Thoughts and Insights from the Shop Floor
Happy New Year for the Year of the Dragon to all of my Chinese friends around the world.
January 23 is the New Year. This message is timed to appear at midnight, Beijing time, as the fireworks are reaching a crescendo.
I look at the time I spent in China as a period of great personal growth and learning.
As a bonus, I got to know the culture, aspirations, conflicts and the fabric of life there.
The relationships from that time still impact my life in very real ways every day.
On Monday MIT hosted a webinar with Steven Spear on the topic of “Creative Experimentation.”
A key theme woven throughout Spear’s work is the world today is orders of magnitude more complex than it was even 10 or 15 years ago. Where, in the past, it was feasible for a single person or small group to oversee every aspect of a system, today that simply isn’t possible except in trivial cases. Where, in 1965 it was possible for one person to understand every detail of how an automobile worked, today it is not.
My interpretation goes something like this:
Systems are composed of nodes, each acting on inputs and triggering outputs. In the past, most systems were largely linear. The output of upstream nodes was the input of those immediately downstream. You can see this in the Ford Mustang example that Spear discusses in the webinar.
Today nodes are far more interconnected. Cause and effect is not clear. There are feed-back and feed-forward connections and loop-backs. Interactions between processes impact the results as much as the processes themselves.
Traditional management still tries to manage what is inside the nodes. Performance, and problems, come from the interconnections between nodes more than from within them.
The other key point is that traditional management seeks to first define, then develop a system with the goal of eventually reaching a steady state. Today, though, the steady state simply does not exist.
Product development cycles are quickening. Before one product is stable, the next one is launched. There is no plateau anymore in most industries.
From my notes – “The right answer is not the answer for very long. It changes continuously.”
Therefore, it is vital that organizations be able to handle rapid shifts quickly.
With that, here is the recorded webinar.
(Edit: The original flies have been deleted from the MIT server.)
A couple of things struck me as I participated in this.
Acknowledging that Spear has a bias here (as do I), the fact that Toyota’s inherent structure and management system is set up to deal with the world this way is probably one of the greatest advantages ever created by happenstance.
I say that because I don’t believe Toyota ever set out to design a system to manage complexity. It just emerged from necessity.
We have an advantage of being able to study it and try to grasp how it works, but we won’t be able to replicate it by decomposing its pieces and putting it back together.
Like all complex systems, this one works because of the connections, and those connections are ever changing and adapting. You can’t take a snapshot and say “this is it” any more than you can create a static neural net and say you have a brain.
One thing that emerges as critical is developing a local capability for this creative experimentation.
I think, what Spear calls “creative experimentation” is not that different from what Rother calls the “improvement kata.” Rother brings more structure to the process, but they are describing essentially the same thing.
Why is local capability critical? Processes today are too complex to have a single point of influence. One small team cannot see the entire picture. Neither can that small team go from node to node and fix everything. (This is the model that is used in operations that have dedicated staff improvement specialists, and this is why improvements plateau.)
The only way to respond as quickly as change is happening is to have the response system embedded throughout the network.
How do you develop local capability? That is the crux of the problem in most organizations. I was in an online coaching session on Tuesday discussing a similar problem. But, in reality, you develop the capability the way you develop any skill: practice. And this brings us back to the key point in Kata.
Practice goes no good unless you are striving against an ideal standard. It is, therefore, crucial to have a standardized problem solving approach that people are trying to master.
To be clear, after they have mastered it, they earn a license to push the boundaries a bit. But I am referring to true mastery here, not simple proficiency. My advice is to focus on establishing the standard. That is difficult enough.
Spear’s story of “Decoding Mary” where the re-admission rate of patients to a hospital directly correlated with the particular nurse handled their transfer reminded me of Heath & Heath’s stories from Switch. One of the nine levers for change that they cite is “find the bright spots.”
In this case the creative experimentation was the process of trying to figure out exactly what Mary did differently so it could be codified and replicated for a more consistent result independent of who did it.
The key, in both of these cases, is to find success and study it, trying to capture what is different – and capture it in a way that can be easily replicated. That is exactly what happened here.
A lot of organizations do this backwards. They study what (or who) is not performing to determine what is wrong.
