The Difference Between Protecting Your Core Business & Igniting New Growth

Pascal Dennis, co-author of Harnessing Digital Disruption

The future belongs to the ambidextrous – those who can both protect the core business with OpEx/Lean AND ignite new growth using the magic of Silicon Valley & Singapore. Our biggest challenge is understanding the very different mindset behind OpEx/Lean & Innovation. Our biggest challenge: OpEx/Lean and Innovation live in very different worlds first articulated by Aristotle 2,500 years ago.

OpEx/Lean Lives in the World of Necessity

This is the world of things that cannot be other than they are. Think Physics, Chemistry and Math; think PDCA, process management, and the Theory of Constraints. The Pareto principle – 80% of the problem is caused by 20% of the causes – is a cornerstone of this world. I absorbed this iron principle as a young Toyota manager. Up until then, like all young managers, I was prone to ‘blah blah blah’. Today I’m lucky enough to advise Boards & C-suites and guess what? The Pareto principle remains fundamental in Board decision-making.

Innovation Lives in the World of Contingency

This is the world of things than can be other than they are. Think fashion, taste, public opinion and culture. Igniting new Growth entails answering questions like:

• Who is the customer?
• What does the customer value?
• Why do they buy, or not buy, from us?

After a few Innovation sprints I realized I was ‘no longer in Kansas’. The principles of OpEx/Lean I’d worked so hard to internalize could be helpful, but were not sufficient, by a long shot! Sometimes they applied – and sometimes not! For example, customers would confidently tell us what they valued – and then ignore it when presented with our offering. And then they’d change their mind again.

Standards & analysis were helpful, for example, in the clever crafting of Discovery interview scripts (‘What hypothesis are we testing?’), and astute qualitative & quantitative analysis. But intuition and gut feel played a far bigger role than in the world of Necessity.

Pareto charts often went out the door. We would identify what we believed were the key Satisfiers and build a kick-ass offering. And then realize our approach was a dead-end because our competitors had done exactly the same as we had done.

Igniting new Growth means finding the proverbial ‘Blue Ocean’ – the place where nobody else if fishing. My Innovation mentor & co-author, Laurent Simon, taught me the magic of Discovery & Validation Interviews through which, with practice, I learned to uncover the hidden pains & needs that might truly delight the customer. These are often so obscure that not even the customer knows them!

For example, one of our projects entailed creating value in the Wealth Management division of a major bank in east Asia. Our Discovery & Validation interviews uncovered a profound, yet unspoken need of customers – anxiety about their elderly parents. We turned it into a kick-ass offering that opened up our ‘Blue Ocean’.

And this is why ambidexterity is such a challenge: Board & C-suite members have to recognize Aristotle’s two worlds and apply the methods & mental models that suit the situation. It took me a decade to understand how to protect the core business with OpEx/Lean. It has taken me another decade to understand the topsy-turvy world of Contingency and Innovation.

It’s worth it for the organization and the individual. In the age of AI, leadership, flexibility and creativity will be the key to sustained prosperity. Understanding how to navigate the worlds of Necessity and Contingency, and how to engage a high performing team (of both human & AI agents) will be a superpower.

Best wishes,

Pascal Dennis

E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org




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

The Control Tower – Learning to See What Is
The Hardest Thing - Seeing What Is
Fundamentals of OpEx/Lean, Part 2
Fundamentals of OpEx/Lean, Part 1

The Hardest Thing - Seeing What Is

Pascal Dennis, co-author of Harnessing Digital Disruption

See what is - Pema Chodron

I’ve spent the past few decades working with Boards & C-suites around the world - smart, successful people, and for the most part dedicated to the common good. I’ve tried to help people understand a) how to protect the core business using the powerful methods of OpEx/Lean, and b) how to ignite new growth using the methods of Silicon Valley & Singapore. Such ‘ambidexterity’ is the essential to sustained prosperity.

What’s the biggest challenge? How to see what is actually happening (WAH)? Way back when I was a fledgling Toyota manager & engineer, WAH was a central theme. Our splendid mentors (senseis) drew circles on the shop floor and asked us to stand there, observing a process closely. After an hour or so, they’d ask, ‘What do you see?’

