I've been quite busy recently and really should have taken more time to reflect and write, but here we are. I watched this video from IMPACT 2018 from HAN where Katie Anderson talks about A3 Thinking. At 22:25 in the video she brings up the Japanese characters for Kaizen. This really started my thinking about how deep this philosophy goes. The word "Kai" includes 2 symbols - "whip" and "self" and of course zen for "good." Watch the entire video and I'll continue below.
In order for an organization to change, as I have said before, it starts with a change in mindset. This is well known to those who practice the Toyota Production System fully. I think this deep learning is not a well-known thing for those who "do" Lean or Lean Six Sigma, or any of the other copies of the ideas from Deming and Toyota.
This week I was in San Diego working with teams on planning for future facility layouts, and while there took a tour of one of Costco's manufacturing and distribution facilities. They said that about 3 years ago or so they switched away from Lean Six Sigma and focused on Lean. "We found that Lean had a much deeper focus on the people and involving people with everything we were doing." The Six Sigma portion (a focus on statistical analyses, projects, and bureaucracy) turned off a lot of people. Project leads would come in to "fix" things and use a lot of analysis to show how it all worked, however it wasn't real to the people in the work. They had ideas too! Costco took to more deeply learning on their own and began reading book after book, participating with AME, and learning from others on their Continuous Improvement journeys. This focus on self development I believe is what creates greater learning, motivation, and ownership of work, improvement, and improvement of work. Learning is for everyone, not a select few, and they create systems to reinforce the learning and provide the ability for people to own improvement ideas.
One of the things I have noticed around me in my own organization is a shift toward self development and learning. Recently we have taken to this concept of Coaching - giving up the habit of telling others what to do and allowing people to try things and learn for themselves. Coaching and the mindset that goes along with it, shifts our mindsets toward one of allowing others to develop themselves. The learning here for me is that even though I want others to develop this mindset, I cannot make them do it. It's part of the deep understanding of the principle of Respect for Every Individual that we must allow people to make this decision for themselves. In order to Create Value for the Customer, we must adopt this philosophy, so if one decides not to develop themselves have basically decided not to do better for the Customer, which does not respect our Customer. The decision not to develop self creates a chain reaction in an organization that becomes a cancer and destroys organizations from the inside out. It's important then to fulfill the role of Coach, respect people, and give open and honest feedback to support the development of others.
For me, I've been continuing my own self development, trying out new things during my temporary assignment as Manager of Continuous Improvement. I have tried to create the environment for people to speak up and provide their ideas by setting the clarity, and basic process for how this can be done. I have reinforced that through Coaching, asking questions, and giving people the opportunity to try things out for themselves. I received feedback recently that this had changed for one of my teammates - he said "I usually don't speak up or give my ideas, but I felt comfortable doing that with this team." I have also been working on my own open and honest feedback for others, especially when it comes to quality for our internal Customers. As we communicate out to the entire organization, if we are the purveyors of Continuous Improvement, we must model that behavior. So when we send out information with links that are not clickable, or emails that force you to scroll to the bottom for important information, we are not meeting our own standards of quality. For me, I have tended to be more "agreeable" but that doesn't really enforce the culture of improvement. In order to improve we must simultaneously create the environment for self development and learning as well as provide open and honest feedback so we can actually develop and get better. It seems like a thin line, but we must practice this in order to get better ourselves as an organization.
During the event I had with our teams on planning the future of our facilities, I kept up with this respect and self development. I talked on the topic of Flow. I showed 3 videos, the first introducing flow as a ballet, the second which showed the methods of seeing flow at the Gemba, and the third as the outcome of flow by watching the Prius manufacturing line. As I discussed the lessons learned in flow, I set up an activity to see flow and impacts of interruptions to flow (no matter how small they may seem). I did not try to force everyone to change how they thought, I merely showed the topic in real life. I huddled with the room to talk about what we are about do to and see (create the environment, set clarity). Then we went our own "Gemba Walk." I had the back 2 rows stand up. They were to walk down the middle up to the front of the room and give me a high five - I was a "morale machine." As the rows came down the middle, to get back they had to go back up the same aisle, impacting the flow of others. It took the whole group a couple minutes to complete this task. We came back to reflect as a team - what did we see? So many ideas came out during this. "So what do we want to try?" We decided to move the machine to the other side of the room - closer to the people - and added an additional hand so each side of the rows could give a high five. Alright let's try it! Sure enough, we completed things in a third of the time. It was a simple exercise, but it is important to recognize how we took what we learned about flow and made it real. We did more than that though, we learned how important it is to involve the people in seeing and trying things to get to flow. The feeling inside each of us motivated us to do more. As the day went on, I heard on many occasions people talking about flow in their conversations together. They had changed their thinking, because they have developed themselves. All I did was create the environment and provide the information.
Change yourself for good. It starts with each of us as individuals to commit to ourselves to be better for ourselves and for our Customers. This is has been quite a lesson for me recently and keeps me going along my own journey.