Critical Thinking Exercises for Leadership – Volume 13 – Exercises 61-65 By Mark Preston

People are usually not the problem; it is usually the Process.?

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

If you missed the first 60 exercises, please review my previous Lean Applications newsletters.

The First 60 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

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

Let’s continue to understand Critical Thinking Exercises 61-65.

61. Don’t Judge. Don’t Blame.

Design your organization’s “lessons learned” process to look forward, instead of going backwards. The goal isn’t to pick a scapegoat, it’s to find the systemic root cause of issues and apply a permanent fix. We often feel that we are too busy to go through a “Lessons Learned” session. We continue to jump to the next crisis, blame, and repeat. This creates an ugly cycle. The old saying, “If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten”, holds so true. Negative attitude is contagious and breads a culture that adds little value. Positive accountability is necessary, which involves developing people to be accountable for their actions. Using a “Lessons Learned” process as a non-negotiable standard can break the ugly cycle of blame and develop value in your organization. Create a 1-page questionnaire or checklist and include it in your process. Some of the questions may include:

• What went well?
• What could have been better?
• What should have been done differently?
• Should there be any special recognition for excellence demonstrated?
• What are the next steps that we should take to improve the process?

Make sure you have actions associated with the answers to the questions, due dates, and those responsible for those actions documented and completed.

Is your team diligent about including a “Lessons Learned” session for improvement?

62. Don’t Design Bad Parts

Don’t order bad parts, don’t build bad parts and don’t ship bad parts! The number one lean principle is: Create and understand Value from the eyes of your customer. Lean starts with the customer. Your team can eliminate waste all day but if you do not give value to your customers, you won’t have a company for long. The opposite is also true, if you offer many options from your perception but they do not offer much value from your customer’s perspective, then you are throwing away money. VAVE (Value Analysis and Value Engineering) is the process of reducing costs in any product development process by assessing the cost and availability of the product components, parts and materials, and the design and production processes without sacrificing value in the eyes of the customer. This is also hopefully adding more value for your customer. At one time, office light fixtures were assembled with 5 different types of screws. This was changed for many fixtures by using bendable tabs in the metal to eliminate the screws and create an even stronger assembly. A tremendous amount of money can be saved when you know what your customer values and you design waste out of your products. This also holds true by designing quality into your products. You can never inspect quality into your products. Start with a design foundation that builds from the customer expectations and creates value through all aspects of your supply chain.

Are you designing value into your products from your customer’s perspective?

63. Avoid Unstable Processes

Your organizational issues are probably caused by unstable, unreliable, and unpredictable processes that probably result in poor quality. It is not a process unless it is documented, it’s just an idea in someone’s head. Many companies think they have processes that are the foundation of their company but when I simply ask to see those processes, they can’t show them to me. When I hear a leader blaming someone for doing something wrong, my first instinct is to think that it probably wasn’t the person that was broken but rather the process that was broken. As accountable leaders, we are responsible for our team. We are also responsible for managing and improving the processes that our team follows to drive the success of the company.

Only winning teams have a playbook! Leaders ensure that they are working toward the future by documenting processes and improving those processes. No matter what you do, Manufacturing, Service, Office Military, Medical, or any team should have a playbook with their documented team processes. A living playbook allows a leader to see the current state and eliminate gaps towards the future. “Living” means that you must feed it and grow it, regularly.

In creating playbooks to improve and manage processes, it is amazing to see the waste that you have never seen because it has never been documented. By looking at how many team members touch the process and the true value-added time in each process, you will be able to lead your team to the future by eliminating this waste. Not only must you document, improve and manage your processes, but you must also be disciplined to review your processes with a formal process of review. It is never “one and done”.

Does your team have a playbook with all their key documented processes defined? How can you improve and manage processes if they are not documented? How long has it been since you have reviewed your documented processes?

64. “Significant Events” Happen

When issues occur, they must drive permanent corrective actions! I will always remember a couple of significant events that occurred in my manufacturing career that have given me better insights as how quickly things can happen to change direction. My first job was in Bandag Tire, that created tire retreads in a plant in Griffin Georgia. This was a turning point in my life to help companies become better and led me to a 35-year career in Lean manufacturing. I remember working on the graveyard shift and pulling hot rubber out of presses, cutting off the excess on the edges, and rolling them up on a pallet. Some nights I would be laying on the floor with cramps in both legs while I ate salt pills. On a good note, I was in the best shape of my life from this job. During Christmas break, 1983, the maintenance team turned the boilers on to restart the plant, but all the pipes and sprinklers were frozen solid. The rubber dust ignited throughout the plant and the plant burned to the ground. Black smoke could be seen for months as the tire plant burned. This was a significant event that no one saw coming. It resulted in nationwide changes in this industry to prevent this from ever happening again.

During my time at TDK, we had a CDR- Recordable Disc machine that automatically made Recordable Compact discs. At the time, we used alcohol and freon to clean the machine every day. The machine was covered with steel covers, and no one saw the puddle that had built up under the machine from the liquids. There happened to be a surge protector outlet that was also on the floor facing up. One drop of freon dropped into the outlet and ignited the puddle on the floor. Our technicians put out the fire and saved the plant, but we lost the very expensive equipment. I teach companies the importance of electrical safety and how one mistake can lead to a significant event that can change the direction of the company.

What are you doing to prevent significant events and learn from those that you never see coming?

65. Apply Permanent Fixes

The Toyota Production System is based on asking the right questions, and

applying one, permanent fix. Time becomes our enemy but if we do not take the time to correct things from never coming back, the time we waste over and over will be 10 times more than the time of just stopping and fixing the problem for good. Every time that I see duct tape it is a red flag to me, and I think of it as a band aid to the problem. Like every band aid, if it is not replaced and if you do not do anything to heal the problem, then it usually becomes infected and a much costlier issue to correct in the future. If you see duct tape, thank the person for taking action, but make sure you follow up and remove it with a permanent fix before it runs wild.

This is also true in the office. Instead of duct tape, we add checklists, more processes and added work that never fixes the true problem. Is waste in your company consuming your most valuable asset, your employees? When we add to existing processes in order to make things better, are we hurting others by making them add to their processes? Clearly, computer systems are very valuable—they help us manage our production scheduling, they help us manage our inventory, and they help us in extremely valuable ways. However, without control and a big picture view, they can grow like kudzu and turn a simple visual tool into a monster. I am not suggesting that we unplug, merely due diligence with everyone that touches the process must be thought out and understood before bolting on and growing the infrastructure. Ten systems might result in nine wasteful entries. Customers are both internal and external. You will be able to save a ton of money if you eliminate the waste for your internal customers.

Are you adding nonvalue added work to the problem or eliminating the problem?

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 – 66. Do Management! 67. Takt Time is Not Cycle Time, 68. Abnormal Conditions are Opportunities, 69. Managers’ Attitudes Matter, 70. Adopt Everyday TPS.

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]