Lean Means Don’t Be a Dumb-Ass

By Pascal Dennis

I owe this gem to our friends & colleagues in the great state of Alabama.

Our partners there have a way with words, and a fine appreciation of Lean fundamentals.

Lean is ‘simple’, is it not?

1. Define Purpose clearly
2. Make problems visible at all levels
3. Treat people with respect – team members, customers, suppliers and the community
4. Involve everybody In problem solving

Lean methods like visual management, standardized work, Help Chains and the like are about making problems visible, so we can fix them.

Once the problem is visible, the countermeasure is often obvious, no?

To be sure, some problems (e.g. Strategic, Design, Supply Chain, machine, information flow etc.) are complex and have multiple causes.

Countermeasures reveal themselves only after much reflection and experimentation. Lean methods enable this process. (Without them we often jump to a dumb-ass ‘countermeasure’)

An old Henny Youngman joke goes like this:

Henny, flapping his arms like wings. “I went to my doctor and told him it hurts when I do this!” Henny makes a face. “The doctor told me, don’t do that!”

Lean methods help us understand what ‘that’ is, so we can fix it.

Our challenge is that we often learn dumb-ass things in college and in dysfunctional organizations. Things like, let’s hide our problems, let’s brutalize our team members, let’s try to hoodwink our customers, and the like.

The truth will out.

Don’t be a dumb-ass.

Best regards,

Pascal

PS Andy & Me and the Hospital, describes how not to be a dumb-ass in healthcare.




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

Scatter - Our Nemesis
The Biggest Weakness is Contemporary Business Culture?
What Makes a Great Sensei?
Beware Prizes, Belts & Self-appointed Experts

Ethics Again

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

What is a standard?

A picture of what should be happening.

Why are standards important?

Because they make problems visible, so we can fix them. And because a clear picture of Okay/Not Okay, or of right and wrong, allow us to relax and focus on the task at hand.

Standards free us up and enable creativity.

This is true in every industry from design to manufacturing, to business services, and to health care. And it’s also true with respect to personal behavior.

A recent coaching engagement reinforced these fundamentals truths once again.

The organization is faith-based and tries to live the Great Virtues that inform every great religion. These include Prudence, Temperance, Justice, Courage, Faith, Hope and Charity. (A ‘virtue’ is a standard, no?)

Working with these fine people is enjoyable and motivating. Their fundamental goodness and humility allow you to relax and focus on the work.

Their mission, a genuinely ‘Noble Goal’, motivates you to do your very best. It’s no surprise the organization has been around for a long time.

Young, immature organizations and industries often lack bedrock standards. Unscrupulous leaders think they can ‘get away with stuff’. To often, they mistreat their employees, suppliers and customers.

Those that survive come to realize the centrality of Ethics. People won’t follow swine, at least not for long.

You can see this process being played out in the newer industries of our day – software design, social media, telecommunications, contract electronics and the like.

The best companies in each industry are beginning to discover Ethics and beginning to lay a foundation for long-term success.

I can imagine my above coaching partners asking, “What took you so long?”

Best regards,

Pascal




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

Lean/TPS in the Public Service – Part 3 – Obstacles & Countermeasures?
Lean/TPS in the Public Service – Part 2 – What are the Obstacles?
Is Lean/TPS Possible in the Public Service? – Part 1
Henry & Edsel Ford – the Pride & the Sorrow

Lean Means Don’t Be a Dumb-Ass

By Pascal Dennis

I owe this gem to our friends & colleagues in the great state of Alabama.

Our partners there have a way with words, and a fine appreciation of Lean fundamentals.

Lean is ‘simple’, is it not?

1. Define Purpose clearly
2. Make problems visible at all levels
3. Treat people with respect – team members, customers, suppliers and the community
4. Involve everybody In problem solving

Lean methods like visual management, standardized work, Help Chains and the like are about making problems visible, so we can fix them.

Once the problem is visible, the countermeasure is often obvious, no?

To be sure, some problems (e.g. Strategic, Design, Supply Chain, machine, information flow etc.) are complex and have multiple causes.

Countermeasures reveal themselves only after much reflection and experimentation. Lean methods enable this process. (Without them we often jump to a dumb-ass ‘countermeasure’)

An old Henny Youngman joke goes like this:

Henny, flapping his arms like wings. “I went to my doctor and told him it hurts when I do this!” Henny makes a face. “The doctor told me, don’t do that!”

Lean methods help us understand what ‘that’ is, so we can fix it.

Our challenge is that we often learn dumb-ass things in college and in dysfunctional organizations. Things like, let’s hide our problems, let’s brutalize our team members, let’s try to hoodwink our customers, and the like.

The truth will out.

Don’t be a dumb-ass.

Best regards,

Pascal

PS Andy & Me and the Hospital, describes how not to be a dumb-ass in healthcare.




