Lean Quote: Leadership Lessons on Valentine's Day

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.

"Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get—only with what you are expecting to give—which is everything."   — Katharine Hepburn

As we approach the most romantic holiday of the year, I think of the leadership lessons you can find in Valentine’s Day.

1. Have passion and desire:
What comes with the thought of love? Passion and desire. While Valentine’s Day brings out the romantic version of these two emotions, I believe passion and desire can translate to your role as a leader.

Great leaders have passion. Passion for the work they do. They love coming into the office and leading a team to success. Great leaders also have great desire. They desire to lead a successful organization.

Become passionate about leading your team and creating a successful organization.

2. Treat people well:
Sadly, some people are treated the best on a single day of the year. That day is Valentine’s Day.

They are brought flowers or chocolates. They’re wined and dined. And then the rest of the year it’s almost like they’re forgotten about.

That’s not what love is. Love is treating people well throughout the year. Valentine’s Day just reminds you to treat your significant other well.

So, let’s translate this to leadership. The leadership lesson from Valentine’s Day here is to treat other people well.

Be kind. Be generous. And be caring.

These are traits of leaders who treat people well. They know by treating people well, they will inspire them to new heights.

Find ways to treat your people well and with respect. You won’t go wrong with that.

3. Show your appreciation:
The last leadership lesson from Valentine’s Day I want to touch on is to show your appreciation for those you lead.

Your team members come in and work very hard. They put in 40-hour workweeks that are probably longer than that. And they make you look good.

The least you could do is to show your team how much you appreciate them.

Write notes of thanks letting them know you see what they’re doing. Take them out to lunch. Shake their hand or pat them on the back.

Showing appreciation goes a long way in creating loyal team members.

8 Tips for Better Hoshin Kanri Implementation

Hoshin Kanri (also called Policy Deployment) is a method for ensuring that the strategic goals of a company drive progress and action at every level within that company. This eliminates the waste that comes from inconsistent direction and poor communication.

Hoshin Kanri strives to get every employee pulling in the same direction at the same time. It achieves this by aligning the goals of the company (Strategy) with the plans of middle management (Tactics) and the work performed by all employees (Operations).

Key items to consider when developing the strategic plan are:

Involve the Whole Team
People will become much more invested in executing the strategic plan if they have a hand in developing it. Of course, your organization is not a democracy. It is up to leadership to determine the direction and set the breakthrough goals, but how you get there (and whether you get there) will ultimately be in the hands of the people who do the work and make the small decisions that add up to success. That should be apparent in your planning process.

Focus on Five
Focus on five goals (or less). The mere act of writing down goals can create a (false) feeling of progress – and more goals feels like more progress. In reality, a goal only expresses intent. Taking action is the hard part. Every company has finite resources and energy…and a limited attention span. Focusing on a small number of goals makes success far more likely than dissipating energy across dozens of goals. Or looking at it another way…if everything is important; nothing is important.

Effectiveness First
There is a well-known distinction between efficiency and effectiveness: efficiency is doing things right while effectiveness is doing the right things. Strategic goals need to be effective – doing the right things to take the company to the next level. If a goal doesn’t have that kind of broad impact it’s probably not strategic.

Evolution vs. Revolution
Goals can be evolutionary (incremental goals usually achieved through continuous improvement) or revolutionary (breakthrough changes with dramatic scope). Both are legitimate and important forms of improvement.

Top Down Consensus
Top management is responsible for developing the strategic plan – it’s one of their most important responsibilities. But taking the time to consult with middle management serves two useful purposes:

• It provides additional perspective and feedback that helps craft stronger, more informed strategies
• It creates a sense of shared responsibility for the plan and significantly more buy-in from middle management

Choose KPIs With Care
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) provide the means for tracking progress towards goals. They also have a considerable ability to drive behavior. So choose KPIs with care. It is essential to think through whether the selected KPIs will drive the desired behavior without unintended side effects. For example, more than one company has found that a single-minded pursuit of efficiency can lead to unintended consequences such as excess inventory (larger batches means less changeovers) and reduced quality (a subtle “fix it later” pressure creeps in to keep lines running).

Own the Goal
Every goal should have an owner – a facilitator and coach who has the skills and authority to successfully see the goal through to conclusion.

