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 using production analysis boards and other forms of visual management.

It's surprising how often the computer is wrong.

And writing the hour's target & actual and the reason for shortfalls brings unexpected benefits.

Such hand-written 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…

Success is the Enemy of Future Success
There is No Right Answer in Strategy
Content Follows Form or Acting Your Way to New Thinking
Value & Waste at the Imperial Grill

Why is Business Transformation so Hard? Lessons from the ‘Back Pain Industry’

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Many fine discussions these days about the above question.

Thanks to Bob Emiliani & other colleagues for their cogent questions & reflections.

Let me add a few thoughts based on my observations of another field – the so-called “Back Pain Industry” – another area wherein smart, capable people can’t seem to do what their trying to do. The back pain industry is

a) Enormous (> $ 100 billion USD), and
b) Doesn't seem to work. (Some common back treatments are not only ineffective, they’re harmful. 30 Surprising back pain statistics.)

What’s going on here? Any lessons for Lean/Continuous Improvement leaders?

Here’s my personal experience.

The back pain industry doesn’t seem to work, but some individual practitioners are extremely effective. My sport physiotherapist, for example, the splendid Janique Farand, has helped to keep my spine strong & supple for the past decade. I’m more active, and in better shape now than I was twenty years ago. A few years ago I even returned to Aikido practice, which severely tests back strength and flexibility. No problem, knock on wood. (Am throwing the young fellows around, and getting thrown, like in the old days.) All this despite significant disk deterioration in the L1 to L5 vertebrae. “Degenerative disk degeneration (DDD)”, my physician & specialist told me. “Normal wear & tear. You’ll have to learn to live with it.”

I don’t want to be misunderstood. All the people I’ve met in the back pain industry are capable, committed and hard working. One of them is clearly a great sensei. But they all work for major healthcare organizations and are constrained by ‘protocols’ sent down from on high. Woe unto them if they deviate from protocol!

Janique, by contrast, runs a small private physiotherapy (PT) practice specializing in sports medicine. Her diagnosis and understanding of root causes seems to be much deeper. She is ‘in the gemba’, if you will, closely observing what’s there. Janique is a detective, guided by her professional training, experience & acute knowledge of the latest advances. Is it any surprise that her countermeasures are deeper and more effective than the back pain industry’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach? (“I couldn’t do what I do if I worked for a major clinic or hospital,” she tells me.)

Here are here core countermeasures include a) Daily inversion using an portable inversion table, b) vigorous core strengthening exercises, c) natural anti-inflammatories (GLA, turmeric, ginger), and d) massage.

(I shared her diagnosis and treatment plan with the top neurologist in town. “Excellent,” he said. “Please continue.”)

“You have to work at it and be a bit lucky with chronic illness,” my PT tells me. “But you can be strong & fit into your eighties and beyond, knock on wood!”

Any lessons here for Lean/CI and business transformation professionals?

1. Top-down improvement is slow & stupid. Bottom up improvement is smart, but can be chaotic. (Janique’s professionalism & experience are invaluable here.). This is called ‘Carlson’s Law’.


2. Senior leaders should define purpose overall direction (the ‘banks of the river’ or design space). They should reduce hassles for their people, then trust them to figure it out, based on what they see in front of them.


3. Respect the folks at the front line. Invest in them – give them the skills to improve the work. Then, let them do so.


4. To truly grasp the situation you have to go see for yourself. It’s hard to manage or improve anything from on high. In fact, you usually make things worse.


5. There are very few magic bullets. You have to work hard and stay with it. But if you do, very little is impossible.

I’m reminded of my physicist friend’s charming bumper sticker: GRAVITY – NOT JUST A GOOD IDEA. IT’S THE LAW.

There are immutable laws of transformation, no? We ignore them at our peril.

Best regards,

Pascal



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

Ambidexterity Requires Navigating Aristotle's Two Worlds
What Makes Toxic Cultures?
Why Becoming an Ambidextrous Organization is so Challenging
The Seven QC Tools, Part 4

Frontiers - Lean & IT

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

By any objective measure, Lean has ‘done well’. Most major organizations have active Lean/Continual Improvement activities. Lean thinking has developed roots far from its manufacturing beginnings and into far-flung fields like healthcare, construction and the process industries.

Yes, there have been dead-ends, detours and growing pains.

Why do so many organizations fail to fully harvest Lean’s potential? How do we sustain Lean as a system, and not merely a set of tools?

