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 #4126 – Standard Work for Leaders

We talk a lot about standardized work for operators. But what about the people managing the process?

Leaders need standard work too.

Leader Standard Work defines the routine activities that help leaders stay connected to the process: reviewing performance, visiting the Gemba, checking standards, following up on problems, and coaching employees.

Without it, leaders often spend their days reacting to whatever happens to be loudest.

A production supervisor may spend the morning chasing an urgent order, the afternoon in meetings, and the rest of the day responding to emails. Important leadership activities get pushed aside because there is always something more urgent.

Leader Standard Work creates a rhythm that protects those activities.

It doesn’t mean every minute of the day is scripted. It means the important leadership behaviors are intentional and consistent.

If we expect our processes to have standard work, we should expect our leadership system to have it too.

Lean Tip #4127 – Leader Standard Work Isn’t a Checklist

Leader Standard Work can easily become another checklist that leaders complete simply to show that they completed it.

That’s missing the point.

The purpose of Leader Standard Work isn’t to create paperwork. It’s to establish the behaviors that support a healthy Lean management system.

A supervisor’s standard work might include reviewing yesterday’s abnormalities, conducting a Gemba walk, checking key process conditions, following up on open problems, and coaching an employee on problem solving.

The value comes from what the leader learns and does, not from checking a box.

If a Gemba walk becomes “walk the area and sign the sheet,” you’ve turned a powerful leadership practice into an audit.

The same applies to daily management boards. Looking at the board isn’t the objective. Understanding the condition of the process and helping the team respond is.

Leader Standard Work should create better leadership habits—not better checklists.

Lean Tip #4128 – Tiered Meetings Should Connect the Organization

A good Tiered Daily Management system creates a chain of communication from the work to leadership.

A problem identified on the production floor shouldn’t have to wait until the weekly management meeting to get attention.

Tiered meetings provide a structured way to review performance, surface abnormalities, and escalate issues that cannot be resolved at the current level.

But there is a danger: each tier can become another meeting that simply repeats the information from the level below.

The purpose isn’t to pass information upward. It’s to pass problems upward when they need help.

For example, a team might identify a material shortage during its morning huddle. If the team can’t resolve it, the issue moves to the next tier with an owner, an action, and a required response—not simply a statement that “we have a shortage.”

When designed well, the tiers connect the organization without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.

The best escalation system doesn’t move information. It moves problems to the people who can solve them.

Lean Tip #4129 – Escalation Should Be Fast and Clear

There’s nothing more frustrating than knowing you have a problem but not knowing who can help resolve it.

That’s why effective daily management needs a clear escalation process.

Imagine a production team discovers that a critical component is defective. Does the operator call the supervisor? Does Quality get involved? Who contacts the supplier? When does Engineering need to be engaged? At what point does the issue reach the plant manager?

If those answers depend on who happens to be working that day, you don’t have a process. You have tribal knowledge.

Good escalation standards define what gets escalated, when it gets escalated, who owns the next step, and how quickly a response is expected.

This is especially important for problems that cross functional boundaries. A delay that starts in Purchasing can quickly become a production, delivery, and customer problem.

Escalation isn’t about getting someone in trouble. It’s about getting the right help at the right time.

A problem that can’t be resolved at one level should move quickly to the level that can.

Lean Tip #4130 – Visual Management Should Tell a Story

A good visual management board should answer three questions quickly:

Where are we? Where should we be? What are we doing about the gap?

Too many boards answer only the first question.

You’ll see charts showing production, quality, delivery, or safety performance, but nothing explaining what is abnormal, who owns the problem, or what action is underway.

That’s not visual management. That’s data display.

The best boards tell a story. They show the expected condition, the actual condition, the gap, and the response.

For example, instead of simply showing that defects increased last week, the board might identify the top issue, the containment action, the problem-solving owner, and the expected completion date.

The goal isn’t to make the board attractive. It’s to make the condition of the process understandable at a glance and create a conversation about improvement.