• As a facilitator, the goal owner will remove roadblocks and smooth the path to progress
• As a coach, the goal owner will track progress and intercede if things get off track

Celebrate Success
Hoshin Kanri is all about breakthrough goals, but you don’t get there without a bunch of small victories. Be sure to take the time to celebrate every single one and put each in context of the big picture. Every time you recognize an employee or team for doing the right thing, solving problems, and innovating processes you increase the likelihood that others will do the same. Continuous improvement is contagious, so share it far and wide.

People perform best when they have a purpose. When they understand not just what to do – but why it’s important. One of the benefits of Hoshin Kanri is that it can help to create that purpose; providing focus and drive towards specific and important goals.


So, it’s worth putting some effort into creating a shared vision of the strategic plan (the future state; the destination) and associated tactics (the path to get there). Make sure as many employees as possible are given an opportunity to understand why the strategic goals are important and how the tactics and operational details support those goals.

Hoshin Kanri: A Better Way for Strategic Execution

Companies must determine ahead of time what the vision and direction will be. A proper strategy must assign clear responsibilities and show what resources are to be committed. Metrics and timelines must be defined. Management must decide what core elements are to be deployed and the order of deployment.

Traditional planning methodologies focus on steering an organization in the direction desired by top management. Often referred to as management by objective (MBO) since top management establish the objectives, targets, evaluate whether employees meet these targets. Unfortunately, as we know, you can’t achieve the desired results by just dictating individual targets.

In Lean Thinking “Hoshin Kanri” is the process to select those annual objectives that will give the organization the greatest possible advantage. The word Hoshin is formed from two Chinese characters: ho stands for “method,” shin means “shiny metal showing direction.” Kanri stands for “planning.” Together, hoshin kanri is used to communicate a “methodology for setting strategic direction,” in other words, a management “compass.”

Hoshin kanri translates the strategic intent into the required day-to-day behavior. It is not another attempt to improve MBO. While hoshin kanri and MBO both aim to deploy company goals and encourage employees to achieve them, there are several radical points of departure. Specifically,

• Hoshin kanri deploys the voice of the customer, not just profit goals. More than the traditional MBO description of projected market share, profit goals, and revenues, hoshin kanri maps and controls the path to a new design based on customer priorities. It describes the behaviors needed to achieve the policies that support the strategic vision.
• Hoshin kanri deploys breakthrough strategies. It concentrates resources on strategic priorities and chronic problems by going after root cause(s) of obstacles to achieve dramatic improvements in performance.
• Hoshin kanri controls the means and methods, not just the results. It manages cause and effect linkage of supporting strategies, measures, and targets to ensure that employee efforts are realistic, synergistic, and add up to the total effort required to meet corporate objectives.
• Hoshin kanri is a continuous improvement management process, not calendar-driven system. MBO typically establishes a set of quarterly and annual goals. In contrast, hoshin kanri identifies a few critical breakthrough objectives that require coordinated and focused effort over an extended period of three to five years. Annual objectives are established within the context of these longer term objectives.
• Hoshin kanri emphasizes frequent reviews up and down the organization. In MBO, the performance review, often an annual event, does not capture or communicate valuable feedback to inform future rounds of planning. Hoshin kanri uses an explicit inter-level communication system to continually distill local lessons and channel them upward to the leaders of the organization. It routinely tracks performance, reviews the capability of the entire planning system, and modifies it accordingly.
• Hoshin kanri is not tied to performance appraisals. Authentic hoshin kanri separates the evaluation of personnel from the evaluation of the strategy. It focuses not on personnel, but on the quality of the strategic assumptions and the discipline of the planning system.

Hoshin kanri is not just a strategic planning tool, it is an execution tool. It is a system to deploy an existing strategic plan throughout the organization. In other words, hoshin management is an idea handler, not an idea generator. It depends on a preexisting statement of direction typically generated by an augmented strategic planning process.

The Hoshin Kanri process identifies and concentrates resources on the vital few stretch achievements that support the vision. It separates those performance issues that require dramatic improvement from the many incremental improvements that can achieved at the local level. All the changes that the leadership believes to be incremental are skimmed out of the strategic plan and addressed through quality in daily work. The remaining category of contribution – the vital few breakthrough achievements – becomes the core of the Hoshin Kanri process.