How do we engage senior leaders more deeply?

Nonetheless, we’ve made good progress these past few decades.

So what’s next?

Information technology. How to translate the powerful Lean principles methods & principles in this vital, fascinating, yet often arcane field?

There has, of course, been some helpful cross-fertilization. Agile, for example, and its constituent methods (Scrum, Kanban..., are creative expressions of visual management, Pull and PDCA. But my sense is we've barely scratched the surface. (Are respect for people, quality in the process, and Strategy Deployment well understood?)

The obstacles are substantial. Information Technology language, mental models, and gembas are radically different than those in, say, manufacturing, logistics or the process industries.

IT value streams are among the most invisible my team & I have encountered. IT departments tend to be fragmented and often comprise multiple deep silos. (DEVOPS is a valuable attempt to integrate the software development and delivery process, and emphasizes communication and collaboration between product management, software development, and operations.)

On the plus side, IT practitioners are among the most capable and creative people we've ever worked with. As ever, shared experiential learning (Yokoten) begins with a shared understanding. I encourage Lean practitioners around the world to learn the language & business of IT, and to think deeply about how to support our colleagues there. (My daughter and I recently enrolled in a coding course, which took me back to my student days & reminded me I’m a bad coder…)

And I encourage our colleagues in IT shops around the world to learn & adapt the powerful thinking methodologies of Lean.

Should lead to interesting conversations.

Best regards,

Pascal



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

Getting the Right Things Done in a Digital World
On Big Data
Why Lean Outside the Factory?
Too Often, Power Means the Power to Do Stupid Things

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

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?

Frontiers - Lean & IT

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

By any objective measure, Lean has ‘done well’. Most major organizations have active Lean/Continual Improvement activities. Lean thinking has developed roots far from its manufacturing beginnings and into far-flung fields like healthcare, construction and the process industries.

Yes, there have been dead-ends, detours and growing pains.

Why do so many organizations fail to fully harvest Lean’s potential? How do we sustain Lean as a system, and not merely a set of tools?

How do we engage senior leaders more deeply?

Nonetheless, we’ve made good progress these past few decades.

So what’s next?

Information technology. How to translate the powerful Lean principles methods & principles in this vital, fascinating, yet often arcane field?

There has, of course, been some helpful cross-fertilization. Agile, for example, and its constituent methods (Scrum, Kanban..., are creative expressions of visual management, Pull and PDCA. But my sense is we've barely scratched the surface. (Are respect for people, quality in the process, and Strategy Deployment well understood?)

The obstacles are substantial. Information Technology language, mental models, and gembas are radically different than those in, say, manufacturing, logistics or the process industries.

IT value streams are among the most invisible my team & I have encountered. IT departments tend to be fragmented and often comprise multiple deep silos. (DEVOPS is a valuable attempt to integrate the software development and delivery process, and emphasizes communication and collaboration between product management, software development, and operations.)

On the plus side, IT practitioners are among the most capable and creative people we've ever worked with. As ever, shared experiential learning (Yokoten) begins with a shared understanding. I encourage Lean practitioners around the world to learn the language & business of IT, and to think deeply about how to support our colleagues there. (My daughter and I recently enrolled in a coding course, which took me back to my student days & reminded me I’m a bad coder…)

And I encourage our colleagues in IT shops around the world to learn & adapt the powerful thinking methodologies of Lean.

Should lead to interesting conversations.

Best regards,

Pascal

Why is Business Transformation so Hard? Lessons from the ‘Back Pain Industry’

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Many fine discussions these days about the above question.

Thanks to Bob Emiliani & other colleagues for their cogent questions & reflections.

Let me add a few thoughts based on my observations of another field – the so-called “Back Pain Industry” – another area wherein smart, capable people can’t seem to do what their trying to do. The back pain industry is

a) Enormous (> $ 100 billion USD), and
b) Doesn't seem to work. (Some common back treatments are not only ineffective, they’re harmful. See: Watch your back! & 30 Surprising back pain statistics)

What’s going on here? Any lessons for Lean/Continuous Improvement leaders?

Here’s my personal experience.

The back pain industry doesn’t seem to work, but some individual practitioners are extremely effective. My sport physiotherapist, for example, the splendid Janique Farand, has helped to keep my spine strong & supple for the past decade. I’m more active, and in better shape now than I was twenty years ago. A few years ago I even returned to Aikido practice, which severely tests back strength and flexibility. No problem, knock on wood. (Am throwing the young fellows around, and getting thrown, like in the old days.) All this despite significant disk deterioration in the L1 to L5 vertebrae. “Degenerative disk degeneration (DDD)”, my physician & specialist told me. “Normal wear & tear. You’ll have to learn to live with it.”

