Lean Behaviors: Trust

We don't talk about trust all that much in the Lean community. 

 

Perhaps we should a little more.

 

Why?  Because we ask people to do some rather counter-intuitive things as we try to set up a Lean system.  Like follow standard work even to the point of running out of raw materials.  Why do we do this?  So we can more quickly discover where other pinch points are.  We want to expose waste.  We, who think a lot about Lean and the systems thereof and want to find waste.

 

But, wait a minute, buster, says our associate.  I've seen this movie before and I know how it ends.  If I work hard and expose a shortage somewhere else, either I get in trouble or my pal who works over there gets in trouble and, either way, it isn't good.  No, I've learned to survive by making a work-around and then keeping the whole system "looking good". 

 

And she is right.  It makes no sense, based on her experience, to work hard to expose waste.

 

Unless.

 

Unless you and I, leaders in our organizations, act differently as well.  Unless we demonstrate exposing waste gets rewarded, not punished.  Unless we walk the talk ourselves. 

 

Unless we say thank you. 

 

Unless we demonstrate respect for her opinion. 

 

That's trust.  And, without it, all the waste we so nobly hope to find remains hidden.

 

Keep on learning.

 

 

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Book Review: Gemba Walks by Jim Womack

Jim Womack has done yet another wonderful service for the Lean Community with his most recent book "Gemba Walks".  I've already greatly benefited from it on a first read.  Why?

 

Repetition.  Creative, clear, shapeful repetition. 

 

Jim brings a remarkable clarity to the task of explaining, encouraging and directing lean implementations.  In this book, he pulls together his written record of walks through a multitude of companies over the past ten years.   He published these records in monthly email newsletters during this time, most of which I remembered reading.  This text shuffles the observations into themes.  Womack adds depth, context and linkage with brief paragraphs before each one.   

 

And the core theme comes through.  Repeatedly. 

 

Look.  Find the problem.  Work hard to find root cause.  Fix it.  Repeat.  Experiment relentlessly.  

 

With story after story, Jim explains how this simple pattern works when applied relentlessly.  And how getting bored with repeating this pattern is a plan for mediocrity or worse. 

 

Jim's relatively recent observation of outdated management systems undermining genuine excellence comes out in two new essays in the collection. 

 

For a person new to Lean, "Gemba Walks" will quickly teach much.  For those of us in the trenches, there is both encouragement and more than a few good kicks in the pants.  For senior execs trying to understand Lean, this is way better than more Power Point slides.

In many ways, this book may well also serve as an excellent reference.  Jim organized the chapters to align with common sets of problems we see.  One simple read of a chapter will take less than 10 minutes and I found each would trigger 2-5 quality ideas to test.  Soon.  

 

Simple steps, done repeatedly and consistently, work.  Womack explains this clearly.  Well worth the read.  

A low-tech personal management system

It's a new year and I've noted a plethora of ads and blogs in the last week touting ways to "turn over a new leaf" by using some new technology tool on a phone or laptop.  It's a noble cause and useful endeavor. 

 

When it comes to organizing one's business and personal life, I've not found any better system than the one described in Getting Things Done by David Allen.  Importantly, GTD is not software but a system of principles.  I first read Allen soon after his book came out in early 2003 and went through several iterations of implementation.  I finally put a system together which worked.

 

The system is decidedly low tech; it consists of a small, organized stack of colored 3x5 inch index cards held by a bulldog clip.  No batteries to recharge, no Internet connection, no usage fees.  I wrote up the entire system in this post on the GTD Connect blog in April, 2008.  I re-read it last week in response to all the urgings to try new apps.  I chuckled that, 2.5 years later, the simple system I wrote up then still works, daily, for me. 

 

So, if you are trying to find a way to organize yourself, I commend GTD to you.  Feel free to use my  implementation to trigger your own thinking to take more effective action with less waste.

 

Keep learning.

 

 

 

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Lean Behaviors: Mock Up, Part 2

Taking my own advice (and that of a colleague), we did a life-size mock up Friday of a new, pull-based scheduling system.  We did it with the folks who will have to use it.

 

What did we learn?

·         How much physical space it would take

·         Our initial thought on label clarity was inadequate

·         The concept will likely work

·         Three other assumptions were slightly off target

·         Batching is built into our DNA

·         Flow is tough to learn

 

How did we learn it?

·         We watched the space it would take

·         We watched clumsiness in working with kanban cards

·         We listened to language

·         We watched moods change from comprehension to confusion to frustration to insightful satisfaction

 

What will we do?

·         We handed out three assignments to get at by Monday at 9am

·         We scheduled a repeat of the mock up later on Monday morning

 

In short, we did a pile of learning and a pile of teaching in a mere 90 minutes at virtually no cost just by doing a mock up and simulating three days' production cycle. 