With practice, I learned to see waste, variation and strain (Muda, Muri and Mura, the ‘3M’s’). Then our senseis would ask what should be happening (WSBH)? which opened up the worlds of flow, ergonomics and process management. I learned an invaluable lesson: If you can define WAH and WSBH you have a good understanding of the problem. You can start think about countermeasures to bridge the gap. In strategy, we call this the ‘winning logic’, which informs all our activities. But it all begins with Pema Chodron’s simple request, quoted above.

Why is it so hard to see what is? Sages throughout history have pondered this question. A few years back, in INSEAD’s splendid Corporate Governance program, we learned about the hidden biases (blind spots) that can afflict Boards. These include the Anchoring, Sunk Cost, Status Quo & other traps that can lead to decision-making disasters. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky helped to explain our blind spots in their classic book Thinking, Fast & Slow. Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational is another fine resource.

What to do? Visual management is perhaps our greatest enabler. The ingenuity of the front line in making WAH visible is inexhaustible, and a reason why ‘Total Involvement’ is a cornerstone of OpEx/Lean.

A second enabler is humility - accepting that we are fallible creatures whose grasp on reality is imperfect. A third enabler is diversity of training & experience - the broader a team’s composition, the deeper is our grasp of WAH. A fourth enabler is going to see for yourself. Do not trust the report, chart, voice or video message. Go see it, sense it, hear it, touch it…Things are almost always different than you expected.

My core metaphor here is the Electromagnetic Spectrum, which encompasses radio waves, microwaves, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays. Visible Light (i.e. visible to humans) is but a narrow part of the spectrum (~ 400 to 700 nanometers). In other words, we only see a small fraction of what’s there.

How do you build all this into your management systems & daily routines? Stay tuned.

Best wishess,

Pascal Dennis

E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org

PS: To learn more about my executive mentoring programs: Exec 101 - Protecting the Core Business, and Exec 201 – Igniting New Growth, feel free to drop me an e-mail.



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

Fundamentals of OpEx/Lean, Part 2
Fundamentals of OpEx/Lean, Part 1
Canada's Innovation Makeover: Singapore’s Cheat Sheet
The Two-Gear Economy, part 2 - Singapore’s Innovation Ecosystem

Fundamentals of OpEx/Lean, Part 2

Pascal Dennis, co-author of Harnessing Digital Disruption

The Four Levels of Visual Management, Part 2

Last time I talked about making problems visible through the four levels of visual management. I described Levels 1 and 2, which have comparatively low power. Today, our topic is Visual Management, Levels 3 and 4:

Level 3 – Organizes Behavior

Home positions for tools & equipment are a good example. In a surgery, home positions provide a nice visual confirmation that sponges, scalpels and other equipment are back where they belong – and not inside the patient!

In manufacturing, having a home position for, say, our torque wrench and gauges, ensures a) they’re there when we need them, and, as important, b) we know when they’re not there. “Right, Bonnie is doing her daily 2:00 pm torque audit.”

Other good examples include the ribbed perimeters, and studded lane lines on highways. You know at once if you’re on the median or straddling your lane. You quickly correct your behavior.

Recently, I saw a nice kaizen in the Oncology department of a children’s hospital. Infections are a major risk in such wards. How to encourage staff & parents to decontaminate their hands before they enter the room? Move the hand decontamination unit to the point of entry. You can’t enter Oncology without seeing and using the unit. As a result, hand hygiene compliance rates have spiked.

Effective Agile teams implement the Agile ‘ceremonies’ each week including the Monday morning planning meeting, Daily Stand-up, and Friday review of the week’s work. Such process discipline reinforces purpose, highlights abnormalities, and organizes countermeasures while reducing hassle.

Level 4 – The Defect is Impossible

OpEx/Lean practitioners will recognize the ‘poka-yoke’ concept. We develop such a deep grasp of our process and its possible failure modes, that we install gizmos and practices that make them impossible.

Manufacturing is full of these: alarms on torque wrenches, electronic lights and safety mats that disable the machine if a team member enters the line of fire, gasoline nozzles that won’t fit diesel tanks and so on.

