand what Customers truly value.

Here’s a simple example. I know a company that had loads of finished goods inventory. The common thinking in Lean was that inventory is a waste and so it needed to be reduced. The problem was the company also had a 1 day lead time to service customer orders. Customers placed a lot of value on this and it was a distinct competitive advantage. Cutting inventory would mean longer lead times which could take away the marketplace advantage the company had and lead to lost sales.

The real answer is of course, to reduce the inventory but not by just cutting it, by reducing the causes of the inventory while still maintaining the 1 day customer lead time.

As the company improved the efficiency of their mfg lines by reducing unplanned delay, reducing change-over times and improving the yield they discovered a lot of unused capacity which they turned into shorter replenishment lead times from mfg.

This is the secret behind Lean. Waste reduction frees up capacity in the resources of the organization. Rather than cash out these freed up resources, this unused capacity needs to be turned into value for customers. Providing more value to customers, leads to growth.

Providing more value to customers and growing sales with the same resource base while making the work easier for Team Members is a formula that can’t be beaten.

Lean is really a growth strategy. Organizations grow to success, they don’t shrink to success. Think about this the next time someone asks “How do we cash out our Lean activities?”.

Cheers

Aussie & Kiwi Reflections

By Pascal Dennis

A Simple Twist of Fate

As you may know, I was in Oceania for almost a month.

Among the highlights was meeting my Aussie cousin, Chris Stavridis, in Melbourne, during the Australian AME Conference.

My mother had told me we had Aussie family and I'd emailed Chris in advance. A cold call, in effect, and I wasn't sure if anything would happen.

On the third day of my visit, just after the day's end Speaker Panel, my cell phone rang.

A loud Aussie voice rolled out, big as a beach ball!

"HOW ARE YOU, COUSIN!? DON'T GO ANYWHERE. I'M ON MY WAY!"

Soon we were sitting on bar stools beside the Yarra River, shooting the breeze like old mates.

My maternal granddad, Stavros, and his, Fotis, were brothers, born in Kastoria, a lovely, ancient town in northern Greece's lake district.

One side of the family came to America. The other took the month long voyage through the Suez Canal, across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, into the Great Southern Ocean.

This took guts - I took the Great Ocean Road west of Melbourne, aka The Shipwreck Coast. The sea seemed a boiling cauldron.

Like me, Chris has three kids. He's proud of his heritage, yet is 'as Aussie as they come'.

We had dinner on Bridge Street in Melbourne's Richmond neighbourhood. Chris regaled me with stories of the neighbourhood's working class roots, and strong Greek contingent.

After dinner, I met Chris' extended family, looked at old photographs, so similar to our families, and told stories.

But for a simple twist of fate, I'd have been born & raised in Melbourne.

"How did our grandfathers decide which continent to settle in?" I asked Chris.

"I think they flipped a coin," he responded.

I love Toronto & North America, but Melbourne would have been just fine.

Our families are now connected by Facebook, of course, and our world has gotten bigger.

Yiasou Chris,