Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the renowned Hungarian psychology professor is noted for, among other things, his research on work and flow (continuous flow from the perspective of the worker being completely absorbed in a task and within a state of intrinsic motivation – “being in the groove”). He addresses the dynamic between the level of skill and challenge. For example, if an employee’s skill level is high for a task in which the challenge is low, there’s a real risk of boredom. If the challenge is very high and the skill level is low, then we end up in the realm of anxiety – usually not very productive!
So, one test for lean leaders is how to match the skill or readiness with a given challenge. How do we stretch the employee, so that they learn and grow…without breaking them? In other words, how can we effectively straddle the zone of anxiety and the zone of boredom or frustration?
There’s at least five things that the lean leader can do:
- Provide the employees with an understanding of the challenge. Think change management basics – proof of the need, vision, strategy, impact on them, etc.
- Train and coach the employees in order to increase their skill level and readiness. In Lean, there are new ways of thinking, a new language and a host of tools, systems and principles. A large part of an effective lean leader’s job is to humbly deliver teaching. And, by the way, we can’t expect people to become experts right away. Frankly, most everyone does not have to become an expert, but they need basic competency.
- Provide a safe, but appropriately challenging forum to apply the new skills. Kaizen events are a great real life place to learn the art and science of continuous improvement. I often tell kaizen team members that the greatest skill that they can bring to a kaizen event is common sense and a passion for improvement and that we will learn together. No use wigging out.
- Make people think. Don’t give people the answers. Help guide and challenge them to apply PDCA thinking – to become experimentalists. This means that people will often fail. Lean leaders must see these failures as learning opportunities.
- Apply emotional intelligence. Lean leaders must be attuned to the emotions of their employees. Using something like Chuck Wolfe’s Emotion Roadmap, they can identify the current feelings (i.e., anxiety), understand the gap between them and the ideal feelings (i.e., enthusiasm) and then work to close the gap.
So, what do you think? What are some of your strategies for effectively stretching people?
Remember Angus MacGyver? He was the star of the old MacGyver TV series and used science and the inventive application of common items (gum wrappers, duct tape, etc. – kind of a one person moonshine shop) to solve desperate problems. Well, MacGyver should be an unofficial kaizen hero for his real-time creativity and frugality.
Recently, someone shared that a multi-national company with a good Lean pedigree was looking to rationalize their facilities so that each facility served only market “A” or market “B,” but not both, like many do now. This makes very little sense, especially in light of the fact that the same value stream serves both markets and there is no substantial difference in “A” or “B’s” design tolerances, required process capabilities, delivery channel, service levels, etc. In other words, value, as defined by “A” and “B,” relative to the order to delivery phase, is the same! Here value delivery should be considered market agnostic.
The Kaizen Promotion Office (KPO) really has nothing to do with advertising or promotion in the traditional sense, but it does play a major role in any successful Lean transformation. The KPO, also known as the JIT Promotion Office, Lean function, Lean office, company or business production system office, continuous improvement office, operational excellence group, etc. is a necessary resource for making an enterprise kaizen-ready.
Lean thinking may not have been big in the first century, but there’s at least one quote that can be applied to Lean, “…you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” So, in a Lean context how do you know the truth and how will it set you free? Here are three steps.
Effective visual controls are, among other things, self-explaining. What does that mean? It means that someone with no inside knowledge of a process should be able to quickly understand the “system” without human assistance. This understanding should extend to the purpose of the system, the operating rules and the owner. From that, the casual observer should be able to easily discern a normal versus abnormal condition. The non-casual observer should be able to do the same and then start thinking about identifying root causes and implementing countermeasures.
The best intentioned try to apply PDCA as well as SDCA (standardize-do-check-act), but often fall far short on the check side. Of course, this means that the likelihood they will act/adjust appropriately is slim. So much for the heart of Lean scientific thought! So much for true kaizen!
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