Daily Lean Tips Edition #74 (1111-1125)

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.

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

Lean Tip #1111 – Respect: Speak Calmly and Listen to Others.

Respect must always be a mutual concept, as you cannot hope to gain it without offering it in the first instance. It is therefore crucial that you remain a good listener at all times, and take the opinions of others on board before taking a direct action or decision. On a similar note, you must always speak calmly when interacting with both colleagues and superiors, as otherwise you run the risk of alienating them and developing a reputation as someone who is difficult to work with.

Lean Tip #1112 – Respect: Go Above and Beyond the Call of Duty.

Whenever you start a job, you are given a basic salary and a job description that outlines the tasks under your control. As you develop relationships with those around you and earn greater levels of responsibility, however, you must be willing to operate outside of these boundaries and do more than is expected of you. Whether this is covering for an unforeseen absence or completing a project within a specified deadline, your willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty will ensure that you remain well-respected among your peers.

Lean Tip #1113 – Respect: Make Collaboration a Key Aspect of Your Work Life.

There will be instances where it is necessary to work on a collaborative project with different colleagues and departments. This can be challenging, especially if you are unfamiliar with their working methods or prefer to operate on an independent basis. Earning universal respect requires you to communicate with people across multiple levels, regardless of status or pre-existing relationship. With this in mind, you must always be open to collaboration and strive to work effectively with any kind of team.

Lean Tip #1114 – Respect: Practice the Virtue of Patience.

Professional respect relies on your ability to showcase both compassion and understanding, as you must make the most of your colleagues’ strengths while also making allowances for their weaknesses. Everyone brings a unique skill-set to the workplace, while each individual also works at his or her own pace. It is crucial that you are patient when dealing with colleagues and superiors, as this enables you to become a productive and respected member of a multi-layered organization.

Lean Tip #1115 – Respect: Become a Problem Solver.

Professional respect can be achieved simply by adding unique value to the workplace. While you can do this by undertaking your role tenaciously and effectively, it is also possible to become a talented problem solver with skills in analytical thinking, strategizing, and negotiation. Every workplace needs proactive problem solvers, so by taking on the mantle and fulfilling this need you can gain newfound respect among your colleagues.

Lean Tip #1116 – Teamwork: Make Every Team Member Feel Valued

Success as a team can only come when each team member is aware of the importance of their role in the team’s success. Involve all team members by sharing any available information relevant to the goal/project and any deadlines. Assign them with responsibility for specific goals/outcomes and reward all members of the team for achieving them.

Lean Tip #1117 – Teamwork: Set Increasingly Challenging Team-Based Goals

Each time the team reaches a goal, set a more challenging goal for them to achieve to encourage team members to stretch themselves and learn from and build on their previous successes. Recognize the team for meeting the challenge and openly discuss how their team effort led their achieving the goal.

Lean Tip #1118 – Teamwork: Incorporate Team-Based Problem Solving into Staff Meetings

At each team meeting ask every team member to share a project or task they might feel stuck on, or challenged by, and request that other team members give feedback, provide some mentoring and share their ideas to help resolve the dilemma or impasse. Encourage team brainstorming of solutions.

Lean Tip #1119 – Teamwork: Discuss Team Dynamics on a Regular Basis

Encourage open communication in team meetings about the team dynamic - for example, talk specifically about what’s working well and what could work better. Use this as an opportunity for team members to discuss how they can work more effectively as a team, but never to whinge or criticize one another in front of other team members. Also encourage conversations reflecting on what has enabled positive achievements as a team.

Lean Tip #1120 – Teamwork: Act as a Guide

Every team needs a great leader who’s willing to guide the team in working and making decisions collaboratively. The team leader must also be committed to reaching the team’s goals and have strong communication skills to be able to share their passion and vision for success.

Lean Tip #1121 - Set Workers Up For Success

Workers who are comfortable in their workspace are more likely to be successful and productive than those who feel uncomfortable. Factors that come into play in worker comfort include cleanliness, accessibility, safety, and ease of use of working environments.

Lean Tip # 1122 - Be Consistent and Continually Reassess

Continuous improvement is one of the main tenets of lean manufacturing, and with good reason. Ensure that workers at all levels are invested in the lean manufacturing process and are accountable for maintaining the environment is crucial. In addition, you will need to adapt and change things along the way. Be sure to stay on top of how efficient the workflow is, how well practices are being implemented, and determine whether changes need to be made.

