Lean Quote: Seek Multiple Views

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Most disagreements about the right solution, decision, or course of action are really disagreements about the interpretation of current reality…Most statements about current reality are not wrong; they are incomplete. The person who adopts this principle seeks to put multiple views of current reality together to build one common and more complete view of it." — The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road by Jamie Flinchbaugh and Andy Carlino

This quote has been sitting with me a while and I hope it is relevant for you too. So often, even a gemba experience may be different for people. Even though facts are found at gemba, people may only see certain things and not the whole picture (like the four men & elephant story). I think the Respect For People principle is at play here too because it suggests to mutually respect multiple perspectives and put together into one common view.



Today's Lean Quote is courtesy of my friend Brian Buck. Brian is an internal Lean consultant at a hospital in Washington State. He blogs at http://improvewithme.com and can be found on Twitter as http://twitter.com/brianbuck.