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

Images and A3 Thinking

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Seems Getting the Right Things Done has been helpful in teaching A3 Thinking, the "story-telling" approach to strategy.

I'm gratified by all the good people who've told me, "That book really helped us – thanks!"

We're hard-wired to tell stories -- that's what our ancestors on the African savannah did at day's end around the fire.

(They didn't show PowerPoint...)

Like any good story, a good A3 pulls you in...

"And what happens next?" you wonder.

Where do images fit in?

Assignment

Here's an assignment for folks that have gained proficiency developing A3s.

Turn your A3 over – now draw a picture that tells the story.

Don't worry if you "can't draw" – stick figures, circles and arrows are all you need.

Now tell the story to your team through the image.

The better your understanding of the problem, the easier this'll be – and the clearer your image.

Hope they're helpful.

Cheers,

Pascal




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

Why Lean in Sales?
Back to Basics - What is Value?
You Want to Get More Done? Do Less…
Strategy Deployment & Language

You Want to Get More Done? Do Less…

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Continuing with Strategy Deployment today, and highlighting an especially interesting paradox.

How to get more breakthrough activity done?

Do less…

Don’t crowd the Right Hand Side of your strategy A3. (I was taught ‘no more than 5 activities – and even that’s too much!’)

If we have ten countermeasures on the RHS of our paper, do we really understand the strategic problem?

Chances are we’re simply buffering our lack of understanding with volume. (“One of these is sure to have an impact!”)

Fatigue and exhaustion is the risk of course. We have a limited number of hours for improvement activity – often 10% or less of our time.

Surely, we have to use this precious time wisely.

Understanding the ‘less is more’ principle is vital for senior leaders. Remember, everything on your A3 maybe multiplied many times over on baby A3’s.

I’ve been lucky enough to observe great masters of A3 thinking, who are able to distill complex problems down to their essense.

“Here’s our critical gap and root causes. And here are the two things we’re going to do about it…”

‘Says easy, does hard’ – but we have to keep trying.

Best regards,

Pascal




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

Strategy Deployment & Language
Where Lean Has Gone Wrong & What to Do About It, Part 2
Where Lean Has Gone Wrong & What to Do About It, Part 1
What is Courage & What’s It Mean for Strategy?

Neither Too Rigid, Nor Too Loose

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

When it comes to fundamentals like Strategy, Management System, Standardized Work, Quality in the Process and the like, it’s easy to become rigid and even doctrinaire.

After all, these are the concepts that underlie TPS, the ‘world’s most powerful production system’. In the circumstances, we’re right to be doctrinaire, aren’t we?

“We have to have four mother A3s – one each for People, Quality, Delivery and Cost! We have to have strategy A3s and dashboards for everything!

Standardized work means Content-Sequence-Timing-Expected Outcome! Quality in the Process means detect the abnormality, stop the process, fix the immediate problem and develop countermeasures for root causes!”

No doubt, you’ve heard this sort of thing too.

In fact, as we apply these timeless ideas in areas further and further from manufacturing, finesse is of the essence, and rigidity, a recipe for failure.

The further from manufacturing we get, the more important it is the we translate the principles, and not insist, “This is how did things at Toyota, or Honeywell, or Proctor & Gamble or…”

This is a major challenge for ‘Lean’ practitioners in these times of tumultuous change. Who cares if your muffler manufacturing factory has the best SMED process in the industry?

Demand for mufflers is going nowhere but down, no? But the principles underlying SMED – separate internal & external work, convert internal work to external work etc. – transcend manufacturing.

SMED principles can readily be applied to shortening changeover times in healthcare, aviation, and software design.

The same applies to any ‘Lean’ principle. Principles are eternal, countermeasures temporary.

And this reflects the deeper challenge facing the Lean movement these days.

Is ‘Lean’ a principles-based profession, or a skilled trade? The distinction is important.

I don’t want to be misunderstood. I respect and admire skilled tradespeople. They’re an honorable and essential element of successful organizations.

But they’re insufficient if you want to transform an organization or an industry. For that you need principles.

Principles are harder to internalize than countermeasures. But principles are eternal, whereas countermeasures are temporary.

Which brings me to the title of this piece, which a wise old gentleman taught me many years ago. The old gentleman is gone, and I am his scarcely adequate proxy.

Neither too rigid, nor too loose, expresses reflects the subtlety and intelligence needed to apply principles in ever more complex situations.

It reflects the need to be humble and learn from quick experiments – because we don’t really know, and can’t really know what’s going on unless we study the situation.

As a colleague likes to say, “If your first hypothesis isn’t embarrassing, you’re not really trying.”

Good advice in a world where Value is often a vague shadowy thing, and changing with every new technological miracle.

