Jim Womack is constantly talking about how we are all leaders in our organisations, and that it is not good enough to simply say “this will never work here because we don’t have the right leadership”.  In lean organisations everyone is involved with the improvements, even if it is only improving the flow and eliminating waste in the small piece of the value stream that we are familiar with.

In their book The Hitchhikers Guide to Lean, Jamie Flinchbaugh and Andy Carlino offer some words of wisdom for Leaders in organisations embarking on Lean.  Here is a short extract from their book.

Why is leadership such an important topic in Lean transformation? Because Lean is not something you engineer. When done right, Lean changes the way you think, talk, see, act, and react. It’s a battle for employee minds and hearts, and such battles require leadership.  Toyota told Harvard Business Review this about its success: “Lean helped us focus our reflection on how we can get closer to True North.”

Perfection isn’t a goal to conquer; it’s a compass indicating in what direction to advance. Daily pursuit toward perfection is vital to successful Lean transformation. A vision of True North, and a clear view of current reality, creates a tension in the organization that, in turn, feeds creativity. We usually relieve that tension in one of two ways. Option one is we lower the vision: “We don’t have to be that good—no one else is.” Option two is to artificially raise our perception of current reality: “You know, we really are pretty good.” But neither of these helps us move forward as much as a clear view of current reality, and a vision of the ideal state.

Flinchbaugh and Carlino continue their discussion with five leadership moves, or actions, a leader can perform to provide leadership on the Lean journey:

Leadership Move 1: Leaders Must Be Teachers
In a Lean organization, learning is critical, and line management’s direct responsibility. Lean is based on how people think; simply defined, Lean is shared thinking. Management and employees need common philosophy, ideas, and principles. Leaders can’t just put workers into situations, and hope they learn the right things. They should take responsibility for the message, combining real-life experience with direct coaching. An organization’s principles should become guideposts to help people make tough decisions. Studies indicate almost half of large U.S. corporations feature “respect” and “integrity” as corporate values. These are effective principles, but they don’t help employees make tough decisions.

Leadership Move 2: Build Tension, Not Stress
A Lean leader needs to be the source of energy that compels the organization toward action. Too often, leaders create stress instead of tension. Workers feel stress when conditions are nearly impossible, and the path forward is shrouded in fog. By contrast, tension is experienced when they sense a gap between current reality and the ideal state. With resources and support from leadership, employees see a clear path to move forward on. Unproductive pushing leads to stress; productive pushing paves the way for tension. Three elements turn stress into tension: a vision of the ideal state; a clear grasp and hatred of current reality; and the right skills, capability, and actions to close the gap between the two. A leader must provide all three elements, or productive tension won’t be created. Every person, function, and process should have an ideal state. Ideal states are not documents, but ongoing dialogues that take place as leaders teach, coach, and encourage workers every day. To provide a compass for the journey, participants in Lean transformation must have a clear sense of where they are currently, as well the ideal state to which they are heading. They must understand their relevance to the big picture and long-term success. Some say it’s difficult to develop a hatred for the current state, but it’s not really that hard. Take a group of employees on a waste-walk and focus on what frustrates them, and they’ll see opportunities. The most financially successful companies are filled with people who are disgusted by the current condition, but believe they have no control over it.

This brings to light the third element of creating tension: presenting a clear path forward. After creating pictures of ideal and current states, leaders can’t passively hope employees will act. To drive change, a leader must give people the right skills and knowledge to close the gap, and make tough decisions about things such as organizational structure. If leaders provide no direction, employees will look at the chasm to be crossed, then at each other to see who will act. Everyone has his or her own ideas about how to cross the chasm, but no one will make that leap alone. A leader must pull people together (through consensus or dictatorship), and provide a way to cross.

Leadership Move 3: Eliminate Fear and Comfort
Lean culture requires action, experimentation, and new thinking—all of which involves risk. Many organizations, even innovators known as risk-takers, are risk-averse internally. Leaders need to eliminate fear of innovation and comfort in the status quo. Learning occurs when employees leave the comfort zone that’s been providing them with safe haven from changes they think are out of their control. A Lean leader must eliminate the comfort zone, and direct employees to the learning zone, changing the conditions and rules under which they operate. This does not mean chaos and unorganized change. Stepping out of the comfort zone should be purposeful, continuous, and multidimensional, setting clear goals and providing mechanisms. It’s not about setting higher targets; it’s about requiring individuals and organizations to purposefully experiment. If a leader asks a worker every day about experiments he or she has performed toward improvement, the worker eventually has to conduct some experiments to answer the question.