Lean Tip #1123 - All Employees Should Contribute to Lean

Lean should be practiced by employees at all levels and in all departments at your company. By engaging people in the process of problem-solving, it reduces resistance to the recommended solutions. Rather, participants want to see their ideas implemented and be successful because they are their ideas.

Lean Tip #1124 - Eliminate Scrap

People don’t always understand the true cost when it comes to scrap. If you make a product that must be thrown away, you don’t just lose the materials. You also lose the labor and the opportunity for profit. Even if you can rework a product, you’re still losing out on the labor and cutting into your profit.

Lean Tip #1125 - Ask for Help

You can ask people for advice on what to do and what they did in similar situations like yours. But you can also ask for more practical help. You don´t have to solve every problem on your own and sometimes it feels better to have someone by your side, even if it is just for emotional support.

Fat Attitudes Add No Value

My friend and fellow Lean thinker Bob Emiliani coined the term “fat” behavior after those behaviors that aren't consistent with Lean thinking. Our behaviors lead us to create the systems we consciously or unconsciously use at work, and our systems help shape and reinforce the culture that is in place. Our culture is the foundation for our daily behaviors, and in turn, our daily results.

Attitude and behavior are closely related in some sense though they are two different concepts. One of the most important differences between behavior and attitude is that attitude is internal whereas behavior is external in sense. In other words it can be said that behavior can very well be seen by others as it is external whereas attitude is shelled within the mind of the individual and hence cannot be seen by others immediately.

I believe there are “fat” attitudes just like behaviors that are non-value added and wasteful to Lean thinking. It is these self-deflating attitudes that reinforce negative thinking and emotions. Here are some common “fat” attitudes that you may recognize in the workplace:

1. Black and White Thinking

We tend to place people and situations in either/or categories. Either something or someone is all good or all bad. Shades of gray don’t exist, leading us to view ourselves and others as failures if we aren’t 100 percent perfect in every way.

2. Blaming

As victims of blaming, we either constantly chastise ourselves for things that are not our fault, or we transfer all responsibility to other people without objectively considering our own role in the situation.

3. Fairness Fallacy

We have an implicit belief that every situation must be fair and are constantly examining whether we are being dealt with in a just manner. Because other people won’t always agree with us about what is fair, and because sometimes the universe works in mysterious ways, we end up feeling cheated and resentful.

4. Filtering

We take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. For instance, a person may pick out a single, unpleasant detail and dwell on it exclusively so that their vision of reality becomes darkened or distorted.

5. Jumping to Conclusions

Without individuals saying so, we know what they are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, we are able to determine how people are feeling toward us. For example a person may anticipate that things will turn out badly, and will feel convinced that their prediction is already an established fact.

6. Overgeneralization

We come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or a single piece of evidence. If something bad happens only once, we expect it to happen over and over again. A person may see a single, unpleasant event as part of a never-ending pattern of defeat.

7. Fallacy of Change

We expect that other people will change to suit us if we just pressure or cajole them enough. We need to change people because our hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them.

8. Always Being Right

We are continually on trial to prove that our opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and we will go to any length to demonstrate our rightness. For example, “I don’t care how badly arguing with me makes you feel, I’m going to win this argument no matter what because I’m right.” Being right often is more important than the feelings of others around us.

In order to have meaningful change we have to change both attitude and behavior together. Change in thinking will lead to behavioral change. Alternatively, change in actions will eventually lead to changes in attitude. This combined approach provides the most success by providing positive thinking with the right methodology to implement and sustain change.

Lean Quote: Courageous Leadership Is Inspirational

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.

"For every person in every organization, there comes a moment when he or she must have the courage to step forward and meet the needs of the time. Regardless of whether your time is now or in the future, you must be prepared and willing to seize that moment as a courageous leader! " — David Cottrell

Leadership takes making bold and often unpopular decisions. Effective leadership requires courage - to stand up for what is right, for what we believe in, and to take the necessary risks to be innovative and creative.

Courage means trusting yourself to overcome your fears and doing what you are afraid to do. Courage increases conviction and inspires others to confront their fears. 

The courage of a leader will inspire commitment from their followers. Billy Graham said, "Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are stiffened." When a leader demonstrates courage, it encourages others to want to follow. Seeing the courage of a leader will inspire courage in the followers. A courageous leader is inspirational!