If your visual board tells you what happened but not what happens next, it’s probably missing the most important part of the story.

Lean Tip #4131 – Don’t Normalize Abnormalities

One of the most dangerous phrases in daily management is:

“That’s normal around here.”

A machine is always down for an hour. A certain report is always late. Engineering approvals always take a week. A percentage of orders always require rework.

When an abnormality happens often enough, people stop seeing it as abnormal.

That’s how chronic problems become accepted as part of the process.

Daily management gives us an opportunity to challenge that thinking. If the expected condition is clear, recurring deviations should remain visible until the underlying cause is addressed.

The goal isn’t to create a culture where every problem becomes an emergency. It’s to prevent repeated problems from becoming invisible.

Just because a problem happens every day doesn’t mean it belongs in the process.

Lean Tip #4132 – Go From Yesterday’s Results to Today’s Actions

Yesterday’s performance matters.

But what matters even more is what we do about it today.

A daily management meeting that spends 20 minutes explaining yesterday’s numbers can leave very little time for discussing today’s priorities.

Suppose production missed the schedule yesterday because of a material shortage. The important question isn’t simply why yesterday’s number was low. It’s what needs to happen today to prevent another miss.

A good daily management system connects results to action.

Review the performance. Identify the gaps. Determine the most important abnormalities. Assign the necessary actions. Then move on.

This doesn’t mean ignoring root causes. Significant problems should receive proper problem solving outside the huddle.

The daily meeting simply creates the connection between what happened and what we are going to do next.

Yesterday’s results are history. Daily management should help shape today’s performance.

Lean Tip #4133 – Use Daily Management to Find Problems

Some organizations treat daily management as a way to prove that everything is under control.

Lean takes a different view.

Daily management should help us find problems.

If the board shows a recurring quality issue, that’s useful. If a delivery measure consistently misses its target, that’s useful. If a process regularly requires overtime to meet demand, that’s useful.

These aren’t failures of daily management. They’re opportunities for improvement.

The danger comes when leaders expect every metric to be green and every problem to disappear before the next meeting. That encourages people to hide abnormalities rather than learn from them.

Instead, use the daily system to identify patterns. Which problems keep coming back? Which abnormalities consume the most time? Where are we repeatedly relying on workarounds?

Those are signals telling us where deeper problem solving is needed.

The purpose of daily management isn’t to create the appearance of control. It’s to create visibility that leads to improvement.

Lean Tip #4134 – The Best Boards Create Conversations

A great daily management board isn’t designed to be admired.

It’s designed to start a conversation.

If a team walks past its board and immediately understands what is happening, where the problems are, and what needs attention, the board is doing its job.

But if everyone simply updates the numbers and walks away, the board has become a reporting tool.

Imagine seeing a red quality metric. The conversation shouldn’t stop at, “We’re down two points.” It should lead to questions: What changed? What are we seeing at the process? Is there a containment action? Who is investigating? What support is needed?

The board becomes a visual trigger for leadership and problem solving.

This is one reason I like the phrase “management by seeing.” The visual should make the condition obvious enough that a meaningful conversation can happen without a lengthy report.

A good board doesn’t replace the conversation. It makes the right conversation easier to have.

Lean Tip #4135 – Daily Management Is About Learning, Not Reporting

At its best, daily management creates a learning cycle.

We set a standard. We observe the actual condition. We identify a gap. We respond. We learn. Then we improve the standard.

That is much different from simply reporting yesterday’s performance.

Consider a team that misses its production target. If the response is simply “work harder tomorrow,” nothing has been learned. But if the team discovers that changeover time increased because a critical tool wasn’t prepared in advance, they’ve learned something about the process.

Now they can improve the changeover standard, address the preparation issue, and see whether performance improves.

This is the real power of daily management. It creates a daily feedback loop between performance and learning.

Over time, those small cycles build stronger processes and more capable people.

The goal of daily management isn’t to have a perfect day every day. It’s to learn something every day that helps make tomorrow better.

