Critical Thinking Exercises for Leadership – Volume 9 – Exercises 41-45 By Mark Preston

Drive Improvement at the Point of Impact!

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

If you missed the first 40 exercises, please review my previous Lean Applications newsletters.

The First 35 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

Let’s continue to understand Critical Thinking Exercises 41-45.

41. Produce only Quality

Every employee should shoulder the responsibility of only producing quality, and ensuring production never ceases. I believe most people want to leave a positive impression on this world and they want their name associated with quality. This goes back to the reason people work. Most people work for a paycheck but are you also working to improve yourself and your company? Far too often we get the impression from leadership that the most important thing to them is productivity or producing products. But producing bad products will have long term effects on any company, destroy reputations or cause worse results based on what you are producing. There is no option but quality when producing defibrillators or parachutes. Also, always remember that you cannot inspect quality into a product. Use your time and resources to build quality into your product design and manufacturing process design. Proactive approaches always win out over reactive inspections. ?

How are you being proactive on building quality into your products and manufacturing processes?

42. Bury “Not Invented Here”

In a kaizen culture, ideas are shared, and the original idea might not be the best idea, but it could give a spark to others that will lead to incredible results. It is always better to have a team on a Kaizen event than just one or two people. Great teams feed off each other's ideas to create great solutions. Ideas can come from many different places, and it has been my experience that benchmarking others, that have been down similar roads before you, can pave the way for breakthrough innovation. I have toured many plants over the years through AME – Association of Manufacturing Excellence . When I tour a plant, my focus is to take away at least 2 ideas that I can leverage at my own company. Many people get bogged down in what a plant is doing wrong rather than reaping the rewards of the little ideas that they are doing right. For example, when I went to the corporate offices of Chick-fil-A, the receptionist asked me for my business card. She scanned my business card, and a visitor sticker came out saying,” Welcome to Chick-fil-A - Mark Preston”. Not only a welcome but it also had “Your Wi-Fi password is “x”. I usually have to ask for a Wi-Fi password, but it was printed directly on my visitor sticker. Little things can add up and make great impressions. Also, be humble enough to recognize those that have given you ideas. Brad Cairn’s from Best Damn Doors does a great job of benchmarking and giving credit to those that he has leveraged ideas from. You can view this on one of the many videos that AME offers to share ideas. AME Best Damn Doors Tour Video.

How are you getting ideas and taking them to the next level?

43. Ask the right questions

One of the most important duties of leaders is to ask questions that lead to the right answers and the right types of thinking. The best leaders are the ones that ask the best questions, not the ones that only give you answers. By questioning team members, it will give them the gift of finding out the true “Why” and help them develop understanding that will translate to knowledge. When developing the AME Lean Sensei , we wanted to ask the questions that would help companies understand and develop their lean system to become better. This series of questions is one of the best secrets that should not be a secret at AME. The reason we named it the Lean Sensei is because, just like a great teacher, the tool asks the best questions that lead you to become better. The AME Lean Sensei is free to AME Members. AME awards an Excellence Award to companies that portray excellence in lean systems. There has always been an onsite audit from AME Lean Masters that give feedback to those that apply but the AME Lean Sensei allows any company to ask themselves questions in order to improve. The questions give guidance on what poor, fair, good, and great look like but they also challenge those answering the questions to give proof of excellence or document the gaps that they see causing them to be poor. This tool is very unique because it does not stop at finding gaps. The AME Lean Sensei has links, based on each subject, to hundreds of videos, webinars, articles, and books. This tool will fuel your fire with great resources and ideas. ?

Have you used the AME Lean Sensei to improve your company?

44. Standardize Work

Standardization leads to repeatability and predictability. I often go to companies that tell me that we do not have Standard Work because they are so customized, and everything is different. This is not true! When you break down your processes, you will find consistencies that can be standardized. If you go to an ice cream shop and see that they can customize your desert and make it unique to you, they still use similar processes to create those unique deserts. They squirt whip cream in similar ways. They measure unique ingredients in similar ways. They store and present ingredients in similar ways. By standardizing, which means documenting the standard, you can improve the process. Without a standard, nothing can be improved. Start with focusing on your high runners. If you try to standardize everything all at once, very little will get accomplished. Focus on the top 3 to 5 and continue with the next 3 to 5. By focusing on repeatable processes, you will find that improvements will flow out of the standards to make it easier for the team, and more profitable by eliminating waste in those processes.

Do you have repeatable processes in a custom world that you can standardize?

45. Leaders are Teachers

Leaders should never cease to understand the people they are charged with leading. My favorite teachers in school were the ones that were passionate about what they were teaching and enjoyed finding creative ways in helping their students become better versions of themselves. Great teachers focus on not only helping their students grow in knowledge but also in helping their students understand how the knowledge can be applied. On the flip side, the worst teachers were boring, without practical examples, and were only there for themselves. My belief is that you are only as good as those you lead, and you should work every day to build each individual on your team to become better than yourself. Simple things like a positive attitude, fun engagement activities, and having an open ear can make a huge impact on those you lead or teach.

Are you making your team fall asleep or what are you doing to lead / teach effectively that will have a lasting impact?

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 – 46. Push Away Success, 47. Understand Failure 48. Reframe Your Concept of Failure, 49. Work Toward Excellence, 50. Level Your Flow.

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]