Leadership Strategies from Disney Part 1

A new book on leadership called Creating Magic: 10 Common Sense Leadership Strategies from a Life at Disney claims “It's not the magic that makes it work; it's the way we work that makes it magic.” The author Lee Cockerell, a former Executive Vice President of Resort Operations for the Walt Disney Company, shared his insights from his incredible 16 years of front-line experience operating 18 resort hotels, four theme parks, three water parks, five golf courses, a shopping village and nighttime entertainment venue, and sports recreation complex. Lee's years, living the Disney principle, helped make The Walt Disney Company the front- runner in quality, service excellence and guest satisfaction. This book is based on his "Great Leader Strategies,” which Cockerell developed for Walt Disney World cast members.

The 12 strategies that Corkerell defines of a Great Leader are:

#1 Foster An Inclusive Environment!

Workplace inclusion is making sure that everyone matters and that everyone knows that he or she matters. It is about engaging and involving your team by asking their opinion and making it clear you want to hear their point of view. One of the main responsibilities of Leader is to develop future Leaders. Personally get involved and take time to do the so-called soft stuff really well otherwise your team won’t take care of the hard stuff. Disney defined its approach to inclusion with the acronym RAVE for Respect, Appreciate, and Value Everyone.

#2 Design Your Organization Structure For Success… “Break the Mold!”

Organization structure is critical to getting the best results. The most important thing is to make sure that every individual clearly and completely understands what he or she is responsible for, what level of authority he or she has, and how he or she will be held accountable.

#3 Make Sure You Have The Right People In The Right Roles!

Hiring new people and promoting people to new levels are really important to do well and carefully. Each time you have an opening you have the opportunity to add talent and strength your team. Make sure the candidate has the right level of expertise and experience for the job but also consider how the person will blend in with the current team.

#4 Ensure That Cast Members Are Knowledgeable About Their Roles!

Leaders are responsible to train and develop their team members. Education is power. Training and development are two of the best ways to improve self-confidence and self-esteem in everyone. Lead by example - attend all training, communicate best practices, and observe actual conditions and behaviors. The best way to develop people is for the leadership to be actively involved in coaching, counseling, and educating the employees.

#5 Make Dramatic Leaps In Guest Service!

Make dramatic improvements for customers, employees, and for business results. Great leaders don’t maintain anything. In order to improve things you need to know how good they are. Demonstrate zero tolerance for anything but perfection. Visit other places known for “world class excellence” and see what you can learn.

#6 Implement Effective, Structured Processes For Getting Work Done!

We have a process for everything. Leaders have the responsibility to identify process problems and opportunities for improvement so that they are not a hassle and that the make sense. Ask the people doing the work and customers using your products or services for their opinion. Spend time finding out what process made things go wrong and change that versus looking for someone to blame. Great Leaders ask “why” a lot. Implement processes that work and follow-up to ensure they are still working.

In the next post I will present the other 6 great strategies of a Great Leader.

Are All these Mobile Solutions Lean?

There was a recent Industry Week article worth mentioning titled Top Ten Mobile Solutions for Lean Manufacturing. Written by June Ruby a Director of Mobile Solutions at Motorola, it seems curiously like a sales pitch. However, the article does examine a number of areas where mobile technologies can improve productivity. In general these are areas where inventory transactions, data collection, and communication are vital to your processes. Access to real-time information can certainty reduce non-value added time, decrease errors, improve safety, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization.

Where I had point to pause and wonder whether this was Lean was the tenth area where mobility can impact Lean initiatives:

10. Management: Improve Decision Making and Manager Effectiveness
Regardless of whether your managers are responsible for your plant, sales or field operations, they need access to a wealth of information in order to act as effectively as possible. With a mobile device, managers can access productivity applications such as email, plant messages and alerts as well as back-end systems that provide a window into Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and more. By mobilizing the many critical management applications, managers can be on the go -- yet access the information required to make the best decisions possible.

I understand access to information at your finger tips can be helpful but does this embrace Lean Thinking and teachings? You can not replace going to the Gemba (actual place). Management must practice Genchi Genbutsu which is a Lean practice of thoroughly understanding a condition by confirming information or data through personal observation at the source of the condition. You can not rely on a mobile device for this since it can’t provide information in this way. If you want to improve decision making you must go and see.

June also implies that management is too busy or unreachable to be available when needed. Lean teaches us to empower operations to make decisions in a structured way. We should all be able to recognize an abnormal condition and stop the process to understand the current condition, define the target condition, and implement countermeasures to close gap. We do not need to wait for management to tell us what to do. This is not to say we don’t need management because we do. It is just the role of management should be different in Lean environment from what is implied here.

