Lean Tips Edition #157 (#2566-#2580)

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 #2566 – Connect Every Day Tasks And Efforts To Long Term Goals

Every aspect of your daily business should connect back to your long term mission statement and over all goals. This allows managers and employees to see how their every day work helps the success of the company – and improves their long term career prospects.

Lean Tip #2567 – Encourage All Employees To Commit To Your Strategies

The more that your employees engage and interact with your goals, the more likely it is that they will stay committed to them in the long run. During meetings and performance reviews, remember to encourage commitment and remind everyone of goals and their own roles in achieving them.

Lean Tip #2568 – Transparency is Key for Alignment

Maintaining a sense of transparency throughout your entire organization will allow your employees to see the productivity of their managers and vice versa. Overall transparency can translate to a healthier and more productive work environment for everyone, improving overall engagement.

Lean Tip #2569 – Promote Individual and Team Efforts for Alignment

Raising self-awareness and allowing teams and individuals to have more autonomy can help drive organizational strategic alignment and have employees centered on the company's goals. In order to promote team and individual efforts, a company must offer transparency and provide sufficient information for employees to complete tasks, as well as include other company stakeholders. By promoting efforts to individuals and teams, a company helps build trust, which can increase loyalty to its organizational strategic alignment goals.

Lean Tip #2570 – Decentralized Decision Making.

Unexpected events may require shifts to the execution plan, but these pivots may need to be sparked by managers lower in the organization’s hierarchy — those with the frontline knowledge to ensure the pivots will work. If improperly handled, pivots may be under-resourced, untimely and doomed to fail.

Lean Tip #2571 – Leaders Should Take a Key Role in Communicating Company Strategy

Have you ever played the children’s game “Telephone”? By the time the message gets to the end of a long line of people, its content has likely been drastically altered beyond recognition. Miscommunication costs businesses more than $37 billion USD each year – you don’t want to add to that total. Be direct, make sure everyone understands your plans, and ensure that you communicate your vision and goals to all staff members.

Lean Tip #2572 – Connect Every Day Tasks and Efforts to Long Term Goals

Every aspect of your daily business should connect back to your long term mission statement and over all goals. This allows managers and employees to see how their every day work helps the success of the company – and improves their long term career prospects.

Lean Tip #2573 – Encourage All Employees to Commit to Your Strategies

The more that your employees engage and interact with your goals, the more likely it is that they will stay committed to them in the long run. During meetings and performance reviews, remember to encourage commitment and remind everyone of goals and their own roles in achieving them.

Lean Tip #2574 – Encourage Transparency From The Top

Maintaining a sense of transparency throughout your entire organization will allow your employees to see the productivity of their managers and vice versa. Overall transparency can translate to a healthier and more productive work environment for everyone, improving overall engagement.

Lean Tip #2575 – Recognize and Reward Your Employees’ Strengths

A recent Gallup study shows that encouraging strengths (rather than focusing on negatives) has a very positive effect on productivity. In fact, positive employee feedback was shown to increase productivity by at least 12.5%! Focus on their strengths, compliment them rather than criticize, and find ways to align them with your company’s goals.

Lean Tip #2576 – Coach Employees By Asking Guiding Questions

Open-ended, guiding questions lead to more detailed and thoughtful answers, which lead to more productive coaching conversations. As a manager or leader, it is critical that you develop strong relationships with your employees. This will help you determine if your employees are curious, have the capacity to perform and improve, and what kind of attitude they have towards their work.

This is where communication skills and emotional intelligence really come into play. Managers must guide conversations both by asking questions and listening, not by giving directives. Employees learn and grow the most when they uncover the answers themselves.

Lean Tip #2577 – Listen and Empower

Coaching requires both encouragement and empowerment. As a manager and a leader, your job is to build one-on-one relationships with employees that result in improved performance.

Your employees are likely to have a lot of input, questions, and feedback. It’s important for them to know you care enough to listen to what they have to say, so encourage them to share their opinions.

Some employees will have no problem speaking their mind, while others will need a LOT of encouragement before they share an opinion with you openly. Once they do open up, be sure to respect those opinions by discussing them, rather than dismissing them.

Lean Tip #2578 – Understand Their Perspective

When you’re coaching employees to improve performance and engagement, approaching things from their perspective, rather than your own, will help enormously with seeing the changes and results you want.