Sometimes it is far easier to try to extract the essence what works. Where are your bright spots for superb quality? Does one shift, or one crew, perform better than the others? Do you even know? It took some real digging to reveal that “Mary” was even the correlating factor here.
Since “continuous improvement” really means “continuously improving the capability of your people,” now perhaps we have “to do what.” I have said (and still say) that the “what” is problem solving.
What you get for that, though, is a deep capability to deal with accelerating change at an accelerating rate without losing your orientation or balance.
It is the means to allow the pieces of the organization to continue to operate in harmony while everything is changing. That brings us back to another dilemma: What is the ROI on learning to become very, very good? You don’t know what the future is going to throw at you, only that you need the capability to deal with it at an ever quicker pace.
But none of this works unless you make a concerted effort to get good at it.
Here is the original link to the MIT page with the video, and a download link for PDFs of the slides:
http://sdm.mit.edu/news/news_articles/webinar_010912/webinar-spear-complex-operating-systems.html
Though I have some reservations (see below), this video shows a lot of good examples of flow for final assembly – only the assembly line is vertical, and the product is a 30 story hotel.
The video actually repeats twice, once with a music sound track, then a second time with no sound.
All in all, this is pretty impressive. Let’s look at the good examples that you can incorporate into your own thinking.
First, the product is designed for quick and easy assembly from the get-go. The engineers thought through how it would go together as a core part of their design process. There was no “throw it over the wall and figure it out” here.
The design itself is very modular. Detail work is done off-line in the “feeders.” This is how you want to set up an assembly line – the backbone (main line) is installation of “big chunks” that are assembled and tested in the feeders. This helps stabilize the work on the main line.
The assembly itself was flowing. Each floor progressed subsequently through the assembly stages as more stories were being added at the top. Contrast this with the more common approach of finishing the frame, then batching the various trades through.
It is clear that this was done as a stunt. They did a good job. There are, however, legitimate questions about how, or if, the work was organized to surface and deal with quality issues. What was the line-stop process?
There are also legitimate questions in the building trade about the long-term stability of foundations and structure that does not have time to settle as it is going up. Building that go up fast can come down fast.
We truthfully don’t have enough information to make a judgment here, but I want to acknowledge those concerns as realistic whenever we see something like this.
Apparently those issues are unfounded. I admit I was repeating what I had read elsewhere. I am certainly not an expert. (See comment below)
Still, it is really cool so I wanted to share it as a good application of flow thinking.
Chapter 4 of The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership lays out the picture of a company where continuous improvement of operations is the primary focus of the management system.
Note here that I said “focus of the management system” rather than “focus of the managers.” I believe there is a crucial difference which I will explain in a bit.
Liker and Convis start out by explaining what “kaizen” isn’t. Sad that they have to do this, but the problem is summed up nicely:
Too often [kaizen] has come to mean assembling a special team for a project using lean of Six Sigma methods, or perhaps organizing a kaizen “event” for a week to make a burst of changes. We sometimes hear the phrase “doing a kaizen” as if it were a one-off activity. At Toyota, kaizen […] is how the company operates at the most fundamental level.
One of the persistent mysteries (to me) is why, after decades of knowing otherwise, so many businesses still consider “kaizen” or “improvement” to be a separate activity from “management.”
A few weeks ago I expanded on a great presentation by Bill Costantino that explained the relationship between challenges, targets, kaizen and the knowledge space of the company.
In that post, I created an animation of Bill’s graphic that illustrates progressive targets pushing the threshold of knowledge relentlessly toward the objective.
In this model, although we have a decent idea where we are, and what we want to end up with, the details of the path to get there are not known in advance.
Lean Leadership illustrates the same point quite well with the story of a factory kaizen team at TMMK (Toyota’s Georgetown, Kentucky facility). Of note is that this team is made up largely of production workers. It isn’t “the improvement team.” It isn’t an engineering department team. It is the people who have to live with the solution.
The team’s challenge was to improve a wasteful process for handling and moving sheet metal parts through the plant to the point of use on the assembly line.
They started by studying another company’s solution to the problem.
Did I mention that this team of factory workers from Kentucky spent two weeks in Japan studying this supplier’s system? Why make this kind of investment? Ponder that a bit, we’ll get back to this too.
