Lean Quote - Respect for People

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.

"It is disrecpectful to not allow people the opportunity to solve their own problems or use their own thinking.." — David Meier, at Northeast Shingo Prize Conference, 2010

Leaders facilitate the solution of problems by pinpointing responsibility and developing employees. Leaders do not solve other people’s problems. Although sometimes it seems easier to solve the problem yourself, that easy road out often has you encounter the same problem again.

It is not the job of the leader to solve all the problems. The leader’s job is to clarify and help define the problem, find the problem owner and see that the owner takes responsibility for its solution. Similar to the fishing adage, which says don’t feed a person a fish; teach them how to fish, don’t solve the problem, teach them how to solve their own problems.

Give a Man a Fish, Feed Him For a Day. Teach a Man to Fish, Feed Him For a Lifetime.

Your role as a leader is to develop talent to the highest levels of independent and autonomous thinking and execution. Great leaders don’t subscribe to a “Do-It-For-You” methodology of talent management, rather they lead, mentor, coach and develop team members by getting them to buy-into a “Do-It-Yourself” work ethic. Great leaders view each interaction, question or even conflict as a coaching opportunity. Don’t answer questions or solve problems just because you can, rather teach your employees how to do it for themselves. If you make it a habit of solving problems for people, you simply teach them to come to you for solutions at the first sign of a challenge.

Lean thinkers at Toyota believe that showing respect for people means you allow them to think for themselves and solve their own problem.  It is often said that the mission of Toyota is about developing exceptional people who happen to make great cars.  The point is that it is more about people and less about the problem.  The problem is another opportunity to teach them a skill for lifetime.

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Daily Lean Tips Edition #8

For my Facebook fans you already know about this great feature. But for those of you that are not connected to A Lean Journey on Facebook or Twitter I post daily a feature I call Lean Tips.  It is meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and some knowledge tidbits about Lean to help you along your journey.  Another great reason to like A Lean Journey on Facebook.

Click this link for A Lean Journey's Facebook Page Notes Feed.

Here is the next addition of tips from the Facebook page:

Lean Tip #106 - Question how often to have a meeting?

How often to have a meeting?  Consider these:

•Don't just meet to meet.  Meeting should be Action Driven.

•Needs to be tied to work needs and deadlines.

•Set with frequency to ensure attendance by team members.

•Do not have a meeting when work needs to accomplished alone.

•Meetings should be used when the work needing to be done can not be effectively or efficiently accomplished otherwise.

•Count the cost (salary, benefits).

Lean Tip #107 - The 4 P's of planning a meeting agenda.

The 4 P's of planning an agenda for a meeting:

•What is the PRIORITY of the meeting?

•What is the PURPOSE of the meeting?

•Which PEOPLE should attend?

•How should everyone PREPARE?

Lean Tip #108 - Use the "100 Mile Rule" as a guideline for meeting interruptions.

Don't interrupt the meeting unless the interruption would have occurred even if the meeting was 100 miles away.  Let the team work together to solve problems and make improvement.  Interruptions effect teamwork on any activity since you don't have the full attention of the team members.

Lean Tip #109 - Team members have a role in meetings too.

If you are a team member at a meeting consider these tips to be fully participative:

•Come prepared.

•Listen and concentrate.

•Actively participate.

•Be flexible.

•Leave your ego outside.

•Don't shut down others; stay open.

Lean Tip #110 - There is a good reason to use a process map when ...

There is a good reason to use a process map:

•To identify measurement points in a process

•To identify potential process improvements

•To zero in on the origin of a problem

•To communicate procedures, process flow

•To identify critical interfaces (between Customers and Suppliers)

Lean Tip #111 - Goal setting should not be taken lightly because your journey to success depends on it.

Goal setting is a process whereby you decide what you want to achieve and set up a plan to do it.  The very first step of goal setting is to, first, determine what you want at the end of the journey. That is your ultimate destination.  Some people say that goal setting is just a matter of sitting down and deciding what to do.  If you fully intend to achieve your goals, you should perceive goal setting as an extremely powerful process of personal planning.

Lean Tip #112 - Don't set a lot of goals at the same time.

