Engaging Consumers to Fight Clutter

Is it possible to get untrained, uninitiated, unconnected people to participate in your efforts to deliver value? Consider this example that caught me totally by surprise in a very unexpected moment.

In October, I had the chance of a lifetime to take a 12 day vacation in Italy with my three sisters and our spouses. During our trip, we rented a house for a week in the not-too-touristy city of Lucca. Since we wanted breakfast and some other meals at the house, we had to figure out how to shop for groceries in a new city, not speaking any Italian.

Our spouses voted 4-0 that the Ely kids should make the first run to the grocery store. Once there, speaking no Italian, my sisters and I started to find the cereal, fruit, eggs, milk and chocolate...necessities each. In proper sisterly fashion, they dispatched me to find a shopping cart.

I observed other shoppers had carts but I could not see where to get one of my own. Finally, I noticed a covered rack of perfectly ordered carts in the parking lot. I went out to get one. And boy was I surprised by what I found.



The neat row of carts were cleverly linked together. Looking around for some visual clues, I saw some drawings which showed a one Euro coin (about $1.50) as the "key" to release the cart from the one ahead of it. My sister Anne came out looking for me. She fortunately had the right coin and plunked it into the small plastic gizmo mounted on the handle of the cart.



She pushed the red coin holder into the housing, the chain dropped and the cart popped loose.



We didn't exactly start singing opera but felt a little smarter. We did our shopping, were pleased my oldest sister's credit card was multi-lingual, loaded the groceries into our car and then wondered just what we were supposed to do with the cart. Pushing it back to the still-neat row of carts, I reversed the process, inserting the chain from the next cart into the plastic gizmo. Pop, out came the coin. And I finally realized what was going on. I thought "Wow, what a cool system!"

Rather than the messy, spread-out, disorganized pockets of carts we see in most US groceries, this simple system provided an incentive for shoppers to return the cart. And when shoppers do it right, the use of the cart is free. I simply had to "loan" a coin to the store for the time it took me to shop.

Interestingly, during the course of the week's stay in Lucca, we made other trips to the store and observed another social dimension of this system. We saw several shoppers accept the help to load their groceries into their car. In return, the helper took the cart back to the rack and pocketed the coin; effectively a tip for the help.

I subsequently learned one discount grocer operating in America has the same system for their Aldi Foods shopping carts.

Why do I mention this? Because well-conceived systems with visual tools and simple economic incentives can eliminate a lot of wasted effort. And if it is possible to do this in a grocery store parking lot, how much more inside our companies?? We have a lot of room for creativity.

Updated: I learned, via a comment, I was wrong in my assumption Aldi was an American-based store. It is owned by a German company. My mistake.

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Santa Really Does Know

Political cartoonists are at their best when they something widely known, exaggerate it a bit and retell it with a clever twist. Like this:



Interesting to me there is such broad awareness that Toyota and Honda run with a different culture, one of innovation and change. And, sadly, this is absent from domestic automakers.

While this is funny, the bigger challenge is for each of us to build that culture in our own organizations. And a culture never happens overnight.

Go make it happen.


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Gettin’ Caught

On a recent vacation trip, I looked in the rear-view mirror and to see a State Police car telling me to pull over. Not having seen those flashers in 38 years, it was an unfamiliar experience for me.

I pulled my driver’s license out of my wallet and awaited the officer to appear at my window. I had forgotten that he was also going to ask for my car registration and insurance certificate; this meant a quick dive into my glove compartment while he loomed large to my left. The glove box had insurance certificates for 1998, 2002, 2003 but no 2008. I fumbled through old oil change receipts, extra fast food napkins, two tire pressure gauges and CD player instructions but found no current insurance certificate. Growing impatient, the officer said “Let me just check out this other stuff and you keep looking.” He headed back to his squad car. I finally found what I needed but was left with quite a mess as I sat and waited.

Eventually, the officer returned with a speeding ticket and an encouragement to “be safe.” I drove on and had plenty of time to reflect. What did this teach me?

5S applies everywhere. The obvious lesson was the mess in my glove box. I had way too many napkins (“just in case” I had a big spill, I had told myself). This excess inventory cluttered the limited space. I also had no labeling system for the crucial documents I needed, by law, to have at my fingertips. The officer could have concluded my sloppiness in the car could further indicate sloppiness in my entire driving record.

Failure of standard work. More broadly, I had done “non-standard work” on the road by exceeding the speed limit. The fact I disagreed with the officer on the degree to which I was “non-standard” did not change the fact I knew I was speeding. And, by doing non-standard work, I significantly lengthened the time it took me to reach my destination.