In addition to eliminating the comfort zone, the Lean leader must eliminate fear. When employees step too far outside their comfort zones, they enter fear zones. To eliminate that, leaders should provide safety in three distinct forms: physical, emotional, and professional. Workers need to feel safe before they’ll try new things. Employees who suggest new ideas in staff meetings and are ridiculed will think twice before speaking out again. Lean leaders have to squelch criticism and provide emotional safety. Attacks often come in subtle, passive-aggressive forms, but the leader must address them head-on, or employees will get the message that failure must be avoided—even at the expense of not improving. While workers who repeat the same mistakes should be disciplined, those who take risks, and learn, should be rewarded.

A Lean leader can move employees out of comfort zones by modeling proper behavior. Many leaders model “knower” instead of “learner” behavior, creating the impression they know everything. “Knower” leaders hide gaps in their knowledge, which they consider to be signs of weakness. But workers have greater respect for leaders with integrity, who know their limitations, and are willing to become vulnerable. “Learner” leaders acknowledge failures and publicly learn from them. Building creative tension is not a one-time, organization-wide event. It’s everyday behavior, based on dialogue and coaching—not featured in brochures, but in actions.

Leadership Move 4: Lead Through Visible Participation, Not Proclamation
Perhaps the greatest falsehood in change management is the myth of “management buy-in.” But buy-in, or being behind an initiative, is different than being in “front” of it. A major element of Lean manufacturing is pulling product through process, not pushing it through. When a leader is pushing, people don’t know if they’re being pushed toward something better, or off a cliff. They don’t have this concern if leaders are out in front, pulling.

Too many leaders think that by allocating resources, attending reporting sessions, and writing a few company-wide e-mails, they’ve done their part in leading Lean, but that’s not enough for cultural and operational transformation. Management buy-in must turn into leadership commitment, or the organization will never reach full potential.

What does commitment look like? Think: active engagement. Leaders often believe they don’t have time to commit to active participation, that it’s sufficient to proclaim the importance of Lean. Employees watch everyday actions of leaders, and if leaders spend their time on financial reviews, status reports, and decision-making, workers will mimic those priorities. When leaders participate in (or ideally, lead) waste-walks and problem-solving coaching, employees understand Lean warrants priority status. Coaching entails side-by-side engagement, encouragement, and support. Setting a good example is not the only reason to actively participate in Lean. By participating, leaders observe how Lean is understood and applied. Teams solving problems and identifying, and eliminating waste tell a leader more about the Lean transformation’s current state than reports.

Leadership Move 5: Build Lean Into Personal Practice
Leaders who view Lean as something that only applies to others make a critical mistake. They should take a good look at their own practices—starting with standardization—developing clearly structured processes for certain activities, designing a structured flow for their own time, and becoming more predictive. Standardization, despite its sound, is not static, but dynamic, changing with conditions, needs, and improvements. Leaders should build on standardization with learning, or the scientific method. They need to make decisions, solve problems, and deliver improvements with a deliberate sense of accomplishment. Suppose there is an improvement idea to reallocate resources out of quality, and back into line management. The scientific method would begin with a hypothesis, the linchpin for learning. The hypothesis might be to make line management more responsible for quality—that 50 percent more defects will be found in process vs. inspection, for example. The hypothesis can be tested, resulting in valuable information, which aids learning. Scientific method and process improvement are at the heart of Lean culture. Leaders and managers become more effective by aggressively applying Lean to their job functions. Applying Lean to leaders’ and managers’ job functions conveys legitimacy, so it’s important for leaders to broadcast their use of Lean to those around them.

To teach, a leader has to learn, and learning Lean is more than a cerebral exercise. A leader can read a few slides on Lean, but won’t be able to coach employees to apply Lean thinking daily. By applying Lean to everything, a leader becomes a more effective teacher. Remember what leadership is really about: It’s not a job; it’s an act. Leaders have to learn how to teach, build creative tension, and eliminate fear and comfort. Leaders need to actively participate in the transformation of the business, and apply Lean to their own jobs.

Jamie Flinchbaugh and Andy Carlino are founders of the Lean Learning Center and can be contacted at www.leanlearningcenter.com.

Having been involved with helping people in organisations implement Lean over a period of 10 years, I have spent a lot of time talking about the 5 Principles of Lean which were popularised by Womack and Jones in their book “Lean Thinking”. I have summarised the 5 principles here.