Best regards,

Pascal

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

You Want to Get More Done? Do Less…

By Pascal Dennis

Trust you all are enjoying the arrival of Spring, as we are here in the Great White North.

(For our colleagues in the southern hemisphere, trust you’re enjoying fine autumn weather.)

Thanks for the fine feedback back on my earlier blog – ‘Strategy is About Saying No.”

More on Strategy Deployment today, building on last blog, and highlighting an especially interesting paradox.

How to get more breakthrough activity done?

Do less…

Don’t crowd the Right Hand Side of your strategy A3. (I was taught ‘no more than 5 activities – and even that’s too much!’)

If we have ten countermeasures on the RHS of our paper, do we really understand the strategic problem?

Chances are we’re simply buffering our lack of understanding with volume. (“One of these is sure to have an impact!”)

Fatigue and exhaustion is the risk of course. We have a limited number of hours for improvement activity – often 10% or less of our time.

Surely, we have to use this precious time wisely.

Understanding the ‘less is more’ principle is vital for senior leaders. Remember, everything on your A3 maybe multiplied many times over on baby A3’s.

I’ve been lucky enough to observe great masters of A3 thinking, who are able to distill complex problems down to their essense.

“Here’s our critical gap and root causes. And here are the two things we’re going to do about it…”

‘Says easy, does hard’ – but we have to keep trying.

Best regards,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Images and A3 Thinking

By Pascal Dennis

Seems Getting the Right Things Done has been helpful in teaching A3 Thinking, the "story-telling" approach to strategy.

I'm gratified by all the good people who've told me, "That book really helped us – thanks!"

We're hard-wired to tell stories -- that's what our ancestors on the African savannah did at day's end around the fire.

(They didn't show PowerPoint...)

Like any good story, a good A3 pulls you in...

"And what happens next?" you wonder.

Where do images fit in?

Assignment

Here's an assignment for folks that have gained proficiency developing A3s.

Turn your A3 over – now draw a picture that tells the story.

Don't worry if you "can't draw" – stick figures, circles and arrows are all you need.

Now tell the story to your team through the image.

The better your understanding of the problem, the easier this'll be – and the clearer your image.

We've tried to illustrate Lean Thinking, Tools and Leadership with our Brain Booster pocket cards.

Hope they're helpful.

Cheers,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Scatter - Our Nemesis

LPI Back to Basics Series

By Pascal Dennis

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

Pascal Dennis Bio

Leadership is About Language

By Al Norval

This time of year is always a great time to not only set our strategies for the coming year but to reflect on our organization’s True North. I often find that an organization will do a great job of setting their Mother A3’s for the next year but put much less emphasis on their True North. Problem is that without understanding True North, how can an organization know if the strategies in their Mother A3’s will get them there? Reminds me of the old saying “If you don’t know where you’re going, any path will take you there”

What is True North?

It’s your organizations Philosophical and Strategic Objective. It generally represents a timeline of 3 – 5 years into the future.

Now that we have reviewed and refreshed True North, is that all there is to it? Of course not, we need to make True North come to life. We need to use it to inspire a vision of the future that engages people to help the organization achieve True North. To do that leaders need to have dialogue and conversations about True North.

How do you do that in a large organization?

When discussing why people didn’t understand or seem to have any knowledge of True North, I once had a leader say to me “But I sent out our True North in an email”.

Leaders need to talk to people about True North. To do that, leaders need to be very efficient and effective in their communications. A few simple, well spoken words have more power than hours of endless chatter. Leaders need to boil their message down so people can understand it and “Join in”. A clear, concise message using common everyday words that people can understand wins out every time. No Corporate talk, no jargon, no buzzwords.

Leadership is about language. If we want to communicate an inspiring vision about where the organization is going and why it’s important, we need to be conscious of the words we use and the message we send. If we are, we’ll achieve the biggest gain of all, that is engaging the hearts and minds of the people to help us achieve True North.

Cheers

Images and A3 Thinking

By Pascal Dennis

Seems Getting the Right Things Done has been helpful in teaching A3 Thinking, the "story-telling" approach to strategy.

I'm gratified by all the good people who've told me, "That book really helped us – thanks!"

We're hard-wired to tell stories -- that's what our ancestors on the African savannah did at day's end around the fire.

(They didn't show PowerPoint...)

Like any good story, a good A3 pulls you in...

"And what happens next?" you wonder.

Where do images fit in?

Assignment

Here's an assignment for folks that have gained proficiency developing A3s.

Turn your A3 over – now draw a picture that tells the story.

Don't worry if you "can't draw" – stick figures, circles and arrows are all you need.

Now tell the story to your team through the image.

The better your understanding of the problem, the easier this'll be – and the clearer your image.

We've tried to illustrate Lean Thinking, Tools and Leadership with our Brain Booster pocket cards and apps.

Hope they're helpful.

Cheers,

Pascal