This week I spent my time in a Master Black Belt class for training. This particular week was focused on Advanced Lean and Finance. Other than the topics, I think I continue to find other companies' journeys much more interesting than anything else. I met people from healthcare, architecture/design, large beer brewing companies, food production, and ride-sharing. As I talked to my classmates, I realized yet again similar struggles that I've noted before. Each has performed projects, coming into a process and helping to improve that process, only to see a lack of sustainment when they leave. This is often attributed back to a poor control plan or poor hand-off to the process owner. I think it is much deeper than that though. There are key assumptions being made in each of our organizations, including this training, that are keeping us from achieving a Lean culture.
Assumption 1 | The Stable Process
As we learned about what was called Advanced Lean, one question kept coming up. "When does this apply?" The answer typically was "when the process is stable." So how then does the process get to be stable? I was trying to remember back to the other belt training I've had and even into my Industrial Engineering classes. How do we get a process to be stable? It seems so simple to say, but in practice there is a good amount of work around this.
First, if the process is not visualized as a control chart (or process behavior chart) it is extremely hard to say whether that process is stable. Now, once we can visualize the process, the question becomes "ok so what do I do with this?" Generally this is where we need to understand the process in more detail. It takes studying the process to truly understand it. One of the first things is to see what work is being done that is causing the points to have instability. Is there clear visual management of the process? Is the work being performed the same way by different people (standard work)? Are the work areas safe and free of clutter (3S, 5S, or 6S depending on your organization)? Does the work team communicate about the work being performed? What is being done about the instability?
So now we have a lot of what some would call "Basic" Lean tools to try to help stabilize the process. The typical way of doing this is to introduce the concept, but then just go ahead and tell people to do things in a certain way. Go clean your work areas! Work to the Standard Work Instructions! Eliminate waste! We start to see the the same exhortations of management as before, but this time with a Lean flair. I think this leads us to the next Lean Assumption.
Assumption 2 | Lean Management System
As a management system, how does the work of management get performed? We see now through our control charts that we have unstable processes. Supervisors, associates, and team leads are all giving the collective "no sh..." remarks. When asking people about their work environments, I usually will hear some response that is similar to "pretty chaotic." Interestingly enough, the data shows this chaos! As a management system, what are we doing to understand what is causing this chaos, and what are we doing to eliminate this chaos?
I think this is where the Huddle - Gemba Walk - Reflection - Improve management model once again applies. I can't help but think that this basic management model is an assumption that many training programs assume is in place. I don't really remember this being discussed at all either. As an Industrial Engineer we are trained that management are the process owners, and we as engineers are tasked with creating the best process. We learn that there will be resistance to change as a known fact, so we are taught that we must find ways to make the ideas come from others. Looking back at it now, it's just manipulation. I want you to do it my way, and so I will do what I can to make you do it my, even if it's making it seem as though you are the one who came up with it. I see things a little differently now. My job is to help the learning process, and through the learning process we improve. Incrementally things change for the better, and we do what is needed to build up this learning and improvement.
Through the basic management model, we learn together the things that are causing the chaos and we start to do something about it. Little by little we see work areas get organized using the basic organizing process (5S). Little by little we see people doing similar work because we all discuss how if each of us does the process differently we are creating our own chaos (standard work). The way we manage becomes more visual, understanding of good vs. bad, direct performance metrics, and issues tracking are all visualized in some way (visual management). The chaos reduces and the system stabilizes. This takes a lot of work. It's a completely different way than I was taught in school and in training, and it's probably the same for everyone I interact with. This is a major assumption we all seem to have, since it seems so "basic," but in reality it is quite an "advanced" way of managing. In order for this to work though, we require another thing, the next Lean Assumption.
Assumption 3 | Leadership Principles
The third assumption is that we are working towards a common set of Leadership Principles. If we have chaotic processes, and we are trying to implement a new management system, we often will see some sort of frustration still. This frustration comes from the fact that we are all working toward some sense of our own leadership values. I have met a wide range of managers in my career. I've worked for those that try to create contracts or agreements with their employees to hit a certain performance, and I have had managers that seek to ensure that I develop in every way possible. The fact that there may be wide ranges of the basic values within an organization just adds to the chaos. When you have a manager that works to the values of learning, respect, and humility and another manager who believes workers are in their positions because they will never have the capacity to do anything else come together for a Gemba Walk, we have our own chaos. One manager will interact with employees in a way of questioning and understanding, while the other will only interact to tell them what they are doing wrong - or worse, they yell from afar and storm off.