Remember, technology can not replace management’s role in a Lean organization. They must learn to see, go to the source, use data and information, educate and coach, and empower the workforce. You can only do this by being accessible, available, and intimately involved. A mobile device can not do this for you.

Ford Posts a Profit

I usually leave the automotive updates to the automotive experts but I couldn’t resist mentioning this one. Ford, the only Detroit automaker to dodge direct government aid and bankruptcy court, surprised investors with net income of nearly $1 billion in the third quarter and forecast a "solidly profitable" 2011. The automaker cited higher pricing, lower material costs, and increased market share for the improvement. Ford cutback production which also allowed the company to cut incentive spending, since the company no longer has excess inventory it must discount heavily in order to sell.

Is this a win for capitalism and free enterprise? While heavy debt and lean times for American car shoppers threaten the comeback, the report puts Ford in a far better position than General Motors or Chrysler, which are still finding their bearings after emerging from bankruptcy.

Ford has focused on product quality, reputation, and making cars consumers want. Ford's cars are winning popular and critical acclaim, like the Fusion midsize sedan and more gas-efficient Focus compact.

The automakers problems are far from over with debt being the largest concern. The UAW also overwhelming rejected a new contract that would have put costs in line with cross-town rivals in the longer-term.

Here’s hoping Ford continues in the right direction.

Toyota Misconceptions Debunked

Mark Graban from the LeanBlog recently posted about an article in Quality Digest that attempts to set the record straight on ten common misconceptions of Toyota.

Stewart Anderson's Ten Common Misconceptions about Toyota

The article does a good job of making the point that TPS is really the “Thinking” Production System and not the “Tools” Production System. Toyota solves problems that interrupt flow in operations from three sources: muda (non-value-adding activity), mura (unevenness), and muri (strain or overburden). Tools like 5S, SMED, TPM, A3, Kaizen and others are countermeasures to reduce the problems in the current state. Toyota believes that if you are not improving your processes then they are declining.

In Anderson’s explanation of these misconceptions that many have about Toyota and the way they operate he offers a definition of Lean. If you want to understand Lean then reading his rebuttal to the misconceptions will piece together a definition of a Lean Enterprise. Toyota was the first corporation to embody this definition in modern time and of course made it famous.

What is important and subtly mentioned in the article is Toyota is not at perfection or the ideal state. They recognize this better than anyone and focus on improving the current situation to get closer to that target everyday. I had once heard that even at Toyota their ratio of value added to non-valued added work content is like 35 or 45%. Toyota understands solving problems while providing value the customer wants is what gets them closer to the next target condition.

Check out Mark's comments on the article as he highlights a few of these misconceptions.

Lean, Competition, and the Bear Story

In lean and in business much is often said about growing and improving our organizations so that our competitors will not steal our jobs. This is especially true during these times of global recession. With our recent economic downturn there are more supply lines then there are. All organizations, markets, and industries are and will be affected by this.

Of course, I think those companies practicing lean and innovating new products have a better chance to minimize their exposure during this downturn period and be positioned to capitalize on growth on the upside.

Companies need to remind themselves of The Bear Story:

Two friends went camping in the north woods. In the middle of the night they were awakened by the sound of a bear outside their tent. One friend was busy panicking when he looked over to see his buddy calmly lacing up his running shoes.

“Why are you doing that, you fool? Everyone knows you can’t outrun a bear!”

His friend looked at him and said, “I don’t need to outrun the bear. I only have to outrun you.”

This simple story illustrates a strategy many organization practice especially important during times of recession. We need to execute better than our competitors or our customers will go somewhere else. The company that handles the recession better, responds better, treats its customers better, and executes better is the company that will lead the way out of the recession by taking market share from its peers.

As you work on new product development and operational excellence through Lean share the Bear Story so others truly understand why this is so important.

Crisis-driven versus Kaizen-driven Thinking

The global marketplace has created a new game whereby forcing companies and their leaders to change the way they think and operate. The object of this game is to consistently provide even-higher quality products and services at lower costs relative to the quality produced. This is contrary to our societal belief that higher quality must cost more.

Three fundamental shifts in an organization’s mindset make it possible to understand how to achieve high quality and low cost in every action taken. First, there is a shift from a purely externalized view of the world to one that combines the internal with external. Organizations not only focus on strategic external activities but understand the importance of internal capability. Second, there is a change in focus from content, or results - a focus that only sees outcomes - to one that appreciates the process leading to them, as well as the results. Finally, a shift from acting in response to external crises or stimuli, to being internally driven by the freely chosen will to improve and create something better. I am going to focus on the later for the remainder of this discussion.

