GETTING STARTED ON LEAN LEADERSHIP

The article below is part of the contents of Shingo Research Award winning book, Developing Lean Leaders at All Levels authored by Jeff Liker with George Trachilis.

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The teaching objectives for this section are to:

1.     Discuss 4 Attributes that Lean Leaders exhibit while at the Gemba.

2.     Discuss a scenario where no one has the Lean Leadership attributes.

3.     Share possible countermeasures toward achieving your vision for leadership.

Figure 1. Attributes of Lean Leaders

 Why do they want to know about the problem? See Figure 1. Why don't they ask what's going well today? Because what's going well today is simply the pep talk. It is stroking your ego which again you need some of that because we're people. But it doesn't help you improve; what helps you improve is finding the weak points; where do you miss the mark? You need to be encouraged in an environment in which every concern that you have expressed is considered legitimate; there are no stupid questions. There are in fact stupid questions. A stupid question would be, “Why are you asking me about problems?” That question suggests that you're resisting the teaching. So if you have a concern and you are way off base, it's not an issue; the product is fine, concerned about safety issue, that's really not a safety issue. That's okay because you might actually be pointing out a safety issue that I haven't thought of yet, or I might be able to explain to you why it's not a safety issue, and then that's one less thing you have to worry about; you’ve learned something. So as long as you learn, then it's a good question.

Figure 2. Lean Leader Attributes

 If you have opinions, you know, let's say for example, your observation is that the team is not making production, and the reason the team is not making production is because of Joey. Joey is slow; lazy; not doing the job and is holding us all back. Then I might say, “I understand that the team is not performing up to what you expect; therefore there is a problem; let's try to understand the problem. Let's focus on the facts. What is it that's causing the slow down?” See Figure 2.

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“Joey, Joey is lazy.” Okay I understand you think Joey is lazy, that's okay, but let's first look at the data to see if in fact Joey is the problem and then if Joey is the problem we ask, “Why is Joey not keeping up with production?” The problem is that Joey is not keeping up with production. The problem is not that Joey is lazy; that’s an assumption. So by focusing on the facts, we shift from the blame game to actually trying to get to the root cause of the problems, to the things that are actionable, and in fact if Joey is not motivated for some reason, that's a problem. It doesn't necessarily mean Joey is lazy. Lazy doesn't really tell us much about anybody, but if Joey is not motivated for some reason we have to understand the root cause of that and decide what we could do about it. So the manager is listening, is trying to get you to find out problems, He's trying to get you to focus on facts and actually to do a real analysis of the root cause. Also, this is a team; remember we're a team and let's figure this out together. By the way, I want you to do most of the thinking because you are the student, because I already think I know what the answer is as the teacher, but I'm not going to tell you.

Figure 3. What Happens?

The question is what do you do when you go into a work place and you find nobody has any of these skills for coaching? See Figure 3. No one embraces the idea of deliberately practicing; the idea of deliberately asking questions; the idea of being able to assess somebody’s skill level and figure out the next challenge. They don’t know how to determine the assignment. Even the basic problem solving processes are not skills that exist in the workforce. In fact, that would usually be my assumption when we work with companies who don't have any of these skills; they do all these things badly. The problem is that you are here and perfection is like way up through the roof. It's hardly even imaginable. So you're at square one. What you need to do is you follow the problem solving process. 

Again the problem is managers who are supposed to be leaders don't really know how to be leaders. They don't know the basic skills of problem solving, which is a core skill for a leader. They're not going to the Gemba. If they go to the Gemba, they are yelling at people and placing blame, and they don't see the facts, and they don't have the skills to teach and coach, even though they may think they do. How do you get started? So again what you want to do is understand the gap. First you have to understand where would I be if we had an ideal organization? What would be the ideal leader? I am telling you, from my experience from my studying’s of Toyota and I have learned about Lean Leadership but that doesn't mean that's the vision for your company just because I'm saying it or you read in my book. You will have to first decide what your vision is for leadership. You may or may not accept everything I say; believe it or not, I might not be perfect; on the other hand, may be I'm perfect and it is a great vision but you can't get your organization to accept all of it. 

Anyway the first step is to determine your organization’s vision of leadership. What's your model? What are the characteristics and skills of the leader who is going to be effective in your organization with your core values? If you don't have that vision, you have not done step 1 in problem solving, which is to identify the ideal vision. Once you develop the ideal vision in problem solving, you have to understand the gaps; you have to understand where are we in relationship to that vision; that's why at the end we have these questions. At the end of the module we have these questions about where the huge gaps exist. They may be big or more modest, or you're actually doing well already. So you can do your assessment of determining where the gaps are; then you need to set your first objective. Generally, annual planning is a good cycle. So let's ask this: At the end of year one where would you like to be on your journey to lean leadership? Then you need to break that year down into steps, into assignments, into specific people who are going to do things. If we're really problem solving, my solution is not your solution because you are starting in a different place. But in your case you might want to spent a lot of effort simply getting managers to go to the Gemba, and you want to teach them what you want to look for so they can actually see the waste and see the problems. That might be a big step in year one.

Some other organization might decide what we really need to do is to teach the senior leaders how to problem solve. We have senior leaders who are buying in to this vision. They actually are opening up to learning, so let's get them a good coach. And there's a small number of senior leaders, maybe only five or six. Let's get them some good coaches and let them pick a problem to work on in the way Toyota does it. That's the way they rolled out Toyota Business Practices and the problem solving method. They started with the senior leaders and a coach and the senior leaders worked on the problem. It typically takes about eight months. At the end of the eight months, they presented the problem through the company President and the coach; they got feedback sometimes they had to make some corrections; then they went through step 1, which concerns their self-development, which is one full PDCA cycle. We're learning problem solving. That could be a good thing to do. You might decide I'm going to do a model line product in one area, and I am going to develop a hierarchy including the manager of that department, supervisors of that department, and some of the line workers who are potentially Lean Coaches and Lead Leaders. 

 In the six month of a line project, I'm going to first teach them; I'm going to demonstrate what a Lean Leader should look like by creating some, and I'm also going to improve the process enough that I impress others so they have a model to look to and they can say, “Yeah that's good; we want to do that next. There are a lot of ways to roll this out whether it's deeply in a small area, or whether it's at the top, at the middle, the bottom. Whether it's on a level of management they're going across broadly, the one constant in all this is that you have to have enough coaches to begin with to coach the required number of people.

One-Minute Review

·        The question, “What’s going well today?” does not lead to improvement.

·        What helps you improve is finding the weak point. A question like, “What is the bad news?” is a good start.

·        There is no such thing as a stupid question; as long as you learn from it, it will always be a good question.

·        Focusing on the facts, and looking at the data, keeps you from guessing at what the problem is.

·        The lean manager is listening thoughtfully, focusing on facts, and has a “Let’s figure this out together” attitude.

·        Most of these skills are missing from the workforce. This is a problem.

·        The first thing to do is to discuss what the vision for leadership is in your company.

·        This will be different for every company, but the process for solving the problem can be the same. It starts with defining the gap.

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Think about the value-based approach of the Toyota Way versus Lean. Contact me today to discuss your company’s needs.

Contact me at https://georgetrachilis.com/contact-us/.