Everyone has different motivations, preferences, and personalities, so if you ask questions to help you understand where their “why” comes from and what their preferred “how” looks like, then you can tailor your coaching conversations to align the way they work best with the improvements you’re both aiming for.

Lean Tip #2579 – Coach in the Moment

If an employee comes to you with a question about a process or protocol, use this opportunity to teach them something new. If you’re not able to stop what you’re doing right away, schedule time with them as soon as possible to go over it.

Better yet, keep a weekly one-on-one meeting scheduled with each employee so you can go over questions and issues regularly, while maintaining productivity. Coaching employees with a goal of improving performance means making them a priority each week!

Lean Tip #2580 – Commit to Continuous Learning Yourself

Make a commitment to improve your own skills and competencies. If you’re not continuously learning, why should your employees? Lead by example and your team will follow.

Show that you are interested in their success (why wouldn’t you be?). Ask questions about where they see their career going, or how they see their role evolving in the company. Even if they don’t have a plan laid out yet, these questions will make them think about their career and what they want to accomplish within the organization.

Show your employees that you don’t just want them to do better so you look better, but that you’re actively interested in their career, accomplishments, and professional success.

Six Proven Ways to Earn Employees' Trust

Trust in any organization works on three levels: at a company level in terms of culture, at a team level in regard to the relationships among the members, and at an interpersonal level between two people.

You can’t always control the level of trust in your organization as a whole, but you can definitely influence it by building trust in your immediate work environment. This may be your department, your work team or your coworkers in the cubicles around yours. Building trust with employees in a smaller unit where you have more control helps to propagate trust in the larger organization.

So how can managers build trust with employees and colleagues as well?

1. Recognize that building trust takes hard work

Trust must be earned. It comes from conscious effort to walk your talk, keep your promises and align your behavior with your values. Building trust is worth the effort because once trust is lost, it can be very difficult to recover.

2. Be honest and supportive

Even when it’s difficult, tell the truth and not just what you think people want to hear. Understand what employees need to know and communicate facts while being considerate of their effort and sensitive to their feelings. Showing support and understanding for your team members, even when mistakes are made. It goes a long way in building trust as a leader.

3. Be quiet sometimes

Actively listen and check for understanding by paraphrasing what you’ve heard. Use a variety of feedback tools to ensure everyone has the chance for their voice to be heard. You must engage in dialogue with employees, giving them the opportunity to ask questions, get answers, and voice concerns. Then, apply what your internal stakeholders share for future actions.

4. Be consistent

Consistently doing what you say you’ll do builds trust over time – it can’t be something you do only occasionally. Keeping commitments must be the essence of your behavior, in all relationships, day after day and year after year.

5. Model the behavior you seek

Nothing speaks more loudly about the culture of an organization than the leader’s behavior, which influences employee action and has the potential to drive their results. If you say teamwork is important, reinforce the point by collaborating across teams and functions. Give credit when people do great work and you’ll set the stage for an appreciative culture.

6. Build in accountability

When you and other leaders acknowledge your mistakes as well as successes, employees see you as credible and will follow your lead. You can encourage honest dialogue and foster accountability by building in processes that become part of the culture, such as an evaluation of every project (positives, negatives, things to change) or a status report and next steps in each meeting agenda (tracking deadlines and milestones).

You build and maintain trusting relationships and a culture of trust in your workplace one step at a time through every action you take and every interaction you have with your coworkers and employees. Trust may be fragile, but it has the capacity to grow strong over time with the deliberate efforts above.

Without trust in the workplace, communication and teamwork will erode. Additionally, morale will decrease while turnover will rise. However, by using these six strategies, you can build your employees’ trust in management, thereby making their workplace an environment filled with innovation, creativity and ultimately higher profits for all.

Lean Quote: Learn to Think Differently

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.

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."   — Ian McLaren

The illustration and story below, while short, is the perfect example of why sometimes switching your view on a situation can go a long way in empathy.

The man doesn’t know that there is a snake underneath. The woman doesn’t know that there is a stone crushing the man. The woman thinks: “I am going to fall! And I can’t climb because the snake is going to bite me! Why can’t the man use a little more strength and pull me up!” The man thinks: “I am in so much pain! Yet I’m still pulling you as much as I can! Why don’t you try and climb a little harder!?”