Value
Ensure we understand “value” from the customer’s perspective and be careful to take the time to actually explore this with our customers, so that we do not fall into the trap of making inaccurate assumptions.

Value Stream
Identify the process steps that create the value identified in the first principle.  It is here that we start to recognise waste or non value added steps in our process.  This principle is achieved using a process known as Value Stream Mapping which is a method used to understand and record all material and information flow required to bring our product or service to the customer.

Flow
This principle uses a variety of continuous improvement tools and techniques to eliminate anything in the process that results in waste and delays.  This principle is about working towards a process that delivers “value” with the most effective use of our resources.

Pull
Once we have improved the way our processes create value and shortened the lead time of those processes, we are then in a position to link our process more closely to actual customer demand.  The objective here is to get a close as we can to producing to demand with little or no inventory in our systems.

Perfection
This principle is about the continuing striving for the perfect process by continually removing successive layers of waste as they are uncovered.

Lately I have had a question in the back of my mind about how well these 5 principles really help people understand how to best adapt the Toyota Production System (TPS) for their own organisations.

The Womack and Jones 5 principles are valuable in that they provide a structure for implementing Lean which starts by ensuring our processes are improved in line with creating the most value for our customers, and therefore providing a profitable future for our company.

But how do we explain what needs to be done to ensure that Lean will be a success, and why is it that so many companies simply end up mimicking Toyota and never manage to “internalise” Lean into their culture?  Why is it that companies usually focus only on the Lean tools, rather than on the thinking that is required to correctly deploy the tools?  Why is it so few companies achieve sustainable results by permanently transforming their organisations using Lean?  Could it be that Womack and Jones’ 5 principles are too much of a simplification?

During my quest to find better ways to help people understand how to be successful with Lean, I have been reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean by Jamie Flinchbaugh and Andy Carlino.  They open their book with a chapter that sets out their 5 principles of Lean.  Based on the 4 rules by Steven Spears and H. Kent Brown the 5 principles offer another level of insight into the thinking required in our organisations to ensure success with Lean.  The Flinchbaugh and Carlino 5 principles are:

1. Directly observe work as activities, connections, and flows. The language of Lean will be found if we look for ways to structure, operate and improve our activities, connections and flows.  Every product, material and piece of information should flow through simple and specific pathways.  Understanding our current reality will require deep observation and a framework to “digest” and “expose” opportunities.  Value Stream Mapping can be a useful method to better understand our activities, connections and flows.

2. Systematic waste elimination. Often we hear people say that the purpose of Lean is to eliminate waste, however the real goal of Lean is to realise our true profit potential.  So waste elimination is an enabler for Lean and if we are to be successful with Lean we will need to be systematic in our approach to waste elimination.  This will require a good understanding of waste (and value) from the customer’s perspective and then we will need to be relentlessly pursuing systematic waste elimination on a daily basis.  The 7 wastes will be useful, however our focus on waste is not complete unless our processes and practices systematically address waste on a daily basis.

So far, Flinchbauer and Carlino have presented similar thinking to Womack and Jones.  However, the next principle cuts to the heart of the Lean philisophy and is probably where there is the biggest disconnect between current practice and the true intent of Lean.

3. Establish high agreement of the “what” and the “how”. Tools such as 5S and Visual Workplace are designed fundamentally to achieve the principle of high agreement for  the “what” and  the “how”.  Achieving high agreement of the “what” is relatively straight forward as we develop and set goals and objectives, whereas achieving high agreement of the “how” is more difficult.  Having agreement about the standard way of executing a process is the starting point for all continuous improvement.  If we do not have a standard, how can we improve on it?  Standardisation is a continuous process of reaching a deeper and more detailed level of refinement.  Standards will usually be communicated visually, so that we can walk into any process and immediately determine whether the process is operating normally or abnormally.

4. Systematic (and Systemic) problem solving. For this we need an environment where we see every problem as a way to move closer to the ideal state. and any gap between current reality and ideal is seen as a “problem”.  Creating an environment where problems are seen as good opportunities for  experimentation and improvement is easier said than done.  Our traditional culture is one where we see it as a weakness to admit to a problem or make a mistake.  Also people are often rewarded for solving a major problem, when we should be rewarding people for ensuring that the problem is prevented through systemic continuous improvement.

Decision making and problem solving should be pushed to the lowest possible level because this is where it is most likely that we will find the “right” answers.  However, this requires rules and high agreement for the problem solving process and boundaries for our problem solving activities.  This principle has a big overlap with the principle of achieving high agreement.

