Lean Quote: Get Your Hands Dirty

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.

"Jump into the middle of things, get your hands dirty, fall flat on your face, and then reach for the stars." — Ben Stein

In a recent Havard Busines Review post on advice for new team leaders a tip stuck out to me:  

Get your hands dirty.

Jeanne DeWitt, Chief Revenue Officer at UberConference, explains this from her perspective:

Spend time doing the work that your team actually does. Not only does this help establish you as someone who leads by example, but you also learn first-hand about all of the different challenges that people experience every day. At UberConference, we have every new member of the team spend a week as a guest member of our customer support team. As a result of those experiences, everyone is far more connected to our customers, and changes to the product, tools, and messaging are implemented immediately because that first-hand experience creates passion. If you can understand what it's fundamentally like to be on the front lines, you have unique perspective when making larger strategic decisions and communicating them to your team.

Lean leaders should go to the shop floor and get their hands dirty by working on process improvement. People expect their leaders to be innovative.  Allow others to see your creativity in action on the front lines.   Leaders need to do more and observe less.   Action is observation in full motion.

Leading by example sounds easy, but few leaders are consistent with this one. Successful leaders practice what they preach and are mindful of their actions. They know everyone is watching them and therefore are incredibly intuitive about detecting those who are observing their every move, waiting to detect a performance shortfall.

The best leaders get their hands dirty and a must for Lean leaders.   Don’t be selfish and wash your hands clean.  Don’t wait to solve the problems in front of you.   Get involved and stay active.  Be transparent, make a difference and watch the immediate impact you can organically create. 

 

Getting Up Again: Lessons from Skateboarding

Rodney Mullen is widely considered to be the most influential skateboarder in skateboarding history. He shares with humility and passion how the constant search for improvement has led to outstanding innovations and how we can all learn from lessons of great skateboarders.

You may not think that skateboarding and success have much in common, but there is one thing skateboarders definitely know how to do: get back up.  Skateboarders crash repeatedly for hours and hours in hopes of landing the perfect trick. It's a great analogy for finding success in your own ventures. Nobody lands a kick-flip the first time they try it.

More importantly, Mullen talks about the factor that makes you get back on the board again. There are a ton of people with the strength and acrobatic ability—or "gears"—to take on skateboarding tricks, but without the desire to get back up after getting broken and bruised—or the "engine"—you'll never actually succeed at what you're trying to accomplish. Remember, life is full of scraped shins, broken arms, and groin shots—but you have to get back on the board.

Lean Lessons from Elementary School

This past week I had the opportunity to attend an open house at my kid’s elementary school. I am not sure how many of you have elementary age kids but I have 2 lovely kids that age (and 1 in middle school). Every time I visit their classrooms I notice all the visuals. They use visuals throughout their learning process. Whether it is learning the alphabet, weather, time, dates, reading or whatever else the topic it is visual. Elementary classrooms are run very much like or Lean factories with regard to visuals and organization. The use of labels help the kids learn new words but also keep the classroom organized. Everything in a classroom has a home and everything is in its place. All the children know this very well.

On this recent trip I was reminded of the importance of establishing standard work. If you want people to behave in a certain way or do something in a particular manner than you need to use standard work. Here is an example of standard work at my daughters 3rd grade class.

It is mounted on their desk in the top right corner clearly visible. The kids don’t have to remember all the steps in the morning routine because it is right in front of them. It gets the kids organized and ready to start learning without wasting any time.

Standard work is highly effective at establishing a means to do something that everyone can follow. It also makes it easy to identify when someone is not following the process.  Standardized work is one of the most powerful but least used lean tools.

I can't but think if a school teacher can use this technique to establish a morning routine for their students why so many managers feel weird doing so for their employees. Perhaps we have forgotten what we learned.  This is why I feel this example of quality improvement in an unexpected classroom is worth sharing.