At the heart of Hoshin Kanri is the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle. Promoted by w. Edwards Deming, this management cycle (sometimes called the PDCA cycle) is an iterative process. A closed loop system, it emphasizes four repetitive steps:

• First, start with an idea and create a PLAN to test it.
• Then, DO adhere to the plan, and take corrective action when necessary.
• Next, analyze and STUDY discrepancies to identify the root causes of obstacles.
• Finally, take appropriate ACTion. If the outcome matches expectations, then standardize the process to maintain the gains. If the results were disappointing, then modify the process to eliminate the root cause of remaining problems. In either case, repeat the process starting again with PLAN.

While these steps appear in a linear sequence, when implemented the phases are best thought of as concurrent processes that can continually be improved.

Hoshin Kanri is the system for setting management’s compass toward True North. It is a tool to align people, activities, and performance metrics with strategic priorities. It can be used to communicate direction, coordinate activity, and monitor progress. It enables members of the organization to work together in the most creative way to define and achieve the strategic intent.

Lean Quote: Managers Light a Fire Under People; Leaders Light a Fire in 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.

"Managers light a fire under people; leaders light a fire in people."   — Kathy Austin

While a leader can be a boss, not every boss is a leader. The distinction between being a boss and being a leader may seem small, but it means the world to the people who work for you. 

The definition of leadership is “a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal.” That is why it is my belief that if you are a good leader for your organization, then you really don’t need to worry about being The Boss. You will gain more influence and have more positive impact on your organization if your team feels valued and respected and has an understanding of where you expect them to be headed.

Here are few key points on leadership:

• A company is a community, not a machine.  When building a synergy on any team, you have to start by building trust and confidence up and down the chain of command.  Start by developing a vision that is easy to communicate and easy to comprehend. Once your team understands the collective vision and goals of the organization, individual goals become closely tied to the collective goal.  Brainstorm with your team and listen intently to suggestions and incorporate best practices.
• Management is service, not control.  Once a vision is established, a great leader constantly queries his/her managers to see if they have the tools necessary to excel.  Once the tools are determined and obtained, empower your managers to make decisions on their own, but always make it clear that you are available to assist at any time.
• Employees are my peers, not my children.  This point ties into the previous point about providing service.  Nobody in any organization likes to be “talked down to” or constantly second-guessed.  Treat your team members as you would expect to be treated.  Remember, you want to encourage the sharing of ideas.

A great leader recognizes the value in individual team members and ensures that their talents are being utilized in the most effective manner. Provides constructive feedback and seek it yourself.  Remember, we are pursuing excellence each and every day.

Being an effective leader means saying, and believing, that the buck stops with you. That your role is to set a vision, give employees the direction, support, and tools they need to reach success and then get out of the way and allow them the room they need to move forward.  You and your organization will be poised for greater success if you remind yourself of this every day – and you too might find that simply keeping a list like this handy on your desk is an easy way to keep yourself on the right path.

During your life, you will face two kinds of managers: leaders and bosses. It does not matter how high the position of these individuals; bossy people are more likely to fail while those who lead will succeed.

Keeping Employees Motivated: 5 Essential Tips

Employees are the lifeblood of any company or business. Therefore, they need ‘VIP’ treatment so that they can go about their duties with dedication. As a boss, one of the greatest achievements you can hone is to have most, if not all, of your employees on your side. Employee motivation is an integral part of performance and excellence for a business or company. No magic can replace the efforts your staff put in the company, as they are the centerpiece of the organization. Their attitude and diligence in duty ensure that everything flows daily.

For these reasons and more, employees have the power to make or break a business or company. It does not matter if you yell at them and give them ultimatums. If they lack the motivation to work, you will only be flogging a dead horse. Therefore, instead of wasting your time, as it is valuable, why don't you use it to increase their motivation? Maybe, you do not have a clue on how to go about this fete. Luckily, we did in-depth research to come up with the following five solid tips to keep your employees motivated. Feel free to apply them in your daily discourse with employees and try to change their mentality and general perspective.

1.     Be their support always

In most cases, employees only seek a boss that can double up as their shoulder to lean on, when they feel disturbed or have different issues. Ask yourself, am I supportive of my employees as a boss?

Leadership and, proper leadership for that matter, is one of the vital ingredients of employee motivation. When you work closely with your staff while encouraging them in their duties, you prove to them how supportive you are as a boss. This way, they will not want to let you down.

Always try to be sympathetic whenever they share things that concern their work or even personal life. Knowing that they can count on you or have a listening ear is vital to their motivation working for the company. The kind of support you give to your staff has a significant influence on how the employees see themselves and the company in general.