A good website payment process makes it impossible to proceed to the next screen unless you have entered the needed information correctly. In Health Care, a poka-yoke on gas lines make it impossible to mis-connect oxygen and other gas lines.

As we get better at OpEx/Lean, our visual management naturally progresses from Level 1 to Level 4. Once we’re good at Level 1 and 2 visual management, we begin to think. “The same defect – here we go again! How do we prevent it?”

Who is the best source of Level 3 and 4 visual management? Front-line team members, of course, which is why Total Involvement is a leader’s priority. Alienate the front line and you lose all their insight & creativity. Problems mushroom – but you already know that.

OpEx/Lean fundamentals like visual management are also the cornerstone of Innovation. By protecting your core business with OpEx/Lean, you lay the foundation for Igniting New Growth with Digital methods.

Best regards,

Pascal Dennis

E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org

PS: To learn more about my executive mentoring programs: Exec 101 - Protecting the Core Business, and Exec 201 – Igniting New Growth, feel free to drop me an e-mail.



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

Fundamentals of OpEx/Lean, Part 1
Canada's Innovation Makeover: Singapore’s Cheat Sheet
The Two-Gear Economy, part 2 - Singapore’s Innovation Ecosystem
The Two-Gear Economy, part 1 – Canada’s Innovation Predicament

Fundamentals of OpEx/Lean, Part 1

Pascal Dennis, co-author of Harnessing Digital Disruption

The Four Levels of Visual Management, Part 1

You can’t fix what you can’t see. This applies whether you’re trying to protect your core business or ignite new Growth using Digital methods. Excellence entails making problems visible. The added benefit: visual management frees up ‘white space’ in your brain. You feel lighter, fresher & more creative.

Here are the four levels of Visual Management, in order of increasing power:

Level 1 – Tells only

STOP signs are a good example of Level 1 Visual Management. In our neighbourhood, people blow through STOP signs all the time. In fact, we call them ‘Hollywood stops’ – the driver slows by 5 miles per hour, takes a perfunctory look around & drives on through. Not exactly, Safety First.

A Digital equivalent might be a chart in a virtual ‘Control Tower’ (aka Obeya), say on Miro or Mural, that everybody ignores. Or an Agile team’s kanban board with WIP levels far exceeding defined standards but is likewise ignored.

Level 2 – Something changes, which gets your attention

Traffic lights are a good example. “Hey, the light’s changed to Green. We can drive on.”

Level 2 has more power because, done well, it wakes people up. A Digital equivalent might be a chart in a Control Tower that includes a target line, a Red/Green indicator, and a sticky note below it explaining what’s going on. And a Leader operating rhythm (standardized process) wherein we review our key indicators on a regular basis and act on significant abnormalities.

My regular readers may recall that OpEx/Lean is about wakefulness…. “Wake up everybody! We have a problem...”

Sadly, visual management in many organizations gets stuck at Level 1. Have you ever been in a hospital full of signage exhorting staff with some slogan? “Patient Safety is everybody’s responsibility!”

As W. Edward Deming observed a generation ago, such exhortations amount to blaming the worker. They subtly shift responsibility from senior management to front line workers. “Hey, don’t blame me. I told them not to do it…”

A few years back, my mom had major surgery at a local hospital. The medical staff was dedicated and capable, as usual, but was the management system making their lives easier? For example, was there visual management around infection control, or mis-medication - methods that highlighted abnormalities and triggered countermeasures?

At a deeper level, did senior leaders foster a culture of transparency, psychological safety and involvement? Did team members feel able to highlight – and fix – abnormalities? Were they trained in root cause problem solving?

No, just exhortations: Do something! It’s up to you!

My mom suffered not one, but two infections. And when I wrote to the VP of Patient Safety & Experience, I received an astonishing response. My mom was to blame, not the hospital. Evidently, in the VP’s mind patients and the front-line staff were responsible for safety. (I don’t want to be misunderstood. I’ve been privileged to work with many splendid hospitals.)

Deming taught us that the root cause of the problem is almost always in the system – which senior management owns. Senior leaders cannot take the authority, rewards and perquisites of power – and not accept the responsibility.

