Over the years, I have been party to at least three corporate-level efforts to bring “A3” or “Practical Problem Solving” into their toolbox. Sometimes it has other names, such as “Management by Fact” or such, but the approaches are all similar.
Typically these efforts, if they catch on at all, become exercises in filling out a form.
Actually, that shouldn’t be a surprise, because they are often taught that way – as process of filling in boxes in sequence, with a “module” for teaching each step.
Worse, it is often taught as an intellectual exercise, and once you are done with the three day class, you’ve been “taught.”
The various classes mention PDCA as being a crucial part of this process, but nobody really practices it.
People are sometimes taught that this process should be coached, but the “coaching” they get is typically organized as management reviews via PowerPoint.
The “problem solving team” shows their analysis and their “implementation plan” that is a list of tasks, and a timeline to get them done. The meetings become status reviews.
Sometimes the “coaches” offer suggestions and speculation about the problem, symptoms, or actions that might be taken. They rarely (if ever) get into the quality of the PDCA thinking.
This is one of the challenges we have in the west (and especially in the USA) where our culture is more one of “go it alone then get approval” rather than true teamwork with the boss. This often turns the “A3” into an exercise of getting approval for a proposal rather than a learning process.
Worse, it does nothing to teach the problem solvers to be better problem solvers.
Note that sometimes an A3 is used for a proposal, but the process of creating it is still coached, and part of the process is the consensus-building that happens before there is any meeting. But here in the west, we still seem to like to spring these things on a leadership team without a lot of that background work ahead of time.
Mike Rother and the “Toyota Kata” community have been discussing this gap lately, and working to close it.
The latest iteration is this SlideShare that Rother sent around today:
He clearly points out what people have been missing: The “A3” is really just another method to document the “improvement kata.”
The “Implementation” box, rather than representing an action item lists, is where the problem solver captures her PDCA cycles, what is being tried, what is being learned, as she drives toward the target condition.
The other boxes are capturing her understanding of the current condition, the target condition, and the impact of various problems and obstacles in the way of closing the gap.
One thing that makes this extraordinarily difficult: We are talking about more than the mechanics of problem solving here. We are talking about shifting the default, habitual structure of the interaction between people. That is culture, which is notoriously hard to change. Not impossible, but unless people are up front that they are actually trying to change at this level, there are a lot of obstacles in the way. This can’t be delegated.
A3 is a great tool to have in your toolbox. I really liked your reference to improvement Kata. Too often the tool becomes more important than than problem your trying to solve. I can recall many time spending useless hours trying to make the A3 “look correct” long after the problem was solved. We got the point the rest was non value added.