Just the same way a little kid would expect you to lend him or her listening and sympathetic ear is the same manner your employees need you to do behave.

2.     Set the right example

How would you even call yourself a leader if you do not lead by example? It would be best if you were an icon that your employees look up to when working in the company. Yes, you are the boss. However, this does not give you the license to act like a jerk. Remember, most employees will do as you do and, not as you say.

What you show is very important to your staff. You might think that giving orders in the comfort of your office while swinging on your swivel chair is the perfect idea of a boss. The only problem is that you are shooting yourself on foot. This is only creating rebellion and animosity if anything. When you go to the office and practice something you have been preaching to your staff, they will be more than willing to emulate your actions. You might be shocked by how much your employees will be motivated when you lead from the frontline.

3.     Define the goals, vision, and mission of the organization

It is quite challenging to focus when you do not even have a clue on what you are focusing on. Let us take an example of a journey. Will you boldly travel to an unknown destination when someone randomly selects you for the fete? Of course, you will have your doubts and reservations and will feel less motivated to work.

Conversely, your employees need to know what they are working towards and, this is clear in a vision or mission statement. Therefore, you need to let your staff know about the organization’s goals, mission, and visions. This way, they will put their dedication and hard work towards achieving this milestone. Motivation lies in your ability to convince your employees what targets the company has and how everyone can work together to achieve them.

You need to make sure every staff member understands his or her role in this journey. Therefore, you need to divide tasks and labor so that everyone has their part to play. If possible, place them in different teams with their distinct roles. Positive teamwork and energy will motivate each one.

4.     Try to ensure the general mood and happiness in the company is intact

Are you a friendly boss? If not, do you know that not being one can affect the general feeling of your employees? Nothing breaks employees' motivation, like having an uncaring boss. This is especially the case when you make no effort to improve the general mood of the staff. You do not have to do much to enhance the mood of your team. Sometimes it is all about the little motivating factors, which make your team energetic and ready to serve the company.

Try rewarding employees, for instance. Whenever they reach or exceed the company's expectations, please give them a reward that motivates them to do more. It can be in any form, depending on what the company can afford. You can promote him or her, organize a trip, or give them a raise in remuneration. Anything that can get the individual motivated.

5.     Create an ideal work environment

Ask yourself, do the employees feel motivated to come to work every morning? Moreover, if not, does the work environment have anything to do with a lack of motivation? In most cases, your staff will feel less motivated to report to work when the work environment is negative.

Employees spend most of their hours daily in the office. Imagine all of these hours seated in a negative environment. Would you feel motivated to work with all of your dedication? Make the workplace an ideal area for staff to work. Make sure that they always feel motivated to come over to the office daily.

Conclusion

In summary, we hope that the tips above will help you motivate your employees. Most of them are easy to follow and will not cost you much. Try them today and notice the difference.

Author Bio

Isabell Gaylord is a professional content writer and journalist who currently works at Dissertation Today. 

10 Keys for Lean Daily Management

Many companies that experience great success with lean hold kaizen workshops to rapidly implement lean tools. It’s no secret, however, that many of these companies find that the improved system quickly reverts back to its non-lean state.  The problem is that lean is a people-dependent system.  All the lean tools, such as posting standard work, require people to use them daily and if they do not understand them, or care about them, the tools will quickly decay. We need to develop people so that they want to use the tools for daily improvement.  This requires internal motivation. What we are really trying to accomplish is to develop people so they have the drive to improve toward clearly defined performance goals.  We want to make improvement a habit. There is no tool that develops people, but there is a methodology that can aid in development often referred to as shop floor management, or daily management.

The purpose of daily management is to make everyone come at a common platform, take charge and ownership of each and every aspect, for example, improving production, productivity, material availability, etc., and most important is the increasing communication.

10 Keys to Daily Management:

1.     KPIs That Matter

To take your production to the next level, you need to collect and analyze the relevant key performance indicators (KPI), or metrics.  The right metrics can help you find the sticking points or weak spots in your production line and processes, giving you the information and insights you need to continuously improve and refine your business.  KPIs allow you to monitor, analyze and optimize production processes regarding their quantity, quality as well as different cost aspects.

