Last week I participated in a training provided by Bob Hafey. Bob is the author of Lean Safety, Lean Safety Gemba Walks, and his most recent Boomhood, a book about the baby boomer generation (see links at bottom to help support this site using my Amazon Affiliate links). Bob and I had many conversations at the AME Conference 2017 and continued these conversations during the week.
Bob has been training hundreds of our people in Lean Safety Gemba Walks across the US. In the training we had a wide variety of people: management, safety specialists, and industrial engineers. Some had been on Gemba walks before, but I doubt any of us truly had such a Gemba experience as Bob showed us. We went to the floor and really "saw" the process from the point of view of the employees performing it. We saw the struggles of people bending into antiquated material containers, lifting heavy sacks, emptying those sacks in more antiquated material containers, and pushing these heavy containers all around the facility. Our processes did not respect our people. Our employees go home everyday in pain, soreness in their shoulders, hands, backs, feet, and legs. Even worse, we haven't even exercised their brains. They had so many ideas they wanted to share with us, such innovative and inexpensive ideas! I think management often thinks people are looking for the most expensive solution, but the reality is that they are already innovating. One employee created a contraption out of rubber bands to help hold tension to a hook to hold containers together in order to move multiple containers at once. Yet, we have not talked to this employee, and we have not taken this innovation and shared it across all places experiencing this problem. And worst of all, as an organization we have not focused our efforts in making jobs easier, we have only focused on reducing costs.
I was taking this training in particular to better understand how to shift the mindset within people. A couple of my colleagues had already taken this training and were quite surprised at how easily Bob was able to make believers out of people we thought would take a while longer. I have been reflecting upon this training a lot over the past couple days and have the following reflection. As a way to make a standard of how I reflect, I will use 3 main categories: Positives, Changes/Improvements and Lessons Learned/Takeaways. Have a better way to display reflection? Let me know in the comments!
Positives
The structure of the class | Bob built this training to help build our belief in the idea of Respect for Every Individual or more simply Respect People. He did this by a mix of information sharing, storytelling, demonstration, and teach-back. The storytelling helped to solidify the idea and understanding of the shared information, and the demonstrations and teach-backs solidified the true learning.
The material shared | Bob's material is focused not on the safety compliance aspect of safety, but the methods by which we interact and share the struggles with the employees creating value for our customers. He used the Lean principles and tools to guide us through this methodology. We still do all the requirements of OSHA, but there is a clear way of improving our processes using Lean that also improve the safety of our people.
Bob's personality | This is just how Bob is. He is so open and caring for people and you can feel that in how he addresses everyone. He challenged us in such a respectful manner - he told us before we were challenged how he would do so ("if you say 'Great' I will ask you why was this 'Great?"). There were many people in the training that were nervous about the interactions we would have with our own employees, and getting in front of everyone to do a teach-back. The comfortable environment that Bob created was a true positive of this training.
The stories | All of Bob's stories were captivating, stimulating, and directly connected to the point or intent of the content we was sharing with us. This will be a lesson learned for me for sure, and it was such a powerful method of sharing ideas.
Changes/Improvements
Communications with Local Management | Getting the buy-in from local management is clearly needed. Something more may be needed than just notification. I think an improvement to this might be to perform a quick Lean Safety Gemba walk with the site management (and even District management) to show them the outcomes that they can expect. We had a surprise in how the local management may have received the report out of the safety opportunities. Reflecting upon this, I think it was just a natural defensive response to not knowing what was to be expected. This shows that as we communicate, it is better to over-communicate than under-communicate.
Our Trainers' Messaging | The way that Bob communicated, it was clear, honest, and open. Our trainers did a great job of emulating this from Bob, but the messaging could have been clearer. This might just be explaining in better detail at the start of the expectations of the people taking the training on what they are expected to do after training. This shows that as part of a local organization, we should be as open as possible about the expectations of our people so they can be more comfortable with it as they are developed.
Display Safety Opportunities with Entire Local Team | A major part of this training was to engage the people who do the work. A lot of the feedback we received from those employees was that they did not expect much follow up to occur. This is based on their previous experience with bringing up ideas and not getting communication from management. The local management has taken this in more a defensive mode saying that they do communicate often, rather than listening to the perceived issues the employees brought up. I think instead of just including the site management, presenting the learning we had from engaging our employees with the entire local team would help guide the site to ensure they have a process of feedback and follow through.
Lessons Learned/Takeaways
Storytelling is key to understanding | This, to me, is a key takeaway and lesson learned. Bob's stories brought everyone's imagination into what he was discussing. We all could "see" what he was talking about, and then he instantly connected with the intent of the content he was sharing. This method is nearly as good as "doing" or going out to do the things we discuss. It also built a comfort in everyone as he told the story as if he were on the Gemba walk! I am committing to telling more stories as I share information - you should see this as I continue with the Lean Sparx journey.
People know more than you think | This was quite eye-opening. At the higher levels of the organization, we typically say that people just won't understand the Japanese terms. In reality, people seem to get it pretty easily. I think it takes making the words relate to the "real" thing that they describe. I was surprised at how well everyone explained the Japanese terms (such as Gemba, Poka Yoke, etc.). I think it is a reflection on how well we have developed people on how well they understand the terms. It isn't the Japanese that gets in the way, it's how we teach.
Mindsets can change, but require reinforcement to make it culture | I was also quite surprised at how well the mindset shifted with many of our people. Even in how I look at process improvement has shifted. See the "why" we make improvements to focus on the well-being of our employees. In the training, Bob showed a slide with two statements and he asked "Do you believe this is true?" The statements were "Every person comes to work to do a good job" and "Every person wants to go home injury free." It was amazing to see that there were people in our organization that did not believe those things. Bob explained that this was a belief we must have, a faith we must have in our people. It is through this belief that we will truly start to understand the Lean Principle of Respect for People.
Don't forget the third pillar "Respect for Every Individual" | Bob not only focused on the safety side of operations, he really drove home how and why this fits into the Lean manufacturing philosophy. Even that, calling Lean a philosophy, was something many learned from this training. Many organizations focus on 2 of 3 pillars of Just in Time and Jidoka, but often forget that there's a third. Having respect for people means so much in the Toyota Production System that Toyota made is a clear pillar. Paul Akers shared this concept in the start of how Sakichi Toyoda developed this idea - Sakichi Toyoda made his mother's job easier when working on the loom. Respect employees and you will find the reason for improving our processes. Respect customers and you will find why we want all employees improving what we do for the customers. Respect humanity and the environment and we find the real reason why we exist in this world.
Gemba is the place to be! | We say this a lot in our company, but the practice of being at Gemba is key to improving the culture. Earlier I said respect was a key pillar, but we give respect at Gemba. I am taking this training back to the higher levels of the organization to innovate at Gemba. The people have so many struggles in our company that the highest levels often ignore. We innovate customer products while ignoring the people that actually create the value for the customer. Their jobs are painful, they have so many repetitive tasks, and they are put in danger every single day. We need to get innovation at Gemba to save our people! We don't need superheroes, we need to be at Gemba!
I have taken so much from this training and I hope you were able to learn something from this with me. Have you had any experiences with taking the principles of Lean to improve the well-being of your employees? Share with us in the comments.