With this experience going through a cultural transformation, I have found that I've gotten into some very interesting and thought-provoking conversations. The latest came earlier this week with another industrial engineer. I met Jim just a couple months ago as we started with some training with him and the team at his site. One night Jim and I ended up getting dinner after work and spent probably another 4 hours or so in conversation. We discussed everything it seemed, from engineering to some philosophy - really just a myriad of topics. Sure, some nice local beers helped draw out more topics as the night wore on, but I knew from that point on there would be many more introspective conversations to be had even after this dinner. This week we happened to have another one of those conversations, which will be the topic of my post this week.
There is the classic question: "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" A somewhat simple question that has created hundreds of years of philosophical debate. There is a great read of this in Time magazine from 2016 (http://time.com/4475048/which-came-first-chicken-egg/). Science basically states that the egg, or egg laying creatures came first. The evolution of the chicken was born from mutations in genes that eventually led to what we now know as the chicken. This is the accepted scientific answer, but philosophically, this question draws out great introspection. According to the article, this question goes as far back as Aristotle, who claimed that they both "go infinitely backward" and therefore have always existed. As Christian scholars tackled the question, they referred to Biblical law, citing the story of Genesis. Since all animals were created, it was obvious that the chicken came first. As the Age of Reason advanced, the idea that all things just exist came into question. Denis Diderot in 1769 remarked that it could not be certain of an animal's future, nor its past. Nearly 100 years later, Charles Darwin comes out with his pivotal writings On the Origin of Species which takes a much more gradual look upon an animal's creation, one of mutation for better survival and success. This is the bedrock scientific theory (defined: well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world) that has led humans skyrocketing (quite literally) through scientific and technological discovery.
The question of the Chicken and the Egg brings us to this idea of organizational culture and a model operation. A model operation is one where quality and productivity runs high, producing very little defects while producing high output based on effort. Organizational Culture is the underlying mindset, behaviors, values and actions taken by an organization that drives how the organization conducts itself. As I think about this more, I am observing some things that may be consistent with the evolutionary answer brought upon the Chicken and Egg question. Generally speaking, we can agree that it takes a high functioning organizational culture to sustain production and quality. As we continue with our journey of Operational Excellence, which should we focus on then, the operation or the culture?
"Is Organizational Culture the Chicken or the Egg?"
I think about this question now, "is organizational culture the Chicken or the Egg?" Let's take either side of this equation to best understand what we have observed. First, let's assume the evolutionary model as our starting point - generally the egg comes first, a chicken emerges from the egg due to slight changes or mutations over long periods of time. Then, let's first assume organizational culture is the egg. To bear a model operation, we must first have the organizational culture to do so. Taking this notion then, having a culture where there is a far off "condition" of a model operation, we will solve problems and/or obstacles that we observe that are in the way of that model operation. Individuals would each have to share the underlying culture in order to progress towards this operational state. Eventually we would assume that there would be operation after operation born from the culture that eventually looks like the model we strove towards. The model operation is then a product of culture we have created, the culture itself drove an evolution of operations eventually leading to something considered a model operation. This would require the culture to be hardwired in all individuals of the organization, to have basic premise that experimentation leads to learning, and learning drives us forward. We would have to focus all of our efforts to teach, to practice experimentation, and build up all people's understanding of the operational world around them. This happens quite slowly, and may not bear the model operation we initially thought.
Assume then the opposite, that the culture is born from a model operation. In order for the culture to be created, we must have an initial model operation for it to be created. This initial model operation would be the way to teach people what to learn - essentially all of those lean concepts and principles. The culture is created by continued use of those principles (including those lean management behaviors) and reinforcement of the concepts through high productivity and quality. As associates, management, and leadership learn through the model operation, their individual behaviors shift towards a new way of thought, a new way of operating, and eventually evolve the culture towards one that supports and sustains the idea of operational excellence. This would require us to have set up a model operation, something that was performed in the late 1980s and 1990s when the Toyota Production System was being introduced to the western world. Consultants created model operations, model lines, implementing the lean concepts and tools to show how it all works. Management would love the productivity and quality gains and want others to work in that model to learn the new way. The idea was that by doing we would learn, and implement that learning (yokoten) across the rest of the organization.
So which is the correct way of thinking? From my observations, reading, and conversations with many going through their Lean journeys, I think there is a bit of both, yet I tend to think more on the cultural side comes first. The term "journey" describes the evolution of thought, action, operations, and culture changing over time, as more and more individuals develop the new mindset and new way of doing things. From my observations, having a model operation can help drive learning by doing, however, we may lose the general idea of how to learn through experimentation. In one site I've been working with, I have seen a gradual understanding of how to interact and engage with others through huddling, how to gemba walk as a team, and how to do some basic experimentation. We may still lack all of the Lean concepts and principles, but we can now use that building culture to drive towards learning those concepts. The problem faced now is, how to introduce the Lean concept into the operation itself. In some cases, we have tried to create the model operation, but there has been some discussion on whether even that was implemented correctly. In my view, the culture comes first, but just barely ahead of pieces of the model operation.
The culture of learning creates the drive to do more and learn more, and we must introduce the concepts quickly as that culture has sparked in our people. To do that, we may have to create a model operation, or create new avenues of learning the Lean principles that drive us toward the model operation. This is where we may have to create the "dojo" environment that helps to teach the model, but use the culture to drive it in the operation itself. This is where I think these two concepts work in tandem. The culture helps to create the environment of learning, while the model operation helps to teach the concepts of Lean. An example of this working in some way is showing videos. With one team, we've been working through the cultural part of things (team development, skills development, kata, etc.) and through that we used a video to help describe and show the concept of U-Shaped workcells for an operation. Using the video as the "dojo," the team used that knowledge to implement in the operation, taking one step closer to something that could be considered "a model operation."
I can't say which is the better way, and maybe neither way is "better." Perhaps, in the mentality of a journey, it is better to just take a path and see where it goes. Use our brains as we go to gain more and more insights on what works for us, and share our learning with each other. As we try things and learn, we will continue to share our experiences and continue to reinforce our culture of learning.