Daily Lean Tips Edition #33

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 #481 – Customers always have a choice, listen to what they want.

Customers want:

• A high quality product that meets their requirements
• Delivered when they want it
• In the quantities they asked for
• At a price that they are willing to pay

Lean Tip #482 – Optimize the plant layout for Lean Improvement.

Optimizing the plant layout can:

• Reduce movement of people and materials
• Reduce work in process
• Allow better flow of production
• Support better communication
• Maximize capacity of machines, floor space and material handling systems

Lean Tip #483 – Use simple visual signals that give the operator the information to make the right decision.

Visual controls should be efficient, self-regulating, and worker-managed:

• Kanban (cards, containers, squares, racks)
• Color-coded dies, tools, pallets
• Delineation of storage areas, walkways, work areas
• Lights

Lean Tip #484 – Standardized work is the combination of three elements resulting in repeatable and reliable operations.

Standardized work is repeatable and reliable operations, safely carried out, with all tasks organized in the best known sequence using the most effective combination of people, material, machines, and methods.

The three elements of standardized work:
1. Work Sequences: well understood and documented, separating cyclic and non-cyclic elements and including quality standards.
2. Standard in-process stock: minimum quantity of material needed for processing
3. Demand: good understanding of how much to produce in a given period of time

Lean Tip #485 - Inspect at the source to prevent defects being passed.

Operators inspect product before passing it to the next workstation. Operators must be enabled to perform inspection:

Visual Tools: samples or established standards
Supporting documentation/standardization: clear checklists and established quality disciplines.
Effective training: quality standards and inspection process.

Lean Tip #486 - Test your 5 Whys chain with the ‘therefore’ test.

Start at the bottom of the chain and say Last Why occurred, therefore the second to last why occurred. Carry on until you reach the first why. If it isn’t true, revise the why chain until you can pass the ‘therefore test’.

Lean Tip #487 – Learn to question to find the answer you need.

If you don't ask the right questions, you don't get the right answers. A question asked in the right way often points to its own answer.

Lean Tip #488 – Don’t jump to solving the problem too quickly if you want to find the root cause.

Moving into 'fix-it' mode too quickly might mean dealing with symptoms but leaving the problem unresolved, so use the five whys to ensure that the cause of the problem is being addressed.

Lean Tip #489 - Data collection through questioning establishes what happened.

The most time-consuming part of root cause analysis, data collection must have a scope and depth sufficient to answer any question the team rises. Usually a quality improvement team gathers data, using blameless, open-ended questions when interviewing, refraining from value judgments.

Lean Tip #490 - When it comes to looking for failures for causes during a Root Cause Analysis investigation, ‘Listen to your operators’.

They are the eyes and ears of your production facility. It doesn’t matter if you are running a chocolate factory, bottling beer, or drilling for oil, they all have one thing in common – operators on the front line. These valuable members of your team are often the first to notice problems occurring.

Lean Tip #491 – When coaching follow the 5 step process from the acronym COACH for the most success.

C.O.A.C.H. stands for these five steps:

Connecting with the coachee.
Observing his or her job performance.
Assessing the performance to select a high-ROI area for coaching.
Conversing with the coachee about performance-improvement ideas.
Honing the coachee's competencies.

Your job as a coach is not complete until you have completed all these steps.

Lean Tips #492 - The most useful coaching is situational.

Consider the difficulty of the task being coached, the skills and experience of the person you are coaching and their preferences in terms of how much 'help' should be given. Sometimes people don't want/need 'the answer', they need a little assistance in finding out how to get the answer themselves.

Lean Tip #493 – Coaching must be part of business processes if you want the most benefit.

Coaching is related to several other organizational processes including change management, team building, facilitation, performance management, and strategic planning. You can acquire many coaching tips from these other processes. You should position your coaching session as a part of these other processes for the most benefit.

Lean Tip #494 – When coaching for performance improvement, make failure acceptable and necessary.

When coaching an employee or team for some type of performance improvement, make failure less threatening and success more personal by taking Peter Drucker's advice (roughly paraphrased): "Don't concentrate on polishing your skills. That will take care of itself if you seek to eliminate the constraints that impede you from achieving your stated goal. Using this approach, the focus of your effort becomes external to yourself, reducing the notion of a "personal shortcoming."