Once back in Kentucky, the team had a clear sense of the challenge, and set out to progressively develop their own solution by experimentation, observation, and learning.
First they tried copying the benchmarked system on a small-scale test to deepen their understanding of what they had studied. Trying it on their parts surfaced differences that weren’t obvious at first, and they learned copying definitely wouldn’t work.
Key: The reason they tried to copy was to learn more about it. This was a small-scale concept test, not an attempt at wholesale implementation.
Even if it had worked, copying develops no skill other than reverse-engineering someone else’s solution that was developed for a different problem in different conditions. When people then say “See, it won’t work here” this is likely how they got to that conclusion. Too many companies “benchmark” and then try to do this. This team took a completely different approach.
“OK, cool, it didn’t work. Try something else.” And that is how learning happens.
They go back to grasping the original problem – damage from forklift handling. This is crucial. So many teams get bogged down on defining the “problem” as “making the fixed solution work” and end up expending a lot of effort in a tunnel with a dead-end. This is about exploring possible solutions to the actual problem.
They end up developing something quite different from what they benchmarked, that delivered the right parts, in the right orientation to the assembly operator. They knew this because they were their own customers – these were people who did this job.
Once they had it working on a sub-set of easier parts, they expanded the concept step by step (a few parts at a time) to handle the larger ones.
Key: Get the simple version working before trying to add complexity. Control your experiments. This is how learning happens vs. “just fiddling with it until it works.”
They proceed step by step – now sharing back and forth with the benchmark company who is seeing their solutions and building on them, until they have an AGV pulling a sequenced line of part carts that were loaded by robots, everything moving at takt.
Still, there was a lot of human interaction and they kept working to better synchronize everything.
Step by step, they worked their way back into parts that came from outside suppliers, dealing with one issue at a time.
Then a remarkable thing happened:
…at some point an hourly team member asked why the company was spending so much money to buy AGVs from external suppliers. Toyota manufactures vehicles, after all. Team members found they could buy the little robotic device that pulls the carts and custom-make the carts themselves.
But they didn’t stop there.
Later they discovered they could buy inexpensive, generic circuit boards of the type used in the AGV and program the boards themselves so that the AGVs would stop and wait at certain points along the line. Programming the AGVs themselves was a breakthrough, since it cut out licensing fees and added the flexibility to reprogram them. The original AGVs cost about $25,000 each; the ones built in-house cost under $4,000. With more than 100 AGVs in use, the team members kaizen initiative saved TMMK more than $2 million.
Let’s take a step back from this and look at what was really happening here.
What did these team members know at the end of this process that the didn’t know at the beginning?
What knowledge did they add to the company’s capability? Beyond the simple technical solution, what else did they learn? What confidence did they gain?
In other words, how did participating in this process improve the capability of the team members to improve other processes?
What would it be worth to your company to have team members who could think like this? (Hint – you already have them)
I promised to address a couple of points later. Here they are:
The role of managers vs. the management system.
The management system in any company is rightly focused on ensuring that operations are delivering the most customer value for the least cost. This is true of any value-creating operation, be it organized for profit or non-profit.
But the picture being painted by Liker and Convis is one where this management system works by ensuring the managers (that is, the individual people who are responsible for the operation) are focused on developing people’s capability.
To do this, Toyota has a specific process for developing leaders to embrace this responsibility.
This isn’t a new message. But it is emerging more clearly and more consistently in the popular literature in the last few years.
Which brings us to who made the improvements.
In this example, the improvements were made by production team members.
The company probably could have achieved similar (or at least similar looking) results with a project plan and a team of engineers. It might have even been faster.
But the production workers would have learned nothing other than to accept whatever the engineers gave them.
It is unlikely it would have occurred to anyone to build their own AGVs and save another couple of megabucks.
And the capacity of the company for improvements would have remained the same rather than increasing. At some point, the rate of improvement is constrained by the resources that can be dedicated to the task.
So, while an individual improvement task might take longer as people learn, in the end there is a multiplier effect as more and more people get better and better at making improvements. Sadly, it is really impossible to assign an ROI to that, so traditional management doesn’t allow for it.
This post is long enough. There is more in Chapter 4 to talk about, but I want to get this out there.