An important lesson I have learned is that the entire workforce wins when everyone shows up to work each day with more courage.  With less fear and more courage, workers take on harder projects, deal better with change and speak up more willingly about important issues. In short, courageous workers try more, trust more and tell more. As a business leader and entrepreneur, your job is to put courage inside of people— to encourage them.

 

20 Ways to Empower Your Team

Employee empowerment has been described and defined in many ways but is generally accepted as: the process of enabling an employee to think, behave, act, react and control their work in more autonomous ways, as to be in control of one’s own destiny.

Empowering employees is the ongoing process of providing the tools, training, resources; encouragement and motivation your workers need to perform at the optimum level. If your organization is looking for a way to embrace employee empowerment focus on these areas. 

Open Up Decision-Making

1. Clarify extent of decision-making authority without manager approval.

2. When leading a meeting, get everyone else’s opinion before expressing your own.

3. Ask your team, “What do you think?” and make your question specific to the task at hand.

4. Eliminate approval steps where post-action monitoring and feedback will be sufficient.

Build Confidence

5. Reward and recognize employees who act in an empowered way.

6. Paint an exciting vision of the future to help employees develop their own plans to achieve the vision.

7. Help connect employees to other people and parts of the organization to broaden perspective.

8. Build up team confidence by letting them discover their own solutions and answers, instead of telling them how to do things,

Clearly Define Expectations

9. Spend more time at the beginning of a project to determine its scope and goals.

10. Ensure that each individual on your team understands what they are accountable for.

11. Make sure that everyone understands what part of their job is mandatory and what they can do on their own.

12. Set clear deadlines, but allow team members to work towards them in a way that they are most comfortable with.

Support Risk-Taking

13. Do not penalize mistakes; create opportunities for individuals to share what they’ve learned.

14. Share problems and challenges transparently to create a sense of team unity and support.

15. Work together to identify and remove non-value-added or redundant work, to free up time and energy for new endeavors.

16. Reward employees for coming up with new approaches and solutions.

Encourage Communication

17. Encourage your team to take a dialogue or personality assessment, and share results with the team.

18. Embed time in project planning for idea sharing and feedback from the team (not just the manager).

19. When delivering feedback, focus on the individual’s actions, not what you believe are the motivations for such behaviors.

20. Instead of asking, “Does anyone have any questions?” prepare pointed questions to ask in team meetings, to generate conversation and surface beliefs.

An empowered workforce is something that is highly desirable in an improvement culture.  Unfortunately, just because we want it, it doesn't make it so. Focus on these 20 areas to make a difference in your organization.

Lean Quote: A Positive Attitude Can Make All The Difference

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.

"Great leadership usually starts with a willing heart, a positive attitude, and a desire to make a difference." — Mac Anderson

We are often not in control of the issues we face at work or home. Problems just present themselves. And chances are the issues you're facing aren't so cut and dry. The solution to the problem might just be your attitude. 

You can find at least two ways to look at virtually everything. A pessimist looks for difficulty in the opportunity, whereas an optimist looks for opportunity in the difficulty. Unfortunately, many people look only at the problem and not at the opportunity that lies within the problem.

Having the right attitude can make the difference between success and failure. A positive attitude can motivate other people to change their negative thinking and come over to your side. Everything is possible with right attitude behind you to push you forward. And since you do have a choice, most of the time you'll be better off if you choose to react in a positive rather than a negative way.

The attitude of the leader has a huge impact on the culture, environment, and mood of the department or organization. The leader’s attitude tends to spread and affect others dramatically. A good leader has the attitude of serving his employees at all times, often at the expense of his own morale or personal needs. A good leader truly cares about the morale of the team, pushes and motivates his team with respect, a relentlessly positive attitude and with a genuine heart.

 

Lean Lessons - Historic Blizzard 2015 Edition

In the northeastern part of the US we have faced historic snowfall from blizzard conditions from storm Juno. This has me recalling a post I did several years ago about the Lean lessons you can learn from winter storms.