Next time, I’ll talk about Level 3 and 4 visual management.

Best regards,

Pascal Dennis

E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org

PS To learn more about my Strategy Execution program, Getting the Right Things Done in a Digital World, feel free to drop me a line.




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

Canada's Innovation Makeover: Singapore’s Cheat Sheet
The Two-Gear Economy, part 2 - Singapore’s Innovation Ecosystem
The Two-Gear Economy, part 1 – Canada’s Innovation Predicament
Has OpEx/Lean Gone Wrong?

Hubris and Ethics

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Hubris is the ancient Greek word for arrogance, excessive pride or self-confidence.

Hubris is a common root cause of unethical behavior and, arguably, the most dangerous enemy of great companies.

(Check out this fine book on hubris and the Enron catastrophe entitled The Smartest Guys in the Room.)

What's the countermeasure to hubris?

Humility -- the extreme awareness of limits, of standards, of all that we are not. Humility is one of the Great Virtues, and underlies Prudence, Temperance, Courage and Justice.

Justice, for example, is only possible if we’re humble enough to accept a higher standard or code.

Visual management, 5 S, standardized work and all the other elements of the Lean business system are designed to keep us humble.

Our old Toyota plant in Cambridge Ontario won many awards. "How could they give us an award?" we'd wonder. "We're so screwed up..."

We need great companies -- they show us what's possible.

And great companies need humility - for the same reason.

Best,

Pascal




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

TPS and Agile
Lean Means Don’t Be a Dumb-Ass
Scatter - Our Nemesis
The Biggest Weakness is Contemporary Business Culture?

Agriculture - The Next Frontier?

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

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




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

Lean Thinking in Software Design
Problem Solving and the Worlds of Reflection & Experience
Learning How to Manage
Bozos and HR

Daily PDCA is a Meditation

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

We are sleepers in a dream, the great philosophers tell us. Our grasp of what's actually happening is tenuous at best.

The great religions and philosophies entail ritual, prayer and/or meditation to help us ‘wake up’.

Lean/TPS is about wakefulness too.

Lean methods like visual management, 5 S, standardized work, and pokayoke, are meant to jolt us out of our slumber.

"Hey, buddy wake up! There's a problem over here!"

And the most basic mediation of all is daily Plan-Do-Check-Adjust.

I’m a dreamer at heart, a ‘sleepy boy’, my Dad used to say. Daily PDCA is my anchor, my center, and has been for a long time.

Daily PDCA is hard, especially nowadays, when it’s so easy to get swept up in the tidal wave of tweets, blogs, pics, avatars, apps, games, music, videos…

I’m not very good at daily PDCA, but even partial success is a big deal.

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed, confused & dopey man is king.

Best regards,

Pascal




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

Ethics Again
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

The Fog of Big Company Disease

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Last time I talked about Big Company Disease and suggested that a key symptom is The Fog…

(It’s fun capitalizing it, and reminds me of a goofy same-name horror movie.

A pal & I have had great fun making up horror movie titles related to, ahem, other atmospheric emissions.)

Joking aside, the Fog is deeply frustrating and debilitating. Here are some symptoms:

Your purpose is unclear. You're not sure who your customers or suppliers are.

You don't know if you're ahead or behind.

You can't see your biggest problems.

So you spend a great deal of time in the "spin cycle".

Life becomes unpleasant so you naturally look for someone to blame.

You buffer the chaos with capacity -- your time.

Eventually, you burn out.

The leader’s most important job, in my view, is making the current condition visible – by gradually dispersing the Fog.

Visual management, standardized work and other core Lean tools are terrific enablers.

Lean principles & thinking are even better.

Best regards,

Pascal




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

What is a Team?
Target, Actual, Please Explain
Why Do ‘Smart’ People Struggle with Strategy?
Social Media & the Lean Business System -- Risks & Opportunities

Target, Actual, Please Explain

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Are We Ahead or Behind? And if so, why?

Perhaps the most basic Lean questions & an important test in any gemba.

Can the zone leader articulate the production/provision target & actual, and explain any gaps?