You should start with one goal and stay focused on this goal at least for 30 days. If after 30 days you feel you're doing well and getting closer to the desired outcome you can start with the second goal.

The simple rule is: Don't set a lot of goals at the same time. You won't achieve any. The key to goal setting is staying focused. And it is impossible to focus at many goals at the same time.  Start with the most important one.

Lean Tip #113 - If you don't believe you can reach your goal you won't.

If there is any doubt in your mind that you can achieve something, you don't give it your all. In fact, you may very well just set it aside. In order to fully achieve anything, you must believe it is possible at a cellular level.

If you believe that you can be successful, that you'll enjoy being successful, then you will be successful.

Lean Tip #114 - Set a deadline for your goal.

Set a realistic date when you plan to accomplish your goal. Don't commit to "as soon as possible"! If you don't have a specific deadline for your goal, you won't have a sense of urgency and you'll start to put things off. What's the hurry, if you don't have a deadline?

Remember that the deadline must be realistic. We all tend to underestimate time it will take us to accomplish tasks. Keep in mind that unplanned obstacles may occur and slow you down.

Lean Tip #115 - Write down you goals, you've probably heard this but it is important.

You've probably heard hundreds of times that it is crucial to write your goal down. But do you know why this step is so important?

When you put pen to paper you turn your thoughts into something tangible. Your goal is no longer just a thought! It becomes something, what motivates us and creates a gut feeling inside.

Writing your goals down is the first step to make the goals more real. Somehow having things in writing really makes them seem more important to most people.

Lean Tip #116 - Leadership is a mix of skills, attitude, will, and motivation.

A leader:

•Makes things happen.

•Is mentor and coach.

•Is respected and followed.

•Has a clear purpose.

•Single-mindedly pursues common goals, regardless of obstacles or temporary setbacks.

•Leads people to accomplish what they thought was impossible.

Lean Tip #117 - A leader overcomes resistance to change.

A leader makes change happen through:

•Education

•Motivation

•Communication

•Support

•Leading change

•Making every situation into a learning experience.

Lean Tip #118 - A leader wants other to improve, and guides rather than controls them along that path.

Leaders trust people and know that trust creates more trust and loyalty.

A Leader:

•Builds positive relationships.

•Is frank and critical, but not threatening.

•Is a keen observer.

•Knows how to ask questions and evaluate answers.

•Develops people's potential, instead of judging their performance.

Lean Tip #119 - Creating a motivating environment is among the most important functions of a leader.

Only leaders can set the strongest motivators in motion amongst these three:

 Belonging: being a member of the team.

Achieving: reaching common goals - the more difficult, the greater the satisfaction.

Recognition: praise, promotion, rewards.

Lean Tip #120 - Leaders communicate and lead the change.

Leaders give support, discuss goals, and inspire.  Leaders:

•Are not embarrassed to ask for advice.

•Eliminate the "we-they" barrier between functions and groups.

•Are self-confident and do not need a "common enemy" to achieve unity.

•Encourage creativity and innovation.

•Accept mistakes as opportunities to learn.

•Get things done with or without direct authority.

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Book Review: 100% Leadership – Guidelines To Be An Effective Leader

There are many roads that can lead to success.  Leadership is about knowing the right road for the right situation.  It takes skilled judgment to apply the right method at the right time, under the right circumstances.

100% Leadership is a practical guide to daily decisions and actions.  This book is written by Gabriel Hevesi a retired management consultant from Brazil with more that 50 years of front-line business experience.  He shares valuable guidance on communicating, team-building, planning, and efficiency.

The author covers an array of topics in context of the company not the leader.  They include:

1. Common Sense and Sound Judgment
2. Know Yourself
3. Managers Lead
4. Risk Management, Crisis Management, Work Ethics, and Social Responsibility
5. What Makes a Leader?
6. Leader Communicate
7. Results Oriented Behavior
8. Leaders are Team Builders
9. Leader Plan
10. Efficiency Leaders
11. Change Leaders
12. Leaders Make Decisions
13. The Leader and The Stakeholder
14. Trend Leaders
15. World Leaders
16. Levels of Leadership

100% Leadership is an easy, quick ready at about 130 pages.  The format allows for anyone from first time frontline leaders to seasoned executives to be able to read this book.  Each chapter starts with a quote from a famous leader and ends with a checklist to support your thinking of the topic.

