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.

All too often we find companies that are struggling with measures that don’t work.  Sometimes there are way too many measures for the people in the organisation to focus on.  Sometimes the measures are simply poorly designed and result in behaviour which creates waste and inventory.  Sometimes the measures simply don’t make sense to those being measured and are not taken seriously.  Sometimes the measures simply don’t help us focus on the causes of the problem or issue.

Our measures should provide immediate real-time feedback on performance, and create opportunities for improvement every minute of every day.  They should be driving us toward the the Ideal State for the process, and be helping us to eliminate waste and improve the flow through every process in our organisation.  They should be designed to engage and encourage the entire workforce to become actively involved in frequent “experimentation” to improve everything we do.

Our measures should also be designed to encourage us all to go and observe what is actually happening in the process.

The measures should form a balanced and dynamic link between our value streams and our daily problem solving processes.  To achieve “balance” it is useful to ensure we have measures that cover the following set of categories: Quality, Cost, Delivery, Safety and Morale (or Engagement).  The actual measures will depend on the process but should be metrics that are meaningful and “real” for the team who owns them.  To increase the level of ownership and buy-in it is useful to have the team involved with the creation and implementation of the measures, and to have the measures displayed close to the workplace in a format that the team can update easily and frequently.  Also it is important to remember the selected measures need to be metrics that the team can actually influence.

But what should we do if we already have measures in place?  Well here are 3 simple ways to start improving your measurement systems.  These have been written by Stacey Barr.  (Stacey’s contact details are included below.)

#1: Stop Reporting It And See What Happens

Decide, this month, to simply not include all the usual measures and statistics in the performance report that you suspect no-one refers to. You’ll soon work out, by trial and error, which measures really do matter, because they’ll be missed. It will help everyone else work out what really matters, too.

#2: Test Its Alignment To Strategy

Grab a flipchart page, or whiteboard, some pens, your business plan, and a list of all the measures you currently report. Along the top of the page or whiteboard, write each of the business goals. Then one goal at a time, list the measures that really, truly are fabulous evidence of the achievement of that goal. If the measure isn’t fabulous evidence, then flick it.

#3: Have A Single Version Of The Truth

Don’t measure the same thing in 12 different ways. Decide the one true way to calculate and report the measure, and standardise on that. I’ve seen immense amounts of time wasted in measuring something as straightforward as cycle time over a dozen different ways by almost as many different people, simply because no-one drew a line in the sand and said “Here’s how we measure this.”

Stacey Barr is a specialist in organisational performance measurement, helping corporate planners, business analysts and performance measurement officers confidently facilitate their organisation to create and use meaningful performance measures with lots of buy-in. Sign up for Stacey’s free email tips at www.staceybarr.com/facilitators and receive a complimentary copy of her renowned e-book “202 Tips for Performance Measurement”.

Kaizen is a very effective way to engage employees and achieve positive business benefits quickly, as long as we do not rely on it as the only tool that we use.  In conjunction with the strategic application of Lean principles and systems, Kaizen is an important component of any business improvement initiative.

Recently I was reading the blog written by Pete Abilla at www.shmula.com and found an interesting article about the way in which effective systems are always based on a small number of “atomic” rules, and that systems often fail when they are based on many complex rules.

A common human trait we all have is to respond to a problem with even more complex systems to “fix” the already complicated processes we have previously devised.  Not only do these complex processes result in unnecessary waste but they also confuse and frustrate our people. In order to help the people in our business really engage with us in our process improvement efforts we need to start dismantling the complexity that we previously thought we needed to improve.

So let’s start with some simple rules for how we use Kaizen as a tool in our organisations. Here are the atomic rules for Kaizen from Pete Abilla:

1. Spend no Money
2. Add no People
3. Add no Space
4. Add no Steps (Touches)

In his article he goes on to explain how these “constraints” will result in “creative tension” as we strive for more creativity, elegance, respect for people and a focus on the process rather than the person in our solutions.

It will also get us thinking “we can if…….” rather than “we can’t because……”, and us help question and challenge the status quo more effectively.

It will also help us focus on solutions resulting from a series of small improvements rather than large changes that consume lots of time and resources.

And finally the atomic rules will keep us focused on achieving change using the “collective wisdom” of many people rather than a small number of “heroes”.