Or does she equivocate, and say, "Well, it's in the computer."

If the latter, Job One is to clear the anaesthetizing fog by using huddles boards and other forms of visual management.

It's surprising how often the computer is wrong.

And writing the hourly/daily/weekly target & actual and the reason for shortfalls brings unexpected benefits.

Hand-written team boards are human, and therefore engaging.

Computer screens, despite often impressive graphics, tend to put people to sleep. (Just more TV...)

So practice the above mantra in your gemba walks.

Be brief, be clear & be honest.

Best,

Pascal




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

Why Do ‘Smart’ People Struggle with Strategy?
Social Media & the Lean Business System -- Risks & Opportunities
Images and A3 Thinking
Why Lean in Sales?

Two Pillars of the Lean Business System

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Continuous Improvement and Respect for People - big ideas that deserve to be capital letters!

These reflect the infinite finesse of the Lean Business System.

They are yin & yang, masculine & feminine, mind & heart.

Each contains the other, as in the famous yin/yang image.


Continuous improvement is largely, though not entirely, an affair of the 'rational mind', which some people call the 'Left Brain'.

We need to know the fundamentals, including Value/Waste, 5 S, Visual Management, Standardized Work & the like.

We need enough problem solving 'reps' so that our core katas become part of our muscle memory.

Respect for People is largely, though, again, not entirely, an affair of the 'heart, which some people call the 'Limbic Brain'.

Respect for People requires empathy, and a solid grounding in core values.

Our readers will know, by now, that for me, this means the Cardinal Virtues:

• PRUDENCE,
• TEMPERANCE,
• COURAGE,
• JUSTICE

These figure strongly in my book, Reflections of a Business Nomad.

By the way, my friend and colleague, Dr. Reldan Nadler, has written persuasively about the importance of Emotional Intelligence in leaders.

I recommend his books warmly.

Best regards,

Pascal


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

Why Do We Learn More from What Did Not Work?
Failure is a Requirement for Innovation
KAIZEN – Small Changes vs. Monster Projects
Is Inventory a waste or a cover-up of deeper waste?

Back to Basics – Visual Management

By Al Norval (bio)

This is the fourth in a series of blogs which get back to the basics of Lean. The purpose of these blogs is to get back to the basic principles of Lean and stop contorting Lean into something it was never meant to be.

What do I mean by Lean?

It’s the engagement of all people in driving continuous improvement through the elimination of waste to improve Customer Value. The result is the world’s most powerful business system.

In the first three blogs I’ve talked about Customer Value, Employee Engagement and Visual Order. Today, I’d like to talk about Visual Management. Why are this and Visual Order some of the first basics I’ve discussed? They are the very foundation on which almost everything else builds.

What is Visual Management?

It’s the ability, at a glance, to see and understand the current condition. We often talk about the Visual Management triangle.

The key learning is that Visual Management drives action. Good Lean organizations have simple visuals for all important things. Therefore it’s easy to see problems and quickly take action when they occur.

My friend and colleague, Pascal Dennis, recently wrote a couple of excellent blogs on the Four Levels of Visual Management, which I’ve linked to here. (Part 1) (Part 2)

I encourage you to read them, even if it’s for a second time, and think about what type of action each of these four levels drives. Then do a survey of your own workplace and reflect upon which of these four levels of Visual Management do you see.

Cheers

Al

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

Back to Basics – Visual Order
Back to Basics – Employee Engagement
Back to Basics – Customer Value

Visual Management in New Product Development

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

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

The Four Levels of Visual Management, Part 2

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Last time I talked about making problems visible through the four levels of visual management.

I described Levels 1 and 2, which have comparatively low power.

Today, our topic is visual management Levels 3 and 4 – the most powerful:

Level 3 – Organizes Behavior

Home positions for tools & equipment are a good example.

In a surgery, home positions provide a nice visual confirmation that sponges, scalpels and other equipment are back where they belong – and not inside the patient!

In manufacturing, having a home position for, say, our torque wrench and gauges, ensures a) they’re there when we need them, and, as important, b) we know when they’re not there.