The emphasis of this book is on usefulness.  The book presents often opposing systems, theories, and opinions to provoke – to force your thinking to fit variables together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. The true test of leadership is how you use your judgment and common sense for selection, timing, and application of ideas.

I enjoyed this book and found it quite valuable.  As the subtitle indicates this is a helpful reference for anyone developing leaders in your organization.  Both those mentoring and being mentored will benefit from 100% Leadership.

Note:  A copy of this book was supplied by the publisher Enna for review.

Ten Ways to Show Respect for People

The power behind Lean is a management's commitment to continuously invest in its people and promote a culture of continuous improvement.  The Toyota Way can be briefly summarized through the two pillars that support it: Continuous Improvement and Respect for People.

Many companies fall short on respecting their people. Not for lack of effort but for misunderstanding what constitutes treating employees with genuine respect, as opposed to being polite and considerate.

Here are ten ways you can respect people in your organization.

Listen harder.  Obviously there are times when you're busy for extended discussions.  But you need to set aside times when you can listen carefully to employee's problems, reactions, concerns, and suggestions.

Look at people when they talk.  Good listening means being willing to stop working computer, close a door, stop reading your email, or only answer emergency calls. Give the speaker your full attention, and let them know they are getting your full attention.

Keep your promise. By keeping your word to someone, you not only establish yourself as a person of integrity, but make the other person feel as though you value them.

Be on time. Another way to demonstrate that you value someone, is by treating their time as though it is valuable. Nothing says this better than being punctual.  Don't waste others time.

Encourage. Sometimes when we hear a silly idea, it's easy to shoot down someone's hopes and dreams, or otherwise make them feel unimportant. Genuinely encouraging someone could be very empowering and liberating.

Take care of your work environment. Your co-workers can see your work space, especially if you are in a cubicle paradise. If you keep your work space and the common areas clean, everyone will be calmer when they are around you.

Let the buck stop with you. This means take responsibility for your own faults and your successes.  Don't claim other people's work as your own, and don't push your failures onto a co-worker.

Create a Learning environment.  Developing your people shows respect for them.  Building explicit (book) and tacit (hands on) knowledge and distributing it is equally important.

Allow mistakes.  The real source of power of Lean lies in its ability to learn from mistakes, and to continuously improve.  Mistakes are seen as opportunities to improve and not as something that needs to be monitored and punished.

Go to the Gemba.  You can't genuinely listen if you aren't there.  Go to where the action is happening and seek the facts.  Lean implementation takes place on the floor, not in the office.

There are many other ways to demonstrate respect for people. These ten constitute a solid foundation of Toyota's pillar, respect for people.  How do you show respect?

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Lean Quote: Build a Reputation with Action

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.

"You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do." — Henry Ford

As the new year starts many of us are coming up with our goals and plans for the coming year.  I don't like resolutions since that contradicts the process of PDCA (plan-do-check-act).  And as many of us already know resolutions have the sterotype of not being followed through on.  In this quote Henry Ford reminds us that action is what is really important.  So in an attempt to look at leadership, action, and doing something new I thought I would share 3 leadership lessons from Henry Ford.

1. Value your workers

Henry Ford valued his workers a lot and he showed that by giving an extremely high pay for all his works in the assembly lines. As a result, he drew talent from all over the region to work in Ford Motor Company.

Whatever you do as a leader, if you can show that you value each and every person on your team, you will attract talent from all over the place. More than just their salaries, people want to work in an environment where they feel that they are valued and an essential part of the organization.

Strive to give your team this sense of value, whether by means of salary or by recognition. You can be sure that in the long run, you’ll be drawing strong people into your organization.

2. Self-Belief is essential

Henry Ford had tremendous self-belief and he constantly preached on it. He would hire workers that didn’t understand the meaning of impossible and would keep pushing the limits of their imagination.

Your self-belief as a leader is infectious as well. What do you believe about yourself? What do you believe about your ability? What is possible and what is impossible? Your willingness to try the impossible will inspire your team push the limits as well.