Lean Tip #495 – Coaching is not telling them what to do, help them understand what they should do.

During coaching sessions, you are advised to make suggestions or ask questions instead of telling the coachee what to do. Help them understand for themselves what is to be done. Sometimes this is not a good idea. Your coachee may get confused and wonder, "Now what exactly did my coach want me to do?" Don't feel guilty about providing unambiguous, no-nonsense instructions--when it is appropriate.

Test Your Productivity Skills with GTD-Q in 2 Minutes

Self management is all about perspective (focus on the right things) and control (the ability to effectively manage all the things coming at you).

The David Allen Company in conjunction with one of the world's leading professional assessment firms developed a test to determine ability to GTD.

GTD® is the shorthand brand for "Getting Things Done®," the groundbreaking work-life management system by David Allen that provides concrete solutions for transforming overwhelm and uncertainty into an integrated system of stress-free productivity. GTD is a powerful method to manage commitments, information, and communication.

GTD-Q is a measurement for evaluating two elements of self-management - control and perspective. In less than two minutes, you will get a visual representation of where you fit in terms of personal productivity.

My Results:

Your "perspective" score was 4 and your "control" score was 2. This means you have scored in the "Visionary / Crazy-Maker" quadrant.

On the positive side, you are a Visionary—you have no shortage of ideas and inspiration. You're probably pretty good at setting goals, being creative, and focused on "the most important thing."

On the developmental side, you are a Crazy Maker. The challenge is that your ideas, projects, and commitments may be outstripping your ability to keep up with them. Along with the inspiration of what you're envisioning, there may be things falling through the cracks, details being missed, and a general sense of being overwhelmed.


Test your ability to get things done here.

Lean Quote: Encouraging Those to Succeed

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.

"Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not." — Neil deGrasse Tyson

Congratulating employees is a simple, effective way to acknowledge them and boost their morale, as well as their colleagues. Leaders know that in order to be successful, they must influence employees to deliver positive performance. They succeed in this area because they do things to inspire higher levels of commitment and cooperation from employees. They don't just assume that because they are leading, employees will follow.

Here are some ways to encourage your employees to get moving in the right direction:

Show genuine interest. I believe this is by far the most effective way of encouraging others. Let them know you care. Express genuine interest by asking questions. Get them talking. With some hope and luck, this can lead to positive action. But don’t be fake about it and don’t go overboard.

Acknowledge what’s important to them. When you acknowledge what’s important to others, you provide a form of affirmation and validation about who they are and what they’re doing. Whether they can admit it or not, each of them deep down craves this acknowledgement. The affirmation and validation fuels their confidence and self-esteem.

Offer to lend a hand. Waiting for someone to ask you for advice is passive. You can be proactive by offering to lend a hand. If that person sees that you are willing to commit your own time and energy in their interests, they will be more committed to seeing it through and less likely to give up themselves.

Say “Well done”. Nothing worth doing is ever easy. If it’s easy, then it’s not worth doing. Worthwhile things always takes time and effort. One good way of providing encouragement is simply by saying “Well done” or “Congratulations”. These magical words of encouragement at the right time can make all the difference between “keep going” and “give up”.

Giving encouragement can boost that person’s motivation, which in turn lead to actions and finally results. Managers need to keep in mind that feelings are contagious. By positively encouraging, a leader makes others want to be part of the change. Only satisfied employees lead to satisfied customers.

Meet-up: My Flexible Pencil's David Kasprzak

Today, I would like to introduce David Kasprzak of My Flexible Pencil. David and I have been friends ever since we started blogging a few years ago. We have carried on a dialogue online over the years that has been thought provoking. He has contributed to this site many times which you can find here.


The goal of Meet-up is provide you an opportunity to meet some other influential voices in the Lean community. I will ask these authors a series of questions:

Who are you and what do you do?
My background is, primarily, in large-scale, multi-year, hardware development program planning and analysis. This includes both engineering R&D and transition into manufacturing. Most of my background is in support of DoD programs, but also includes commercial aviation and IT programs as well.