I don’t want to be misunderstood. All the people I’ve met in the back pain industry are capable, committed and hard working. One of them is clearly a great sensei. But they all work for major healthcare organizations and are constrained by ‘protocols’ sent down from on high. Woe unto them if they deviate from protocol!

Janique, by contrast, runs a small private physiotherapy (PT) practice specializing in sports medicine. Her diagnosis and understanding of root causes seems to be much deeper. She is ‘in the gemba’, if you will, closely observing what’s there. Janique is a detective, guided by her professional training, experience & acute knowledge of the latest advances. Is it any surprise that her countermeasures are deeper and more effective than the back pain industry’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach? (“I couldn’t do what I do if I worked for a major clinic or hospital,” she tells me.)

Here are here core countermeasures include a) Daily inversion using an portable inversion table, b) vigorous core strengthening exercises, c) natural anti-inflammatories (GLA, turmeric, ginger), and d) massage.

(I shared her diagnosis and treatment plan with the top neurologist in town. “Excellent,” he said. “Please continue.”)

“You have to work at it and be a bit lucky with chronic illness,” my PT tells me. “But you can be strong & fit into your eighties and beyond, knock on wood!”

Any lessons here for Lean/CI and business transformation professionals?

1. Top-down improvement is slow & stupid. Bottom up improvement is smart, but can be chaotic. (Janique’s professionalism & experience are invaluable here.). This is called ‘Carlson’s Law’.


2. Senior leaders should define purpose overall direction (the ‘banks of the river’ or design space). They should reduce hassles for their people, then trust them to figure it out, based on what they see in front of them.


3. Respect the folks at the front line. Invest in them – give them the skills to improve the work. Then, let them do so.


4. To truly grasp the situation you have to go see for yourself. It’s hard to manage or improve anything from on high. In fact, you usually make things worse.


5. There are very few magic bullets. You have to work hard and stay with it. But if you do, very little is impossible.

I’m reminded of my physicist friend’s charming bumper sticker: GRAVITY – NOT JUST A GOOD IDEA. IT’S THE LAW.

There are immutable laws of transformation, no? We ignore them at our peril.

Best regards,

Pascal

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

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 using production analysis boards and other forms of visual management.

It's surprising how often the computer is wrong.

And writing the hour's target & actual and the reason for shortfalls brings unexpected benefits.

Such hand-written 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

How Long Does it Take to Form a Habit?

By Al Norval

How long does it take to form a new habit? Popular belief says it takes 21 days. Actually, this is an urban myth with the answer being dependent on a number of variables. Firstly, is the new habit something we like to do or is it something we don’t like to do? As you can imagine, if it’s something we like to do, we can form the new habit much quicker than if it’s something we don’t like to do.

Secondly, it depends on the number of repetitions we get. If we practice our new habit once a month, obviously, it will take many months to form a habit whether we like doing it or not.

Why is this?

Habits reside in the unconscious mind which means they are automatic behaviors, we don’t have to consciously think about them to do them. It takes time & repetitions for people to be able to perform these new behaviors automatically.

So what does this have to do with Lean Leaders?

Lean involves forming many new habits that require leaders to behave differently. If these are things we like to do and we practice them frequently, they will become habits quickly. But if these are things we don’t like to do and we only practice them once a month or even worse once a quarter, they probably will never form a habit and the behaviors won’t get locked in. We’ll only do them when we consciously think about them.

Let’s take - Going to Gemba and learning what to see and how to behave as an example. Many leaders pair up with a consultant (either internal or external) to help them as they begin. As a result the leader goes to Gemba once a month, meaning it will take many months or years before this behavior becomes habitual. In fact, research shows that behavior repeated only once a month almost never becomes a habit.

What’s the countermeasure?

As we begin to introduce new behaviors to Leaders, like going to Gemba, it’s best to repeat them daily or at a minimum weekly. Then the new behavior has a chance of becoming a habit and performed automatically.

So how long does it take to form a new habit? It depends and varies widely but the best data I can find says - on average 62 repetitions. For leaders learning to go to Gemba that means it will take 6 months, on average, to form the habit if they go to Gemba 2 -3 times per week. 6 months for the behavior to become automatic.