Lean Tip #4136 – Leaders See Results; Lean Leaders See Systems

Executives naturally focus on results. Revenue, margin, quality, delivery, cash flow, and growth all matter.

But results are the output of a system.

When performance misses the target, the instinct can be to ask, “Who owns this?” A Lean leader asks, “What is happening in the system that produced this result?”

If margins are declining, look beyond the financial statement. Are yields falling? Is rework increasing? Are lead times creating premium freight? Is the organization spending hours compensating for poor processes?

The number tells you what happened. The system helps explain why.

This doesn’t mean leaders should ignore results. Quite the opposite. Financial and operational results tell us where to look. The mistake is stopping there.

Great leaders manage results. Lean leaders understand the processes and systems that create them.

Lean Tip #4137 – Don’t Manage by Dashboard Alone

Dashboards have transformed how leaders see their businesses.

But there’s a danger in believing the dashboard is the business.

A KPI can tell you that on-time delivery fell from 96% to 88%. It can’t necessarily tell you what the customer experienced, what is happening at the Gemba, or why the process is struggling.

That’s why Lean leaders use data as a starting point—not the final answer.

If a metric changes significantly, go see what is happening. Talk to the people doing the work. Follow the process. Ask what changed.

I’ve seen leaders spend an hour debating a metric in a conference room when a 15-minute conversation at the Gemba would have provided more useful information.

The dashboard tells you where to look. The Gemba helps you understand what you’re seeing.

Lean Tip #4138 – Growth Can Create Waste Too

Growth is usually good news.

More customers. More orders. More revenue.

But growth can also expose weaknesses that were hidden when the organization was smaller.

A process that worked reasonably well at 100 orders a week may collapse at 500. A planner who could manage information through spreadsheets may suddenly spend the entire day chasing updates. A quality engineer who could personally review every issue may become the bottleneck.

The typical response is to add people.

Sometimes that’s necessary. But before adding resources, ask a Lean question: What waste did growth expose?

More volume can magnify excessive approvals, poor information flow, duplicated work, long changeovers, unclear ownership, and other process problems.

Growth shouldn’t simply mean doing more of the same work. It should be an opportunity to improve how the work gets done.

Don’t just scale the workload. Scale the capability of the process.

Lean Tip #4139 – Cost Cutting Isn’t the Same as Cost Reduction

When the business needs to improve profitability, “cut costs” is often one of the first instructions leaders give.

But cutting costs and reducing costs are not necessarily the same thing.

Eliminating training may reduce this quarter’s spending while increasing quality problems later. Cutting maintenance may improve today’s budget while creating tomorrow’s downtime. Reducing headcount without addressing the work can simply transfer the burden to the remaining employees.

Lean takes a different approach: remove the causes of unnecessary cost.

Reduce defects. Eliminate rework. Improve flow. Shorten lead times. Reduce unnecessary inventory. Simplify processes. Remove work that doesn’t create value.

The objective isn’t to make people work harder with fewer resources. It’s to create a process that requires fewer resources to deliver the same—or better—value.

The best cost reduction doesn’t make the organization weaker. It removes the waste that was making it expensive in the first place.

Lean Tip #4140 – Put the Customer in the Management Conversation

How often does your leadership team discuss customers?

Probably often.

But how often do you connect your operational decisions directly to what the customer values?

Lean begins with value from the customer’s perspective. That means customer needs should influence how we prioritize quality, delivery, responsiveness, cost, and improvement.

Consider a decision to change a process to save internal labor. If that change creates longer lead times or more work for the customer, did we really improve?

The same applies to performance metrics. An internal metric can look great while the customer experience gets worse.

Lean leaders continually connect the internal process to the external customer: What does the customer need? Where are we creating friction? What problems are we asking the customer to compensate for?

The customer doesn’t care that our process is efficient if the result doesn’t meet their needs.

The best Lean improvements make life better for both the business and the customer.