Critical Thinking Exercises for Leadership – Volume 12 – Exercises 56-60 By Mark Preston

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

If you missed the first 55 exercises, please review my previous Lean Applications newsletters.

The First 55 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

51. Rotate within the Production Cell

52. Rotate Leaders

53. Leaders are like Pool Sharks

54. Never Have Mediocre People

55. Input + Method = Output

Let’s continue to understand Critical Thinking Exercises 56-60.

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56. There is No “Strong Medicine”

All organizational improvements that last are earned through training, kaizen and efforts to standardize the way you work. I have always liked the saying, “The Pain of Discipline or The Pain of Regret”. I say this when I go to the gym or don’t go the gym. We must have the discipline to follow through in the key areas of Training, Kaizen (Continuously making things better), and the creation of standards throughout the workplace.

• Training – Do you have robust Training system? Skills training, Lean Training, Safety Training, Quality Training, Cross Training, and Technical Training must be continuous to build a world class workforce. Leaders must commit to making their teams better through continuously training their teams.
• Kaizen – Stretch your goals and achieve those goals through Kaizen events that are focused on the gaps in your value streams. Align those events with your strategic objectives and continue to improve the way you improve. Create a Kaizen system dashboard that creates training and standards around how you hold kaizen events. This includes always having a Charter that explains goals and objectives for your events and a way to follow up on each event to ensure sustainment of improvement.
• Standards – Without a documented standard, nothing can be improved. Create 5S Standards, Safety Standards, Visual Standards and work standards throughout the plant. Have a system to challenge standards in order for standards to not become stagnant. Standards should never be a check the box activity or “One and Done”. Set the standards for a period of time and then take the standard to the next level.

Do you have the Discipline to create sustainable results through Training Systems, Kaizen Systems and Standards?

57. Strive for Cross-Functional Teams

The people who work for your organization are the only resource you have that you can develop, grow and exponentially increase their ability to create value. Cross-Functional teams are critical on Kaizen events. You must plan to succeed when assembling kaizen teams. These are a few key ideas when assembling a Kaizen Team:

• Always have key members from the area that you are changing on the team. You are doomed if you are doing a kaizen in an area and none of the people from that cell are in the event. These people are the experts that work in the cell every day and if they are not in the event, then you are missing some of the best ideas and it will never sustain because they will not know the “why” things have changed.
• Select team members that are “doers”. So many times, people that talk about change never realize the importance of learning from the experience of trial and error.
• Put key motivated and positive people from other areas on the team. Fresh eyes are always beneficial if these people are not afraid of challenging the standard in a positive way. ?
• SMEs or Subject Matter Experts should also be available and a key part of the team. These people include Engineers, Sales, Maintenance, and other people that can bring valuable experience to the team.

Are you planning for success when assembling Kaizen teams?

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58. Improve Your Rate of Improvement

A good friend of mine, David Hogg, said it best, “Accelerating the rate at which your organization improves should be the ultimate goal of your company”. Whether a business runs with gazelles or takes a more conservative approach to growth, it can never assume that what works today will suffice tomorrow. Sustaining a company’s success—or just safeguarding its survival—is always a function of innovation. Smart entrepreneurs continually adjust their products and practices in response to changing market demands and conditions; and smarter entrepreneurs get ahead of the curve and define the next big thing. The leaders of some of the Fastest-Growing Companies are some of the smartest entrepreneurs you’ll meet—and they’ve proven their ability to generate great ideas and turn them into reality. These are the innovation practices that deliver results for them.

