Ambidexterity – the Battles We Have to Win

 Doing nothing is the biggest risk.  21^st C truism

Nowadays, can we rest on our proverbial oars? Can we afford to coast, confident that our voyage & destination are assured? Are we immune to the deadly diseases of our day – Volatility, Black Swans, and Obsolescence?

Our good luck & curse is to be ‘born in interesting times’. Doing nothing is our riskiest option. When the ocean is in furious flux, alertness, manoeuverability and speed are of the essence. And the clearest expression of these qualities is ambidexterity – the ability to both protect the core business with Lean/OpEx, and also, to ignite new Growth using Digital methods.

This is the first of a series of articles in which I describe the transformation blockers I have experienced.  These are the ‘battles’ we have to win whether we are launching a Lean ‘model line’ or an Innovation ‘showcase’:

• Ignorance
• Fear
• Space
• Scatter
• Guesswork

I'll describe them briefly today and set the stage for a deeper discussion in articles to come.

Ignorance

When I launched our advisory service in year 2,000 the Toyota Production System was all the rage. TPS was indeed the ‘machine that changed the world’, and companies around the world were anxious to absorb & apply its secrets. In a marvelous spirit of generosity, Toyota shared its methods and opened its factories to the world. And yet, it took a long time to lift the veil of ignorance.  Indeed, it’s estimated that between 50 and 90% of Lean transformations fail to achieve their goals.

Fear

Senior leader mentorship is a big part of my personal practice these past few decades. I’ve worked with CEOs, COOs, CFOs, CMOs, CROs and with independent & executive Board members. With very few exceptions, they are smart, capable and committed to doing the right thing for their companies, team members and communities.  (To be clear, I carefully screen mentees – no bozos, a-holes, or ‘dark triad’ types.)

Fear is perhaps their most common shared emotion.  They don’t want to let people down; they don’t want to look bad. They want to leave the company is better shape than they found it.

Space

Transformation requires space – physical, temporal, financial, strategic, and cultural space. Such space requires ‘executive air cover’ against the inevitable ‘corporate antibodies’ that will shut down a model line or showcase in overt and covert ways.

Scatter

Scatter means the inability to pair down one’s activities & focus on the critical few.  The Pareto principle is often cited but rarely practiced consistently. There is something in human nature that likes to push buttons repeatedly, to see what happens, I suppose. This debilitating tendency has reached epidemic proportions in our screen-addled worlds.

Guesswork

Guesswork entails jumping to conclusions in the absence of data. Sometimes the deeper cause is HIPPO management (decisions based on the highest paid person’s opinion). Other times, we simply lack the data – very common when we’re trying to ascend the now mythical ‘hockey stick’ curve.

There you have it – the biggest blockers to ambidexterity that I have experienced.  In articles to come, I’ll do a deeper dive on each one.  Hope you join me.

Best wishes,

Pascal Dennis         E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org

In case you missed earlier blogs... please feel free to have another look….

Ambidexterity-in-practice
AI and Innovation, part 2

Failure Modes in Lean Implementation

By Al Norval

I wrote an earlier blog about failure modes in Lean Implementation in which I described two of the most common failure modes. Both dealt with Leadership.

The first was leaders not recognizing Lean as a cultural change within the organization and the second one was Leaders not changing themselves and delegating Lean Implementation to others.

The two are related in that Lean culture is about discovering problems, solving problems and sharing the learning across the organization. Being a cultural change there is a need for Senior Leaders to lead the way by modelling the new behaviours and making it OK for the rest of the organization to change. The culture change then cascades outwards from examples set by the Leadership team.

So what are some of the changes in their behaviours that Leaders need to make?

They need to let the Lean Mental Models guide their behaviour and change their existing routines. Here’s a few to get started:

- Leader as a Teacher

- Go to Gemba

- Make problems visible

By Going to Gemba and seeing for yourself, Leaders put themselves in a position to act as Leader as a Teacher. Be seeing problems and treating them as gold – to be treasured, they set the tone for the organization. People quickly pick up on these new behaviours and the culture begins to change. See a problem, solve a problem; share the learning becomes the mantra of the organization. Improvement occurs at a faster and faster pace. Everyone jumps on board.

Think of the possibilities.

Sadly, this doesn’t occur as often as it should. Leaders do what they have always done. Improvement occurs, changes are made but sustaining is an issue and soon we’re back to the way things always were.

The choice seems obvious. Why is it so difficult?

Strategy Deployment and Chess

By Pascal Dennis

What's the difference between Strategy Deployment and other planning & execution systems?

I get this question all the time.

SD is akin to playing chess. The left side of your strategy A3 summarizes your grasp of the current "chess position".

"I'm attacking on the King side, my opponent on the Queen side. My pawn structure is weak, but I have dangerous bishops, but his King is well protected. In order to checkmate him, I need to..."

As in chess, sports -- or life, grasping the situation requires both your rational mind & your gut feel.

Chess grandmasters do a lot of analysis -- but they also look at their opponent's face & body language, and take in the atmosphere in the tournament hall...

The right side of your paper summarizes your plan based on that deep intuitive understanding.

"I need to slow down his Queen side attack by....and shore up my weak pawns by doing....Then I can break through on the King side by..."

How do we gain that deep understanding? By going to see, running experiments and reflecting deeply on results, by PDCA in other words.

Otherwise, strategy devolves into "wood-pushing" -- same old dull moves & results.

The challenge and joy of Strategy Deployment is in:

1) Clearing the fog so you can see the chessboard,

2) Keeping it clear (with visual management and other techniques) so that you can assess the effect of your  moves,

3) Maintaining focus despite a strategy's long cycle time (1 year plus),

4) Learning from what happens -- and sharing that learning, and

5) Locking in the process so it becomes "no big deal"

Not easy, but if it were, Strategy Deployment wouldn't be a killer app...

Can small companies get Big Company Disease?

Hi ya'll,

My book The Remedy is about a major automotive company with a bad case of BCD. The past few months, several people have asked me whether BCD can affect small companies.

Short answer: of course, people are people. The mental models, cultural & structural factors that encourage BCD often exist in the smallest firms.

Luckily, the countermeasures are easier. More on countermeasures to BCD later.

By Pascal Dennis