Lean Quote: A Leader Must Be A Good Teacher

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 has been well said that an effective leader must know the meaning and master the technique of the educator." — Philip Selznick

A leader must be a good teacher. Leaders must be able to be good teachers to share insights and experiences. Leaders can inspire, motivate, and influence subordinates at various levels through the use of teaching ability. Obviously, one must be a good communicator in order to be an effective teacher. Without the ability to clearly and effectively communicate a message, goal, story, or philosophy, it is impossible to lead.

In a Lean organization, learning is critical, and line management's direct responsibility. Lean is based on how people think; simply defined, Lean is shared thinking. Management and employees need common philosophy, ideas, and principles. Leaders can't just put workers into situations, and hope they learn the right things. They should take responsibility for the message, combining real-life experience with direct coaching. An organization's principles should become guideposts to help people make tough decisions.

Lean Leaders must not only be teachers, they must also preach and promote teaching at all levels. Lean Leaders make sure that all of their direct reports are good teachers. In classical leadership, the role of teaching is frequently delegated – not so with the Lean Leaders.

The Lean Leader must teach leadership. This is the real key to sustaining the gains. Teach them to keep a focus, teach them how to get their resources aligned and teach them how not to “de-motivate” their subordinates and peers and you will have gone a long way toward teaching leadership.

To teach, a leader has to learn, and learning Lean is more than a cerebral exercise By applying Lean to everything, a leader becomes a more effective teacher. Remember what leadership is really about: It's not a job; it's an act. Leaders have to learn how to teach, build creative tension, and eliminate fear and comfort. Leaders need to actively participate in the transformation of the business, and apply Lean to their own jobs.

 

Eliminating the Management Roadblock for Improvement

On A Lean Journey’s Facebook page this past week we have been discussing the largest roadblock to Lean implementation. Overwhelming the response has been management.

In my experience I have learned that the single most important element for success in Lean is the human element.   First and foremost Lean managers have the critical role of motivating and engaging all people to work together toward a common goal. Management must define and explain what that goal is, share a path to achieve it, motivate people to take the journey with them, and assist them by removing obstacles.

Lean requires top-to-bottom leadership of a special kind. Lean leaders need to be firm and inspiring, relentless and resilient, demanding and forgiving, focused and flexible. Above all, they have to be smart and highly respected in the organization. Every successful company has at least one of these leaders. These people must be a passionate part of the Lean leadership team.

Commitment from management is a “MUST”. In fact, it is the driving force. Procedures, tools, and database are all useless if the management does not want to see an improvement culture in the organization. The employees of the organization will not care, if the management themselves do not show the attitude to follow the right path.

The truth is demonstrating commitment is hard work. Wavering commitment is usually seen as no commitment at all. The only way to achieve a reputation for commitment is through determination and persistence. Genuine commitment stands the test of time.

Commitment is demonstrated by a combination of two actions. The first action is called supporting. The second action underlying commitment is called improving. It is the combination of both supporting and improving behaviors that makes up the practice of commitment. Company leaders demonstrate their commitment to change and improvement by making these behaviors visible to everyone. Leading by example is the ultimate demonstration of your commitment.

Most management teams don’t understand Lean. When we don’t understand something it is next to impossible to support it. This lack of understanding of Lean by management allows even the most subtle of things to derail Lean efforts.

However those managers who truly know Lean understand the benefit comes from developing people to think and improve their own process the more they define the role as influencing or coaching. Management must focus on how solutions are developed. Develop, via coaching, the capability in people to develop new solutions. Leaders can have the biggest impact coaching or influencing the process of improvement to capture the ingenuity of those in the organization.

Getting executives in your company to want to support and then adopt Lean Thinking may be difficult but not impossible. We would all like to work at a company where the top people in the organization don’t just do Lean but live Lean but many of us work at a place where they don’t even necessarily do Lean. 