5 Create a learning organisation. This principle relies heavily on principle number 4, and using  agreed problem solving processes at all levels in the business to work on the systems that should be  preventing problems from happening.  We need to be spending more time reflecting on how the organisation works, thinks and improves and get into the habit of doing this daily.  This reflection should be happening at all levels in the organisation. The more points of reflection we can create the faster, deeper and more sustainable our transformation will be.

Leaders must be learners and teachers, open to changing themselves and involving themselves in the learning and experimentation that results from principles 3 and 4, and setting an example by leading from the front.  Everyone in the organisation can take on a leadership role by becoming change agents.  Everyone is involved with closing the gap between the current reality and the vision or ideal state.  Focusing on how to close the gap is where the leader is learning. Helping others close the gap is where the leader is teaching.

On balance, I think Flinchbauer and Carlino add some further insight into the 5 Principles of Lean and have helped us understand what it takes to internalise some of the Lean fundamentals, in particular the use of  “high agreement” to ensure standardisation and systematic waste elimination and problem solving at all levels of the organisation to help us become a Learning Organisation.

“Lean starts with rules , not tools.”

Jamie Flinchbaugh can be found at www.LeanLearningCenter.com

The Gemba Walk is a powerful way to build standard work into our leadership activities.  It is about getting out of the office and into the process with our people, to help them discover issues and fix them.  It becomes a valuable mechanism for staying in touch with our managers and team leaders, and keeping in touch with the real operational issues in our business.

Why do we need to build Gemba walks into our daily routine?

• We can use the Gemba Walk to reiterate our vision for the organisation and make sure we are doing the “right things - right”.  There is no better way to reinforce our vision than repeated face to face dialogue.

• We can break down the barriers between management and the teams and improve communication channels throughout the operation.  Often, team leaders and team members will be reluctant to raise issues for fear of being “wrong”.

• The Gemba Walk helps us build relationships with our team leaders by getting to know them better and helping them improve their processes.  This is fundamental to improving teamwork and the effectiveness of our teams.

• We can help people discover opportunities for improvement by asking questions and listening to the answers.  In this way we can offer real support, encouragement and praise.

• It becomes a mechanism for “catching” people doing the right things and allows us to recognise people for the good work that they do.  We can use the Gemba Walk to improve morale by actively showing respect for people.

• Our visibility shows that we care about how things are going, and want to support the teams to set targets and improve performance. When we show interest in certain aspects of the operation the teams will usually also take an interest.

How do we do Gemba Walks?

• Make it a daily routine and have a set time. Avoid letting other meetings or issues interfere with this routine if possible.

• Choose your Gemba walk participants carefully.  Have a briefing session before and after the walk to prepare and debrief.

• Ask questions and listen attentively. Avoid the temptation to offer solutions - this is disrespectful to our people because it does not help them solve their own issues for themselves.

• Set the example of how we want our team leaders to behave with their people. We should be encouraging our team leaders to mirror our behaviour with their teams.

• We are looking to increase ownership so be careful that by doing the Gemba Walk we do not erode the ownership.  Use the Gemba Walk as a mechanism to empower people to solve their own problems.  Ultimately we are looking to have teams solving problems of which we are not aware.

• Use the opportunity to reinforce the importance of the appropriate Lean tools such as 7 wastes and VSM.

• Structure your questions so that they draw out ideas for improvement of the process.  It is often useful to have a “standard” set of question to ask.

• Use the Gemba Walk as an opportunity to share what you are learning about the processes.

• It is useful to have a theme for each walk, so that there is a focus eg safety, 5S or performance measurement.

• Maintain a sense of “pace” during the walk.  This not to be seen as just a casual chat.

• Make sure we take care of problems straight away.  There should be a sense of urgency about our improvement activities.

• Take the opportunity to praise people and give people positive feedback where it is due.

• Be careful about being the management police.  This process is about building trust and relationships.

• Look for what disrupts the workflow with a focus on waste between the process steps.

• Use the walk to help identify where mistakes could be made in the process, and encourage people to implement solutions that prevent mistakes.

• Use the walk to identify all waste streams and rework loops, along with ways to reduce these.

• Use the walk to identify whether the metrics being used are effective measures that help highlight causes of problems.

This week I include an extract from a recent newsletter by Jim Womack as he discusses the role of the Lean manager as a “problem solver” and how the manager should develop a Lean mindset.

