Critical Thinking Exercises for Leadership – Volume 11 – Exercises 51-55 By Mark Preston

(This is a Piebald Deer on the Golf Paths of Peachtree City, GA., taken by my niece, Olivia Laux. These deer are very rare, and you may see only 1 out of every 1000. They do not live very long usually because of their genetic mutation.)

Leaders must stand out in the crowd through their actions and results! (not just their looks)

I have a list of 75 critical thinking exercises, and I will be discussing 5 every 2 weeks.

If you missed the first 50 exercises, please review my previous Lean Applications newsletters.

The First 50 Exercises:

1. Shadow / Emulate Lean Thinkers

2. What’s on Your Daily Leadership To-Do List?

3. Your Company Standards Should Be documented and clear to all team members.

4. Read Across (Yokoten)

5. See Flow

6. Seeing Waste

7. Distinguishing Normal

8. Who-What–When-Where-Why-How

9. Quick Response

10. The 4-step training process.

11. Audit Always

12. Standardize Solutions

13. Designate Early Warning Signals

14. Distinguish Between Human and Machine Work

15. Adopt JIT (Just in Time)

16. Know What’s Value Added

17. Don’t Let Problems Hide Behind Inventory

18. Respond to Reality

19. Flow Materials and Information in a pull processing system

20. Give Your Process a Heartbeat

21. Have a Flexible Worksite

22. Invest in Team Members

23. Never Implement Temporary Solutions

24. Mirror Single Piece Flow

25. Cost Shadows Motion

26. Time is a Powerful Measure

27. Make Problems Visible Immediately

28. Step Back from the Screens

29. Never Fear Failure

30. Delegate Authority to the Worksite

31. Strive for Elegantly Simple

32. Develop People for Trustworthiness

33. Set Standards

34. Recognize and Resolve

35. Foster a “Trusty” Group.

36. Establish Improvement Processes

37. Don’t Allow Dropouts

38. Awaken Motivation

39. Recognize the Benefits of Kaizen

40. Provide Goals

41. Produce only Quality

42. Bury “Not Invented Here”

43. Ask the right questions

44. Standardize Work

45. Leaders are Teachers

46. Push Away Success

47. Understand Failure

48. Reframe Your Concept of Failure

49. Work Toward Excellence

50. Level Your Flow

Let’s continue to understand Critical Thinking Exercises 51-55.

51. Rotate within the Production Cell

Allowing your associates and Supervisors to take on different roles within the production cell is a critical action for increasing flexibility and knowledge in your manufacturing process. Three indispensable factors for Cell Manufacturing Implementation:

• “Knowledge” – Cross Training is essential for flexibility in the cell. The more knowledge that is gained by the entire team, the more cohesive the team becomes. Team members take vacations, but this cannot be an excuse for not making the goals of the team.
• “Sweat” - Sweat equity develops pride and ownership within a cell. By setting achievable but challenging goals, a great team will reach new heights. Recognize great teams as a leader and support them by creating challenging but achievable goals. ?
• “Tears” – Teams in the Olympics seem to always shed tears from the great achievements that they have worked so hard for. This overwhelming feeling of accomplishment can be reached by your Olympic teams on the manufacturing floor.

Challenge, Recognize, and build on your team’s knowledge and abilities by helping them by providing the Tools that they need to do their jobs, setting them up for success through the environment of excellence, and give them recognition - or gold medals when they achieve greatness.

What are you doing as a leader to develop your Olympic teams to achieve greatness?

52. Rotate Leaders

Allowing your leaders to assume new challenges within the organization will broaden their skill sets, foster their vision and foster the implementation of new best practices. When I started to work for TDK Electronics, as a leadership trainee, I was given a great opportunity in the first 2 months on the job. I was given a schedule that included working on the floor with every job and becoming trained in each job by key team members. They saw me make mistakes, but by learning from them I became a much stronger leader. By learning, listening, and stepping into their shoes many advantages surfaced. I knew each person’s name, their pains / frustrations, and I became a better problem solver. I kept a knowledge journal and wrote down key knowledge from each job and I made a list of all the things that could help each team member which I worked with. This list became incredibly valuable because as I implemented the things that eliminated their frustrations, I developed team members that had confidence in me as an emerging leader to be the “go to” person for actually doing something about their pain and frustrations. After working in each job, I was given the advantage of working each shift for 3 months. By understanding your team members where they work, it will definitely give you a different perspective.