This was brought up briefly in the training this week, but was more about the differences between Lean Management and Traditional Management. We discussed the differences in behaviors, but didn't really dive into the underlying Leadership Principles. I am not sure why this isn't a major point of discussion in training, whether internal to organizations or external. It's basically assumed that if you are receiving some sort of Lean training that your organization has already adopted some sort of Lean Leadership Principles. I think this is a major assumption that many of us just glaze over. Why then would we not have some basic Leadership Principles that we all work toward? I think that leads me to the final Lean Assumption that I've come up with so far.
Assumption 4 | The Lean Business Philosophy
This is the final piece of the pie - the general business philosophy of the organization. Typically organizations are run off the idea of "creating value for the shareholder" or some other performance driven thing. This was something that was brought up during the Finance portion of the training this week. In Lean organizations, while we may still achieve shareholder value, the focus becomes more of the flow of value to the Customer. It seems like it really shouldn't matter much at all, but this, as well as a few other things I'll cover below, are key differences in business philosophy that really shows whether an organization can truly "be Lean."
This story is often shared among the Lean community. A former Toyota leader is brought into a company to help assess if they are Lean. The leaders of the company shows the Toyota leader all the visual management, standard work, huddles, and Gemba Walks. They show him how they do Hoshin planning, how goals are set by work teams, and how people interact with each other. They go through their kanban system, the way they flow value to the Customer, and how they address problems. After a full day of touring and answering all of the questions the Toyota leader has, the company's management asks, "so tell us, are we Lean?" The Toyota Leader responds: "It's impossible to say." "We've shown you all the things we are doing, all the principles we lead to, all the hard work we have put in to making this all work. Why is it impossible to say?" "I was not here yesterday, so it is impossible to say if you are Lean or not."
This little story tries to explain that to be a "Lean Organization" we must see improvement happening all the time. We may be doing quite a lot of things to remain stable, but what are we doing to improve? Is everyone involved in the improvement? We can only see this over time. That is why most will say "Lean is not a destination, but a journey."
What does this have to do with the underlying business philosophy? Well let's dig into this a little. First, we must see that there is a clear difference between a company whose focus is on short term shareholder value and long term Customer value. Second, we must understand that there is a difference in business philosophy of controlling employees' work, and giving employees control to improve the work. Third, there is a clear difference in the thought on competition and cooperation. Those companies that succeed in the long term have the "infinite game" mentality, constantly seeking out to better for the Customer, rather than always focused on what they can do to beat the competition. Toyota quite freely allows others to see the inner workings of their organization. Why is that? The philosophy is that if all organizations can work in this way, we will all provide more and more value to our Customers which grows the market together. It is better to be in a growing market which we are cooperating to expand than to compete for a dying one.
The fundamental philosophy of how to manage and lead is also different in a Lean Organization. I can't tell you how often I see leaders trying to constantly delegate the work of continuous improvement on others. As a business, we must truly believe in the idea of continually improving, which means we must all be involved. Talking with some of my classmates, it seems as though we, in positions of a continuous improvement professional, are constantly put into the role of "making it happen." So leaders delegate the work to someone else to go improve the process. When a person goes to a plant, the plant manager may or may not participate. Typically I find people saying "well they will come out with me to see what I'm doing, but generally their style is more hands-off." As a way of thinking about the business, we must be involved with the improvement culture. Without this, we slowly lose traction of improvements, and it all just becomes a game of "who can care less."
Now, I'm sure there are many more assumptions I am missing, and there's probably a lot more detail we can go into with any of these topics, but generally I am seeking more and more knowledge about these assumptions. Before we are able to truly apply the tools, I need to understand how to help create this new culture, this new way of business. As we start changing the way we think, lead, and work, we can then add the tools as we go. We can better understand kanban, why it is useful, how to use it, and when to use it. Projects (the standard way of improving in the Lean Six Sigma way of things) are defined at the Gemba rather than the office or boardroom. How we train each other, how we interact with each other, all the things that keep the business running, all become re-thought around the idea of creating value for the Customer (or how we support that).
I appreciate the knowledge gained (or refreshed) this week. I value all the connections I was able to make with others who are going through their own journeys and all the stories we were able to share as well. I find great value in learning from others' experiences, and sharing with others my own. For me, if I could start our organization's journey over again, I would focus more effort on these assumptions. I think it would have saved us all many frustrations that we have experienced, and continue to experience. From my discussions with others, this is probably the same for them as well. The constant fear among those who are the "continuous improvement professionals" in the organization is when will the organization grow tired of not seeing gains being sustained. For those organizations, they will never truly understand why they failed, and the leaders may never even reflect on it themselves, for it is not part of their philosophy to do so.