Carlos Villela’s blog lixo.org has a great story about simple solutions. I really have no idea if it is true or not – indeed, a couple of the details don’t hang together. On the other hand, I have seen for myself the kind of thinking that is described in this story.
Link to full story: Networks are smart at the edges.
The factory is having a quality issue. The response is pretty typical:
The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, third-parties selected, and six months (and $8 million) later they had a fantastic solution — on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time. They solved the problem by using some high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box weighing less than it should. The line would stop, and someone had to walk over and yank the defective box out of it, pressing another button when done.
And a great solution. It stops the line and forces someone to pay attention to the problem. While I would usually add that these instances need to be followed up by problem solving to eliminate the issue, even if I were doing so, I wouldn’t eliminate the final verification check. Even Toyota performs a thorough and rigorous final inspection. But that’s not the point here.
It turns out, the number of defects picked up by the scales was 0 after three weeks of production use. It should’ve been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was something wrong with the report. He filed a bug against it, and after some investigation, the engineers come back saying the report was actually correct. The scales really weren’t picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor belt were good.
Puzzled, the CEO travels down to the factory, and walks up to the part of the line where the precision scales were installed. A few feet before it, there was a $20 desk fan, blowing the empty boxes out of the belt and into a bin.
“Oh, that — one of the guys put it there ’cause he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang”, says one of the workers.
Like the Dilbert cartoon about 25 critical focus areas, this is more funny because the original reaction is totally typical, especially in companies who are comfortable with technology, controls, automation, etc.
Cudos to the CEO who realized, at least, that “No problem is a problem” and went to investigate at the actual gemba.
Once the team had a challenge (in this case 
provided by the annoying bell) they dealt with what they saw as the issue.
Oh – and this graphic? It is an inside joke for some of my readers. Maybe we should have put some fans on the conveyer.
Thanks to Hal for sending the original link to this article.
Chapter 3 of The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership is titled “Coach and Develop Others.”
Where in Chapter 2 the authors were outlining the individual leader’s responsibility for self-development, now they are describing the environment and the process of supporting and focusing that drive.
Rather than just outline the chapter, I want to dig into some key elements of the context that Toyota creates for their leaders.
First is the expectation that leaders lead.
Chapter 3 has a great story that exemplifies the key differences in management styles that I alluded to in the post about Chapter 2.
In that story, NUMMI has equipment reliability problems in the body shop. Mr. Ito, the President has instructed Convis to have each engineer prepare and present a one page report for every breakdown lasting over 30 minutes. The telling moment is Convis behavior in the presentations:
While Ito was critiquing the [A3] presentations and reports, Gary [Convis] simply stood to one side, marveling at Ito’s insight and amused at the struggles of the engineers’ efforts to learn this way of thinking.
This quote nails the core issue we have to deal with in any company that wants to succeed with lean production.
Convis was newly hired from the U.S. automobile industry, and was acting exactly as he was trained as a manager. He was acting as every manager in the USA is trained.
He has delegated the process of training the engineers to Ito, who he sees as the technical expert. Convis viewed his presence here as overseeing how well his engineers are responding to that training.
Ito, though, had other ideas.
After a few sessions, Ito asked Gary how he was coaching the engineers through the process before the presentations. Ito pointed out that there was still a lot of red on the reports, and if Gary had been teaching the engineers properly, there would be less red ink. […] problems with the reports were a reflection of Gary’s leadership, and he was more responsible for any failures than the engineers were.
Zing.
You can’t even cite “If the student hasn’t learned, the teacher hasn’t taught” here because the delegation paradigm was so strong that Convis didn’t realize he had responsibility for being the teacher.
Convis, of course, “got it” and began seeing the red ink as his failure, rather than the engineers’. The drive for self-development kicked in and worked. And of course, in the process of struggling to coach the problem solving process, he had to struggle to learn it well enough to do so.
Personally, I see the idea of delegating and then passively overseeing improvement and people development is a cancer that is difficult to excise from even the most well intentioned organization.
I have seen this with my own eyes – senior executives struggling with how to “implement lean.” What was their concern? What metrics they could use to gage everyone’s progress through reports to corporate headquarters. They simply saw no need to get personally involved in learning, much less going to see, and certainly not teaching, the messy details. Not surprisingly, that company still struggles with the concepts.