The level of involvement in Lean by the management team shapes the Lean implementation and those who may lead it. In my experience the less knowledgeable the management about REAL Lean (Bob Emiliani’s term) the more they think of it as a set of tools the more they want you to just do it. These are the managers that are usually hands-off with Lean and want to see the short term gains to demonstrate they are improving the process. They are focused on the results and outcomes and not the means by which we achieve them. This task oriented approach to management unfortunately is only sustainable while the doer is doing.

The management system must change as the production system changes in Lean. A Lean management system comprises of the practices and tools used to monitor, measure, and sustain the operation of Lean production. Lean management practices identify where actual performance fails to meet expected performance; assigns and follows up improvement activities to bring actual in line with the expected, or to raise the level of performance.

Management can’t be the roadblock to change. They need to be the champion for change. All managers are teachers, and their actions determine company capability. Whether consciously or not, with their everyday words and actions all managers are teaching their people a mindset and approach.

Lean management is an art one should perfect with time and with the understanding about Lean manufacturing. Lean leaders will be the most important asset to any organization in its Lean journey. 

Lean Quote: Fail Again, Fail Better

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.

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." — Samuel Beckett

To err is completely human, so you should not be afraid of the mistakes you may make and of course, you should never hide them. Nobody likes to make mistakes. However, the simple reality of life is that at some point, all of us are going to be wrong. That’s just life. We are going to make mistakes.

Most often we learn through trial and error. We reserve the word success for the accomplishment of difficult things and there are few difficult things you get right on the first try. Hence while success does not ALWAYS start with failure, it would be fair to say it does most of the time. If you aren't failing, you're not trying, and if you aren't trying you aren't succeeding.

Treat every mistake as an opportunity to learn and grow. Don’t feel stupid or doomed forever just because you failed at something. You can always find other opportunities.

A colleague of mine always said, “Learn to fail quickly.” Essentially, if you are going to fail you need to learn to do it quickly in order to get the data (results) that you can use to gradually improve. The faster you get at learning from unforeseen circumstances and outcomes, the faster you can find a solution that truly adds value.

If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not improving. Henry Ford said, “Failure is merely an opportunity to begin again knowledgeably.” Failure can be an inevitable stepping-stone to great achievement.

Fear of failure is a genuinely scary thing for many people, and often the reason that individuals do not attempt the things they would like to accomplish. But the only true failure is failure to make the attempt. If you don't try, you gain nothing, and life is too short a thing to waste.

But to have success, management must create an environment where it is safe to fail. Failure is an expected part of the process of finding solutions. If workers feel that they have to “hit one out of the park” every time they come up with an improvement idea, they will be reluctant to provide their ideas. In a Lean environment, failure and success should be met with the same level of enthusiasm and support.

The ability to go through failures without losing enthusiasm starts from a passion, or some form of inner fire. If that’s missing, then every failure is going to be a huge blow able to stop you. If you have passion, than it’s going to be a huge bang able to make you stronger.

 

Daily Lean Tips Edition #68 (1021-1035)

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 #1021 - Know, Understand and Involve Your Customers

It’s a given that without customers you will have no business. You need to know what they want and how they want it – not just now, but in the future – to stay ahead of the game. Ask them questions such as: would they recommend your business to others without hesitation. If not, ask them what they think you need to do better.

Lean Tip #1022 - Create a Coaching Culture

Lead by example. Show that you are willing to receive and give feedback by openly asking for it.  And encourage your colleagues on the management team and your employees to do the same. This doesn’t just involve giving out feedback forms for big initiatives like new customer launches or employee events, it also means asking employees or customers for informal feedback, for instance after a particularly tricky meeting or discussion.

Lean Tip #1023 - Actively Listen…and Respond

Whether it’s a customer or an employee, whether they are saying something you want to hear, or not, make sure you actively listen. And show you are listening by asking questions to clarify and consolidate what people are telling you. Once you have listened, acknowledge and respond, quickly – otherwise customers and employees will assume that you weren’t listening in the first place.

