A3 THINKING

These materials are from Jeffrey K. Liker and the book, Developing Lean Leaders at All Levels. 

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WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN?

Why do people skip over planning and checking and adjusting and jump to the doing?

Why do they look at a problem and (particularly high-level managers) think that they need to come up with the solution.

So I have a problem or a gap to close; I'm now challenged to come up with the solution; I have to make sure that mine is the best solution so everybody can point to me and say you are the hero; you solved the problem. 

Why do people do that? A lot of new research helps us understand why this happens.

There is research down to the level of brain chemistry and then here is a best-selling book called Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman who happens to be a cognitive psychologist.

WHY IS SO MUCH PROBLEM-SOLVING SUPERFICIAL?

For decades he’s been studying the way people reason and the way people make decisions. He won a Nobel prize for his work and in this new book at the simplest level he says think of your brain as having two parts that are independent. 

It's not really what happens but it's a simplified view. So you have at least two processors in your brain, one of them loves to jump from problem to solution.

One of them wants to think fast, wants to react; stereotyping comes from fast thinking. I see you and I immediately make assumptions like this person looks intelligent; this person looks lazy; this person is a low-paid worker; this person is a highly successful manager.

I have all these attributes associated with the first thing I learned about you, your job title perhaps or just your appearance. That's the fast-thinking part of your brain that wants to draw conclusions as fast as possible and slowing down that part of the brain is painful and frustrating. 

Another part of the brain says Wait a second, Jeff how do you know that, you just saw the guy and I don't know anything about him until you start asking questions and finding out things about him. Slow down a little bit. 

Now these two parts of the brain are fighting with each other because the fast part wants to be right immediately and move on and the slow part want to stop and check and reflect and collect data.

The fast part is saying You jerk we don't have time for this, we got to solve the problem. Get your head out the clouds and the slow part is saying Slow down, slow or we're going to get in trouble unless we think this through. 

One of the things that Kahneman shows through his experiments is that when you have a scarcity of information, system one, the fast thinking part, operates as a machine for jumping to conclusions. 

So the fast part is going to win when there is an absence of information. The fast part will say you don't know anything, so I'm just going to do what I think is right. The more that information is available, accessible, visible, the more the slow part can win the argument and jump in there sometimes and slow down the fast part.

In fact, one of the things we do with Lean is visual management. Where, at a glance, you will ask is this process in control or is it out of control. That is absolutely critical information that the fast part can't easily argue with. We know something is broken; we stop the line and now the fast part has to differ to the slow part to start thinking a little bit as to why this happens.

George Trachilis: Okay. That's quite interesting. Is this book a good read or did we just learn everything we need to know from what you said?

Jeff Liker: I think you learned a lot of it but it's a long read; it's hundreds of pages; it's written by an academic but the academic happens to be a brilliant communicator. He is so brilliant that he wrote a four- or five-hundred-page book that you can use as a paperweight and he made it in the top ten top sellers of the New York Times for, I don't know, a year or more running.

George Trachilis: Wow!

Jeff Liker: People are buying this book by the millions and presumably a bunch of them are reading it. Now personally I think a lot of people don't read the whole book. I have not read the whole book, but it's very engaging reading.

 George Trachilis: What you point out about visual systems?I never thought of it that way. I've never thought to explain it that way, but that is such a good way to explain how they're critical because we’re fighting against the human side and wanting to jump to conclusions without information.

 Jeff Liker: Right, right, right and it helps also as the manager comes down and looks at it and it and slows you down a bit and slows himself down a bit. So it's a great tool and that's another conclusion of Kahneman, and of brain scientists, that we are naturally visual creatures. 

If the data is buried three levels down in the computer, it's worthless and if there is too much of it, it's worthless.

You have to have very crystal clear and focused information that tells you very clearly there is a gap; there is a problem, and then you have to take the time to solve the problem.

Now the other implication is that people naturally prefer fast thinking. It feels good; it generates endorphins; it's like a high; you feel good; you solve the problem and it happens right now. 

When you slow down and start asking questions like was that the right problem,people's eyes glaze over; their working memory gets activated, which is painful. Learning something new is painful. Deep thinking is painful. 

Now the positive thing that Kahneman learns and the brain scientists have learned is the more you use the slow thinking part of the brain, the more powerful it becomes--like exercising--it's really hard to do five push-ups, but if you keep on doing it, suddenly you're doing 30 push-ups.

 So the slow part of the brain can be exercised and can learn and then you get even more pleasure from finding the root cause of the problem and really solving it. There is some benefit at the end of the tunnel if you go through this tough process of learning to train your brain to think more slowly and deeply and systematically.

VISUAL MANAGEMENT BOARDS AT TOYOTA

This is the visual meeting area for the group leaders. This looks elaborate enough where it could be a meeting area for the entire plant, but it’s just for one group leader.

There are many group leaders in Georgetown Kentucky; say that they have one group leader for every 25 people; and they have 6000 people so that's a lot of group leaders and therefore a lot of boards.

They still print out the paper even though it comes off the computer, and they post it and they have a simple visual that might be hard to see, but you might see red X's. 

That's where your eyes should be drawn; the red X's are where the problems are. The definition of a problem is we're not on track; this is what we should be doing this week; this is what we should have accomplished in quality improvement; in safety improvement; in cost reduction and we didn't do it, so we have a problem. 

That's where they need coaching support, and the top levels come down and see that and they discuss it and they walk the line and they try to help mostly by asking challenging questions.

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