How and when did you learn Lean?
My employer launched a Lean initiative and put a core group of us through GBMP's 8-week Lean program.

How and why did you start blogging or writing about Lean?
The Lean training really lit my fire in terms of being able to understand the, frankly, broken way in which most organizations operate - particularly as it relates to the humanistic aspects of work (or lack thereof). That fire burned hot enough for me to go back to school and earn an MBA. I started blogging 1/2 way through that program as a way to broadcast my ideas and network with others who share my belief in changing the underlying mindset by which organizations operate.

What does Lean mean to you?
Lean is a philosophy of human behavior. It offers an explanation of why people do what they do, describes the path to develop an ideal mindset, from which ideal activities take place. Seeing Lean as a philosophy explains why it is so hard to understand fully, and yet so easy to apply to many different situations and activities.

What is the biggest myth or misconception of Lean?
That it is only about reducing cost. Reducing cost is just an outcome of Lean practices and, especially if you believe in the Shingo model. (easier, better, faster, cheaper) All too often, those cost reductions are enforced in a way that makes the work harder - which is unsustainable since no one will, or even can, do that which is more difficult for an indefinite period of time.

What is your current Lean passion, project, or initiative?
I am always looking for ways to make home life more efficient, effective, organized, simpler....so there is an on-going personal initiative to apply Lean concepts to daily, personal life. On the blog, I keep looking for way to introduce typically non-Lean audiences to Lean concepts. Usually, this focuses on white-collar, knowledge management environments and the project management activities I'm most familiar with. The more I dig into it, the more I find similarities in the approaches different schools of thought advocate. When it comes to organizing large groups of people, the tactics are often very similar even if the terminology or application is different.

Resistance to Change is Futile, You Will Be Assimilated

Change is inevitable. Adaptation to change is a necessary and critical component to survival. But mostly, change is a constant in business. And business seems to be where the adaptation to change -- or lack thereof -- seems to have some of the most significant impact.

Former US president John F. Kennedy said, “Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future”.

In business, we must continually change, evolution is not an option. If we stand still in our businesses we go backwards. The day that we think we have our business model perfected is not the day to stop changing. The issue comes about when we try to make changes. With the evidence in existence related to the necessity of change in business, you would think every business would constantly be revising their model. But that is not the case.

Before you can overcome the resistance it is wise to be aware of why the resistance exists. Usually it is a result of one of the following causes…

• People not agreeing with or understanding the value / benefits of the innovation.
• Fear of the unknown.
• People have had no opportunity to provide input in the planning or implementation of the change.
• Little or no reward / benefits to the people impacted by the idea.
• Increased effort from people required as a result of implementing the idea.
• Fear that the change will result in job cuts.
• Personality clashes between the people affected by the idea and the ideas inventor.
• No trust of the people who have been mandated to implement the change
• Belief that the change is unnecessary or will make the situation worse
• A belief that the idea is inferior to another idea.
• A feeling that the change will result in a loss of security, status, money or friends.
• Bad experiences from similar changes that had been or been attempted to be implemented in the past.

Being aware of the causes mentioned above and being able to specifically identify which ones may be relevant to our particular business greatly increases your chances of overcoming the resistance to change.

Being a leader today we must to be more adaptable to change than ever before. Technology alone will challenge us to learn new things and adapt almost on a daily basis! Change is absolutely unavoidable and successful people recognize this fact and learn how to play the “Change Game”.

Let go of the feelings you have associated with the “old way” of doing things. While some strategies are tried and true… change WILL find a way… and when it does, bringing emotional attachment into the fray can spell disaster. Comfort does not equal rationality.

Change is most often a difficult thing. The sooner we learn to embrace it and work within it, the easier it will be to begin the next challenge that comes along. We naturally gravitate toward the things that make us feel fulfilled, safe and happy. Therefore as we embrace change more often and see the good in it… the more we will gravitate toward it with enthusiasm!

If we accept change is inevitable, you will need a means to continually drive change throughout your business. You should have a change management process that involves every single employee in an organization. Change should be ongoing and employees should be a critical part of that process so there is not fear of change but a willingness to embrace it because it’s a part of the everyday process in the organization.

Change is necessary, resistance is futile. Prepare to be assimilated.