The moral is— you can’t see the pressure the other person is under, and the other person can’t see the pain you’re in. This is life, whether it’s with work, family, feelings or friends, we should try to understand each other. Learn to think differently, perhaps more clearly and communicate better. A little thought and patience goes a long way.

Be kind to people. Everyone we meet is fighting their own battle.

Five Ways to Motivate Your Team With Empathy and Authority

A crisis pressure-tests leadership and culture. Many new values are formed under the strain, and employees gain new perspectives on their organization and its leadership. Communication is the key to keeping them motivated and productive in a season of enormous distraction.

The COVID-19 pandemic isn’t my first financial crisis. No matter how well you run a business, external forces will test you, your culture, and your resolve. Leaders are constantly processing the future, and our employees are watching to see how confident we are and how clearly we see the situation.

So, what exactly does “empathy” mean right now? It means focusing on goodwill and doing no harm. It means prioritizing people and their well-being. Making decisions that are in your employees’ and customers’ best interest. This may sound simple, but it’s not always easy to execute. Here are some tips to help you navigate communication in the midst of a challenging situation.

Let Employees Ask Questions

Remember, during a crisis people are scared. Actively listen to what employees have to say. Even if you think you know what questions are on your employees’ minds, giving them the opportunity to ask makes all the difference in how “heard” they feel. Displaying empathy through solidarity can assuage concerns.

Seek Opportunities to Learn & Grow

While crisis can be detrimental to normal business operations, such as having to cancel events, it can also lead to positive growth and learning. We are already seeing signs of this positive growth and learning opportunity. Many companies have leveraged their built-in virtual infrastructure and transformed massive in-person events into virtual meetings to protect participants’ health. And, while some may be concerned about how remote work and work-from-home flexibility may impact business, research shows that there are a variety of benefits when companies provide remote work flexibility. Those may include: an increase in productivity, increased morale, less stress for workers, and lower operating costs.

Build Trust

To feel confident to act on your recommendations and direction, your team has to trust you. Why is trust so critical in a crisis? Because, according to several studies, the more we trust the people who are supposed to protect or inform us, the less afraid we will be. The less we trust them, the greater our fears. To build trust, communicators must manage expectations and communicate openly, honestly, and often.

Arm Employees with Facts

Knowledge is power, and during a crisis information and events can move quickly. Educate your team on the best ways to take care of themselves and others. Provide your team with updated links to reputable sources with accurate and up-to-date information that includes advice. Research shows, the more people are armed with facts and understand what they can do to take care of and protect themselves, the more they will gain self confidence that they can care for themselves.

Challenge Your Biases

We all have biases. Some of them are conscious biases, because we know we have them. Others are unconscious – we react automatically, without thinking. Biases are built from our upbringing and experience. We can never eliminate them, so the next best thing is to be aware of them, so we can ensure they don’t affect our decision making.

Leading isn’t for the fearful. How you show up and how you communicate can dissipate anxiety and help your team be more connected to the purpose of your company and to one another. It can also help them be productive while getting there.

Book Review - The Conclusion Trap: Four Steps to Better Decisions

Why do organizations and individuals so often struggle to make good decisions, investing enormous amounts of time and money in fruitless efforts to solve thorny problems? Too often, our mistake lies in jumping to conclusions before we even understand the problem we’re attempting to solve.

Dan Markovitz’ The Conclusion Trap gives us a straightforward guide to thinking better about "problems." He distills key insights from lean management and the psychology of making decisions into an easy method you can apply right now.

This book will help you make better decisions by eliminating the tendency to jump to conclusions. You will learn how to ensure that you deeply understand a problem before pursuing any given solution by applying a powerful, four-step process: (1) gathering both facts and data, so you can accurately grasp the situation; (2) framing the problem, so you can avoid cognitive biases; (3) isolating contributing factors, so you can manage complex situations; (4) finding the root cause, so you can avoid ineffective makeshift actions.

It is intentionally a quick read (maybe a couple hours) at just 59 pages but has good illustrations and simple follow structure. The book goes directly to the point with real examples to approach application.

This book doesn't provide solutions. It is a guide to come up with a better understanding of the problem: Get the facts, put them together and think about why this keeps happening.  But understanding the problem is really the first step in coming up with better solutions.  Understand what to change first, before talking about what to change to or how to cause the change.  

This is a great primer to problem solving for those starting a continuous improvement journey but more of a review for seasoned practitioners.

