If It’s Not Simple, It's BS

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, "any scientist who can't explain to an eight-year-old what he's doing is a charlatan." This principle is especially true in strategy, perhaps our most human management activity.

Artificial Intelligence & Robotics can eventually handle many jobs, but can they make & deploy strategy? Can they motivate a team to be better than it's parts, to rise together in some great endeavor?

"How will you win? What is the logic?" I`m a proverbial broken record in strategy sessions. It's remarkable how difficult we find these questions. We've been taught that complexity is profound. In fact, it's a crude state. Simplicity, by contrast, marks the end of a process of refining.

The late great physicist, Richard Feynman looked and talked like a New York City cabbie. His Caltech freshmen lectures in Physics, and all his books are classics for their simplicity & humor.

How did Feynman achieve that level of clarity? Through slow, patient reflection, by turning a problem over and over in his mind until a 'simple' explanation suggested itself.

And that's where the shoe pinches in our time-starved era. Who has time to turn a problem over and over in their mind these days? Who has the time, as Einstein did, to imagine himself riding a light beam - so as to makes sense of time and gravity and light?

Which invokes the second great law of strategy: less is more.

Knowing we'll be time-starved, please let's not over-fill our strategy plates, like teenagers at a buffet. "First we'll do this, then this and this and that over there. Oh, and then we'll..."

One of the many benefits of Lean Start-up and Design Thinking is that they force you to simplify and clarify your offering. We test our 'Minimum Viable Product', on the way to our 'Minimum Viable Company'.

Similarly, in strategy, we want to deploy our 'minimum viable plan', watching carefully what happens, and ever ready to adjust to the inevitable 'known, and unknown, unknowns' that confront us.

Breakthrough entails walking up the stairs in the fog, continually making & easy quick experiments, most of them yielding a negative result.

Best wishes,

Pascal

Lean Laughs

Lean Laughs

Lean & Business Results

By Al Norval

“We don’t do Lean for Business Results we do it to build capability”.

How many times have you heard that? I hear it a lot. And unfortunately the people who say it have got things twisted around a bit. Of course we implement Lean to achieve improved business results. It’s the way we achieve them that’s different.

The primary role of leaders is to achieve business results. If leaders don’t achieve business results, they won’t be leaders for very long. So we need to achieve results but we need to do it in a way that engages all our people in solving problems. For them to do that we need to build their capability. We need to build their capability to solve problems and we need to build their technical and social skills as well. The higher the capability of our people, the more problems they can solve. The more problems they solve, the better our business results. Therefore, the second role of leaders is to build the capability of the people in their organization.

Lastly, we need to achieve results and build capability in a way that’s consistent with the values of the organization. Showing respect for our people and challenging them to solve problems that stretch their capability. This way they are always growing and learning.

The problems our people work on need to drive improvement for the Customer, for the Employee and for the Organization.

When we look at business results, we’re not just looking at a narrow view of the organization financials; rather we need to take a broader view that encompasses all three areas.

Here’s an example of what I mean by business results:

1. Safety
   
2. Quality
   
3. Delivery
   
4. Cost
   
5. Morale
   

We need to engage people to solve problems and remove waste to drive improvement for the Customer, the Employee and the Organization. By doing this our business results get better.

So Lean is about business results and it’s about developing capability in people to solve problems to help achieve them.

Cheers

Lean Laughs

Lean Laughs

Visual Management - Drawing Helps Us Learn

By Pascal Dennis

I've been a scribbler for many years.

My journals are full of doodles, drawings, chicken scratch.

Now I know why -- it helps me learn.

Check out Science, August 26, 2011, Volume 233.

Ainsworth et al, in a paper called "Drawing to Learn Science" describe what happens when you draw.

Check out their Youtube video too.

Wonderful, no?

Wish I'd learned science this way...

Makes me think of Darwin, Leeuwenhoek and other greats.

Drawing things out in their notebooks, the messiness of the pages mirroring the messiness of learning & discovery...

So...get drawing ya'll!

Cheers,

Pascal

Visual Management -- Reverse Magic

By Pascal Dennis

Visual management infuses every element of the Lean Business System.

In a sense, we're doing "reverse magic".

David Copperfield makes elephants disappear.

We need to make the (information) elephant -- appear!

"Now you DON'T see it -- now you DO!"

Presto!

Many obstacles in most organizations -- fear, need for power & control, lack of knowledge etc.

But we can't move forward without it -- especially once you move outside the factory.

My book The Remedy is about applying this reverse magic in Sales, Marketing, Design, Engineering, Retail...

