Finance professionals: why you should be "Going to Gemba"

Finance business partnering is about?creating impact for the business which can only be achieved through a comprehensive understanding of what the business is actually doing. Unfortunately, far too often, finance professionals end up preoccupied with spreadsheets and data crunching, while neglecting time spent understanding the business processes that truly affect the customer experience. This is where the concept of Going to Gemba becomes relevant.

Going to Gemba is the act of visiting the shop floor (i.e., business operations) in Lean and Kaizen. Literally translated as "the real place", the whole point of?Gemba?is that issues and opportunities in a business process or production line are often easily visible, and the best solutions are found by observing operations first-hand.

As a finance professional - especially as a finance business partner - Going to Gemba, i.e, completing Gemba Walks, can be a highly effective approach to improve your understanding of the business. When done in a thoughtful and caring way, Gemba Walks can be a fast-track to becoming an effective choice facilitator, value creator and trusted business partner.

"Gemba walks can be a fast-track to becoming an effective choice facilitator, value creator and trusted business partner."

To get started, consider the following guiding principles that might help you avoid some pitfalls along the way.

Go see, ask why, show respect

Finance professionals tagging along on Gemba Walks can easily seem like an unnecessary disruption of normal operations. Thus, it is key to focus on encouraging greater communication, transparency and trust between the business stakeholders and you as a finance business partner.?Consequently, do not point out employee flaws, or enforce policy, as this runs the risk of?business stakeholders putting up barriers, leaving you out of relevant decision-making forums, or closing off altogether. Instead, follow these six simple principles:

1. Inform: reach out to relevant stakeholders and explain the purpose of your visit.
2. Prepare: come prepared with relevant questions and insights that might be relevant.
3. Observe: focus on understanding the process, and not on evaluating performance.
4. Ask: ask who, what, where, when, and why to better understand the process.
5. Capture: document observations and share findings with the stakeholders.
6. Repeat: perform multiple Gemba Walks to observe progression and change.

Other relevant steps to an effective Gemba Walk can be found here.

Want to learn more?

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