The audit process. In my day job, I’m often assessing standard work, trying to point out non-standard work. This experience on the highway was useful as it put me on the other side of the coin. It wasn’t fun having non-standard work pointed out to me, even when I knew it was an accurate assessment. It gives me more empathy on how to point out non-standard work.

One problem can point out another. By speeding, I was forced to find another, less obvious, problem; the mess in my glove box. There is a chain reaction when we pursue excellence. That’s a good thing.

Future prevention. Not surprisingly, I was a very careful driver for the remaining 12 hours of driving on this trip. As noble as many of us may think we will be, not needing any checkup, this thought is often an illusion. I haven’t had a speeding ticket since I was a senior in high school; I was pushing the limit. I needed a correction. And the remaining trip was clear and uneventful. At the speed limit.

Learning opportunities are everywhere, sometimes decorated with red and blue flashing lights. Don’t miss them.




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Simple or Simplistic?

A colleague recently returned from a management conference where she heard a presentation by a software firm about their new inventory management package. She was intrigued; it had a fully configurable tool to calculate buffer inventory levels based on shipment levels. As sales rose or fell, the tool would raise or lower the buffer inventory every two weeks according to the methods selected by the user. In addition, the package provided signals to production to ask for replenishment of the buffer as customers purchased goods.

Impressed, she complimented the presenter on coding an efficient pull system. He shuddered at her suggestion. “Oh no, this is not a ‘pull system’, this is a predictive system, driven by the program.” She paused, asked some clarifying questions, the answers all pointing to this as a well-conceived pull system capable of managing inventory levels of tens of thousands of SKUs according to the user’s wishes. Yet, the company was adamant they had not made a “pull system,” as if the term was a label they wished to avoid at all costs.

Why? Why the apparent revulsion?

I suspect it has something to do with the confusion of “simple” with “simplistic.” Most of us are comfortable with the former but less so with the latter term. Pull systems are simple. Take one, make one. That’s it. To manage the huge variety of finished goods most customers want, software can do a dandy job of keeping track of the ins and outs, all the “take ones, make ones” signals. The software is complex; the concept is not.

Holding fast to the simple principle, while seeing the need for complex tools to implement the idea is key. But denying the ultimate simplicity, the clarity and the visibility of the principle is downright foolish.

Be simple…not simplistic.



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Book Review: Managing to Learn

I just got the new book by John Shook, Managing to Learn. I was surprise and pleased by what I found

The book describes the use of the “A3 Process.” This process is, on the one hand, simple; it uses a piece of 11”x17” paper to tell a story of a problem and how to approach it.

Yet the book is anything but simple. And is anything but a description of how to write on a big sheet of paper.

Shook does the Lean community a great service in the book, comparable to his service in writing “Learning to See” in 1999 describing Value Stream Mapping. Shook delivers this value in two unique ways.

First, he uses the story format, with a young employee learning from a seasoned executive how to produce a good A3. “Oh, no, not another book of forced dialogue” I thought to myself when I learned this was the format. Rather than trying to be Eli Goldratt, however, Shook tells two stories; one from the perspective of the learner, one through the eyes of the teacher. The stories are side by side, in two different colors, presented simultaneously. The learner can’t understand why his early approaches aren’t good enough; the teacher struggles to know how to help the learner be enthusiastic while correcting his short-sighted efforts. The rhetorical tool works well.

I live in both of these roles and Shook’s description was right on the money. Rather than just showing the mechanics of filling out a form, he goes much deeper, to the learning process allowing people to see more, learn better and lead more effectively.

Second, the pace of the book “walks the talk” of the book. Central to the A3 process is finding the root cause of a problem. Shook forces the reader to agonize through this process. It does not happen as quickly as I would have liked. I found myself saying as I read, “John, get me to the point. Please!” And he didn’t. He forced me, the reader, the learner, to grapple with the difficulty of finding root cause, particularly in strategic, non-mechanical problems. For me, with Lean not a new thing at all, this was the most important lesson. The effort to get to root cause is difficult. And worth it. Shook forces me along that journey, a journey I need to take. Too many Lean books illustrate only the easy cases, the obvious paths to root cause. Shook takes a tougher path and it is worth it.

This book is a significant contribution to the Lean community. I suspect it was long in the making, as the book shows much reflection and a distillation of much knowledge. I recommend it highly.

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Going Deep into the Basics

Had a wonderful conversation this morning with one of our supervisors. The ostensible topic was a scheduling question. But, from that, she asked a most wonderful, telling and profound question.