Cheers,

Pascal

Lean Laughs

Reflections on 9-11

By Pascal Dennis

A decade ago we watched in horror as fanatics murdered innocent people.

What did they hope to achieve?

An immediate goal, evidently (which marks them as pathetic), was carnal delight in the afterlife.

A broader goal appears to have been the destruction of pluralism -- the free interplay of people, ideas, goods and services.

Commerce, if you will, between cultures, religions, ages, genders, with only minimal, common-sense restrictions.

The fanatics sought to isolate & "purify". (We've heard that story before, no?)

In the Lean Business System, this commerce is called yokoten -- direct, experiential sharing and learning.

Commerce/Yokoten is perhaps our species most distinguishing trait.

Does any other species exchange and build off one another's ideas?

Does any other species record and share its learning across generations?

In our magical age, we are able in a matter of moments, to download the collected wisdom of the ages.

My Kindle library includes free downloads of Epictetus, Seneca, Avicenna,  Maimonides, Rumi, Gracian, Confucius and other sages.

Another of humanity's distinguishing traits is compassion -- the desire to help others in need.

A decade ago, we saw compassion in abundance, did we not?

Are not yokoten and compassion linked?

When we share, learn, break bread with one another, do we not also learn compassion?

Not along ago, the Chinese and Japanese were perceived to be the implacable enemies of America and the west.

After decades of mutual sharing and learning, former adversaries have become friends, colleagues and partners.

We have gotten to know each other & realize we're not that different, so why not be friends?

Yokoten (and compassion) which will continue to grow as we become more interconnected.

And that's why, after a gut-wrenching decade, I believe we are going to be okay.

Best,

Pascal

Lean and the Excellence Authors

By Pascal Dennis,

Over the past two decades the "Excellence" authors, Jim Collins, Peter Senge et al have produced a series of helpful books (Good to Great, The Fifth Discipline and others).

How do these relate to the Lean movement?

The Excellence authors basically got it right in my view. Their work is congruent with Lean -- (I continue to refer to them.)

But the "Excellence" books are (necessarily) academic.

The Lean movement has brought these ideas into the messy world of practice -- a great and continuing contribution.

Imagine a messy changeover kaizen in an Indiana stamping plant. The team stands glaring at you with their arms crossed.

Can we cut changeover time in half? Can we teach these jokers how to sustain & make further improvements?

(Will they kill us?)

Our revered and scary gemba -- where the proverbial rubber hits the road...

That's why I write business novels.

Hopefully, The Remedy, and its prequel, Andy & Me, in some small way give people a sense of what transformation looks and feels like.

Customer Focussed Innovation

By Al Norval,

Ever notice how many companies push products out to customers rather than first understanding what Customers really find value adding and then designing products to fill that need?

Why is it that organizations do that?

It starts with not taking time to understand the Customer and their needs. Every product design is a countermeasure to a Customer problem. Before we can design the product we need to have a deep understanding of their problems. Not just the things that people will tell you in focus group feedback sessions but the deep, unspoken, unarticulated needs they have, many of which they don’t even realize they have. To do this we need to study our Customers, live in their world, experience their problems through their eyes. This allows us to truly Grasp the Situation and start the problem solving process following the PDCA cycle. It allows us to define the problem in the Customers terms. Only then will we have the insight to design products and services that will provide value to our customers.

But knowing this, why is it that many companies still don’t do it?
As I’ve reflected on this, I’ve come up with a few reasons. It takes time and resources to study our Customers both of which are in short supply when designers are pushed into meeting shorter launch time lines and shrinking budgets. It’s often easier to assume we know what’s best for the Customer. This is a type of Hubris or Big Company Disease both of which we’ve written about in previous blogs.

Another reason is we get attached to one particular concept and keep pushing it through to launch even though feedback and data say we shouldn’t. By the time we realize the product is flawed it’s too late since we have nothing else. Again Hubris and arrogance lead to poor product acceptance in the marketplace.

Interestingly enough, the root cause in both cases is a product innovation process that is full of waste.

True Lean Innovation is about taking the waste out of the Design process and carrying several alternatives deep into the process to allow designers time to explore alternatives until the last possible moment. This way we can launch products that deliver more value to customers. Having a process like this allows creativity to flourish since we are not forced to pick the one best idea very early on in the process.

In another blog, we’ll talk more about how to foster creativity as part of our design process and how to look at many alternatives and slowly converge on a solution. But none of this is possible without first and foremost taking the time to truly understand what drives the value proposition for your Customers.

Safety -- Our Window on the Process

By Pascal Dennis,

Why do leading organizations like Alcoa, Dupont, Toyota and others put safety first?