Lean Tip #1024 - Share Knowledge Within Your Company

 If you don’t share knowledge within your company, your customers will suffer. Many managers are unaware that the team that sits right next to theirs is doing some great work that that could help the business deliver a better service to customers, or open the door to a new market.

Host regular knowledge-sharing sessions – whether virtual or real; keep your knowledge management system updated and make it interactive. Or invite individuals from totally different parts of the business to team meetings and then reciprocate. Start with some of the managers. Proactive knowledge sharing is one of the key ways to remain one step ahead of your competitors – and senior people need to make the time to lead by example.

Lean Tip #1025 – Remember The Four Main Factors in Goal Setting.

In order to get people motivated, they must: 1) Value the goal; 2) The goal must be difficult, but obtainable; 3) There must be feedback contingent upon goals; and 4) That feedback must be numerical. If you have someone acting on an A3, you will have all of these and you will build the culture change that you're looking for.

Lean Tip #1026 – Start By Defining Processes

First things first: You have to take a hard look at current processes, both how your workers go about their job and with your manufacturing equipment, and see if there is room for improvement.

Are you using machine parts that are defective? Unnecessary? Is an employee skipping important steps that only save production a minimal amount of time?

Look at every aspect of your production process and clearly define and streamline those processes.

Lean Tip #1027 - Create Repeatable Processes

If you’ve done something with absolute success before, you want to continue doing it that way. That’s why it’s important to document processes, as it provides a baseline understanding of what you do and how you do it. Following a disciplined approach to documentation promotes consistent results.

Lean Tip #1028 - Plan For Continuous Improvement

By following a system that adheres to planning, monitoring, evaluating and measuring results, you get continuous improvement in the quality of your employees, your manufacturing equipment, your processes and your products.

Lean Tip #1029 - Have A Preventative Maintenance Plan

Preventative maintenance of your manufacturing equipment is the key to avoiding downtime and big costs to replace broken machines. By implementing routine adjustments and replacing worn components, you ensure your equipment is functioning with the highest possible degree of efficiency.

All of these factors improve quality and, in terms of costs, actually save you a lot of money in the long run.

Lean Tip #1030 - Cleaning Is Inspection

Typically, in a production environment, the raw materials being turned into products leave residue on the machinery. At least once per eight-hour shift, use an air hose to clear this residue. This minimizes the opportunity for the dusty remains to work their way into the components of your equipment and cause a breakdown over time. Then, once or twice a month, pull the machines out and do a more thorough, intense cleaning.

Lean Tip #1031 - Think About How To Do It, Not Why It Can't Be Done.

I often hear, "We tried that before and it didn't work." They may have had a good idea, but the chances are that they didn't include the accountability portion. Without accountability, you will not have sustainability. Make someone accountable and avoid the "flavour of the month."

Lean Tip #1032 - Do Not Seek Perfection. Do It Right Away.

Taiichi Ohno used to regularly nag at people not to let a quality problem "escape" to the next customer. You've got to stop what you're doing, put a countermeasure on it and do it right away. You've got to fix mistakes immediately. Don't wait for the next shift to do it. Don't wait for the weekend to do it. Don't wait for maintenance to do it.

Lean Tip #1033 - Do Not Spend Money for Kaizen.

All that proves is that you have a lot of money. I don't care whether you're in manufacturing or health care, you don't have "extra" money. Toyota says that they use their wits, not their wallets, for continuous improvement.

Lean Tip #1034 - Ideas are Infinite. Execution is the Key.

This simple maxim is often overlooked as people get caught up in meetings and so on. You've got to be the change you want to see, not the change you'd like to see. It's the same as not confusing better with best. You want to move to better right away, not take forever working out what "best" looks like.

Lean Tip #1035 - Kaizen Starts With Taking a Look at the Actual Place of Work. Continuous improvement efforts must start with a trip to the gemba. The gemba might often be the factory floor, but people forget about Lean in the office, where half of the work starts out being late! It's easy to see waste on the floor, but it's harder (at first) to see waste in the office or other value streams. Going to the gemba will make it easier.