Of course it cascades down from there. The various sites’ leaders follow the example, and delegate to their professional staff people. The staff’s job? To come up with “the lean plan” and “drive improvement” while the leaders watch. At some point, someone in charge of the operation actually has to do something different, but that, it seems, is always the next level down.
I am not going to get into what stops leaders from stepping up to this responsibility or what do to about it because that would be a book in itself.
It doesn’t help that, with the revolving-door of leadership we often encounter, each new leader comes in with the old mindset. OK </rant> and back to the book. 
This expectation of leaders leading does not operate in a vacuum. Toyota processes are deliberately set up to remove any ambiguity about what the next challenge is by surfacing problems immediately
In the words of Lean Leadership, these problems are framed as challenges for leader development.
In a much earlier post, I objected to our western euphemism of “opportunity” when we meant “problem.” My objection was treating this “opportunity” as an something that could be taken on, or not.
A challenge, especially in the context of leader development, isn’t optional. A top level athlete grasps the meaning of a challenge. He is driven to take it on and push himself to meet it. He improves in the process. It isn’t about the record, per se, it is about what he must develop and pull from within himself to get there.
Just as the world-class athlete has a stopwatch on every lap, the assembly line is set up to verify the timing of every cycle. Any discrepancy is immediately apparent to both the team member and the leaders. If the work can’t be done, the line is stopped and things are made right. Then we figure out why. And everyone learns.
TPS […] creates a never-ending stream of opportunities for on-the-job development and increased challenges. Toyota sensei do not need to create artificial training situations […]. The daily process of producing cars generates all the development opportunities and challenges that are needed.
If your organization has trouble finding problems, it isn’t because they aren’t there. It is because your processes are blind to them. That is why “No problem is a big problem.”
The key is that when we talk about “implementing the tools of lean” we are doing nothing more than setting up the baseline process to present the challenges for leadership development. That’s it. It is the difference between playing a casual game and deciding to keep score.
You can’t improve without keeping score, to be sure. But keeping score alone doesn’t cause things to get better. If anything, it increases people’s frustration because they see they are coming up short, but don’t have the support or opportunity to do anything about it.
What happens then? They start seeing problems as “normal” and start blinding the system. They add padding to cycle times to “allow for variation.” They decouple processes and put in extra inventory. They start running two at a time, then four, and return to batching.
If a problem remains hidden below the surface long enough, it can stop being perceived as a problem and become part of normal operating procedure.
OK, so I’ve beaten that to death yet again. It is critical to structure the work so that we can see whether things are going as planned or not.
But it is just as critical to have the problem solving processes engaged immediately. If those processes don’t yet exist, you have no hope of your so-called improvements sustaining for long.
That’s not all. There is another standard that is just as critical – if not more: A standard for problem solving.
We just got done exploring how critical it is to have a process that is totally transparent. Why? So we can clearly see any difference between how it is and how it should be.
The purpose of the A3 is to provide that level of visual control to the problem solving process itself.
And yes, problem solving is a process. It follows standard work. It is perhaps the most critical thing to standardize. The only way to gain skill at something is to practice against a clear standard. It really helps to have a coach watching your every move and calling out small adjustments, things you need to pay more attention to the next time you do it (which should be immediately).
The A3 is the game film, the slow motion camera, the visual control of how problem solving is being done. It is not sufficient to find the solution. It is more important to develop a consistent approach to problem solving across the entire organization.
But outside of Toyota and a few companies that are starting to grasp what this is about, the A3 is, sadly, one of the more recent fads in the lean community.
An A3 isn’t something you tell someone else to do. It is a visual control, just like the moving line, that works only in the context of direct observation and participation by all parties involved. In the above story, Ito was setting an example, and expecting Convis to follow it. Once that started happening, Ito’s participation shifted from coaching the engineers to coaching Convis as he coached them.
Just as the tools of takt time, standard work, pull systems, etc. do not stand alone and “make you lean,” neither does filling out A3 forms. Even if you have “the tools” and a problem solving process, it doesn’t help if they are not intimately linked together.