Aren't private organizations about maximizing shareholder value?

Isn't profitability number one? Without it, after all, you're soon out of business, no?

The great Paul O'Neill, former CEO of Alcoa and Secretary-Treasurer coined the title of this blog.

If we can manage our processes such that nobody gets hurt -- quality, delivery, cost & profitability will surely follow.

Safe workplaces are invariable productive. They have standardized work, visual management, good ergonomics, flow and pull.

People understand their jobs, what can go wrong, how to avoid it -- and how to excel.

A health care colleague told me that industry CEOs believe they can delegate patient safety.

He also said that patient safety is not usually in the top 3 priorities of a typical health care CEO.

If so, I believe we have a root cause of the health care catastrophe.

The Remedy Wins the Shingo Prize

By Pascal Dennis,

The good people at Shingo Prize have seen fit to give The Remedy the nod.

They do important work & I'm humbled and deeply obliged for all their efforts.

It's an odd feeling. After finishing a book, I often forget I what I wrote.

(Maybe because the process is so intense & exhausting -- you need a break from the damned thing...)

"That's the other Pascal," I joke. "I'm his idiot brother."

Still, it's a footprint in time, a nod, a tip of the hat -- a sign that somebody finds your stuff helpful.

For that I am deeply grateful.

Pascal

P.S. BTW ya'll, be sure to attend next year's International Shingo Prize Conference, May 7 - 10 in Atlanta (http://www.shingoprize.com/).


I'll be there for sure!

Lean Laughs



Visual Management in New Product Development

By Pascal Dennis,

Lean thinking is moving out of the factory -- downstream into sales, logistics and order fulfillment, and upstream into finance, marketing and New Product Development (NPD).

We're often asked, how do you apply the fundamentals in these areas?

For example, how might you apply visual management in NPD?

A good first step is to decide, What do we need to know to run our business?

Here are typical answers:

a) What's the project loading at each point (P0, P1, P2) in our development pipeline?

b) What are min/max levels and our status at each point?

c) What are the biggest obstacles in each project?

d) Do we have countermeasure plans? What's their status?

e) What are broader system issues? Do we have countermeasure plans? Status?

Now we're ready to engage our teams in developing visual tools that will make the invisible, visible.

In our consulting work we've used funnels, race tracks, football fields, as well as, team boards and the like.

Visual management is also invaluable in NPD physical plants (e.g. Test Labs), and is similar to what you might find in a factory.

For example:

a) What's this week's work?

b) Are we ahead or behind?

c) What are our biggest obstacles? Countermeasure plans & status?

d) How versatile are our people?

e) What's the loading on our machines? Constraints?

The key, again, is to make the invisible, visible.

For more on Lean thinking outside the factory, please check out The Remedy.

Cheers,

Pascal

BE CAREFUL WHEN GOING TO GEMBA

I read a recent blog by Mark Graban in his Lean Blog http://www.leanblog.org/ that I found intriguing and wanted to pass it on to you.

The basic theme is – there is more to “Go to Gemba” than just showing up. We hear a lot about the need to “Go To Gemba” but if we just go and hang around then we go back to management by walking around and that’s not what we want. Rather we want to “Go to Gemba” with a purpose. We need to have a clear understanding of what we are trying to do. If not, we face the problems Mark Graban describes in a recent blog:

Lean Thinkers might wonder “what is bad about going to the Gemba?” Well, going to the Gemba could be a bad idea and could make things worse if leaders exhibit the wrong kind of behaviours. This old urban legend helps articulate that in a cheeky way:

Thanks to the site Snopes.com, a site that debunks (or verifies) urban legends and myths, here is one version of a classic factory story:
[Braude, 1965]

The proprietor of a shop was once passing during the packing room and noticed a boy lounging towards a field and whistling cheerfully. Thinking of all his cash being wasted on this sort of exertions, the corporation requested gruffly, “How much do you get a week?” “Ten dollars,” the boy spoke back. “Here’s your pay for the week,” stated the person. “Now get out!” On his as far back as the administrative center, the shop proprietor bumped into the foreman and requested him, “When did we hire that boy, and who is responsible for hiring him?”  “We never hired him,” the foreman stated. “He was just delivering a package from another firm.”

The story is a silly one, but it illustrates one possible failure mode involved with going to the Gemba – jumping to conclusions and making on-the-spot top-down decisions out of anger. The words of Toyota Chairman Fujio Cho, “Go see, ask why, show respect” are now famous as basic lean principles.