Lean Quote: Freedom Lies In Being Bold

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.

"Freedom lies in being bold."   — Robert Frost

Tomorrow, we celebrate Independence Day in the US. The 4th of July is an extremely patriotic holiday where we celebrate the independence of our country. People celebrate with family and friend gatherings, barbecues, parties, games, food, fun, festivals, parades, musical events and fireworks. 

Lean is a journey of discovery and offers a new path to a different world – a Lean World. The destination and routes individual enterprises takes will rarely be the same, but the principles they apply will. Few executives are brave or bold enough to take a radically different path. Being bold is about having the courage to challenge the status quo but also about being the leader who can set a direction and a goal. A bold organization knows its weaknesses but never let them stop it from making impact. 

Lean manufacturing provides your workforce the freedom that they need to own and maximize their productivity. In a Lean production plant, the "freedom to control one's work" replaces the "mind numbing stress" of mass production. Armed with the skills they need to control their environment workers have the opportunity to think actively even proactively to solve workplace problems. 

Lean is more than the traditional metrics of improved efficiency, reduced costs and increased throughput. The people-centric approach to the application of Lean creates a better future, driven by empowered individuals working in teams, committed to continuous improvement. It is this culture of responsible freedom and trust that allows employees and their organization to realize the positive benefits of Lean and achieve a successful outcome. 

Lean transformation lies in being bold. It takes boldness to win the day. To build your influence, you’ve got to walk in front of your group. You’ve got to be willing to take the first arrow, tackle the first problem, discover the first sign of trouble. You’ve got to seize the moment. 

Consider this my challenge to you. Dig deep into your inspirational leadership skills to inspire others. Being bold is about taking charge and making something happen. Bold leaders in bold companies do not sit back and wait to see what happens – they take an active role in making good things happen. So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and get moving so that you can boldly take your company where it has not been before. I’m confident that it will be an exciting ride full of opportunity and promise.  

Focus on Countermeasures Not Solutions to Problems

Inherently, in Lean problem solving is the heart of what we do. Murphy’s law is an adage that broadly states: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." It is therefore inevitable that businesses must solve problems. Organizations cannot improve unless they consistently seek out and solve their problems. But are your focused on the right thing. 

One element of the Toyota Production System that has not gained much traction is the practice of addressing problems with countermeasures instead of solutions.  It is misunderstood by many people that the tools will lead to the development of a solution to the root cause of a problem.  Organizations are highly complex systems and it is naive to think that any of the problems they face result from a single root cause or can be resolved by a single solution. 

When all of the factors and interactions that can influence work are understood, it becomes clear that the best we can do is attack problems by addressing as many of the perceived causes as possible with the idea that we may never permanently fix the issue.  Because of this, remaining competitive requires continually developing and implementing measures to improve processes and accept the fact that some of the problems the organization faces may never completely disappear. 

Within Lean, virtually every action, tool, or system is considered a countermeasure rather than a solution in an effort to prevent the mindset that changes are, in any way, permanent resolutions to problems. Although some action may, in fact, be permanent solutions to a problem, acting in this way can lead to static thinking and interfere with the development of better methods in the future. 

This is a difficult concept for many to accept because of the importance our culture places on solving problems.  Countermeasures can, at first glance, appear to be nothing more than temporary fixes to problems rather than permanent solutions – which is counter to what organizations are trying to achieve with Lean.  In reality though, it is just the opposite, because a solutions thinking mindset can give a false sense of security that a particular problem has, in fact, been eliminated.  This can be very dangerous down the road if a problem that the team thinks it resolved returns. 

This is not to say that a countermeasure approach focuses on symptoms of a problem rather than the root causes.  The tools and methods associated with an effective kaizen process help a team get down to the root causes of a problem.  The difference with this line of thinking, however, is the concept that there are several potential root causes to any problem and that actions taken to address a problem are based on what is known today with whatever information is currently available.  As the environment changes, the problem can reappear as a result of new or different interactions that were not known at the time it was last studied.  Although the initial countermeasures were valuable to the company, the team needs to continue its efforts to assure performance remains stable or continues to improve. 

Rarely is there a silver bullet in Lean when improving processes. That is why in the Lean language we do not like to use the term “solutions,” implying fixed and done. In the Lean vocabulary, we prefer “countermeasures,” which must be implemented with a good PDCA cycle.