I have been reflecting once again on the myriad of changes that have been happening with the journey of learning I've been on recently. While I was thinking about what has been happening, and reading through our many reflections over time, I began to realize something. As people talk to me about what they have seen change, their own "aha" moments, and generally tell me their own Gemba stories, I see that they have changed how they think, lead, and work. What I am finding out more and more, especially when you start to contrast it with those that haven't discovered it for themselves, is that we must think, lead, and work differently with Lean, or Operational Excellence. In this post I want to capture some of my thoughts on what has changed.
Thinking
What is it about thinking that it is done differently than before? I recently had one of my colleagues tell me about their own experiences with what happens when you truly start to understand Lean. He told me, "you know Tom, it wasn't until I had my own epiphany that I really began to think about everything in a new way. I saw the struggles and waste, and I saw how everything was a process. Now with what we are doing now, it goes much deeper than that. I think about the culture and how I affect it." We think about a lot of things differently when we start to "get" Lean. I don't mean "Let's get Lean!" I mean, "Let's understand Lean." When you really truly start to understand what it all means, you can't get away from that way of thinking. For instance, when you start to understand waste, burden, and unevenness, you can't un-see it. It's everywhere! When you think deeper on it, you wonder why it exists in the first place. Why didn't I see that before and why haven't I done anything about it?
Again working through the Lean principles, we reflect more. Because we now see things differently, we see ourselves differently. As we reflect, we start to see our own impacts on others, on the process, and on our Customers. If you don't "get it" it's hard to describe how this changes. When we first introduce people to these new concepts, we often see at least some skepticism. I think that is natural and is a good practice to have. So we say "I will tell you things that are happening elsewhere in our company and you won't believe me. That's alright, we will help you to develop and see things in a totally new way. We can't say when it will happen exactly, but when you experience what they are experiencing now, you won't know why it wasn't always like that."
So what exactly do we think about differently? There's a long list of things that I think differently about now. I'm going to just do a quick list form of as many as I can now.
I think about how I respect (or disrespect) people in the things that I do, and in the processes that they have to be a part of that I have some responsibility
I think about the long game rather than short term things - to constantly create value for the Customer forever and ever has me think about what is important for me to be doing
I think about individuals, what personal or internal motivations they have, what are they proud of in their work?
I think about everything that is keeping someone from being proud of their work
I think about cost as boulders keeping the river from flowing
I think about the burdens that people endure to do the work that needs to get done
I think about the flow of value to the Customer and I see the things that is hindering that flow
I think about the future state of near everything and what can be done to get closer to it
I think about the purpose, the why, behind my own life, and the life of the company for which I work
I think about how the data is describing the process and what is telling me to go look at; where to "go to Gemba to see and study"
Leading
As we think about many of things, we start to realize that the way we have been leading was just not the right way at all! I have been working with many more teams now starting this journey and during the start we discuss Coaching style management. A common struggle we all have is the sense that to be successful in coaching that the person we are coaching has to go do the "right thing." Today we had a small discussion about that. I walked someone through a struggle they were dealing with as a manager, in this case it was about people calling out from work. As we walked through the cycle, trying to figure out what the goals and current situation are, we got to the part of finding out what we can go try. At this point we seemed stuck performing the same processes as we have always tried. "How has that worked for you in the past?" was the next question I asked. "I still have issues with some of my employees. If I give discipline to the younger employees it seems to fix the issue, but my employees that have worked here longer, that no longer works," was the response. "That's interesting, so is there anything else you can try?" And so it went, back to the same answer as before. We were stuck. Instead of being defeated, we worked to trying out that process again, and following up later. Was this unsuccessful? No. Success in Coaching is getting someone to take ownership of an issue and take action for learning on their own. If this person wanted to continue the process again, then that's what they must do to learn. In this cycle, I formed trust and a relationship. This relationship will pay dividends when I follow up later.
Generally, I think, we lead differently because we think about leadership as a way of helping other learn and develop. Our focus becomes less on getting people to do what we want them to do, and more about helping to align people to a common goal and help them work through how to get there. We support each other, we build stronger relationships, we connect with people! As Leaders, we are developers of others. We help others to see the waste, to see the burden, to see the unevenness, and we give them the ownership to take action. I like what Ohno said to his one team that did not make improvements to a standard work for many months, "Are you a thief? Why do you steal from this company? When you do not improve, you steal from everyone. Now, in this time, what have you learned about this process? What can you do to improve? What will you do? When?" There is a great leadership lesson there that can be misconstrued. Is Ohno too harsh asking if they are a thief? I think not. He thinks and leads from respect. We have built the respect as a principle, one of which we teach and learn how to improve, and we expect everyone to be part of that in the company. If you are not improving, are you not then disrespecting the company? Are you not then stealing the potential improvements that could have been made? Once he gets through that part it instantly transitions back to developing the person to own the process and learn about what can be done to improve it.
I think I am starting to realize a lot more of the leadership part through my own reflections and from listening to other people as they figure out how to lead differently. Leadership for the sake of developing and supporting others is wildly different than telling people what to do. To many, the outcomes may look the same, but that's only because they are looking at the surface level part of the iceberg and not what is underneath. In the telling way, what is underneath the water is barely anything at all, just a floating chunk of ice and someone treading water holding it up. With Coaching, the iceberg is large and full, keeping itself afloat. All those things we cannot see, those are things that matter most to Leaders who lead differently.
Working
Finally there is the piece of how we work. I can tell you how we work differently (as I posted about in June), but that doesn't really explain everything that goes along with it. If I truly think differently, and truly lead differently, then it just is an outcome of those things that I work differently. The model that is created from that for management is simply Huddle - Gemba Walk - Reflect - Improve. Going through the motions is not an effective way of working though, it is just a waste of motion and time.
Earlier in our Lean journey as a company, we tried the "just do this" type way of deploying what we called "Lean Management." I now see that one of the major failures of that (other than telling others what to do) was that we did not change the thinking or mindset of people. So instead of thinking differently, we thought the same as we did before. People are just objects to do the work, they do things because we pay them money, when they don't do what I told them to do I punish them so they know better next time. When we continue to think that way, the idea of the huddle is just nonsense. There is no real point to it, and it will probably harm the culture more if you do it. And so that's how it went. Operations across our company installed "huddle boards" to have their huddles. People displayed metrics mostly. Now there were pockets where the thinking was happening, and so there were places where we would see these things working fairly well, but after a couple years, they too succumbed to the culture and the boards gathered dust.
On our Gemba Walks, we would pass by some of these boards and check some dates. Most were double digits months old. There may have been data posted, but no one looked - at least we never saw anyone look. The discussion that would happen would be "to inform them of how they are doing." Again, we weren't thinking or leading differently - we just didn't know any better. Now that we have been thinking differently and leading differently, in those places where this has really begun to show the work changing, the boards are actively changing. Issues are posted, worked, reviewed by the team for feedback, and completed. Performance metrics are relevant to the process itself, and everyone is thinking about those interruptions to flow - the burden, unevenness, and waste. People are helping each other, training much more often than usual. The work is completely different, and not different at all. The machines still run, the product still moves, but the real how it all happens part...it's just so difficult to describe.
You must experience this for yourself. I have no better words than that. It is called a Journey because we experience it, for ourselves, and with each other.
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