3. We are created for work

Henry Ford understood the importance of work. He saw that work was an essential part of human development.  Our fulfilment as people will come as a result of us using that potential in us to work. To him, it was not about when he could retire. In fact, retirement was never in the question for him.

You have to see that work is a part of life, and a large part of life in fact. The moment you decide to stop working, your mind begins to deteriorate and your body begins to grow weaker. No matter how old are you or how young are you, remember that work is always a part of life and work hones and molds us as people.

This year I am going to look at every challenging situation with these in mind.  I will value those I work with, believe in myself, and value the work I do.  This sounds like a recipe for continued learning to me.  I hope you will consider these lessons on leadership for yourself and continue learning.

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Lean for Haiti

Yesterday, marked the 1st anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti on January 12, 2010.  My friend and fellow Lean Blogger Mark Graban has a new project to spread Lean Thinking, a volunteer's personal story of supporting Haiti in the aftermath, and the awareness of Haiti relief needs. 

The project is Lean for Haiti.  In the truest sense of Lean it is sharing best practices for the greater good.  A lesson I think we all need to be reminded of.  Lean has helped so many organizations.  Now it is time to give a little back. Mark explains the project:

Last year, I was fortunate to meet a special person - Russell Maroni, an x-ray tech at Akron Children's Hospital. He volunteered in Haiti for 15 days in February 2010 as part of the earthquake relief efforts. He was unexpectedly, and necessarily, pressed into service in a medical role, not only caring for patients, but also using his formal lean training from ACH to help improve processes and radiology patient throughput at a field hospital.

Russell wrote a very compelling, and very personal, journal during his time in Haiti. He and his colleagues took many pictures. We are sharing this all in a PDF eBook that we are freely distributing - to share the story and to create awareness for Haiti relief needs. We are asking people who read the book to consider donating to the Friends of the Orphans, which runs an orphanage in Haiti.

The journal isn't mainly a "lean story," although it does include his hand-drawn A3 plan. It's a very personal story, of his own prayer and contemplation of the trip, and his experiences in the midst of that tragedy.

When you go to http://www.leanforhaiti.org/ you can find a pdf of the journal.  It has a great example of using Lean Thinking in the form of using an A3 to solve a problem.  In this case how to increase patient turnover and x-ray film quality. 

The real goal of this project is to raise some much needed funds to help Haiti recover.  To support the relief and rebuilding effort of Haiti you can donate to this project's charity Friends of the Orphans.

Help spread the word for the worthy cause by connecting with Lean For Haiti's facebook page, twitter @Lean4Haiti, and feed.


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Visual Management Board

On A Lean Journey, I have talked about Visual Factory or visual management a number of times.  My friend Allison Myers and I have talked online about a visual managment board she uses at Lantech. 

Allison is a Marketing Product Manager at Lantech where they have been using Lean Thinking for decades.  She was nice enough to demonstrate how the marketing team at Lantech uses a visual management board to keep track of projects.

You can follow Allison on Twitter at AllisonRMyers. Learn more about Allison on LinkedIn at AllisonMyers.

Subscribe to Allison’s YouTube channel at TheAllisonMyers.



Lantech is the innovation leader in stretch wrapping. We have been since founder Pat Lancaster invented the first turntable stretch wrapper in the early 1970's.

To further strengthen our dedication to unsurpassed customer value, Lantech made a commitment in the early 1990's to transform into a Lean enterprise. A fundamental principle of Lean is that improvements in work always start at the place where the work actually gets done. In Lean that's called going to the shop floor or where the work is done. The simple principle of observing and understanding work first hand, inside customer plants, along with a relentless focus on continuous improvement, has become the guiding philosophy in our quest to develop products and processes that deliver high value.

Lantech's packaging and productivity solutions include semiautomatic and automatic stretch wrapping; automatic case handling; shrink packaging; and pallet-load conveying systems. Lantech is the originator of stretch wrapping technology and world's largest manufacturer, with 65,000 systems placed around the world and 175 U.S. and foreign patents. Headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, with manufacturing operations in the U.S. and Europe, Lantech products are sold and serviced by a worldwide network of 175 distributor locations. Visit http://www.lantech.com/ to learn more. You can now follow us on Twitter @ LantechCom.