• Look around, up, and beyond - Staying abreast of emerging business opportunities and threats is one of those basic management practices that is far easier said than done. The challenge is twofold: first, you must gather good intelligence; then, you have to disseminate it within your company. Attending industry events such as trade shows, conferences and seminars allows you to see first-hand what your competitors are doing, and gain insights from experts that you can apply to your business. Think about this by requiring any staff member who attends a trade show to make a related presentation during one of the company’s weekly meetings. Find out what they learned and whom they met at the event that could lead to new opportunities. This tactic gives the broader employee base a lot more intelligence to work with. The new generations of employees have much more experience using online platforms, and they are very comfortable communicating in this type of environment.
• Partner with an Innovator - Good ideas to improve your business don’t have to come from inside your company. Research-driven institutions, such as colleges and universities, and innovation minded companies in other sectors, can open your eyes to an idea you can adapt for your business that you otherwise wouldn’t have known about. That’s why it makes sense to explore innovation partnerships. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that your ideas and processes are not being copied. Take it as a compliment and survive by moving forward with new designs, new technologies and new products that you can take to market.
• Form Innovation Teams - A few Companies have formed Innovative teams with their entire workforce. These teams meet once a month for two-hour lunches, during which they formulate and debate ideas for new products, enhanced services or improved processes. They look for anything that will add value for their customers. One great question to ask your customer and drive topics for team debate: What do you hate to do that you wish could be accomplished by others?? A company that focuses on problem solving for their customers is a key resource for that customer. Many employees stay on the sidelines because they have not become engaged. By creating a Culture of Collaboration, you are essentially discovering the hidden talent for success.? Americas Got Talent gives opportunities to people to showcase their hidden talent. How are you showcasing your team members’ hidden talent? Once this talent is uncovered, think about creating pull throughout the organization by appropriately rewarding and recognizing teams and individuals.
• Borrow Great Ideas - AME (Association of Manufacturing Excellence) is differentiated by its motto of Share, Learn and Grow. A lean unwritten principle is to Steal with pride. There is a responsibility associated with borrowing great ideas and that is to improve the idea, recognize those that gave you the idea and give the improved idea back for additional improvement.
• Leverage an Advisory Board - One great piece of advice that I received many years ago was to create my own Personal Board of Directors. By leveraging an advisory board, or Personal Board of Directors, your ability to grow yourself, your career, your relationships, your finances, your faith, and you're thinking will increase incredibly. Companies need a similar advisory board. They can help the company bring new products to market. Technology Advisor, Legal Advisor, Marketing Advisor, Engineering / Technical Advisor, International Advisor, Logistics Advisor, Lean Advisor, Leadership Advisor, Regulatory Advisor, and many other Advisors may make up your company’s advisory panel. Always remember that more minds are better than one because of the experience and education that each mind brings to the table.
• Don’t Let it Bring you Down - Eliminate boredom and dullness from your company’s vocabulary by being innovative when it comes to innovation. Start something new and creative to generate new ideas. Some ideas may include inviting a guest speaker to discuss Creativity at an all-employee lunch, create a team competition to generate ideas, create an award competition for your suppliers to compete for improvement in Design, Quality, or other Improvement. Keep your meetings fresh. The theme is always innovation, but the menu and even the agenda should vary from meeting to meeting.

What are you and your company doing to improve the way you improve?

59. Policy Deployment (Hoshin Kanri) is Essential

Upper management must respect lower manager’s current knowledge of the process. The same goes for every level of the organization! Hoshin Kanri is a strategic planning tool that businesses use to connect company-wide objectives to the day-to-day work of individual contributors. In Japanese, the word “hoshin” translates to “policy” or “direction.” The word “kanri” translates to “management.” The phrase all together roughly translates to, “How do we manage our direction? The goal of Hoshin Kanri is for everyone in the company to push towards the same goal at the same time.?This involves total connectivity, measurement rollup, accountability, and engagement of all employees in the PDCA process. ?(Planning, Doing, Checking, and Acting to reach the key goals for success in the company).

Two critical parts of this process are the development of the Company Mission and Company Vision. The Company Mission should drive day-to-day business fundamentals. The company mission is deployed through planning with Ownership, Key Metric Drivers for continually achieving this mission and Actions to review and renew changes that come in the real world. The Company vision drives breakthrough activities and is deployed through an annual plan that steps toward a longer term 3-to-5-year plan.

To see the big picture, the team must communicate up and down throughout the organization and understand the Value Stream Maps in the organization. Communication must come from every area of the organization, from the Customer back to the Supplier. By seeing constraints in the Value Streams, companies have a much better understanding of their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

But…If you try to do everything, nothing gets done well. Focus or prioritization is the key to achieving forward momentum. By communicating the plan throughout the organization and holding individuals accountable for their part of the process through key performance indicators, the leadership team and the entire company will have a winning formula for continued success.

Does your company have a process to achieve their mission and vision or are they just holding out for hope??

60. Rarely Hire Leaders Outside

I did not say “never” hire leaders outside but strive to select promotions from your “trusty team,” This statement should point back at yourself as a leader. How are you preparing people to take leadership positions in the company? Training and leadership development should be a key part of your teams’ reviews. The Team that you develop as a leader should make the company better and make each team member better. Team members should always be learning. This includes new Skills, Technology, Benchmarking (Inside and Outside the Organization) and through challenges that give them the chance to become better.

When starting Supplier Development in Respironics and Acuity Brands Lighting, I found out that I had developed an incubator to train top leaders for transformation in the company. If a Supplier Development leader transformed a couple of our suppliers with lean, they would be very promotable in the company. My success as a leader was driven from the success of the team and I had to accept the constant rotation of team member promotions upward in the organization.

How are you as a leader preparing your team members for future promotions?

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 – 61. Don’t Judge. Don’t Blame, 62. Don’t Design Bad Parts, 63. Avoid Unstable Processes, 64. “Significant Events” Happen, 65. Apply Permanent Fixes.

Have a great week!

Mark

Mark Preston

[email protected]