Reflection - the Breakfast of Champions

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Year-end is my favorite time of year. A time to hit the PAUSE button & humbly reflect...

How did things go this year? Did I meet my personal goals? Did we meet our team goals?

What worked, did not work – and why?

What have I learned about myself & our team?

What have we learned about our business? What's it mean for the upcoming year?

What skills do we need to strengthen? What new skills do we want to develop?

We are human by the grace of our intellect, by the grace of reflection. But given our inevitable blind spots, proclivities, neuroses, and occasional insanities – it’s hard for any individual to do well.

But we have to try. Even better if we can reflect as a team, which can blunt the effect of individual foibles.

Action without thinking is aimless. Thinking without action is lifeless.

Here's to honest reflection, growth & good spirits - and to a safe & healthy 2018.

Best regards,

Pascal

Value Added vs. People Being Valuable

By Al Norval

A big part of Lean is observing the work that people do and breaking it down into three categories:

1. value added work,
   


2. non-value added work
   


3. necessary non-value added work
   

When teams go through this exercise, people are always amazed at how small a percentage of their time is actually spent doing value added work. For knowledge workers in an office environment, it could be 15-20% of their time is spent doing value added work. For a product moving through a value stream, the amount of time spent on value added activity is often less than 1% of the total lead time for the product.

The remainder and bulk of the time, not spent on value added activity is waste which can be broken down into two groups; necessary non-value added and pure waste. In a Lean environment teams work daily to eliminate the waste. Necessary non-value added includes activities driven by regulation or legal obligations. For these kinds of activities, team still must work to reduce the waste in them although the activity itself can never be eliminated.

It’s often a shock to people when they learn that 80% of their work is non-value added. Many times they assume we are saying they are non-value added and react accordingly often with anger and indignation. On the contrary, we aren’t saying the people are non-value added, we are saying much of the work they do is non-value added. The people themselves are still valuable team members. We need to separate the people from the work they do. While this sounds easy, many times it’s a difficult concept to explain to people.

When this happens, I always fall back on the pillars of Lean and talk about how Lean is built on Respect for Humanity. Lean is very respectful of people and so sees it as dis-respectful to ask people to do work that is full of waste.

At this point in time, people usually become engaged in the improvement activity to drive waste out. Understanding the foundations of value & waste as well as Respect for Humanity are key concepts to getting team members to engage and drive improvement.

Cheers

Reprise - What is a Team?

By Pascal Dennis

A team is ‘an organized group of people with a clearly defined goal.’

"Organized" means team members have clearly defined & interconnected roles -- which in turn, depends on shared purpose.

In the absence of latter, our discourse inevitably devolves into random opinions, factoids and, often, recrimination.

"If only those bozos in... would do their jobs!"

Shared purpose shifts our thinking to, "Just how are we going to achieve that objective?"

What sort of objectives are most compelling & effective?

Objectives that are just beyond the capability of the team. (I've found that it's better to err on the side of too aggressive objectives, than the other way)

These compel collaboration. "We hang together -- or separately." Teamwork, therefore, entails interdependency.

Lean factories are organized such that team members in adjacent work zones can help one another and communicate freely.

Work thus becomes a relay race -- if need be, the faster runner can help the slower runner in the baton transfer zone.

(It triggers problem solving too. "Why is the team member always behind? Is it our layout, ergonomics, part fit...?)

Lean offices should be laid out this way too. I've seen finance, insurance, order fulfillment teams achieve remarkable performance levels thereby.

I've described some of the more visible aspects of teamwork.

The invisible is as important. Teams are connected by values, in other words, by shared standards of behaviour.

John Wooden's "sets of three" are good examples:

• Don't lie. Don't cheat. Don't steal.
• Don't whine. Don't complain. Don't make excuses.

Tough standards - for me at least! But when a group of people is aligned around values, life becomes more predictable & they can relax.

That's another element of teamwork -- security.

Best,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Value Added vs. People Being Valuable

By Al Norval

A big part of Lean is observing the work that people do and breaking it down into three categories:

1. value added work,
   


2. non-value added work
   


3. necessary non-value added work
   

When teams go through this exercise, people are always amazed at how small a percentage of their time is actually spent doing value added work. For knowledge workers in an office environment, it could be 15-20% of their time is spent doing value added work. For a product moving through a value stream, the amount of time spent on value added activity is often less than 1% of the total lead time for the product.

The remainder and bulk of the time, not spent on value added activity is waste which can be broken down into two groups; necessary non-value added and pure waste. In a Lean environment teams work daily to eliminate the waste. Necessary non-value added includes activities driven by regulation or legal obligations. For these kinds of activities, team still must work to reduce the waste in them although the activity itself can never be eliminated.

It’s often a shock to people when they learn that 80% of their work is non-value added. Many times they assume we are saying they are non-value added and react accordingly often with anger and indignation. On the contrary, we aren’t saying the people are non-value added, we are saying much of the work they do is non-value added. The people themselves are still valuable team members. We need to separate the people from the work they do. While this sounds easy, many times it’s a difficult concept to explain to people.

When this happens, I always fall back on the pillars of Lean and talk about how Lean is built on Respect for Humanity. Lean is very respectful of people and so sees it as dis-respectful to ask people to do work that is full of waste.

At this point in time, people usually become engaged in the improvement activity to drive waste out. Understanding the foundations of value & waste as well as Respect for Humanity are key concepts to getting team members to engage and drive improvement.

Cheers