“Right, Bonnie is doing her daily 2:00 pm torque audit.”

Other good examples include the ribbed perimeters, and studded lane lines of many highways. You know at once if you’re on the median or straddling your lane. You quickly correct your behavior.

Recently, I saw a nice kaizen in the Oncology department of a children’s hospital. Infections are a major risk in such wards. How to encourage staff & parents to decontaminate their hands before they enter the room?

Move the hand decontamination unit to the point of entry. You can’t enter without seeing and using it, and compliance rates have spiked.

Level 4 – The Defect is Impossible

Lean thinkers will recognize the ‘pokayoke’ concept. We develop such a deep grasp of our process and its possible failure modes, that we install gizmos and practices that make them impossible!

Manufacturing is full of these: alarms on torque wrenches, electronic lights and safety mats that disable the machine if a team member enters the line of fire, gasoline nozzles that won’t fit diesel tanks and so on.

In Health Care, pokayokes on gas lines make it impossible to mis-connect oxygen and other gas lines.

As we get better at Lean, our visual management naturally progresses from Level 1 to Level 4.

Once we’re good at Level 1 and 2 visual management, we begin to think. “The same defect – here we go again! How do we prevent it?”

Who is the best source of Level 3 and 4 visual management?

Why, our front line team members, of course.

That’s why total involvement is critical. Alienate the front line and you lose all their insight & creativity. Problems mushroom!

But you already know that…

Best regards,

Pascal

The Four Levels of Visual Management

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Lean is about making problems visible, and visual management is a core methodology.

You can’t fix what you can’t see!

There are four levels. Here they are in order of increasing power:

Level 1 – Tells only

STOP signs are a good example. In our neighbourhood, people blow by them all the time.

(We call them ‘Hollywood stops’ – the driver slows by 5 miles per hour, takes a perfunctory look around & drives on through. Not exactly, Safety First!)

Level 2 – Something changes, which gets your attention

Traffic lights are a good example. “Hey, the light’s changed to Green. We can drive on.”

Level 2 has more power because, done well, it wakes people up.

Our regular readers may recall that Lean is about wakefulness…. ``Hey, we have a problem here. We should do something!

Sadly, visual management in many organizations gets stuck at Level 1.

In many Health Care organizations, for example, visual management amounts to signage telling people to do, or not do something.

This amounts to blaming the work, as W. Edward Deming observed a generation ago

Doing so, subtly shifts responsibility from senior management to front line workers. “Hey, I told them not to do it…”

A nice trick – “I’ll take the power, privilege and perks of power – but not the responsibility!”

This amounts to a 21st century variation on “Let them eat cake.”

Most of the time, the root cause is in the system - which senior leaders own.

Next time, Level 3 and 4 visual management.

Best,

Pascal

Daily PDCA is a Meditation

By Pascal Dennis

We are sleepers in a dream, the great philosophers tell us. Our grasp of what's actually happening is tenuous at best.

The great religions and philosophies entail ritual, prayer and/or meditation to help us ‘wake up’.

Lean/TPS is about wakefulness too.

Lean methods like visual management, 5 S, standardized work, and pokayoke, are meant to jolt us out of our slumber.

"Hey, buddy wake up! There's a problem over here!"

And the most basic mediation of all is daily Plan-Do-Check-Adjust.

I’m a dreamer at heart, a ‘sleepy boy’, my Dad used to say. Daily PDCA is my anchor, my center, and has been for a long time.

Daily PDCA is hard, especially nowadays, when it’s so easy to get swept up in the tidal wave of tweets, blogs, pics, avatars, apps, games, music, videos…

I’m not very good at daily PDCA, but even partial success is a big deal.

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed, confused & dopey man is king.

Best regards,

Pascal

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

Reprise: Target, Actual, Please Explain

By Pascal Dennis

Are We Ahead or Behind? And if so, why?

Perhaps the most basic Lean questions & an important test in any gemba.

Can the zone leader articulate the production/provision target & actual, and explain any gaps?

Or does she equivocate, and say, "Well, it's in the computer."

If the latter, Job One is to clear the anaesthetizing fog by using huddles boards and other forms of visual management.