Opportunities to take on challenges in other departments will also give you a unique perspective. lean is universal and I have been blessed to not only do lean in operations but also lean in sales, lean in purchasing, lean in distribution, lean in customer service, lean in new product development, lean in marketing, lean in supplier development, and many other areas. If you what to grow as a leader, rotate your knowledge and perspective.

Are you rotating your emerging leaders to give them knowledge and perspective?

53. Great Leaders are like Pool Sharks

Pool Sharks are calm under pressure because they practice, practice, practice.

You never see a first-time pool shark. They spend years seeking perfection by practicing to be the best. In the same regard, leaders continuously work at perfecting their leadership skills by improving through reflecting on experience. Most often this includes networking with other great leaders, reading and studying about great leaders, and continuing to practice great leadership qualities. Great leaders do not panic. They stop and think about all the possibilities or angles of solving the problems that they face. Pool Sharks and Great Leaders Have many common traits.

• They Don’t Panic – They Think of how many ways a problem can be solved.
• They View the Big Picture at all angles – The Person, Machine, Material, Method, and Other Views
• They Know their playing field – They know their capabilities and their Competitions capabilities
• They Brainstorm all the Possibilities of their current shot and set themselves up for future wins.
• They Think about how their actions affect the total team.
• They Choose the Best Possibilities and take ownership of those actions.
• They Follow up, Communicate, and always believe there is room for improvement

How are you becoming a great leader like a pool shark playing pool?

54. Never Have Mediocre People

Toyota’s secret is exceptional people with exceptional results. You’ll only achieve poor results and a weak Kaizen (continual improvement) culture without excellent people. Mediocre means of moderate or low quality, value, ability, or performance. It means acceptable but not very good. “Kaizen” means Change for the Good. “Kai” meaning to change for the better and “Zen” means to make good or better. As a leader you must have a team that wants to become better and not just good enough. This starts with getting the right people on the bus of change for the good and removing the people that have accepted mediocrity. Leaders should hire with greatness in mind, develop – educate- train those people with greatness in mind, and continually challenge team members to be great. By doing this you will make manufacturing great again.

Do you have mediocre people on your team bus, or do you have a bus full of Kaizen change agents?

55. Input + Method = Output

You can’t expect your output to change if you’re only changing your input. Redevelop and refine your methods, even though it isn’t necessarily a “quick fix.” If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten – no matter the Inputs. Key lean transformation must start with looking at the process. By doing Value Stream Maps and Process Maps you can see the waste and opportunities for change. Value Stream Maps reveal the big picture of constraints throughout the company and eliminate the mistakes of focusing on only who yells the loudest. Many companies base their budget plans on who yells the loudest rather than looking at the data and big picture in the value stream. This is also true with office waste. Only by mapping the process and seeing the current method can you identify bottlenecks that are preventing you from a greater output. Focus on improving the method or process to improve the results.

Are you able to see the process that may be preventing you from attaining greater results?

I hope these critical thinking exercises have helped you exercise your mind as a leader. In the next article, I will be discussing the next 5 Critical Thinking Exercises of the 75. These include – 56. There is No “Strong Medicine”, 57. Strive for Cross-Functional Teams, 58. Improve Your Rate of Improvement, 59. Policy Deployment (Hoshin Kanri) is Essential, 60. Rarely Hire Leaders Outside.

How can I help you?

I hope you enjoyed the article, and it brought a smile to your face. Please comment and share, I would like to hear your thoughts. Have a great week! Please reach out if you need help developing leadership and engagement at your company.

I specialize in:

• Lean Assessment and Lean Journey Development
• Problem Solving Workshops
• Strategic Planning Workshops
• Value Stream Mapping Workshops
• Rattlesnake Hunt Engagement
• Monthly Leadership Coaching
• Lean Certification?

Have a great week!

Mark

Mark Preston

[email protected]