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

Lean – So ‘Easy’, It’s Hard
“Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail”
Building Quality into the Process
Standardized Work for Knowledge Workers

Lean Means Don’t Be a Dumb-Ass

By Pascal Dennis

I owe this gem to our friends & colleagues in the great state of Alabama.

Our partners there have a way with words, and a fine appreciation of Lean fundamentals.

Lean is ‘simple’, is it not?

1. Define Purpose clearly
2. Make problems visible at all levels
3. Treat people with respect – team members, customers, suppliers and the community
4. Involve everybody In problem solving

Lean methods like visual management, standardized work, Help Chains and the like are about making problems visible, so we can fix them.

Once the problem is visible, the countermeasure is often obvious, no?

To be sure, some problems (e.g. Strategic, Design, Supply Chain, machine, information flow etc.) are complex and have multiple causes.

Countermeasures reveal themselves only after much reflection and experimentation. Lean methods enable this process. (Without them we often jump to a dumb-ass ‘countermeasure’)

An old Henny Youngman joke goes like this:

Henny, flapping his arms like wings. “I went to my doctor and told him it hurts when I do this!” Henny makes a face. “The doctor told me, don’t do that!”

Lean methods help us understand what ‘that’ is, so we can fix it.

Our challenge is that we often learn dumb-ass things in college and in dysfunctional organizations. Things like, let’s hide our problems, let’s brutalize our team members, let’s try to hoodwink our customers, and the like.

The truth will out.

Don’t be a dumb-ass.

Best regards,

Pascal

PS Andy & Me and the Hospital, my latest, describes how not to be a dumb-ass in healthcare.

Get a copy today & tell me what you think!

Pascal Dennis Bio

Agriculture - The Next Frontier?

By Pascal Dennis

The past several years the Lean Pathways team and I have been lucky enough to work in agriculture.

Good, smart, well-trained people, an instinctive grasp of the PDCA cycle, and a solid ethical foundation.

The soil, so to speak, is fertile indeed. (And the gemba is often glorious.)

We should tip our hats to farmers & agricultural industry. The past few decades, they've led a technological revolution.

Yields have increased exponentially through better crop varietals and farming methods.

Despite the dire warnings of the 'doomsters', food is more plentiful than ever.

(Just one example: India, plagued by famine when I was a kid, is now a net exporter of grain.)

Fresh fruit & vegetables are available year-round at reasonable prices. (My family has fresh berries every morning.)

We've seen marvelous kaizen in farming technology. Now we have to extend Lean thinking into farming operations.

Value/Waste consciousness, visual management, standardized work, and other Lean fundamentals, have the potential to extend & deepen farming's transformation.

Should be a great ride - GIDDY-UP!

Best regards,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Reflections on Physicians’ NEJM Rant

By Pascal Dennis

Jan 14 issue of NEJM included an interesting Opinion Page piece by Drs Hartzband and Groopman

With all due respect, the good doctors voice opinions that were canards a century ago, and are outright howlers today.

Here are just a few:

• Standardization does not apply in medicine


• People are not cars


• Lean means stop-watching the patient-physician interaction

The authors continually equate Taylorism with Toyota, despite the obvious and well-documented differences in philosophy and practice.

NEJM readers and many of our colleagues, notably Mark Graban, have provided a cogent point by point rebuttal

I’m struck by the authors’ degree of frustration and sense of grievance.

The medical profession is in the midst of epochal change. Used to be most doctors were self-employed. Now most work for large organizations and the trend will only accelerate.

Are physicians comfortable working in teams, thinking laterally, making problems visible, and having their thinking regularly challenged by uppity nurses, patients and others? Perhaps not.

Physicians are very indeed at good scientific thinking and structured problem solving. In my experience, they also quickly absorb other Lean fundamentals – provided we translate them together and prove they work.

Fair enough, no?

So to Drs Hartzband and Groopman, with great respect, please reflect on the all feedback you’ve received.

Lean is not your enemy – quite the contrary.

Best regards,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Ethics Again

By Pascal Dennis

What is a standard?

A picture of what should be happening.

Why are standards important?

Because they make problems visible, so we can fix them. And because a clear picture of Okay/Not Okay, or of right and wrong, allow us to relax and focus on the task at hand.

Standards free us up and enable creativity.

This is true in every industry from design to manufacturing, to business services, and to health care. And it’s also true with respect to personal behavior.

A recent coaching engagement reinforced these fundamentals truths once again.

The organization is faith-based and tries to live the Great Virtues that inform every great religion. These include Prudence, Temperance, Justice, Courage, Faith, Hope and Charity. (A ‘virtue’ is a standard, no?)

Working with these fine people is enjoyable and motivating. Their fundamental goodness and humility allow you to relax and focus on the work.

Their mission, a genuinely ‘Noble Goal’, motivates you to do your very best. It’s no surprise the organization has been around for a long time.

Young, immature organizations and industries often lack bedrock standards. Unscrupulous leaders think they can ‘get away with stuff’. To often, they mistreat their employees, suppliers and customers.

