Steve Spear on Continuous Improvement

Steve Spear on Continuous Improvement

 

I promised to report on my readings during my recent vacation.  Here's the first.

 

Steve Spear has, in my opinion, become one of most influential thinkers on Lean.  He cemented that position in my mind with the publishing of his third article in Harvard Business Review on Lean Fixing Health Care from the Inside, Today (abstract). 

 

His focus was on how we can fix healthcare delivery, a noble and far-reaching goal in itself.  But the topic masks the underlying message of the article: how Lean practices enable any enterprise to learn and improve, constantly and dynamically. 

 

Most importantly, he identifies and illustrates four underlying principles for operational excellence:

 

1.       Work is designed as a series of ongoing experiments that immediately reveal problems.

2.       Problems are addressed immediately through rapid experimentation

3.       Solutions are disseminated adaptively through collaborative experimentation

4.       People at all levels of the organization are taught to become experimentalists.

 

Spear's time observing Lean operations and now implementing in a healthcare initiative is right on the money.  Even in these four notes, you will see the links to his earlier work.

 

I see Spear's three articles (this one along with his first, Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System and his second Learning to Lead at Toyota ) becoming the basis for the  training in Lean I'm doing.  His clarity and ability to capture the central, bedrock elements of Lean are unsurpassed.

 

If you have access to HBR through your local library, copy these articles.  If not, it is well worth the $6.00 for the electronic download of the copy. 

 

I hope this is helpful.

 

When Options Vanish

When Options Vanish

 

Yesterday's epic National League Playoff Game between Atlanta and Houston illustrates an important management principle for each of us.

If you missed it, the game was very tight and will likely prove to be a classic.  The Astros came from 5 runs down to tie the game with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th.  The two teams then put up zeros until the 17th inning when the Astros won on a home run and thus won the Divisional Playoffs.

The rules of baseball make this a useful management example.  In such a long game, each manager made numerous substitutions to try to win, both in the late innings of regulation and then in each extra inning.  Relief pitchers, pinch hitters, pinch runners.  Since baseball requires players to leave the game once they are substituted for, the choices got more complex as they used up available players.  The managers of both teams faced and made key decisions.

 

They ran out of options.   Players were in positions they didn't normally play.  Roger Clemens, the great 43-year old veteran pitcher, was a pinch-hitter.  The Braves had Julio Franco, the living fossil, playing first base.  At age 47 (we think), Franco is older than 8 current major league managers. The Astros had a rookie shortstop, Eric Bruntlett, in right field. 

 

They didn't whine.  At least not about the rules.  They played the game and made the best of the situation. 

 

They balanced the "now" with the "future".  Bobby Cox and Phil Garner had to weigh out each decision and balance its effect on the current situation (often one at-bat at a time) with the impact it would have on the lineup for the remainder of the game.  And, in choosing to use Clemens as a relief pitcher, with how even the next game might set up. 

What do we learn?  Managing a business is also about succeeding now, while not cutting off future possibilities.  As Eli Goldratt says, the purpose of a business is "To make money now and into the future."  Sometimes we don't have the options we'd like to have or the options we had in the past.  Whining never gets us anywhere.  Relentless pursuit of excellence does win out.  For, even though the Braves lost the game and are now out of the playoffs, Bobby Cox and crew have won 14 straight division championships.  They deserved to be there.

 

Be relentless, even when options start to vanish. 

 

I hope this is helpful. 

 

Oh, and if you enjoy baseball illustrations of management principles, check out Jeff Angus' excellent blog Management by Baseball. 

Making Better Decisions

Making Better Decisions

 

Yesterday's readings from Peter Drucker:

 

A decision without an alternative is a desperate gambler's throw, no matter how carefully thought through it might be.

 

Which triggered a memory of a Frank Patrick blog in July (click here and scroll down to July 5 for the full post):

 

One choice is not a choice, it is a trap;
two choices is not a choice, it is a dilemma;
three choices is a choice.

 

Good decisions, a necessary element of good leadership, requires an understanding of choices.  No choice is indeed a "gambler's throw", a "trap". 

 

If you are in process leadership, you are probably an action-oriented person.  Good.  And we still need to pause.  Find choices.  Write. Noodle.  Be open.  Wait.  Think. Mull.

 

I hope you can mull this and find it a bit helpful.

 

Every kaizen has a lesson--Handoffs

Every kaizen has a lesson--Handoffs

We recently learned a big lesson by by paying attention to the handoffs.

Frank Patrick wrote well about managing handoffs in August, which got me thinking.  In a project setting, many problems happen not in the work itself, but rather in moving the work from performer to performer.

 

We did a 3-day kaizen event several weeks ago on a complex process where we did just that.  We told our team that we were operating on the assumption that their actual work content was just fine...don't change a thing.  Rather, we looked exclusively at the hand-offs of both material and information between multiple performers in the process. 

 

Oh my. 

 

When we took times of material and information just sitting, unacted upon, when we looked at assumptions of both sender and receiver, when we offered simple improvements and implemented them during the kaizen, the results were astounding. 

 

Why is this so?  I wonder if it isn't because our attention is usually so much on the work itself that we pay little attention to the movement of work and information to trigger further work.  And, thus, the inattention means that there is great opportunity. 

 

Think of what happens when you walk into an urgent care facility.  The receptionist may be efficient at taking your name and insurance background and the physician may be efficient at diagnosing your hacking cough.  However, the facility might not pay attention to how the receptionist communicates to the physician that she has a patient, right now, in exam room 12.  And, as a result, your total time increases.  Even though the performers are efficient, the collective performance is very inefficient with your time, due to inattention to handoffs. 

You find handoffs in the space between processes.  Particularly processes you are proud of.  The handoff gets lost in the shadows.  Go poke in those shadows. 