 

No computer screens in sight. 

 

Seven people, sitting, walking, scowling, asking, listening, talking, moving, adjusting, clarifying. 

 

90 minutes. And I truly don't think it would have happened as well had we not done the mock up.  

 

Well worth it.

 

 

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Lean Behaviors: Mock Up

I was reminded twice today of the criticality of a simple, life-size mock up of a proposed change.  In our virtual, digital world (witness this blog :-) ) we mostly sit, staring at a computer screen.  Subtly, that becomes reality to us.

It becomes more of a shock and of supreme use to make up a model of a process.  

• Use a refrigerator box as a "machine".  
• Stand at a kitchen counter to model an assembly.  
• Use empty milk jugs to simulate fluid flow.  
• Write with washable markers on a wall to see how a pipe should run.  
• Use playing cards to simulate kanban pick up and delivery.  
• Put tape on the floor to show where you would walk between process steps.

Mock it up.  Now.  It's amazing what it will trigger for your learning.  

And then keep learning.

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Lean Behaviors: Trusting Signals

Fundamental to any Lean implementation is Just in Time delivery. JIT is driven by pull signals, flowing opposite the direction of product, requesting an upstream.  Thus, everything depends on the human reaction to that signal, be it a physical kanban card, an electronic signal, a specified container, or the arrival of a tugger.

 

And humans want to know; Is the signal reliable?  Can I depend on it?  Does it tell me, every time, precisely what to do?  Does it make my life better?

 

An answer of "no" or "maybe" or "well, it should" is enough to derail the pull system.

 

Humans need to trust the signal.

 

The signals need to be trustworthy. 

 

When a pull system isn't working, it's usually one of these two. 

 

Keep on learning.

 

 

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Lean Behaviors: Hard work, in reality

One of the appeals of Lean is its framework to describe, from a high altitude, how a process or collection of processes should operate.  It appeals to readers. 

 

To sell books on Lean, one needs only to tell the stories of how those processes should operate.  It appeals to authors. 

 

Understanding the books and the stories makes one literate on Lean, able to use the lingo, able to fly over a situation and offer advice.  It appelas to senior executives. 

 

Implementation, however, is the truly hard work of Lean.  By definition, implementation is at a low altitude, encompassing detail.  It's hard to write interesting books about the boring, long grind of implementation. 

 

And the true leader accepts this, buckles down, and implements anyway. 

 

The leader does the hard work.

 

The one who does the hard work is the true leader. 

 

 

 

 

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Lean Behaviors: Who Behaves Differently?

Long time blogging buddy Dan Markovitz points to an oft-forgotten essential:

Accomplishing biz strategy requires defining, developing & managing specific behaviors at a front-line level

As many of us enter the planning cycle for 2011, ask: "Will this plan actually modify anyone's behavior?"  

Keep learning.

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Lean Behaviors: Focus

Years ago, a friend succinctly described the struggle her son had due to his ADHD.  "All stimuli carry equal weight to him," she said, sadly.  A bird flying by the classroom window carried equal meaning to the assignment written on the board.  He simply could not distinguish between the important and the trivial or irrelevant.  

The Lean leader must have eyes to see the important and ignore or downplay much else.  This is doubly difficult because events irrelevant to the delivery of value maybe very important to others, even senior people, in the organization.  

It isn't easy.  But everything is not important.  Only a few things truly are. 

Keep learning.

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The Behaviors of Lean

It has been a while since I've posted in this space.  The inactivity is not because there's a problem or that I'm not learning anything about Lean. 

 

Rather, I have not been able to put a mental handle on just what I have been Learning About Lean.  And with nothing clear-headed to say, I chose to simply say nothing. 

 

There are a lot of great sources out there to discuss the tools and methods of Lean.  We've now been implementing these tools for 6+ years in my current role and it has been and continues to be a blast.  I don't see much reason now to try to add to those who are way better than me in describing tools.

 

Yet, Lean is more than tools...it represents a way of thinking, a way of viewing the often-chaotic world of business.  Ultimately, it is about the actions one chooses to take in a variety of situations.  Do the actions make sense?  Are they reasonably consistent over time?  Does the leader demonstrate those actions clearly for those with whom he/she works?

 

In short, a lot of Lean is about behavior.

 

I've been observing more closely those behaviors over the past year or so.  Yet, only recently have I sensed a framework for describing what I see, behaviorally.

 

So I'll be writing about these observations in this space.  As it has been in the history of this blog, the writing is a work-in-progress, a way I try to explain to myself just what I am sensing.  If you enjoy coming along for the ride, so much the better. 

 

Keep on learning.

 

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