I’d love to hear from you. Any examples of new Lean behaviors that have become habits? What were some of the obstacles you faced?

Cheers

Strategy Deployment & Dieting, Part 1

By Pascal Dennis

More companies die from over-eating than from starvation – Dave Packard

The great Dave knew a thing or two about management, no?

And yet in our strategy deployment work, Job One remains slimming things down.

“Just one more…” seems to be the compulsion of countless organizations.

Result?

Obese, lumbering strategies with no hope of success. Organizations approaching diabetic coma.

Alienated team members. “One more thing? Sure, just add it to the pile!”

All the while thinking, “Our leaders are bozos. We’re doomed...”

Or more commonly, “Your pretend to give us a reasonable strategy, and we’ll pretend to do it.”

How can smart people behave so foolishly?

Many, many reasons.

As Dinah Washington memorably sang, “If you ask me, I could write a book…” (Hell, maybe I will.)

In part, it’s a buffering effect. “We don’t really know what’s happening, so we’ll keep pressing buttons. Something is bound to work!”

The countermeasure to this one?

Get off your duff and out to the Gemba.

Go with purpose, gained by sorting out the hot spots. Talk to your people about them.

Thereby, begin to put your strategy on a diet.

More to come.

Best,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Top 3 Pieces of Advice for Lean Implementation

By Al Norval

It’s quite common for people to ask me for advice on how to best implement Lean. Often though, they are asking for the wrong reasons. In reality they are asking for a “Silver Bullet”. I could translate their question into “Please give me some advice on how to simply implement Lean so that it’s not so much hard work”

I’m sorry to say, there is no answer to that question. Implementing Lean is hard work. It involves changing the culture of the organization and changing the organizational norms that have been built up over time and that just isn’t going to happen overnight. So I answer the question with some thoughts on how best to do it. Here’s the list for you.

1. Go to Gemba
2. Try Something
3. Share the Learning

Let’s examine these one by one:

1. Go to Gemba. One of the fundamental pillars of Lean is problem solving using the scientific method. But before we can problem solve we need to fully understand the current condition. We can try to do this from a computer screen, pretending the computer sees all and knows all but a better way to grasp the situation and understand what is really happening is to get out of the office and go see for yourself. Data, reports and computers can always twist things but you can always trust the facts that you observe with your own eyes. Go to Gemba with an open mind, asking questions, particularly “Why”. Return to Gemba when you discover things you don’t know in your problem solving and get additional facts. Each time you do so, you’ll get a deeper understanding of what is really happening.


2. Try Something. It amazes me how many people are afraid to try things. Often they are worried about trying things without having the right answer and question what would happen if they are wrong. This worry translates into a hesitancy to taking action and instead of trying things, people sit around wasting time debating endlessly. The basis of the scientific method is trying things with uncertain outcomes. We use a hypothesis to set up a test so we can easily determine if our trials worked or not. An old Chinese proverb says “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step”. Start and you’ll be amazed at what happens.


3. Share the Learning. The advantage of the scientific method is that we learn from what works and we learn from what doesn’t work. The great news is we learn both ways. The key is to share the learning with the rest of the organization. Most organizations are reluctant to do this but if we only share what did work we limit the learning of the rest of the organization and someone else is bound to try again and suffer the same fate. Sharing leads to lifelong learning and growing body of intellectual wealth in the organization.

Three pieces of advice. All sound easy but take hard work. There is no shortcut or easy path.

Make sense?

Cheers

Agriculture - the Next Frontier?

By Pascal Dennis

The past few years, it's been our good fortune to begin 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!

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 using production analysis boards and other forms of visual management.

It's surprising how often the computer is wrong.

And writing the hour's target & actual and the reason for shortfalls brings unexpected benefits.

Such hand-written 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

Leadership – Going to Gemba with a Purpose

By Al Norval

It’s interesting to observe Leaders behavior as they begin to get comfortable with Lean and start to change their own behaviors to match the new Lean Mental Models. It’s obvious most are not comfortable, yet I always give Leaders a great deal of credit for trying, after all part of Leadership is modeling the behaviors you want others to use.

I’d like to highlight a couple of these new Lean behaviors - Going to Gemba and Leader as a Teacher.