2.     Setting Standards

Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible, And like-wise you want to turn your expectations into clear standards through team discussions and displaying the end results. Setting standards help your lean leaders to be able to clearly display the company expectations of a task to your team. It also makes it easier for the leader to correct and adjust behavior if necessary.

3.     Visual Displays

Utilize a visual board to display its goals, targets, and performance metrics. The look and feel of the visual board should be standard across your system, with each board including the standard metrics as well as a designated space for discussion and prioritization of improvement ideas. The visual board should be located in an accessible area so that the data and metrics stay in front of everyone.

4.     Daily Huddles

Daily huddles take place at the value stream level and last for about 10 to 15 minutes. Huddles are led by the leader and are attended by all members of the value stream. Huddles take place directly in front of the visual board so that the metrics that are displayed on the board can be discussed and updated as needed.

5.     Gemba Walks

The leadership team needs to visit the actual place (Gemba walk) to ‘check things out’ and see if there are any issues that need to be addressed.  Auditing processes by visiting the floor and talking with employees.  The purpose of the Gemba Walk is to observe processes, not to evaluate the people preforming the process. Leaders then go to work on the problems and actions from the morning meeting.

6.     Problem Solving

It’s necessary to create an environment in which hiding problems is neither acceptable nor possible. The right way to work, which lean thinking advocates for, is exposing problems, effectively solving them, and asking for help and getting it whenever necessary. Problems occur constantly and more time is required to understand and solve them, the bigger their consequences.

7.     Coaching

Highlighting improvement opportunities, idea prioritization, and evaluation are not part of frontline employees’ normal work. These behaviors need ongoing encouragement and mentorship beyond the initial training. Strong, capable department leadership and visible senior leadership are crucial for encouraging, recognizing, and promoting these behaviors and accountabilities to sustain daily management.

8.     Accountability – Improvement Tracking

Daily accountability is the vehicle for interpreting the observations recorded on the visual controls, converting them into assignments for action and following up to see to it that assignments are completed. As with the other principal elements of lean management, daily accountability relies on disciplined adherence to its processes on the part of leaders.

9.     Leader Standard Work

For daily management to be successful, it is critical for leaders at all levels of the organization to be committed to the process and visibly be present at huddles. The role of these leaders at huddles is to encourage teamwork and collaboration, help remove barriers, mentor and coach frontline staff, and foster systems thinking.

10.  Everyday Communication

Leaders should regularly communicate with employees across all levels of the organization to ensure that information is disseminated and to learn about employees’ experiences, problems, and suggestions. Communication is enhanced by the leaders who remain in contact, are able to clarify, and convey information concisely and clearly. Since lean management favors an approach where managers are in regular communication with employees about their work and their process, employees should feel they are empowered to make better decisions.

The main purpose of the daily management process is the enabling of robust “Check” and “Act” activities. An organization that places daily management at the core of its management system will be capable of identifying deviation as soon as it occurs and to initiate the problem solving process right away.

Such an organization will be best placed to deal with future challenges, because it has created a solid method for dealing with uncertainty and problems, and because it has continuously engaged and developed its people (the real value creators).

Lean Quote: Empowerment and Delegation

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 don’t know about management techniques as such. I only know about engineering and people. The most important thing is the respect for people within the corporation and so it is incumbent on the managers to create an environment within a corporation in which all employees are encouraged to take initiatives in carrying out the work and doing the work with pleasure."   — Soichiro Honda, Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

One challenge many managers experience surrounds delegation. You can’t do everything yourself which means you need to respectfully delegate work throughout your team. Leaders need to motivate and empower their employees to want to work for you and with you.  

Empowerment may not be a new concept to you, but many organizations experience problems because they don’t know how to ‘live it’. It is still too common for ‘delegation’ and ‘empowerment’ to be confused, and for the latter to be regarded as something you can use over somebody else, like having authority. 

Empowerment is not delegation because:  

Empowerment is where the organisation has enabled or coached the employee and now continues to support that person within the scope of his or her own work, as previously agreed

Delegation is about giving away parts of your own job to someone else; it is not about giving people scope within their own jobs 

However, the processes involved in delegating should be similar to those for empowering. With empowerment, accountability and responsibility rest with the person empowered. With delegation, responsibility can be passed on but accountability for ensuring the work is done stays with the person who delegated the task.

An empowered organisation encourages the entire company to believe in empowerment and checks to see that the ‘infrastructure’ for empowerment is in place.