At Efficiency Works in our work with management teams of organisations on the Lean journey we are constantly seeking to find the critical ingredients for the successful execution of Lean. There is no doubt that energetic management support is one critical ingredient for success. When management support is missing the Lean initiatives are often seen by the employees as just another “thing” that we are doing to reduce costs.

But is energetic management support enough to create a culture that thrives on “enquiry” and “experimentation”?

Now over to Jim Womack ……

What do I mean by a lean state of mind?

First, the lean manager eagerly embraces the role of problem solver. This means going to see the actual situation, asking about the performance issue, seeking the root cause, and showing respect for lower-level managers and for colleagues at the same organizational level by asking hard questions until good answers emerge. It’s this critical, probing state of mind that permits lean tools to be put to good use as the lean manager applies the right tool for the specific problem and does this in context on the gemba rather than in the abstract in some conference room. Empty ritual is replaced with a rigorous thought process that engages employees and pulls forward their best abilities.

Second, the lean manager realizes that no manager at a higher level can or should solve a problem at a lower level. (And one of the worst abuses of lean tools lies in trying to do just this.) Instead, the higher-level manager can assign responsibility to a manager at a lower level to tackle the problem through a continuing dialogue, both with the higher-level manager and with everyone actually touching the process causing the problem. The lean law of organizational life is that problems can only be solved where they live, in conversation with the people whose current actions are contributing to the problem. But this requires support, encouragement, and, yes, relentless pressure, from the higher-level lean manager.

Third, the lean manager believes that all problem solving is about experimentation by means of Plan Do Check Act. No one can know the answer before experiments are conducted and the many experiments that fail will yield valuable learning that can be applied to the next round of experiments.

Finally, the lean manager knows that no problem is ever solved forever. Indeed, the introduction of a promising countermeasure is sure to create new problems at some other point in the organization. This is not bad. It is good, provided the critical, probing mind of the lean manager keeps on the case in pursuit of perfection.

In short the traditional manager is usually passive, going through rituals and applying standard remedies to unique problems. By contrast, inside the mind of the lean manager lies a restless desire to continually rethink the organization’s problems, probe their root causes, and lead experiments to find the best currently known countermeasures. When this lean mindset is coupled with the proper lean tools amazing things are continually possible.

Next week we will discuss how to use the “Gemba Walk” to help us improve our Lean state of mind as part of our management standard work.

I have a client who is very excited to have achieved 12 months without sustaining a Lost Time Injury (LTI).  This is a record for this particular site and a great achievement.

But does this measure drive the behaviour we  need to achieve long term sustainable continuous improvement in everything we do for our customers?  Sure, having an injury free workplace is something we should be aiming for because it enables us to reliably supply goods and services to our customers.  Additionally, we have a responsibility to our employees to provide a safe working environment, but how should we measure our safety performance?

The number of Lost Time Injuries, often expressed as the number of LTI’s per million hours worked (LTIFR) is a popular measure for safety.  One problem is that this metric is a “lag” indicator that doesn’t necessarily provide a good indication of how our safety performance will track in the future.  Also the longer we go without having an LTI, the more pressure there is to not report an LTI.  In my experience this means that we find ourselves going to great lengths to make sure any injury does not count as an LTI.  Have you ever heard someone say “If we could just get that person back to work quickly on light duties  we could prevent this “becoming” and LTI?”  This is not showing true respect for our employees, and communicates the wrong messages to our workforce.

I once worked for an organisation that had achieved 2 years LTI free, and in doing so had created so much pressure on the employees that no one was prepared to admit they were carrying injuries.  Eventually there was an avalanche of repetitive strain LTI’s that had been “covered” up and remained untreated because nobody wanted to be the one who spoilt the LTI performance measure. The company’s focus on the LTI measure had actually resulted in injuries that were much worse than they might have been had they been reported and treated earlier.

So, what is the answer?

Wherever possible we should be using “lead” indicators that help us identify problem solving opportunities as early as possible in the process.  So for safety, perhaps we should be measuring how many near misses are reported and how quickly corrective actions are implemented to prevent or reduce the risk of their re occurrence.  By focusing our attention on measuring how well we are improving our processes  to prevent near misses from ever happening  we are shifting the emphasis to “prevention” rather than “cure”.  We are also providing a real mechanism for employee involvement that will lead to a more sustainable set of operational outcomes in the longer term.

Lag indicators may sometimes achieve a result faster, but as a general rule for designing any metrics we should always insist on having lead indicators that drive the right behaviour and provide a more sustainable outcome in the long term.