All of these things are designed for 1:1 interaction. They are messy testaments to the fact that problem solving often loops back to previous steps as more is learned.
This chapter provoked a lot of thought for me, and I have tried to share some of that. When / if you choose to read the book, I hope you have your own thoughts, and even share them here or in the forum (that could use some life right now).
Fundamentally, Chapter 3 is about the phenomenal support Toyota provides those leaders who have the self-motivation to learn.
Aside from a couple of case studies and examples, this chapter is a bit of a synopsis of Toyota Kata. I continue to bring Kata into this discussion because there is obvious overlap in topics, and I see these two books complimenting each other. Kata gets into the nitty-gritty of how problem solving and coaching happens. Lean Leadership is providing a context and case examples of the entire ecosystem.
More to follow.
This is of no particular interest to anyone but those of us who spent time working “in the yellow box.”
Tonight the Megamillions jackpot is $206 million dollars.
Eastman Kodak’s (at $0.69 / share) market cap is $186 million.
Though Kodak is mostly known as a (former) consumer products brand, today most, if not all, of its strength is in commercial graphics and printing where it is a clear leader.
The question is whether or not they have (or can raise) enough cash to downsize the company to fit its market, and whether or not their management realizes that is what they (in my opinion at least) have to do.
Lest you think about winning the lottery and buying the company, consider these two tidbits:
I learned a lot during my time at Kodak. I had pretty decent access to the highest levels in the company, and experienced the process of some really tough decisions that were being made. To be known by face and name to top level corporate executives and people working on the shop floor is a rather unique perspective. Going back, knowing what I know now, would I take the job again? Without a doubt.
When I first interviewed there in December 2002, I grasped the implications of Clayton Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma immediately when I asked a simple question: “How much are you feeling the impact of cell phone cameras on your business?” The people I asked didn’t grok the question, much less the answer. Two years later, cell phone cameras were listed as the #1 displacer of one-time-use cameras. Today they are displacing consumer grade digital cameras in general.
There is no doubt with anyone that events in the next 4-6 months are going to answer the question in the headline of this post.
This has nothing to do with lean production except at the touch point of the customer experience.
Mrs. LeanThinker was looking for a replacement for her well-worn 5 quart stock pot. We were in Macy’s home department browsing.
She found one she really liked, a Circulon Symmetry model, full retail $140, sale priced at $69.95. Only this one was a brown color, and she wants black to match everything else she already has.
“Does this come in black?” A reasonable question.
“Yes” was the answer.
“Can you get it?”
“Let me check.”
The answer was that, yes, they can get it but because Macy’s didn’t stock it, they would “have to” sell it at full price. They do, it was offered, match online prices except Costco and Amazon.
We fired up the Droid, got online, and found this (click the image for full size):
See the second line there?
That’s right. Macys.com has the same item at the “sale” price.
So Macy’s ended up price matching to their own web site. Oh – and they are shipping it to our door for no extra charge. Go figure.
Some things I just leave in the “perplexing” column. Yes, I know, they are two separate business streams and all, but really?
Then there is the Best Buy debacle that is brewing. Cancelling Black Friday orders on people three days before Christmas, but offering the item they ordered at full price in the store? I’m guessing there are lawyers involved faster than you can say “class action.” Where were the lawyers when the decision was made? What were they thinking?
As we approach the end of the calendar year, many companies are starting to work on their Annual Operating Plans Wishes for next year.
Why do I say wish? Because all too often these plans dictate what they wish would happen. Throughout the year, performance is “measured” against the plan. Positive variances are rewarded. Negative variances are, well, not rewarded.
To make things more interesting, each department: Sales, Production, Purchasing, etc., is responsible to meet the plan independently of the others. That makes sense, it is the only way they can be “held accountable.”
So when sales fall short in 1st quarter, production keeps producing. They have to. Otherwise they wouldn’t meet their AOP numbers.
To make things more interesting, if the sales mix changes from the original plan, and there is a raw material shortage that prevents shifting the production to match sales, production just makes whatever the can, whether it is selling or not.
It is pretty easy to think this through to a process of running overtime on weekends to build a product that was sold at a discount to “make the numbers” in the AOP.
