Daily Kaizen

For several years now I have had to constantly battle my tendency to grow inpatient with the pace of change.  For those of you that know me you would not be surprised by this comment, although, I think most Lean zealots have the same challenge.   The more I learn, the greater my experience the more I see just how much opportunity there is for improvement.   A year ago I may have walked a process and seen the opportunity to improve throughput by 10-15%.  I walk the same process today and I see the opportunity to improve throughput by 50 or 60%.  Nothing has changed, but my awareness of the opportunity.  Simply, I have learned more effectively to see waste. 

This awareness is a good thing, because it can help me more effectively do my job if I channel it correctly.  Yet, at the same time it can also be a real curse and a source of a lot of frustration.   I see what is possible, but those that must own the change are not yet there.  They don’t see what I see.  If I am not careful I can come off arrogant or as a VP friend of mine like to say “like a preacher on the street corner.”  Or even worse, it will lead me to drive so hard that I lose the faith of those that I am suppose to be helping in the first place.  Like I said earlier this is a real challenge for me.  Luckily, I have a couple of really good coaches that help talk me down when I get wound up.  A peer of mine that recently joined us from another company is constantly reminding me that the ability to see problems (opportunities) will always outdistance the rate of improvement and that the delta can either be an opportunity for teaching or a whole lot of frustration. 

I write this post today, because over the last week I see a lot of people in the organization struggling with this same challenge.  Many of them are new to Lean and the light bulbs have strarted to go off.  They find themselves suddenly out ahead of their peers, and wanting others to see what they see.  Or they now look at plans, initiatives and policies and see that the “emperor has no clothes.”  That what we have always told ourselves or plan to do is just not right, not effective and drives waste.  It easy to quickly come to the conclusion that we need to change everything, that there is not enough time, etc.   If this post is hitting home I would share with you the advice my coaches have given me.  Remember that these problems (opportunities) have been there for a long time and the first step to solving them is being aware that they are there.  Remember that you can only do one thing at a time and that to be effective you need to bring other along.  So don’t try to solve world peace, pick the one thing you are going to work on today, make the improvement and then take the next.  Finally, when all else fails find another Lean zealot and go grab a beer. 

PS–Speaking of grabbing a beer, I won’t be posting for a week or two.  I am off to Hawaii for a break and a much needed vacation.  Aloha!

Being only slightly more then a year into our Strategy Deployment process we are still living and will continue to live for a while longer with a hangover from our long history of Management by Objective (MBO).  I heard a quote recently from a Lean leader from outside our organization that said if Strategy Deployment is not driving your leadership team completely crazy then you are not doing it right.  I guess time will tell if we are doing it right, but we sure have passed the crazy test.  Stepping back it is not difficult to see why this process is so challenging.  As leaders for our entire career we have been taught to focus on results, that when things are not going as expected to bring forward flashy solutions and that too much emphasis on process is a waste of time. 

I have had several coaching opportunities with senior leaders in the organization that are struggling with this transition.  They are committed to making this new process work, but are often catching themselves either in the midst of old behaviors or unclear of how to reinforce new behaviors.  I tell them that it will take time and that they need to “stay the course”, ask for help when they are unclear, and probably most importantly they need to call out when they see that the process is being worked around.  The last point being the biggest risk we face right now.  I am confident that over time they will master this process, but only if they continue to use it.  As soon as senior leaders no longer follow the processes that they create a great skepticism will be created in the organization and it will singnle a green light to others that the process is not that important.   This is probably most at risk when new problems arise that require new work to be started.  If this new work is not vetted through the PDCA process we will lose the focus we are trying to create.

Another key coaching point I often make relates to teaching leadership how to think and see process.  Across the organization we have several improvement targets tied to cost, quality and delivery metrics.  It is often unclear what actions will be taken in order to achieve these targets.  Since I have been with the organization I have often watched leadership set measures on our dashboard and then month after month track the measures without hitting the targets.  Why?  Because by just tracking the measure it does not mean you are going to achieve a different result.  That is the flawed logic from the past based on the belief that we need to set targets and then set people lose to achieve them without concern for the means.  We have a whole lot of data that suggest show this does not work   

Leaders in the organization need to get good at asking their peers to “please show me the process you will change that will lead to this result.”  In fact, unless they can go out into the workplace and see how the process will change and understand the process measures that will be put in place to support the change they should have very little confidence that result will ever follow.  This might sound simple, but it is a question that can do a lot to help bring clarity and sort out whether we are solving a problem or just jumping to a solution.   For example, we have several strategies right now that are focused on either structural changes or adding resources as the solution to getting better results.  If we asked the question above would we come to the same answer?   Would we add resources to a current process that is not working or would we focus on improving the process first?  Additionally, we have set several targets that it is unclear which processes we will focus on improving in order to achieve them.  It is clear there is still a lot of work that needs to be done starting with asking the question. 

Overall, please don’t take this post as being negative.  Sure we have lot of problems.  The good news is that we have always had these problems and for the first time there are more then just a handful of people that recognize them.  That means we got a good shot at solving some of the them.