1. Forecasts are inaccurate.  You can only count on actual demand.  We have all experienced school cancellations based on high forecasts which result in only a few inches. You can't rely on forecasts to plan your business either.
2. Overproduction is the biggest waste.  A snowstorm with 24 inches is much harder to manage than one with a few inches.  As in snowstorms overproduction leads to other wastes in business.
3. Waiting is inefficient.  Snowstorms often leave you stranded at home.  This means going to work and school is difficult.  Businesses can't afford this waste of valuable time.
4. Excess processing is not productive.  Large snowstorms usually result in multiple clean-ups.  This extra trip outside to remove snow is wasteful.  Extra processing and steps in business result in lost productivity.
5. Excess motion is dangerous.  Removing snow manually with a shovel is physical exhausting.  Excessive motion in your business can be physically and emotionally exhausting for your workers.  This overburden is referred to as Muri in Lean.
6. Inconsistency creates difficulties. The variation in type and amount of snow fall makes snow removal and road treatment more difficult.  The methods and effort to deal with sleet (freezing rain) and heavy wet snow is quite different. In Lean we call this inconsistency in demand Mura.  Businesses would prefer predictable level demand since it is easier to manage.
7. Preventative maintenance is essential.  If you want to be able to clean up from a storm your snow blower needs to be maintained and ready to operate.  If you want to deliver on-time to your customers then your equipment needs to be ready to produce.  Total preventative maintenance (TPM) is the program to help you do this.
8. Inventory is necessary.  During a storm you find many people stock up on supplies because of the unpredictable nature of weather.  They want to be prepared until they can resume their normal delivery routes.  This is necessary in business as well.  Lean is about having the right amount at the right time.

Lessons in Lean thinking are all around us.  Many of us are unaware of them but if you are willing look you can learn a great deal.  Jeff Hajek and I have highlighted various Lean concepts with everyday examples like making coffee, buying milk, and driving.  Keep learning and applying Lean to make work easier.

6 Ways to Motivate Change

Anyone who has worked in or led an organization's transformation understands change is not easy. People commonly resist change for a variety of reasons.  Although you intend for the change to result in a positive outcome, change is often viewed as negative. For your plan to be accepted, you must anticipate and overcome any negativity, anxiety and/or resistance.

As author Liz Keever explains, leaving some kind of option—even if the overall shift is still mandatory—can make people more willing to give your changes a chance. It also helps them feel like they're part of the process of making the change happen, rather than having it thrust upon them:

Change cannot happen to people. It needs to happen with people. Change must be co-created. Everyone should have some say in how the change is implemented. It is their job and their life. Let them have an element of control. If you keep lines of communication open for suggestions, you will hear lots of good ideas from the people who need to make the change happen. Use those ideas because it will build more engagement in the process. Create the change together.

Here are a few suggestions that come to mind to reduce resistance to change:

Suggestion 1: Empower employees to become part of the change.  There are several reasons people resist change, one of which is fear.  Many people play "Gee, what if" scenarios over and over when a new idea is proposed.  When you begin to implement your plan of action, it's essential that you invite those around you to identify how the change will influence them, benefit them, and improve their present situations.

Suggestion 2: Keep your employees informed.  Communicate as much as you know about what is happening as a result of the change.  One of the major reasons people resist change is fear of the unknown.  If you communicate with employees and keep them informed, you put this fear to rest.

Suggestion 3: Break the change down into digestible chunks.  If it makes it easier for employees, introduce the change gradually.  You can give employees encouragement and help them focus on small steps they can take to move toward the future.  Celebrate their small successes.

Suggestion 4: Answer the "What's in it for Me?" question.  This suggestion is similar to Suggestion 1.  Generally people will accept change when they see a personal benefit.  Employees who are involved in determining the benefits of change are less likely to resist it.  Assist employees in identifying what the change will do for them.

Suggestion 5: Give employees some control over change.  As employees begin to focus on the benefits of the desired change, provide them with the opportunity to control the steps to the change.  Participants in change workshops have revealed that having control reduces the anxiety and stress associated with the change implementation and increases their motivation to make the change.

Suggestion 6: Help employees assimilate the change.  Once employees begin to experience change, help them assimilate it by reinforcing the personal benefits they're gaining.

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. As employees begin to demonstrate a willingness to assimilate change into their daily routine, they develop a commitment to the change, a willingness to stick to the plan of action.  The change actually becomes integrated into the work environment, and employees begin to feel a sense of satisfaction in accomplishment.  They readily see the payoffs associated with the change.  They enjoy, and may even take credit for, their participation in the process.  Employees can view their efforts to bring about change with personal respect and pride. The change becomes a part of their routine, and any lingering concerns vanish.