During the 1970’s and 1980’s, Fram oil filters used to run TV ads that featured a mechanic with a rather dour look on his face. Ostensibly, he had just seen something really bad under some poor sap’s car hood, the root cause being a lack of preventive maintenance – specifically someone had not changed their oil filter within the last millennium or so. He then uttered the warning to the viewer, “You can pay me now or you can pay me later.” Chilling.
Well, the same warning is relevant to the application of leader standard work. Leader standard work is one of the four major lean management system elements, the others being: visual controls, a daily accountability system, and leadership discipline. Leader standard work is a simple but powerful standardize-do-check-act (SDCA) way to lock in kaizen gains and to ensure process adherence as well as process performance. Leaders apply the frequent rigor of gemba-based leader standard work audits, as aided by “drive by” visual controls, to quickly determine if situations are normal or abnormal and, if abnormal, ascertain the root cause(s) and then deploy necessary countermeasures. It drives a required discipline at multiple leadership levels and ultimately facilitates a lean culture.
Where’s the warning in this? Typically new standard work is developed, tested and implemented as part of a kaizen event or activity. This is part of the PDCA improvement cycle. However, sustainability is always a challenge – for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the standard work did not anticipate certain product or service variations, maybe the supporting material flow design is imperfect, possibly the associates were not adequately trained in the new standard work, heck, maybe the associates just don’t want any part of the standard work and the related transparency and accountability, etc., etc. Well, standard work does not do any good if it is not sufficient and/or not followed. Hence the need for SDCA activity. Leader standard work “forces” leaders to practice SDCA. Human nature is such that people rather not check on process adherence because often, especially in an immature lean environment, there is a good chance that people won’t always willingly follow the standard work…and then what? This requires intervention and sometimes confrontation (remember, attack the process, not the person – 5 Why’s before the 5 Who’s). The longer process adherence is left unchecked, the less the likelihood of kaizen sustainability (hey, this lean stuff doesn’t work!) and the more powerful the change antibodies will become.
So, you can pay me now, by cumulatively implementing leader standard work with each new addition/modification to standard work or you can pay me later, after much pain, suffering and backsliding and finally get serious enough to implement some “catch up” leader standard work.
What are your experiences with leader standard work implementation?
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#1 by John on January 1st, 2010
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How high up in an organization would you have leadership standard work?
#2 by markrhamel on January 1st, 2010
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John,
Excellent question. My humble rule of thumb for initial implementation is that the leader standard work should extend all the way up to the value stream manager. Soon thereafter, the organization should build-out the leader standard work to more senior leaders – obviously with a different scope and frequency. Senior exec leader standard work should include, at a minimum, things like strategy deployment and value stream improvement plan checkpoints and the regular audit of the lean management systems within the value streams and functions below them. This audit includes a review of recently completed/submitted leader standard work sheets, direct observation of the daily accountability process and gemba walks with copies of the leader standard work sheets in hand and subordinates in tow.
Happy New Year,
Mark
#3 by ed on January 13th, 2010
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Leader Standard Work – guidelines and rules I like to follow:
Serve as a baseline
What are the core tasks that define your position?
Am I doing the right things?
Tangible feedback on progress toward goals
Am I staying on track?
Are new projects supporting my goals?
Measurable metrics for performance review
What did I complete?
Are adjustments necessary?
Helps provide for succession and better training
Requires discipline
Prohibits Backsliding
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