Going to Gemba has several purposes:

• To see for yourself and understand what is really happening.
• To reinforce the standards of the organization and ask why when deviations occur.
• To show respect for the people

When leaders observe abnormalities they have two choices on how to respond. They can act like dictators and tell people to fix the problem barking out orders or they can ask why? The first does nothing to develop the capabilities of the team and at best leads to compliance behavior but does not lead people to get engaged. By asking why we get people to think and can teach them to problem solve for themselves. We engage their hearts and minds in solving the problems leaders have observed. Over time people will see these problems for themselves and become actively engaged at eliminating root causes.

Sounds simple but how do leaders do this? A terrific way I observed was a leader who was just getting into the routine of a daily Gemba walk through his section of the factory. He observed a group of operators struggling to keep a piece of machinery running. The equipment was dirty, covered in oil and grime. He could have told the team members what he wanted done but instead asked them why were they having trouble getting the machine to run? They replied that it was an old machine. Another question – what was the problem with the old machine?

No one could pinpoint the problem except to say that it hadn’t been maintained in recent years.

At this point the leader started explaining the concepts of 5S and Visual Management and how they were the foundation of TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) and with these techniques equipment could be put into a like new condition once again. Since the factory was noisy he used a set of pocket cards and images to help explain these concepts to the team. The pictures were like a thousand words. The Team Members understood what needed to be done but more importantly they understood why. They began to work on simple ways to improve the performance of the equipment and over time developed daily clean and inspect checklists, visual indicators of performance and found many sources of problems including air and oil leaks, loose fittings and contamination. The equipment started to run better and the maintenance team was freed up to work on the deeper, more complex machine issues.

A good news story all around driven by a leader who understood his role of teaching his people and building their capability so they can engage and solve problems for themselves.

For more information on Pocket cards/ Lean Brain Boosters and Lean Images see www.leansystems.org

Cheers

The Lotus Eaters?

By Pascal Dennis

In Homer's Odyssey, one of our oldest and greatest epics, the Lotus Eaters were a race of people living on an island dominated by Lotus plants.

Lotus fruit, their primary food, was narcotic and addictive, and it caused the people to sleep in peaceful apathy.

The metaphor came to mind as I struggled with the fundamental question:

Why do so many leaders fail to go see what's actually happening?

Why do they avoid the places where value is created, and the people who create value?

It's one of the most common failure modes in any transformation - one that causes economic and emotional misery.

Are we, like the Lotus Eaters, addicted to a powerful narcotic - our screens?

In my view, our various screens - phone, pad, computer - exert an anaesthetizing, narcotic effect.

Why go see when there is so much on your screen?

Data, apps, pictures, videos - all so addictive.



The problem is, of course, that it's always different in the gemba - the real place.

By going to see with your own eyes you engage your whole being - your six senses, your mind & intuition.

Countless leaders have said to me, “I’m so glad we came to see in person. If not, we'd have made a horrible mistake!"

So use your screen, if need be, to orient yourself, to prepare for your gemba visit.

Then turn the damned thing off and get out there.

Cheers,

Pascal

Japanese Words – To Use Them or Not?

By Al Norval

One of the questions I am often asked at clients is whether they have to use the Japanese terms associated with Lean. Most times the organization is leaning towards not using the Japanese terms and is looking to me for some kind of validation. I always answer that it’s their personal choice as an organization but there are several things to consider.

The first is that Japanese terms don’t always translate well into English words. Japanese is a very visual language that relies on a character set called Kanji to make complete sentences in their writing system. Each Kanji or character represents a thought or image which is a very different structure from a Latin based language where each letter represents a sound. So translating these thoughts or images from Japanese into English can be difficult and produce some very wordy translations.

Take Jidoka for example. It has various translations including; autonomation, machines with a human touch, built in quality at the source, separation of man and machine work. All of these translations are correct, yet none of them truly grasps the full meaning of the term Jidoka.

A simpler example comes from Jim Hereford as quoted by Mark Graban in his blog of Nov 22, 2011 at www.leanblog.org. Jim gives the example of sushi in defending the use of Japanese terms and says:

“When you go to a Japanese restaurant, do you order sushi or do you say something like, ‘Please get me raw fish rolled in a leaf and rice?’”

Good point Jim.

Another reason I recommend using Japanese terms is in a Lean Transformation we are trying to change the culture of the organization. To change the culture we’ve got to get people behaving differently. Using Japanese terms signals a change and is a great antecedent to the change process. It tells people the status quo isn’t good enough and needs to be altered. It signals a different kind of change process from one where the change is sanitized to make it palatable to the entire organization and thus is watered down and limiting.

I remember working with an organization who had decided not to use Japanese terms.

I asked about “Kaizen” and they said they would use that one.

I asked about “Kanban” and they said they would use that one as well.

I asked about “Gemba” and of course, they said they would use that one as well, but they didn’t like “Muda” and were going to use “waste” instead. Fair enough.

As I said, each organization has to develop their own glossary of improvement terms and needs to think deeply about what kind of culture change they are introducing by using those terms.

For a sample glossary to get you started, please see www.leansystems.org. for a free download.

Cheers

Going to Gemba with a Purpose

By Al Norval

By now most leaders understand the purpose of “Going to Gemba”. A great deal has been written about the famous words of Toyota Chairman Fujio Cho that have become a Lean mantra now:

1. Go See
   
2. Ask Why
   
3. Show Respect
   

Each of these three phrases has deep meaning.

Go See – one of the basic Lean Mental models. See for yourself, Grasp the Situation, seek to understand what is actually happening, look at things from both a technical and people point of view. The 4 M’s is a good framework for this. Consider the Manpower, the Machines, the Materials and the Methods as you observe the situation.

Ask Why – another one of the basic Lean Mental models. It revolves around Leader as a Teacher. Rather than tell people what to do, leaders ask questions to probe. This develops people’s thinking and develops their ability to problem solve for themselves in the future. Although this approach may take longer to resolve an issue in the short term, it pays big dividends in the long term as people’s capability to solve their own problems develops over time.

Show Respect - Key to the entire process and fundamental to Lean. It’s founded on one of the basic principles of Lean which is “Respect for Humanity”. Anytime, leaders go to Gemba and ask why, it needs to be done in a way that builds the capability of the team and empowers them to try things to learn for themselves. This is showing respect for their mental capabilities and their humanity and goes beyond just showing respect for them in the way we talk to each other in an interpersonal relationship.

Now we have a system of Going to Gemba but as with any system, this system needs a purpose. What’s the purpose of Going to Gemba? Obviously to understand the current condition, to develop the capability of team members and to kaizen the process. But do we just go to Gemba hoping to find problems and waste? I’d suggest a better way would be to define a specific process or capability you want to check and predetermine questions you want to ask about it. Start by identifying the critical processes in an area and develop a calendar on when you’ll go to Gemba with the purpose of checking that process. Over time many different processes can be checked and many different capabilities developed, all with a specific purpose.

If we don’t do these things we revert back to Management by Walking Around which I like to call Management by Milling Around. We feel good about it but it really doesn’t get us anywhere.

Cheers

Lean Leadership Excuse #2

By Al Norval

As I work with leaders in organizations who are making the transformation from a traditional way of thinking to Lean Thinking, I hear many stories about lack of leadership commitment. That seems like a fuzzy problem so I ask people how to make it concrete and real. The answer I get is people want to see evidence of leaders at Gemba daily, leading and involved in problem solving.

When I talk to leaders about why they can’t do this, I get a string of excuses, the most common one being “I don’t have time”. After that , the excuse I hear the second most often is:

“It’s so hard”.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the first excuse – lack of time. If you want to refresh on that excuse, please see our blog dated January 12, 2012.

And yes, change is hard but as leaders we need to step up to the plate and lead the organization towards True North. But why is even a change for the better, so hard to implement? I’m not an expert in organizational design by any means but I observe that organizations have an inertia to them. Much like Sir Isaac Newton, the great English mathematician, physicist and astronomer described as the first of his three universal laws of motion – “A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force”. In organizations we tend to perpetuate those things we’ve learned and practiced over the years and it requires energy to overcome that inertia.

The role of leaders is to be the force, that source of energy, that changes the inertia of the organization.

In adults it takes a great deal of energy to replace what we’ve learned and done in the past with something new even if that something new is better than what we already know and do.

As a great sensei one told me “You have many years of unlearning to do”

What’s the remedy? Daily practice at Gemba

We have to practice over and over again. It takes repetition and with repetition we build the muscles of the organization so it gets a little stronger every day. The key is to make time to go to Gemba every day. Over time the repetition becomes a habit and the organizational culture begins to change. As leaders - what you do is what you get. This is the water ring model of change. Start in one area of the organization and the change spreads across the organization like ripples across a pond. But it needs to be reinforced continually to overcome to inertia of the organization.

Is it hard to transform a culture and implement Lean? Yes, but by going to Gemba every day and starting small, the culture will change faster than you think is possible.

Cheers