“So just what does ‘single piece flow’ mean anyway?”

This supervisor has been in on and supportive of our Lean efforts from day one. She knows about single piece flow. Yet, as she explained the context of her question, it showed a growing depth of understanding. She was no longer mimicking the simple answer to the question; now she was grappling with the principle underneath the technique.

We went into the specific matter prompting her question. It had process criticality, major quality demands as well as logistical challenges.

“So just what does ‘single piece flow’ mean anyway?”

The seemingly simple question was actually deep. We grappled with the application in this setting. We left it for her to assess how best to apply it. She does, after all, know the setting better than anyone else in the company.

And, more encouraging, is asking the question. It challenged me to keep asking basic questions. I hope it does you as well.



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Debating Gemba

This is not a post about politics, though it flowed from last night's Presidential Debate.

It struck me that John McCain regularly mentioned how he had been to various trouble spots around the globe. How he had gone directly to opinion makers. How he had been present at the place things were happening.

I don't think Senator McCain knows anything about Lean, nor did he cite Lean as a strategy for competitiveness. Yet he appealed for credibility by stating he had physically been where important issues were taking place. In Lean parlance, this is going to gemba.

Intrinsically, people ascribe credibility to those who are at the point of action. Our modern idiom "been there, done that" illustrates this further.

So, if a politician knows this intrinsically, why is it so hard for many mangers to physically show up at the place value is added?

Perhaps this is a time to learn from, rather than criticize, those running for office.

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There's Clutter, then there's Clutter

When I posted recently about clearing out clutter, I had a couple of queries deserving response.

One of my work associates read the post, slipped quietly into my office and asked, in a hushed tone, “Joe, who did you tick off now?” I got a good laugh; the post was not directed at anyone. I simply was fed up with my own propensity for junk to pile up on my desk. As most of my posts, I wrote this one to myself.

Then, Joanna Rothman posted a comment asking about those who stay organized with everything out. Is this clutter? She poses a great point.

Many jobs require horizontal surfaces to be covered with relevant material. In particular, architects, project managers and building planners often need to work with large sheets of paper. They do no good rolled up in a drawer.

As in many things Lean, identical issues can be value-added in one setting and pure waste in another. Recall our usual revulsion at conveyor lines; yet in the chocolate factory it can add value by letting the gooey mix solidify before going to the packaging line.

To Joanna, I’d suggest the difference is in the intent. To answer the question “Is this piece of paper out because I need it or because I’m procrastinating trashing it or filing it?” If the former, leave it out; if the latter, well, it’s just plain clutter.

And each of us knows the difference.

So, keep getting rid of clutter. It just gets in the way.

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Clutter

Why do we tolerate clutter? Is it a crutch? Is it an effort to hide the work we don't want to get done? We'll never know while it surrounds us.

Gotta get rid of the messes. The physical messes. The email messes. The relational messes. The structural messes.

All of them are clutter. Getting in the way. Distracting us.

The leader has enough distractions already. Why do we put more in our way?

Start with your desk. Then de-clutter your email inbox. Then, go make an apology to someone you’ve offended.

De-clutter. Daily.

It is essential.

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Passion and Tools, Part 2

I wrote recently about passion for a topic and the tools to excel in that topic. Here’s an example.

GTDtimes is a blog surrounding David Allen’s excellent book “Getting Things Done.” GTD is a wonderful system to help us deal with the crunch of “stuff” coming our way. In mid July one practitioner published Cool GTD Gear to Motivate Everyone in your Organization. A very good post, well conceived on tools for doing GTD.
In the comment section of the post, one reader said:

I was enthusiastic to the point of trying to mandate GTD among my team of 20 about two years ago. I only had spotty success and found myself doing what you have just described here…REMINDING people to follow the program. I have found that this road is a tough one. A different road I chose was to have everyone work on projects together in a group collaboration system. At least for those projects, we were getting things done and communicating about it. if they were not working on a project for me, I learned to let them do what worked for them.

There you see it. A leader gave out tools and sought to motivate his team. Yet it didn’t really take.

The passion never took. And, left only with tools, the implementation was spotty.

Last week I heard a consultant present on the change process. He described two needs. The first was for alignment; getting all folks to understand the direction of the organization, in the right spots, equipped to achieve organizational results.

Yet, a second need remained which he termed atunement, the ability of people to buy in, at an emotional level, with these goals.

Alignment gives tools, yet atunement breeds passion. How does this happen in an organization? How do we, as Lean Leaders, build this passion? I’m learning this myself and welcome your input.

Be passionate and live it.

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