Moving Quality Beyond The Product

In June’s post on ASQ’s A View from the Q Blog Paul Borawski asks how you are moving quality beyond product.

… the Quality Council report provides great insights on how the quality community is responding and what it can do better. And therein lies the seed for my question of the day. The opening paragraph of the Quality Council’s perspective is, “For some organizations, ‘quality’ remains a set of tools and techniques associated almost exclusively with quality control. For others, quality has evolved into a critical partner, closely linked with business model development and the enterprise-wide execution of long-term strategy to achieve results.”

Building a quality culture is not an easy task. A quality culture starts with managers who understand and believe the implications of the systems view and know the necessity of serving customers in order to succeed. The result of that understanding is a culture where a positive internal environment and the creation of delighted customers go together. It is a culture that naturally emphasizes continuous improvement of processes, one that results in a healthy workplace, satisfied customers, and a growing, profitable company.

Every year companies ratify and formally commit to their quality policies but are they more than words on paper. It should be part of the culture of the company. Employing quality methods and practices in everything you do provides a firm foundation for your business and can be a determining factor in your success.

To create a culture of quality, an organization must align its organizational processes with quality planning and desired outcomes. Quality leadership starts with the leaders who plant the seeds, create the environment for success, empower others and deploy quality throughout the organization.

After safety, quality must be the organization’s highest priority. In lean manufacturing one of the principles we teach is to build in quality. Many think it is only about eliminating waste but that is too minimalistic. Quality issues result in all sorts of waste. As a result, lean principles specifically seek to address this point.

Quality must go beyond our product or service. We cannot add it at the end of the line or inspect it into the product. At best that is only a false sense of security. If we want a quality product it must be made with quality processes by quality minded people. A focus on quality must be intrinsic to the company culture and practices for the customer to take notice.

In my opinion successful businesses are those that not only sell quality to their employees but make it part of the culture or what they do daily. The organization must make quality a top priority for everyone in the company, from top managers to the workers building product. The final product and goal of the organization is creating value for consumers.

A quality organization understands that the realization of quality must be continually energized and regenerated. Successful implementation of a quality focused organization requires commitment and patience, but the rewards are substantial. Beyond the obvious practical benefits, organizations become empowered to solve persistent process and performance challenges while raising the expectations they set for themselves.

It is said that the quality of an organization can never exceed the quality of the minds that make it up. The key to success lies in how well each employee is motivated and inspired to deliver quality work.


I’m part of the ASQ Influential Voices program. While I receive an honorarium from ASQ for my commitment, the thoughts and opinions expressed on my blog are my own.

Lean Quote: Reduce Fire Fighting By Not Participating

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.

"I spent so much time putting out fires until I realized I was the oxygen." — John Toussaint, MD

Unfortunately, a far too common management style in many companies is the reactionary style commonly referred to as fire fighting. But fire fighting consumes an organization's resources and damages productivity. Fire fighting derives from what seems like a reasonable set of rules--investigate all problems, for example, or assign the most difficult problems to your best troubleshooter. Ultimately, however, fire-fighting organizations fail to solve problems adequately. Fire fighting prevents us from getting to the root cause. And if we don’t get to the root of problem we will be right back to fire fighting soon.

The idea of fire fighting is to let a problem fester until it becomes a crisis, and then swoop in and fix it. Fire fighting is popular because it is exciting. Furthermore, it is a win-win situation for the fire fighter. If the fix works out, the fire fighter is a hero. If it doesn’t, the fire fighter can’t be blamed, because the situation was virtually hopeless to begin with. Notice that it is to the fire fighter’s advantage to actually let the problem become worse, because then there will be less blame if they fail or more praise if they succeed.

But the real problem is the people in charge. Fighting fires instead of developing a plan to stop fire fighting and making sure it will not happen again is the job of management. Most of us deplore the firefighting style, yet many managers and organizations perpetuate it by rewarding firefighters for the miraculous things they do. In fact, it may be the absence of a vision and plan that cause your organization to be so reactive, and spend a lot of time fire-fighting rather than proactively meeting the needs of your customers. This is all easier said than done, of course, but if you get things right the first time, there's usually not much fire-fighting later.