Thanks to Mark for this story which is a great example of “Go to Gemba” with no clear purpose where we only do the first of the three parts of “Go to Gemba” which is “Go See”.  What we should be doing is all three parts so that we “Go See” but more importantly “Ask Why” based on what we have observed so that we fully understand what is actually happening and finally do so with the intent of building the capability of our teams  and in doing so “Show Respect” for them. Asking questions is a Socratic way of building Team Member capability by getting them to think deeply about the situation and allows Leadership to introduce and reinforce problem solving based on their observations.

So the purpose of “Go to Gemba” is to develop a deep understanding of what is happening and to use that understanding to deepen Team Members understanding and so the Team Members ability to use that understanding to solve problems. Ultimately, we develop many problem solvers in the organization. Without this clear purpose, Leadership can turn “Go to Gemba” into a very different experience from its initial intent.

Cheers,
Al Norval

Leadership and a Lean Transformation

By Al Norval,

As I work with various organizations on their Lean transformation, it amazes me how many organizations start out believing that Lean is all about implementing a set of tools. They believe that if we only implement these tools, then we’ll be Lean. Often times, I see this develop into implementation lists and audits which check to see how well the tools have been implemented. Sometimes companies carry this one step forward to sending out “Corporate Auditors” with the goal of having a standard set of people to calibrate the audits so the audit scores are valid.

What these organizations miss is that only 10% of Lean is about the tools. The remaining 90% is about people and culture. It’s about engaging people at all levels of the organization to solve problems so that every day we get a little bit better and drive more value to our Customers.



What does this have to do with Leaders?

Tools can be managed but people need Leadership if they are going to change their behaviours and truly start to change the culture.

Leaders need to exhibit these new behaviours. This follows the old adage “What you do is what you get.” What Leaders do is amplified many times over in the organization. Small changes in Leadership behaviour can have an enormous impact on changes in Team Member behaviour in the Value Stream.

But how do Leaders know how to behave in a Lean world?

Their behaviour needs to be based on Lean Leadership Thinking which is based on Lean Mental Models. There are six primary Lean Mental Models:

- Leader as a Sensei

- Go to Gemba to see for yourself

- Problems are gold, make them visible

- Don’t pass junk down the Value Stream

- Simple, visual standards for all important things

- Everyone solves problems using simple methods

As Leaders begin to change their behaviours based on these Mental Models, the rest of the organization picks up on it and more and more people become engaged in solving problems to root cause rather developing work arounds. Business results start to accelerate and Lean becomes locked into the culture of the organization.

For more on Lean Leadership and Lean Mental Models, please see Lean Thinking and Lean Leadership Brain Boosters at www.leansystems.org

Cheerfulness & Kaizen Spirit

By Pascal Dennis,

In an earlier post on kaizen spirit has generated fine comments.

I'd like to expound on the related concept: cheerfulness.

I'm not referring to the Pollyanna variety -- shallow, rootless, Ill-informed by life...

I mean the real deal: deeply rooted cheerfulness, fully informed of life's ups and downs -- and showing a sunny smile to life regardless.

Cheerfulness is a statement:

"Yes, life is tough. There are plenty of reasons to be depressed. But here I am -- in spite of everything."

In spite of everything -- I'd suggest this humble phrase summarizes the spirit of kaizen.

We ain't got much money, we're in an old plant, in a mature industry -- but we're making things a little better every day...

I see that same spirit now in Japan; have no doubt they'll meet their troubles with resolve -- and cheerfulness.

I remember an old, esteemed aikido sensei (in my martial arts days).

"You must have a big heart, Pascal-san."

Then he cupped his hands on his chest -- an expanding heart.

(See chapter 13 of Andy & Me )

I've never forgotten the lesson.

The Biggest Weakness is Contemporary Business Culture?

By Pascal Dennis,

Last time I talked about Big Heart.

In my view, the biggest weakness in contemporary business culture is just that -- an absence of heart.

McKinsey-Gupta scandal exemplifies it -- "achievatrons" at the trough, gorging themselves at the expense of the public.

I wouldn't go as far Barry Ritholtz.  But I'd agree with CNBC -- it could be bigger than Madoff.

If Gupta did tip off his hedge fund manager friend, it was something darker than greed. Was it sociopathic narcissism?

Did Gupta, like Madoff, believe he was somehow above the law, immune to the rules that govern the rest of us?

By contrast, the sensei who taught me about big heart spent hours with me and my chums -- at no cost.

He had dedicated his life to teaching Aikido -- the "way of harmony of the spirit".

And Big Heart was its foundation.

For more, please feel free to read chapter 13 of Andy & Me, or its sequel, The Remedy.