Gemba Tales   ^™

We’ve all heard the flight attendant’s compulsory safety announcement regarding oxygen masks. Personally, I’ve grown pretty numb to the whole safety monologue.

Not a good thing.

During a relatively recent trip on a Southwest flight there was a refreshing twist to the typically sober announcement.

It went something like this, “In the event of a sudden loss in cabin pressure, oxygen masks will descend from the ceiling. Stop screaming, grab the mask, and pull it over your face. If you have a small child traveling with you, secure your mask before assisting with theirs. If you are traveling with two small children, decide now which one you love more.”

Pretty funny.

But, the truth is there’s a reason that the parent (or guardian) should don the mask first and THEN attend to his or her charge(s). The parent needs to maintain his mental and physical faculties so that he can effectively take care of others. This is not self-serving.

So, this leads (surprise, surprise!) to a lean metaphor.

Lean leaders need to put on the oxygen mask first.

The “oxygen” here is lean competency.

Jeffrey Liker and Gary Convis in their book, The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development, which I highly recommend, captures this notion well.

Their Toyota Way Leadership Model reflects the following. Please note the ORDER.

1. Commit to Self-Development. Learn to live True North values through repeated learning cycles,
2. Coach and Develop Others. See and challenge true potential in others through self-development learning cycles,
3. Support Daily Kaizen. Build local capability throughout for daily management, and
4. Create Vision and Align Goals. Create True North vision and align goals vertically and horizontally.

Leaders can’t teach what they do not have. So, they must first put on the oxygen mask of understanding (or at least genuinely commit to and begin to walk the road to understanding) before they can effectively and credibly BEGIN to coach and develop others.

With that, good luck deciding which colleague you first assist with that oxygen mask thing.

Related posts: Book Review: Leading the Lean Enterprise Transformation, Why Do You Ask?, 12 Narrow Lean Gates

Tags: lean leadership

This question is typically posed in response to a question that is deemed a bit nosey. It’s actually more of a statement. Along the lines of, “Mind you own business!”

But, for the purpose of this post, it really is a question – one of, and for, the lean leader’s self-reflection.

What truly is the purpose of the questions that we ask? Granted that we must always consider the particular situation, the intent of our questions says a lot about our own lean leadership effectiveness.

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Do we ask questions targeted primarily to extract information from others so that WE can solve the problem for them (maybe despite them)?

Or, do we ask questions to develop the critical thinking of others so that they can develop their own problem-solving muscle and so that they can learn how to mentor others in a similar way?

In short, the role of the lean leader is to teach and learn. NOT to fix.

I know, I know, this is crazy talk.

…Especially when we have historically and routinely been rewarded for being someone who quickly fixes problems single-handedly. All hail the superhero!

What the heck is it with Toyota and that notion of building people before cars?!? Looks like we’ll need a double-dose of patience, humility, and help in questioning strategies and techniques.

So, when is the “extraction method” OK? I’m guessing there are a couple acceptable scenarios where leader as fixer is appropriate (see below). However, the rest of the time, it should be leader as teacher.

• Life or death situations, and/or when time is really short. The mentor asking the mentee, “What do you think we should do to disarm this soon to detonate explosive device?” probably isn’t going to work out too well.
• Subject matter expert dealing with a non-expert in an area where deep mentorship is not pragmatic or important. For example, it’s OK for the doctor to ask closed or leading questions after the initial open-ended question of “How do you feel?” The doctor is trying to quickly discern the situation and help the patient heal. The doctor/patient relationship is usually not about the physician teaching the patient to self-diagnose and treat.

In order to develop problem-solvers, we need to help our mentees identify and acknowledge the problem and ultimately, solve the problem. This requires the mentee to think, to engage, and to take ownership.  The extract and tell method that is often employed by leaders doesn’t do any of that well.

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What kind of questions help folks to identify and acknowledge problems?

• What did you observe?
• What is/was supposed to happen?
• What is actually happening/happened?
• How do you feel about that?

In order to provide good coaching, the lean leader needs to understand how the mentee is thinking, why they’re thinking it, and what they know/think they know and don’t know. Some simple, open-ended questions:

• What are you thinking?
• Why do you think that?
• What makes you say that?
• How do you know?

Finally, the mentor must help the learner through the PDCA process without doing the telling and without taking ownership themselves. This includes prompting the mentee to identify and articulate the problem to be solved, discover the root causes, formulate potential countermeasures, converge on and experiment with the countermeasure(s), reflect (a.k.a. check) and adjust. Here are some example questions (in addition to the relevant ones listed above):

• When/where is the problem happening?
• When/where is the problem not happening?
• What do you think is causing the problem?
• How do you know those are the causes?
• How can you address those causes?
• Did the countermeasures work as planned?
• How do you know the countermeasures were effective?
• What’s your plan?

One thing that I’m sure you have noted is that the example questions are all open-ended in nature. That’s because closed questions (typically limiting a person to a yes or no answer) and leading questions (i.e., “When are going to get the police report?” versus “What further information do you need to close this claim?”) do little to foster critical thinking and ownership.

Open-ended questions also demonstrate the leader’s respect for the mentee’s ability to think. That’s important.

So, ask away with good intent…and listen.

Related posts: Lean Listening, 12 Narrow Lean Gates, 6 Leadership Habits for Effective Tiered Meetings

Tags: lean leadership

Leonardo da Vinci’s quote, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” could easily serve as a lean tagline.

Surely, lean tools, like standard work, visual controls, and mistake proofing devices, are only truly effective if they are easily explained, understood, deployed, maintained, and adjusted. Heck, lean principles are simple too, just hard to implement.

This whole simplicity stuff is consistent with the Shigeo Shingo-identified first objective of continuous improvement – easier (followed immediately by better, faster, and cheaper).

But, some folks in their rush to keep things simple, careen into “simplism.”

Simplism, defined by thefreedictionary.com, is, “[t]he tendency to oversimplify an issue or a problem by ignoring complexities or complications.”

I think a lot of simplism is driven by a type of unthinking lean just-do-it machismo, detachment from the gemba, and/or ignorance of lean principles, systems, and tools.

Simplism begets simplistic directives. Like, within the next quarter, team leaders need to facilitate problem-solving like their counterparts at Toyota.

Except, there just might be some “complications” that need to be addressed first, such as the fact that Toyota team leader span of controls is in the 5-8 associate range, and our team leaders have 15 to 20 associates… not to mention the profound training and mentorship that is required to develop effective team leaders.

Simplism begets simplistic countermeasures.

Countermeasures must address root causes – real root causes. And, the countermeasures must work in the real world.

For example, when a given process is irreducibly complex (for now), the standard work might have to be more than 1 page.

The simplistic practitioner (and I have encountered such folks) might maintain that standard work can’t be more than a page. “It’s too hard for my (well-educated) folks to absorb…”

Simplism shouldn’t be allowed to trump lean principles.

If the one page standard work is insufficient, then the steps, sequence, cycle times, standard WIP, etc. may not be appropriately defined. What then? Is it OK for the operators to improvise?

Ignoring complexity and complications. It’s just magical, non-lean thinking.

Lean leaders can’t be simplistic.

Related posts: Guest Post: “Magical Thinking”, Working Smarter, or Just Harder? Thoughts on Standard Work., Kaizen Principle: Bias for Action

Tags: lean leadership