Content Follows Form or Acting Your Way to New Thinking

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

By walking, I found out where I was going
Irving Layton

Acting your way to new thinking is easier than the other way round. (Tip of the hat to my colleague Mike Rother.)

That’s why Politeness is called the door to the Great Virtues – (another tip of the hat, this time to Andre Comte-Sponville.)

Politeness is pure form. Our children don’t understand why they have to behave in a certain way. But the more they do it, the more they come to understand Gentleness, Humility, Compassion and other great virtues.

Content follows form. May I suggest that form helps to create content? The imitation of virtue over time becomes the real thing.

What’s this got to do with Lean management? Quite a bit.

Lean excellence rests on a set of mental models or mindsets, which I’ve described in some detail (Getting the Right Things Done). These include:

• Leaders are teachers


• Go see for yourself


• Make problems visible


• Engage everybody in improvement work…

What’s the best way to change one’s behavior? Why, through a set of routines – even if you don’t fully understand why you’re doing them.

Understanding will come: “Holy cow, I had no idea what was actually happening. If I hadn’t gone to see for myself, I’d have made a disastrous mistake!”

Or, “Good thing we committed to involving the front line in planning our launch, and giving them the authority to stop and fix problems. It’s our best launch ever!”

Or, “I thought standardized work would hinder my creativity. But it’s freeing me up. I now have time to reflect, coach and make strategy!”

In our old Toyota plant, I often didn’t understand why we did certain things – daily stand-up meetings, scheduled & purposeful gemba walks, PDCA cycles around all significant activities and the like.

But I did all these things because that’s what you did in a Toyota factory, and because I intuited a deeper, richer pattern, a chessboard grander than any I’d imagine before.

By walking I found out where I was going.

Best regards,

Pascal



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

Value & Waste at the Imperial Grill
Value in an Age of Endless Innovation
The Power of One Page
Strategy in a Time of Explosive Change

Content Follows Form or Acting Your Way to New Thinking

By Pascal Dennis

By walking, I found out where I was going
Irving Layton

Acting your way to new thinking is easier than the other way round. (Tip of the hat to my colleague Mike Rother.)

That’s why Politeness is called the door to the Great Virtues – (another tip of the hat, this time to Andre Comte-Sponville.)

Politeness is pure form. Our children don’t understand why they have to behave in a certain way. But the more they do it, the more they come to understand Gentleness, Humility, Compassion and other great virtues.

Content follows form. May I suggest that form helps to create content? The imitation of virtue over time becomes the real thing.

What’s this got to do with Lean management? Quite a bit.

Lean excellence rests on a set of mental models or mindsets, which I’ve described in some detail (Getting the Right Things Done). These include:

• Leaders are teachers


• Go see for yourself


• Make problems visible


• Engage everybody in improvement work…

What’s the best way to change one’s behavior? Why, through a set of routines – even if you don’t fully understand why you’re doing them.

Understanding will come: “Holy cow, I had no idea what was actually happening. If I hadn’t gone to see for myself, I’d have made a disastrous mistake!”

Or, “Good thing we committed to involving the front line in planning our launch, and giving them the authority to stop and fix problems. It’s our best launch ever!”

Or, “I thought standardized work would hinder my creativity. But it’s freeing me up. I now have time to reflect, coach and make strategy!”

In our old Toyota plant, I often didn’t understand why we did certain things – daily stand-up meetings, scheduled & purposeful gemba walks, PDCA cycles around all significant activities and the like.

But I did all these things because that’s what you did in a Toyota factory, and because I intuited a deeper, richer pattern, a chessboard grander than any I’d imagine before.

By walking I found out where I was going.

Best regards,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Lean Pathways Problem Solving Kata

By Pascal Dennis

My friend and colleague, Mike Rother, has done us a fine service.

His book, Toyota Kata, shines a light on Toyota-style problem solving, and comprises five questions:

1. What is your current condition?
2. What is the target condition?
3. What are the obstacles?
4. What experiments will you run next?
5. Where can we go see the results?

All fundamentally sound & helpful.

Our Lean Pathways kata goes like this:

1. Do I have a problem?
2. Do I know the cause?
3. Have I confirmed cause & effect?
4. Have I confirmed the countermeasure?

(For a deep dive the interested reader is referred The Remedy)

How do the two katas related?

In fact, they express the same underlying algorithm and thinking, and are synergistic.

Mike's kata is very helpful in getting people started, and getting them necessary problem solving "reps".

Toyota Kata also links problem solving to brain physiology and learning in a very interesting way.

Our kata explicitly links to problem to True North and Strategy Deployment, and highlights important technical aspects, such as:

• Three types of cause -- Point of Cause, Direct and Root Cause
• Nature of experiments to prove cause & effect
• Role of STW, visual management & Jidoka in confirming countermeasures

In summary, as Hemingway once observed, "It's all true..."

Pascal