Those that survive come to realize the centrality of Ethics. People won’t follow swine, at least not for long.

You can see this process being played out in the newer industries of our day – software design, social media, telecommunications, contract electronics and the like.

The best companies in each industry are beginning to discover Ethics and beginning to lay a foundation for long-term success.

I can imagine my above coaching partners asking, “What took you so long?”

Best regards,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Lean Fundamentals & Strategy Deployment

By Pascal Dennis

Strategy Deployment makes problems visible.

The core process steps are:

1. Develop the Plan
2. Deploy the Plan
3. Monitor the Plan
4. Improve the system

Each step entails a deep, shared understanding of Lean fundamentals.



To develop a good Plan, for example, we need to Go See and grasp the situation thereby.

But this is difficult if our visual management and information flow are poor.

It'll be doubly hard if our managers hide problems because of dysfunctional mental models.

Similarly, improving the system requires a solid understanding of Practical Problem Solving and root cause analysis.

Sustaining improvements entails locking in improvements with 5 S, standardized work.

Weak fundamentals are perhaps the most common failure Strategy Deployment failure mode.

In summary, please supplement your Strategy Deployment efforts with a broad development of Lean skills - for front line team members, as well as senior leaders.

And remember, since Lean is all too clear, it takes time to grasp.

Best regards,

Pascal

Lean is a Growth Strategy, Part 2

By Pascal Dennis

Last time I wrote about the three loops (Design, Make, Sell) and of the need to move Lean efforts upstream & downstream into the Design & Sell loops.

Today I'd like to expand on these ideas.

It makes sense to deploy Lean in the Make loop first, because value & waste are more visible there.

Defect waste in a Weld shop, for instance, means a pile of scrap which everybody can see.

(Hence, the Lean adage "make it ugly". In other words, make the problem painfully obvious.)

Defects in a Design process, by contrast, are often invisible.

A good CAD drawing looks the same as bad one.

Design WIP comprises magnetic signals on hard drives, and is also invisible.

The same applies in Sell loop processes. (A good, level-loaded schedule looks the same as bad one -- a matrix on a spreadsheet.)

Once we've locked in Lean fundamentals in the Make loop, we can move upstream & downstream.

To succeed there, we have to

1. Zoom out to see the entire chessboard, and
2. Understand the very different mental models in Sales, Marketing, Design and so on.

Let's not underestimate the challenge these pose!

(Translating Lean fundamentals for a Chief Marketing, Information, or Medical Officer is a fine test.)

Toyota is the leader with respect to Lean in the Design loop. How are they doing in the Sell loop?

Here's one data point.

Our family drives both Lexus and Toyota models so we're able to compare each dealership's capability & understanding.

Observations:

• Lexus dealerships have a deeper understanding & capability than Toyota dealerships
• Neither is close to that of a Toyota factory

So, in North America at least, even mighty Toyota has work to do in the Sell loop.

"Getting lean" is indeed an evolutionary process.

The bar keeps getting higher, as it should.

In summary, Lean is about growth. And to grow you have to deploy Lean upstream & downstream of the factory.

Best regards,

Pascal

Lean Brain Boosters - Making the Invisible, Visible

By Pascal Dennis

Two years ago my colleague, Al Norval, and I were wresting with a tough question.

How do you make Lean principles visible?

Lean thinking, tools & leadership are often paradoxical & counter-intuitive.

Moreover, often they contravene accepted 'wisdom', at least as defined in our business & professional schools.

I've always loved doodling and my recently-published book The Remedy -- Bringing Lean Out of the Factory, which was full of them.

We had a brainwave.

Why not create doodles that expressed Lean fundamentals in a light-hearted, engaging way?

We started with a suite of 12 entitled Brain Boosters - Lean Thinking.

Ya'll seemed to like them, so we followed up with two more suites: Lean Tools and Lean Leadership.

We've been gratified by the response & believe Brain Boosters are a fine addition to the Kaizen toolkit.

Here's how people have been using them:

• Mental Models Self-Assessment
• For each card, have team members individually score the organization 
• 10 = Lean Thinking; 0 = Conventional Thinking
• Plot the results. What do they tell you?
• Pick a few “hot spots” & make an improvement plan
• Reassess again at year-end
• Theme of the Day
• At team huddles, give a card to a team member.
• Ask her to find examples of both Lean & Conventional Thinking & report back at shift-end. Any learning points?
• Rotate on a set cadence so everybody gets a chance
• Lean Training, Kaizen Workshops, Gemba Walks
• Pass out Brain Boosters at training & kaizen sessions.
• Carry them during gemba walks & use to reinforce the basics

From time to time people email us with other innovative uses.

(One company obtained the rights to the images & has turned them into posters, T-shirts, mouse pads and other training aids!)

We'd love to hear more of your stories.

Thanks, as always,

Pascal