You can have gains, easy gains, by merely paying attention to handoffs.  Look at them anew.  I sure am.

 

I hope this is helpful. 

 

Sauce, for both goose and gander

Sauce, for both goose and gander

 

The foundation for all Lean efforts is standardized work.  And this is a huge turn-off for most people, me included.  Some of you will remember the Richie Havens song Freedom (or maybe you don't...I date myself here...).  And standardized work feels like a major crimping of said freedom.

 

So, it is crucial for us in leadership roles to model this.  Even with nobody looking.

 

One of my regular duties is to review and approve company invoices.  I set up standard work for this.   Including cycle times.  So, with a performance standard and a stopwatch, I can record plan vs. actual for this mundane but key task.

 

Geeky?  Yes (you are surprised??).  But the example is key.  When I talk with others about standardized work, I have to walk the talk too. 

 

I hope YOU can find some work to standardize and then improve.  It's a great example.  And it helps you learn more about lean and about yourself.

 

 

 

Reducing Email waste

Reducing Email waste

 

Whew.  Vacation.  Piles of work to recover from.  So much to blog about, so little time. 

 

But here is a link little bit of wisdom for you on how to reduce the waste of those to whom you send email: Writing sensible email messages.  Customer first.

 

I hope you find this helpful. 

 

EOM.

 

 

Heading out with an armful of books

I'm taking off for a week's vacation with my lovely wife on Saturday.  The past month has been both hectic and gratifying with some surprisingly positive kaizen event activities.  I hope to write more about the lessons learned.

In the book bag for the are two new Lean Enterprise Institute books.  "The Gold Mine" is a novel about a Lean turnaround, sort of in the style of "The Goal."  I'm about halfway through it and will report on it.  The second is Womack and Jones' latest thinking on the entire lean process, called "Lean Provision".  It looks useful, but I've only skimmed it.  Jim Womack is an excellent writer, though.  Also in the bag is the September issue of Harvard Business Review, in which Steven Spear, a true lean academic, writes on improving healthcare.  I'll try to report on all of these. 

We have much to do to make our enterprises competitive.  The pressures to distract are significant.  I count on books like these and interactions with many of you to help me stay focused.  I hope this blog may, in some small way, do the same for you.

Masking waste, even by a good deed

Masking waste, even by a good deed

 

Had a long talk with a neighbor last night who is very active in a food pantry at his church.  They feed over 250 families a month and have done so for nearly 20 years.  His role is in finding and transporting food to the pantry.  Many local stores donate old food and my neighbor takes it to the pantry.  He described one store's story to me.  

 

"Yeah, it was really a shame when that store got their logistics act together last year."

 

Oh really?

 

"Yes.  Before the change, I could go there on Saturday morning and get enough day-old bakery goods to fill the trunk, back seat and passenger seat of my car!  But now, boy, they are running better and I'm lucky to get a couple dozen donuts each week."   He just shook his head.

 

So what happened?

 

"Oh, they just figured out what was selling in the store and quit guessing.  So now they have stuff that the paying customers want.  A lot less is left over for us."

 

My waste-free-system side went clashing into my do-right-in-the-community side at his description.  Clearly, the company made some effective changes in predicting and supplying their bakery shelves.  Did the contributions to the local charity mask this supply chain problem for them?  Did they ignore other problems under the banner of "helping the community"?  I have no idea. 

 

Yet it also raises the issue that we not mask a system problem by calling it something that it isn't.  And, similarly, we not mask a community responsibility by just letting waste flow that way. 

 

How much better to have a good supply system and a good way to contribute back to local communities.  Both clearly called what they are. 

 

I hope there is not a "Corporate Scrooge" somewhere now relishing the fact that they are not sending food to help local poor.  But, even more, I hope they are not masking either their ability to contribute or their ability to supply their stores. 

 

Inventory masks problems in many ways.  This is a new one to me.

 

I hope this is helpful. And go make a contribution, in money or in kind, to a local food pantry today.  You'll be better for it and so will they. 

 

 

Never get complacent

 

 

Never get complacent

 

"Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it.  It always creates new realities.  It always creates, above all, its own and different problems."

Peter Drucker, from The Daily Drucker, p 262

 

Today's thought from the writings of Peter Drucker is dead on the money for a lean thinker.  Indeed, one of the fundamental concepts of Lean is continuous improvement, kaizen, a relentless and never ending quest to improve. 

 

While this quest can be stated (and often is) as mere pabulum, what does it mean for your company?  Is it, as one process company I know of put it, a continual improvement in their "first batch quality" metric?  Is it, as a retail company describes it, a steady increase in the average purchase per customer visit?  Can you measure it and then improve it?

 

Further, from our understanding of Theory of Constraints, do we apply this improvement most intentionally at the point of constraint?  And, further, do we apply it to make sure we increase capacity for throughput as we expand the constraint?

 

When we succeed, we create new issues.  Face them.  Measure them.  Improve them. 

 

I hope this is helpful.

 

Distractions vs. Focus

Distractions vs. Focus

 

Today's activities:

--accounting issues

--unplanned tour to give

--a lost document to find

--a wounded ego to salve

--plan a major project that just emerged

--plan a kaizen event for next week

 

So, what else is new?  Sounds pretty normal doesn't it? 

 

One of the key features of a lean system is the ability to separate the important things that require our attention from the noise that is always there.  This is why we use kanban cards, for example (making the fulfillment of inventory clear and easy) or daily production charts (which show us the key metrics we know we need). 

 

We need these tools to separate the important from the rest of the things that clamor for our attention.  Not all signals are created equal. 

I hope you can separate the key signals from the fluff today.

 

I hope this is helpful.