It's surprising how often the computer is wrong.

And writing the hourly/daily/weekly target & actual and the reason for shortfalls brings unexpected benefits.

Hand-written team boards are human, and therefore engaging.

Computer screens, despite often impressive graphics, tend to put people to sleep. (Just more TV...)

So practice the above mantra in your gemba walks.

Be brief, be clear & be honest.

Best,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Quality in the Hospital Laboratory Process?

By Pascal Dennis

“We’re sorry…” CEO Toronto Hospital for Sick Children

Terrible story, folks, out of the Hospital for Sick Children. Sick Kids apologizes for drug-test failings.

Flaws in the Motherisk laboratory’s hair-strand drug and alcohol testing process might have caused some parents to lose custody of their children. Other parents might face unjust criminal convictions.

Children’s Aid Societies use the results of such tests to make decisions on custody and so on. After months of denial and deflection, the hospital has finally accepted responsibility and apologized.

Cold comfort to the victims, though. How many lives have been damaged?

As always, there are learning points. What are possible causes of this laboratory disasters?

Layout?

• Poor overall layouts result in chaotic work pathways, which increase contamination risk
• Work Area Layout – are all the items technicians needs to do their work within easy reach, or do they have hunt and peck?

5S & Visual Management

• Are reagents, equipment, slides and the rest easy to find? Is it easy to tell, ‘what is it?’, ‘where is it?’ and ‘how many?’

All of these increase contamination risk.

Standardized Work?

• Are there simple, visual standards for the lab’s core ‘recipes’?
• Are standards checked and updated regularly, and ‘owned’ by team members?

Team Member Training Process?

• Are lab team members trained in core standards using robust methods (e.g. TWI)?
• Are team members cross-trained to build capability and ensure requisite skills are in abundance

Daily Accountability?

• Does the hospital’s management system include daily stand up meetings in front of team boards wherein team members are encouraged to make problems visible?

Team Member Involvement and Problem Solving?

• Are team members trained in fundamentals like standardized work, visual management, and problem solving?
• Do leaders at all levels actively support total involvement and daily problem solving?
• Does the Human Resources system support and promote such leaders?

Hard questions, all.

My heart goes out to the victims.

Best regards,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Lean & Wakefulness - Reprise

By Pascal Dennis

The Lean Business System, at heart, is about wakefulness.

Philosophers throughout the ages have argued that we are sleepers in a dream, that our grasp of what's actually happening is, at best, tenuous.

Many schools of philosophy and religion include exercises, prayer or meditation designed to "wake" the sleeper.

Lean tools like visual management, 5 S, standardized work, and pokayoke, are meant to jolt us out of our slumber.

"Hey, buddy wake up! There's a problem over here!"

Strategy Deployment, the application of the scientific method to our enterprise, is also about wakefulness.

Our Level 1, 2 and 3 check processes, for example, should be stand-up meetings in front of a board or wall that makes "hot spots" painfully clear.

"Holy cow, look at that! We should do something..."

My books Getting the Right Things Done, Andy & Me and its sequel, The Remedy, all entail the protagonists' gradual awakening.

Let me conclude with a mixed metaphor: In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen.

Cheers,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Reprise: Lean & Wakefulness

By Pascal Dennis

The Lean Business System, at heart, is about wakefulness.

Philosophers throughout the ages have argued that we are sleepers in a dream, that our grasp of what's actually happening is, at best, tenuous.

Many schools of philosophy and religion include exercises, prayer or meditation designed to "wake" the sleeper.

Lean tools like visual management, 5 S, standardized work, and pokayoke, are meant to jolt us out of our slumber.

"Hey, buddy wake up! There's a problem over here!"

Strategy Deployment, the application of the scientific method to our enterprise, is also about wakefulness.

Our Level 1, 2 and 3 check processes, for example, should be stand-up meetings in front of a board or wall that makes "hot spots" painfully clear.

"Holy cow, look at that! We should do something..."

My books (Getting the Right Things Done, Andy & Me, The Remedy) all entail the protagonists' gradual awakening.

Let me conclude with a mixed metaphor: In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen.

Cheers,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio