Lean, Leadership & Ethics, Part 1

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Been reflecting about each of these lately, and how they relate.

But what’s Ethics got to do with anything?

We’re in a proverbial knowledge economy. The market caps of, say, Google, Facebook and Apple, dwarf that of Toyota.

Google, Facebook and Apple have comparatively little in physical capital. ‘All’ they have is intellectual capital, and in particular, human capital.

How does human capital differ, from say, physical or financial capital?

Unlike, say, a machine, or a bond, human capital can chose not to deploy. Human capital can chose to walk out the door, in fact.

“That army will win which has the same spirit,” said Sun Tsu twenty-five hundred years ago. It’s never been more true.

Yet Gallup’s latest State of the Global Workplace report tells us that only 13% of employees are engaged in their work!

Big company disease and organizational dysfunction is so deeply entrenched that we barely flinch at such data.

Imagine you’re a factory manager and your machines are operating at only 13% of capacity!

Why are people so disengaged? Gallup doesn’t say. But I suspect that disillusionment, or even disgust, at what the organization stands for, or how management behaves, is a major reason.

There’s more. Millennials (those born after 1980) will comprise 75% of the workforce by 2025. And Gallup tells us that ethical behavior in corporations is even more important to millennials than to their parents.

Of course Ethics matters. People will not follow swine, at least not willingly, for very long. People will certainly not commit their hearts and minds – unless they feel good about what the organization stands for.

Best regards,

Pascal




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

The Work of Leaders
Why is Lean So Hard? – Organizational Elements
The Trouble with Corporate Clichés
Economy I and II - Never the Twain Shall Meet?

Why is Lean So Hard? – Organizational Elements

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

In this piece I focused on our personal qualities that make Lean so hard to sustain (e.g. our innate trickiness and laziness).

A number of folks asked me to talk some more about organizational elements that hinder Lean.

Lean’s foundation is Standards and Connections – (Rules 1 and 2 of the Four Rules articulated by our MIT friend & colleague, Dr Stephen Spear, whose work I recommend highly.)

What organizational elements or qualities weaken or hinder Standards and Connections?

Standards

A standard is a picture of ‘What Should Be Happening’ (WSBH), our current ‘least-waste-way’ of doing a given task, the best way we know today. Most often, the front line team defines our standards for doing our work.

Senior leaders define WSBH in the form of organizational goals, the management system through which we run and improve our business, and our values (standards of behavior).

Here’s the rub: If senior leaders fail to meet the latter, our team members will ignore the former. Senior leaders have to embody our Values. If not, team members will pay scant attention to our organization’s goals & management system.

Think about that – team members will ignore our Purpose and our way of working. Can decay be far off? I’m reminded of Peter Drucker’s elegant summation of the Leader’s Purpose: 1) Get business results, 2) Create capability, and 3) Reinforce values.

Leader visibility in the form of purposeful & regular gemba time is an excellent way of doing all three. “Holy cow, the President was just here. She remembered my name and thanked us for making our problems visible and taking the lead in fixing them. She had some good suggestions & she’d be back again next month.”

In summary, if leaders at all levels embody the organization’s values, team members will embrace its purpose and management system.

Connections

Connections are the magnetic force that animates our management system. Each team has multiple connections – to our internal customers and suppliers, and to our ultimate customer. Strong connections entail reflecting on and answering challenging questions:

Just who are our customers? What do they need from us? What are the critical few metrics that express those needs? How do we make our current condition visible, so that we can see our biggest problems – and fix them?

To answer such questions, we need a supportive management system and culture. At our splendid Toyota site in Cambridge Ontario, it was understood that the downstream process was our customer, and that we’d have a stand-up meeting every morning to reflect on how we did the day before. If we in the Paint shop had delivered junk to the Assembly shop, we took it personally. I was letting down Freddie and his team. At shift end, all of us suppliers to Assembly shop met at the ‘money board’ to reflect on how we’d done, and how we’d improve.

Big Company Disease, the nemesis in many of my books, weakens such connections and can be a mortal threat. Big Company Disease usually begins with hubris – arrogance, haughtiness, excessive pride. “He who the gods would destroy, they first hold high…”, Euripides tells us.

Sometimes, industry structure inherently hinders connections. Government agencies (almost always monopolies), are perhaps the most obvious example. In the absence of competition, why should anybody care about the customer? To be sure, even here, fine people are fighting the good fight. A deep bow here to Governor Doug Ducey and the team in the great state of Arizona, who are building the Arizona Management System to make government work for the people. Imagine that…

But would this splendid enterprise flourish under a less diligent governor? And what happens when Governor Ducey moves on? Indeed, building and sustaining connections are the Achilles’ Heel of public service.

Increasingly, rapidly advancing technology can weaken connections. I remember a strategy session with a senior Silicon Valley team, who spent much of the time berating customers for being ‘so out of it’.

“What do you think?” the senior leader asked me at session’s end. “I think you hate your customers,” my reply.

In summary, Lean is hard to sustain because of a) our human hard-wiring, as described in my earlier blog, and b) organizational elements that weaken Standards and Connections, as described above.

Excellent is a game with endless innings. At best we partially succeed – and that makes all the difference.

Best regards,

Pascal




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

The Trouble with Corporate Clichés
Economy I and II - Never the Twain Shall Meet?
Strategy is Not About Doing What’s “Important”
Agriculture - The Next Frontier?

Lean – So ‘Easy’, It’s Hard

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Striking how ‘easy’ Lean is, no?

1. Define Purpose clearly & communicate it tirelessly
2. Identify the main obstacles and/or enablers to achieving Purpose
3. Treat people with respect and seek to involve everybody in improving the business
4. Go see what’s actually happening regularly and with purpose
5. Reflect regularly, openly & honestly on what’s working, what is not working, and why
6. Keep going (until you die)

That last one is perhaps the most difficult, and, in my view, the sign of a great sensei. It’s how we transform a management system into a way of living and being, something that remains after we’re gone.

I think of George Kissell, the legendary St. Louis Cardinal minor league manager, teaching baseball fundamentals well into his eighties. Or Ed Deming still teaching, kicking butt and taking names from a wheelchair at the age of ninety three.

We’re fortunate enough to work with a number of faith-based hospital systems. I find it profoundly moving when they begin a day or a meal with a prayer for wisdom and humility.

I’m sure you can cite many more examples. Enduring excellence in sports, business and management, is based on bedrock principles (very much like the ones above), no?

The more you practice the easier – and harder it gets. Easier, because repetition develops muscle memory.   Harder, because we humans – or at least this one – are lazy, tricky and dishonest (especially with ourselves).

We think we can outfox the fundamentals, that we can ‘get away with it.’ The more success we experience, the more lazy, tricky and dishonest we tend to become. As a result, success corrupts, just as ‘power corrupts’.

Greatest senseis throughout the ages have adopted various countermeasures to our innate vulnerabilities. The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, the world’s most powerful person then, meditated on death every day.  St. Jerome kept a human skull on his desk.

(My daughters, knowing my respect for the afore-mentioned, gave me a skull replica, which sits on my desk as I write, wearing my Green Bay Packers cap. Needless to say, I am no St. Jerome…)

Our Toyota senseis countermeasure was to check frequently and severely. “Target, actual, please explain!”  “Your activities have no meaning, Pascal-san!”  “This is NOT countermeasure!”

They were right, of course, and I felt like the village idiot for a long time. Good thing too – how else could I unlearn the rubbish I’d learned engineering and business school?

(Don’t want to be misunderstood – I learned plenty of good stuff in professional schools too. But often it’s mixed in with rubbish, no?

In summary, Lean fundamentals are really life fundamentals – simultaneously easy & hard. Seek them out, practice and keep going.  Very good things will happen.

Then, remembering Marcus Aurelius and St. Jerome, double-down on humility.

Best regards,

Pascal



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

“Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail”
Building Quality into the Process
Standardized Work for Knowledge Workers
Difference between Hansei and a Post-mortem

Lean, Leadership & Ethics, Part 1

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Been reflecting about each of these lately, and how they relate.

But what’s Ethics got to do with anything?

We’re in a proverbial knowledge economy. The market caps of, say, Google, Facebook and Apple, dwarf that of Toyota.

Google, Facebook and Apple have comparatively little in physical capital. ‘All’ they have is intellectual capital, and in particular, human capital.

How does human capital differ, from say, physical or financial capital?

Unlike, say, a machine, or a bond, human capital can chose not to deploy. Human capital can chose to walk out the door, in fact.

“That army will win which has the same spirit,” said Sun Tsu twenty-five hundred years ago. It’s never been more true.

Yet Gallup’s latest State of the Global Workplace report tells us that only 13% of employees are engaged in their work!

Big company disease and organizational dysfunction is so deeply entrenched that we barely flinch at such data.

Imagine you’re a factory manager and your machines are operating at only 13% of capacity!

Why are people so disengaged? Gallup doesn’t say. But I suspect that disillusionment, or even disgust, at what the organization stands for, or how management behaves, is a major reason.

There’s more. Millennials (those born after 1980) will comprise 75% of the workforce by 2025. And Gallup tells us that ethical behavior in corporations is even more important to millennials than to their parents.

Of course Ethics matters. People will not follow swine, at least not willingly, for very long. People will certainly not commit their hearts and minds – unless they feel good about what the organization stands for.

Best regards,

Pascal

Lean, Agile and the Martial Arts

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Fall down seven times, get up eight times
Aikido proverb

I first stumbled onto the martial arts when I fifteen years old. I was shooting baskets at the YMCA with my pal, Pete Stathakos, when we a series of loud slams followed by raucous applause emanating from the large wrestling room.

We hurried over and what we encountered there has informed my life ever since. The newly launched Toronto Aikikai club was giving a demonstration for an enthusiastic audience.

What did I see that day that made such a lasting impression?

Power, movement, discipline, intense focus, and an obvious consideration and respect between the participants. Everybody on the mat seemed powerful, tireless and respectful.

I joined the club, of course, and for the next fifteen years would attend 3 or 4 times a week. I learned the Seven Virtues of bushido: Yuki = courage; Jin = charity; Gi = justice; Rei = courtesy; Makoto = honesty; Chugi = fidelity; Meiyo = honor.

These lined up well with the Cardinal Virtues I learned at St. George’s Greek Orthodox Sunday School. Aikido helped me through Engineering school and Business school and with the ups & downs of life.

Then I heard Toyota was opening a major factory in the Waterloo region about 90 minutes from my home. My application was accepted and after a series of preliminary interviews, I met the President, Mr. Watanabe.

After a few perfunctory questions about my training and experience, he said, “Tell me about aikido.”

Mr. Watanabe closed his eyes as I described my senseis, training and dojo. “You are a serious student, Pascal-san – good! Toyota is also like a dojo…” Turns out he had studied both judo and aikido. I got the job and my apprenticeship began in earnest.

Mr. Watanabe was right. Toyota felt very much like a martial arts dojo. In fact, before stepping onto the shop floor, I felt like bowing, as a sign of respect to my team members, and to the art of management.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because it’s all the same. Lean, and its close cousin, Agile, are a ‘do’, in other words, a ‘path’, very similar to aikido, judo, karate-do and other martial arts.

A set of techniques becomes a path when they connect to your deeper being and purpose. A path provides constancy of purpose. The great senseis, whether in the martial arts or in management tend to be extraordinarily long-lived.

Peter Drucker, W. Edwards Deming, Joe Juran, Eiji Toyoda were all active well into their 90’s!

The single most important quality in life, leadership and the martial arts is tenacity, which the ancients called Fortitude. Great senseis, and great organizations have it in spades. Decades later, I’m still practicing Aikido and hope to continue till they lower me down (or shoot what’s left of me out of a cannon =)

Last thing. Despite all my failings, I’ve just been promoted to Ni-Dan. My deep thanks & respect to Nakamura-sensei and Barnes-sensei of Aikido Hokuryukai

Visit aikidoclub.ca

Fall down seven times, get up eight times.

Best regards,

Pascal

Why is Lean So Hard? – Organizational Elements

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

‘Lean – So Easy, It’s Hard’ seems to have hit home. Thanks for all the thoughtful comments.

In this piece I focused on our personal qualities that make Lean so hard to sustain (e.g. our innate trickiness and laziness).

A number of folks asked me to talk some more about organizational elements that hinder Lean.

Lean’s foundation is Standards and Connections – (Rules 1 and 2 of the Four Rules articulated by our MIT friend & colleague, Dr Stephen Spear, whose work I recommend highly.)

What organizational elements or qualities weaken or hinder Standards and Connections?

Standards

A standard is a picture of ‘What Should Be Happening’ (WSBH), our current ‘least-waste-way’ of doing a given task, the best way we know today. Most often, the front line team defines our standards for doing our work.

Senior leaders define WSBH in the form of organizational goals, the management system through which we run and improve our business, and our values (standards of behavior).

Here’s the rub: If senior leaders fail to meet the latter, our team members will ignore the former. Senior leaders have to embody our Values. If not, team members will pay scant attention to our organization’s goals & management system.

Think about that – team members will ignore our Purpose and our way of working. Can decay be far off? I’m reminded of Peter Drucker’s elegant summation of the Leader’s Purpose: 1) Get business results, 2) Create capability, and 3) Reinforce values.

Leader visibility in the form of purposeful & regular gemba time is an excellent way of doing all three. “Holy cow, the President was just here. She remembered my name and thanked us for making our problems visible and taking the lead in fixing them. She had some good suggestions & she’d be back again next month.”

In summary, if leaders at all levels embody the organization’s values, team members will embrace its purpose and management system.

Connections

Connections are the magnetic force that animates our management system. Each team has multiple connections – to our internal customers and suppliers, and to our ultimate customer. Strong connections entail reflecting on and answering challenging questions:

Just who are our customers? What do they need from us? What are the critical few metrics that express those needs? How do we make our current condition visible, so that we can see our biggest problems – and fix them?

To answer such questions, we need a supportive management system and culture. At our splendid Toyota site in Cambridge Ontario, it was understood that the downstream process was our customer, and that we’d have a stand-up meeting every morning to reflect on how we did the day before. If we in the Paint shop had delivered junk to the Assembly shop, we took it personally. I was letting down Freddie and his team. At shift end, all of us suppliers to Assembly shop met at the ‘money board’ to reflect on how we’d done, and how we’d improve.

Big Company Disease, the nemesis in many of my books, weakens such connections and can be a mortal threat. Big Company Disease usually begins with hubris – arrogance, haughtiness, excessive pride. “He who the gods would destroy, they first hold high…”, Euripides tells us.

Sometimes, industry structure inherently hinders connections. Government agencies (almost always monopolies), are perhaps the most obvious example. In the absence of competition, why should anybody care about the customer? (You may recall my recent ‘Agita at Air Canada’ piece…) To be sure, even here, fine people are fighting the good fight. A deep bow here to Governor Doug Ducey and the team in the great state of Arizona, who are building the Arizona Management System to make government work for the people. Imagine that… [video]

But would this splendid enterprise flourish under a less diligent governor? And what happens when Governor Ducey moves on? Indeed, building and sustaining connections are the Achilles’ Heel of public service.

Increasingly, rapidly advancing technology can weaken connections. I remember a strategy session with a senior Silicon Valley team, who spent much of the time berating customers for being ‘so out of it’.

“What do you think?” the senior leader asked me at session’s end. “I think you hate your customers,” my reply.

In summary, Lean is hard to sustain because of a) our human hard-wiring, as described in my earlier blog, and b) organizational elements that weaken Standards and Connections, as described above.

Excellent is a game with endless innings. At best we partially succeed – and that makes all the difference.

Best regards,

Pascal

Lean – So ‘Easy’, It’s Hard

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Striking how ‘easy’ Lean is, no?

1.       Define Purpose clearly & communicate it tirelessly,

2.       Identify the main obstacles and/or enablers to achieving Purpose

3.       Treat people with respect and seek to involve everybody in improving the business

4.       Go see what’s actually happening regularly and with purpose

5.       Reflect regularly, openly & honestly on what’s working, what is not working, and why

6.       Keep going (until you die)

That last one is perhaps the most difficult, and, in my view, the sign of a great sensei. It’s how we transform a management system into a way of living and being, something that remains after we’re gone.

I think of George Kissell, the legendary St. Louis Cardinal minor league manager, teaching baseball fundamentals well into his eighties. Or Ed Deming still teaching, kicking butt and taking names from a wheelchair at the age of ninety three.

We’re fortunate enough to work with a number of faith-based hospital systems. I find it profoundly moving when they begin a day or a meal with a prayer for wisdom and humility.

I’m sure you can cite many more examples. Enduring excellence in sports, business and management, is based on bedrock principles (very much like the ones above), no?

The more you practice the easier – and harder it gets. Easier, because repetition develops muscle memory.   Harder, because we humans – or at least this one – are lazy, tricky and dishonest (especially with ourselves). 

We think we can outfox the fundamentals, that we can ‘get away with it.’ The more success we experience, the more lazy, tricky and dishonest we tend to become. As a result, success corrupts, just as ‘power corrupts’.

Greatest senseis throughout the ages have adopted various countermeasures to our innate vulnerabilities. The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, the world’s most powerful person then, meditated on death every day.  St. Jerome kept a human skull on his desk.

(My daughters, knowing my respect for the afore-mentioned, gave me a skull replica, which sits on my desk as I write, wearing my Green Bay Packers cap. Needless to say, I am no St. Jerome…)

Our Toyota senseis countermeasure was to check frequently and severely. “Target, actual, please explain!”  “Your activities have no meaning, Pascal-san!”  “This is NOT countermeasure!”

They were right, of course, and I felt like the village idiot for a long time. Good thing too – how else could I unlearn the rubbish I’d learned engineering and business school?

(Don’t want to be misunderstood – I learned plenty of good stuff in professional schools too. But often it’s mixed in with rubbish, no?)

In summary, Lean fundamentals are really life fundamentals – simultaneously easy & hard. Seek them out, practice and keep going.  Very good things will happen.

Then, remembering Marcus Aurelius and St. Jerome, double-down on humility.

Best regards,

Pascal

Reprise: Lean – Where Are We Now? - Part 1

By Pascal Dennis

The sigmoid curve is one of nature’s most common patterns, governing phenomena as diverse as population growth, and the spread of disease.

It also governs dissemination of ideas.

The Lean Business System was born during the 1946 – 1952 Allied occupation of Japan, a historically unique moment when the best & brightest of two great cultures met and learned from one another.

The Japanese were extraordinarily open and curious students, and they absorbed what Deming, Juran, Drucker and other great senseis had to offer.

Of course, since then Japanese management gurus have returned the favor and taught what Deming called the ‘profound system of knowledge’ around the world.

Lean (a.k.a. Toyota Production System) gained worldwide attention after the publication of The Machine That Changed the World in 1990, and as Toyota’s achievements began to be understood.

Since then, Lean thinking has migrated across manufacturing and developed roots in field as diverse as health care, financial services and education.

Where on the curve are we now?

Are we still in the state of accelerated growth – or has Lean leveled off?

If the latter, how to create a new sigmoid curve? What are the obstacles and possible countermeasures.

I’ll share my thoughts in the weeks to come.

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Lean, Leadership & Ethics, Part 1

By Pascal Dennis

Been reflecting about each of these lately, and how they relate.

But what’s Ethics got to do with anything?

We’re in a proverbial knowledge economy. The market caps of, say, Google, Facebook and Apple, dwarf that of Toyota.

Google, Facebook and Apple have comparatively little in physical capital. ‘All’ they have is intellectual capital, and in particular, human capital.

How does human capital differ, from say, physical or financial capital?

Unlike, say, a machine, or a bond, human capital can chose not to deploy. Human capital can chose to walk out the door, in fact.

“That army will win which has the same spirit,” said Sun Tsu twenty-five hundred years ago. It’s never been more true.

Yet Gallup’s latest State of the Global Workplace report tells us that only 13% of employees are engaged in their work!

Big company disease and organizational dysfunction is so deeply entrenched that we barely flinch at such data.

Imagine you’re a factory manager and your machines are operating at only 13% of capacity!

Why are people so disengaged? Gallup doesn’t say. But I suspect that disillusionment, or even disgust, at what the organization stands for, or how management behaves, is a major reason.

There’s more. Millennials (those born after 1980) will comprise 75% of the workforce by 2025. And Gallup tells us that ethical behavior in corporations is even more important to millennials than to their parents.

Of course Ethics matters. People will not follow swine, at least not willingly, for very long. People will certainly not commit their hearts and minds – unless they feel good about what the organization stands for.

In the weeks to come, we’ll dig into Ethics and how it relates to Lean and Leadership.

Best regards,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Lean as a Growth Strategy

By Al Norval

There is a common misconception about Lean that I hear over and over again. In fact it’s so common I see it getting baked into the strategy of organizations. That is – Lean is all about waste reduction and by reducing waste we can meet our cost objectives. As always, there is some truth in this statement but I like to take it deeper and go to the next level which is what strategy should really be doing.

True Lean is about waste reduction but the purpose is to provide more value to our Customers. To do this we need to understand what Customers truly value.

Here’s a simple example. I know a company that had loads of finished goods inventory. The common thinking in Lean was that inventory is a waste and so it needed to be reduced. The problem was the company also had a 1 day lead time to service customer orders. Customers placed a lot of value on this and it was a distinct competitive advantage. Cutting inventory would mean longer lead times which could take away the marketplace advantage the company had and lead to lost sales.

The real answer is of course, to reduce the inventory but not by just cutting it, by reducing the causes of the inventory while still maintaining the 1 day customer lead time.

As the company improved the efficiency of their mfg lines by reducing unplanned delay, reducing change-over times and improving the yield they discovered a lot of unused capacity which they turned into shorter replenishment lead times from mfg.

This is the secret behind Lean. Waste reduction frees up capacity in the resources of the organization. Rather than cash out these freed up resources, this unused capacity needs to be turned into value for customers. Providing more value to customers, leads to growth.

Providing more value to customers and growing sales with the same resource base while making the work easier for Team Members is a formula that can’t be beaten.

Lean is really a growth strategy. Organizations grow to success, they don’t shrink to success. Think about this the next time someone asks “How do we cash out our Lean activities?”.

Cheers

Lean & Theory of Constraints

By Pascal Dennis

Lean, Six Sigma, Lean-Six Sigma, Business Process Reengineering, TQM, Theory of Constraints...

Hard to make head-nor-tail of the different systems of improvement...

Or are they so different?

In fact, they all converge, just as the martial arts converge.

I studied Aikido. The better I got, the better I came to understand Karate, Taekwondo, Judo and Jujutsu.

They're all expressions of Budo, the way of the warrior, and Bujutsu, the practical application of the Way.

The greatest masters, in my view, approach a form of formlessness - no style or free style.

Free style means the student, after many years of practice -- (and at least 10,000 hours, Malcolm Gladwell tells us) -- has absorbed the core forms into their very being so they don't have to think about them.

This brings me to Lean and Theory of Constraints.

For some reason, some people frame these as 'Either/Or'.

In fact, they are synergistic.

TOC's core tenet is, arguably, Little's Law:

Lead Time = (Work in Process)/Capacity

And Lead Time is the most important Value Stream metric.

Are our materials & services flowing?

To paraphrase Taiichi Ohno, founder of the Lean Business System: "It's all about Lead Time reduction."

We could similarly align Lean and the other transformation systems noted above.

After years of practice, we learn to stop worrying about theology, and simply do.

It's Too Hard...

By Pascal Dennis

When leaders say that Lean/continuous improvement/kaizen is "too hard", I'm reminded of the last days of the Roman Empire.

The so-called nobles were no longer capable or willing to fight.

So they hired mercenaries to do their fighting for them.

"Our shields and swords are too heavy..."

The mercenaries, of course, soon turned on them and Rome's splendid civilization collapsed.

Much of the world into chaos & despair. People lived like dogs for centuries.

Nowadays, some 'leaders' outsource thinking to the 'big consulting houses'.

Some of these, a cynic would say, are also treacherous, if not barbaric.

(For examples, do a Google search on 'Gupta scandal'.)

Kaizen is hard, but not as hard as the alternative.

Best regards,

Pascal

Yokoten

By Al Norval

In the Lean world we hear all kinds of Japanese words. Indeed, it seems like a badge of honour to know obscure Japanese words that baffle your fellow teammates. I’d like to highlight one that isn’t mainstream but is critically important – Yokoten.

Yokoten is a process for sharing learning laterally across an organization. It entails copying and improving on kaizen ideas that work. You can think of yokoten as "horizontal deployment" or "sideways expansion". The corresponding image is one of ideas unfolding across an organization. Yokoten is horizontal and peer-to-peer, with the expectation that people go see for themselves and learn how another area did kaizen and then improve on those kaizen ideas in the application to their local problems.

It's not a vertical, top-down requirement to "copy exactly". Nor is it a “best practices” or “benchmarking” approach nor is it as some organizations refer to a “lift and shift” model. Rather, it is a process where people are encouraged to go see for themselves, and return to their own area to add their own wisdom and ideas to the knowledge they gained.

Simply put, Yokoten equals copy and improve. The role of the senior managers is to make people aware of the existence of these good kaizen examples so that they can go see for themselves, gain the knowledge and improve upon it further. Simply telling subordinates to copy it may be kaizen of a sort but it would not serve the second important aspect of the Toyota Production System, the respect for and development of people.

An effective Yokoten process is a critical step to building capability within the organization and becoming a true learning organization. It truly is one of the capabilities of outstanding organizations.