Tom Lane and Alan Green wrote about this change in thinking in their book “The Way of Quality, Dialogues on Kaizen Thinking” in1994. They talk in detail about the shift from what they call “crisis-driven” thinking in which people react and respond to problems once they occur to what they call “kaizen thinking” where people prevent problems before they occur. The table below contrasts the way of thinking of these two approaches.

MENTAL FRAME	CRISIS-DRIVEN	KAIZEN-DRIVEN
Psychological Need	To be right and best.	To be improving continually.
Method of Perceiving	Looking at results with desire to control outcomes.	Looking at process to increase comprehension and performance.
Object of Measures	Fix blame, determine what / who is wrong.	Get data on current performance to help improve and adjust.
Source of Mental Energy	Threats / fear, fire-fighting excitement.	Problem elimination, challenge to improve.
Psychological Reward	Short-term fixes, immediate feedback	Long-term system upgrade, indirect feedback.
Attitude toward Change	Avoid major system change because it implies wrongness.	Expectation of constant small and large changes.
Guiding Principle re: Change	If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.	It can always be done better.
Learning Approach	Quick analytical skill and remedial action.	Curious about large system: act to create quality, prevent recurrence.

While there may be a strong desire to shift from crisis-driven to kaizen-driven thinking, the transition must be made carefully. The crisis-driven system requires ongoing attention, even while it is being phased out, because it lies at the heart of all our current systemic structures and till maintains order.

Moving to kaizen thinking may be difficult but not impossible. It requires us to change our action behind thinking. Below is a table of key drivers of action behind crisis and kaizen thinking.

Crisis Thinking	Kaizen Thinking
After the fact	Before the fact
Event-focused	Process-focused
Judgmental/critical	Curious/investigative
Right/wrong-based	Data-based
Non-systemic/narrow	Systemic/broad
Short-term fix	Long-term change
Expedite out-of-control operation	Upgrade in-control operation
Immediate/direct reward	Long term/indirect reward
Immediate problem fix	System/operation improvement
Minimum diagnosis	Continuous thorough diagnosis
Work/problems come to you	You go to the system
Internal –hero oriented	Customer oriented
Narrowing of thinking scope	Raising/widening of scope
Time to redo	Time to do it correctly
Progress is tangible only	Progress often intangible
Working harder gets it done	Working smarter gets it done
Variance to fixed standard	Standard continually upgraded
Fragmented jobs	Work as unified flow
Disconnected individual effort	Connected joint effort
Things always break	Things are prevented from breaking down
Don’t fix it if it isn’t broken	It can always be improved
Give me simple answers now	Let’s see how this works
Don’t ask questions –do it	Questions help us understand
Don’t confuse me with data	What are the data?
Job security comes from their depending on my ability to fix	Job security comes from increasing our capability
Learning takes too long	Learning is continuous
Learning means you are inadequate	Learning is necessary to deal with change
Getting by is good enough	Fixing it permanently is the only solution
Quality is passing inspection	Quality is no variances
Quality is not as important as quantity/low cost	Quality is everything we do and think
Don’t challenge the system	Everything can be improved
Success is individual	Success is of the whole
Work manages me	I manage my work
Customer reactions drive improvement	Customer input blends with technology and capability input to create improvement
I get paid to react quickly	I get paid to think, then do
Who is to blame is important	What went wrong is important
Targets are to be hit	Trends of improvement are tracked
Don’t worry about the big issues	Work on seeing how large issues affect the small ones and vice-versa
Mistakes mean failure	Mistakes show where we need to improve
External simulation from crises (especially bosses)	Internal simulation from exploring, discovering, improving, understanding
Physical energy dominates	Mental energy dominates
Bored with discipline, routine, energy goes into complaining	Dislike disorder, maintain orderliness; cleanliness, standards, safety; self-managing

Thinking is what shapes our actions. Not only what we think but how we think. World-class products and services result from breakthrough thinking. If companies are going to deliver higher quality and lower cost in the increasingly competitive global economy, they must change the way they think about work, organization, and themselves.

Standard Work for Flu Season

With the start of flu season in the northern hemisphere and the growing concerns about H1N1 Flu companies and individuals are looking at ways to prevent the spread of infection. Proper education, simple prevention techniques, and limited exposure around sick people have been recommended.

I recently observed a form of standard work displayed at the point of use in regards to preventing the spread of illnesses by hand washing. Frequent hand washing is one of the best ways to avoid getting sick and spreading illness. Hand washing requires only soap and water or an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

Mounted in a restroom area at the sinks was a simple posting reminding individuals to wash their hands.

The posting described a 6 step process detailing the proper technique to effective hand washing. The process followed a simple clockwise flow with pictures and text describing the actions needed.

In this case a standard was created for hand washing that is easily visible at the point of use. Are you using Lean Thinking to tackle all your opportunities for improvement or just the manufacturing or service related ones?