The hilarious thing is that I have yet to meet a manager, at any level, who does not agree that this is exactly what happens, and that it is a poor way to run the business.
Yet we keep doing it over and over.
OK, so what to do about it?
The most important thing to grasp is that “the plan” is just that. It is not a fact. It is a working hypothesis, a prediction. It is wrong the day it is made. (If you can perfectly predict the future, why are you reading this?)
The purpose of making a plan is to identify the unexpected. If the sales mix and numbers start to depart from the plan, the entire system responds. This isn’t every department for themselves. (or shouldn’t be) This is about running the company to maximize total margins.
That means working together as a team with one plan, not a separate one for everyone.
In Chapter 2 of The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership, Jeff Liker and Gary Convis describe one of the most important, and least emphasized, aspect of developing leaders – the necessity for intrinsic motivation. In simple terms, the desire has to come from within. This theme ties together everything else in the chapter, and I suspect, through the rest of the book.
On the other hand, this isn’t about the typical western “everyone fend for themselves” environment that develops unhealthy (and unethical) cutthroat competition.
They describe a nurturing environment that will allow and support anyone with the desire to take on ever increasing responsibility and challenges, and learn through a process of developing mastery.
The Role of Sensei
Not surprisingly, the role of the sensei described in Lean Leadership is quite consistent with the process that Jeff Liker and Mike Hoseus describe in Toyota Culture.
While the work environment itself is built around opportunities for learning, it is far different from out western ideas.
Lean Leadership sums it up quite well as they discuss the role of the sensei.
The teaching process is one of challenge and struggle – but not abandonment. It is guidance through discrete learning stages on the way to mastery.
Mastery
“Standard work” has always been regarded as a core element of the Toyota system. Liker and Convis build on the concept as far more pervasive than simple work procedures. We have known there is more to it for a long time, but like the list of what doesn’t work, authors, consultants and practitioners continue to emphasize the work procedure model.
In Lean Leadership, we see standard work as a path to mastery, and we see the reason behind the emphasis.
Liker and Convis describe a three stage process of learning and developing:
The point of standardizing and stabilizing a process is to allow the team member the chance to master it. Why is this important? Because then the team member can pay attention to solving problems to improve the work vs. solving problems to simply get it done.
Even this is fairly easy to grasp in the context of bolting a suspension together, or welding a scissor lift. But the same principles apply to leadership itself.
Mike Rother’s Toyota Kata is about application of this principle in the core processes of leadership: Problem solving and coaching. By standardizing problem solving, we give team members the opportunity to master it so they can focus on solving the problem rather than trying to figure out how to go about solving it. It sounds like subtle semantics, but it is a huge difference.
But, again, this is about demonstrated capability rather than classroom hours Compare this process with how we typically “certify” practitioners in the west.
At Toyota the learner’s capability is judged by direct observation, just like any other process. While there must be an internal drive to learn, the challenges and struggles are tailored for the learner’s next stage of development.
Self Development vs. Mandated Development
All of this brings us to one of the core differences in the Toyota described by Liker and Convis.
Throughout my career as an internal “lean guy” in companies large and small, our “lean skill development” (or whatever you want to call it) process for leaders was largely driven by establishing requirements.
We wanted to require leaders to participate in kaizen events. We wanted to require them to attend the Lean 101 class. At one company, managers and supervisors were required to teach the “World Class Competitiveness” course. We want to include classes and educational events on their performance goals. We wanted to make them learn it.
To get back to an earlier post it doesn’t work.
The Toyota process is reversed. There is no requirement for anyone to master anything other than their current job. But if you want to get more responsibility, it is incumbent on you to demonstrate the drive to develop your own capability.
One purpose for universal team member involvement in kaizen is for leaders to directly observe who has the right motivation to learn and take on more. That is the beginning of the leadership development process.
In our companies today, of course, we have the situation of an existing hierarchy. Leaders have gotten into senior positions without having any of these skills. Our western management process is one of detached decision making from summaries presented by staff on PowerPoint. If a new initiative comes along, the senior leaders delegate it and “support” it by not shutting it down.
That doesn’t work if you want to change the status-quo.
What does? A drive to master something new and a realization that personal development is a continuous life-long process. That is the key message I get from this chapter. More to follow.