Leaders or Teachers: Managers Role in driving lean at workplace

The steady growth of Toyota, from a small company to the world's largest automaker Toyota owes a large part of its success to the creation and implementation of a lean manufacturing framework called Toyota Production System (TPS), which was based on the idea of preserving (or increasing) value with less work.  

According to this famous lean philosophy anything that doesn't increase value for the customer should be considered waste, or "Muda", and every effort should be made to eliminate that waste.  

Seeing the spectacular success of Toyota countless organizations across the world have applied and leveraged the lean philosophy in some shape or form with varying degree of success.

In the last 30 years, the practice of lean enterprise and the pursuit of lean transformation have evolved from being a competitive advantage to a necessity of survival for all businesses across sectors. Indian automobile industry’s application of lean principles is a case in point.

Being one of the largest industries in the world with a growth rate of over 8%, contributing at 7.1% to India’s GDP, ably supplemented by the Government’s policy push, a resurgent middle class & substantial exports it has its own challenges as players find new ways to earn and expand their market share.

For organizations to learn and leverage the lean principles it is imperative that managers are oriented on how to build and sustain a culture of continuous improvement that is accepting of good ideas from others. Also research shows that most managers want to spend more time coaching their team members since coaching creates value by building capability in team besides creating competence and confidence in the team members. In reality, however, a large part of a manager’s time goes in ‘managing’ others. What complicates this further is the fact that most managers themselves receive little or no formal coaching / support as they transition to a managerial role. It is assumed that they will learn the ‘tricks’ on the job. That is a costly mistake.

So what is it that organizations can use to enable Leaders become better coaches to their teams?

Make Talent Management a business priority - In recent time many organizations have come around to the fact that talent being the only real differentiator in today’s competitive world it is too important to be left to human resources (HR) department alone. Research by DDI conclusively proves that organizations that outwit their peers on various parameters of performance are led by leaders who are driving an organization wide talent strategy. These leaders first articulate their business and cultural priorities for the organizations and then assess the readiness of their leadership, across levels, to deliver on those priorities. This ensures that business priorities sync well with the availability and readiness of talent at all levels in the organization.

Focus on Developing EQ of Managers -Manufacturing organizations puts a lot of emphasis on hiring candidates that demonstrates high level of conceptual & technical proficiency – and that is indeed important. However, equally important, if not more, is the Emotional Intelligence side that often gets marginalized. As leaders transition into senior roles EQ becomes even more critical in deciding their effectiveness at senior leadership roles. The good news is that unlike IQ, EQ is not static & can be developed and leveraged.

Involve the Manager of the Managers - Research shows that the manager of the leader is essential to ensuring that newly developed skills are transferred and applied back on the job. Without leader support or without an environment that supports and reinforces practice of the newly acquired skills, they won’t “stick,” the investment in learning is sub-optimized and possibly even wasted, and you have what is known as “scrap learning.” To avoid this—and more importantly, to drive lean—managers of leaders need to step up as role models, coaches, mentors, and teachers; they need to accept and be accountable for ensuring new skills and lean leadership principles are applied. However, many interpret this as developing great technical skills; but it’s so much more than that. It’s also about developing broader skills in coaching, engaging, delegating, holding others accountable, and inspiring teams.

Who better to drive development—either informal or formal—than managers of learners? Not only do they possess a wealth of experience, but they can also place it in the proper, shared context for the learner. When the leader is a teacher, learners don’t experience the frustration of returning to the job only to find out that their managers don’t even know or demonstrate the skills they just learned. Through feedback and reinforcement, leaders of learners are integral in helping the skills “stick” once they’re back on the floor. If managers do not support, reinforce, or model the skills themselves, why would you expect their direct reports to improve?

Equip managers to manage interactions - Effective leaders apply the Interactions Essentials framework for satisfying the two critical components of effective interactions: the practical and personal needs of the participating parties. This standardized approach includes the Interaction Guidelines—the five steps that target the practical needs of participants by guiding the structure of the conversation. These steps—Open, Clarify, Develop, Agree, and Close—form a process that progresses from the beginning of the interaction, through the engagement of participants, to the resolution.

Personal needs, meanwhile, are met through the application of a set of Key Principles. The Key Principles guide how participants interact with one another during the conversation and focus on fostering esteem, empathy, involvement, sharing, and support. Meeting personal needs addresses one of the foundational elements of lean: respect for employees. And, the consistent and effective application of the Key Principles builds trust—another fundamental element of successful lean operation. Managers can learn how to utilize these principles to ensure positive interactions, Two additional process elements—checking for understanding and making procedural suggestions—help keep an interaction going and ensure the discussion achieves its set objectives. Through the use of the Interaction Essentials, interactions such as giving performance feedback, seeking suggestions, or setting performance goals can be standardized, and the waste generated by missing a step or violating the Key Principles can be eliminated.

For example, if managers skip the “open” step (and fail to explain the purpose and importance of the discussion), the conversation has no context. Likewise, if they don’t “clarify” essential background information, the interaction can derail because all involved are not on the same page. DDI research shows that a whopping 85% of frontline leaders don’t clarify before moving on to discuss an issue.

Also, when leaders fail to seek and listen to employees’ input, they cannot effectively “develop” a course of action. They miss getting great ideas from others and can fail to identify the root cause of the problem. An alarming 94% of frontline leaders rely more on their own ideas, instead of involving the people closest to the work—their employees.

Finally, when leaders skip over the “agree” and “close” parts of the process and fail to review the WHOs, WHATs, and WHENs of next steps, there can be no commitment and, consequently, no action. Just think about all the meetings you’ve walked out of, unsure of what was decided and what action items were assigned to whom.

Amongst the 4 factors of production namely Men, Machine, Money & Material only the first one offer a meaningful competitive advantage for access to machine (technology), Money (Capital) & Material (Suppliers) is now a given. The future will belong to organizations who invest in nurturing this critical factor.

Article originally contributed and appeared in "The Machinist" June 2017 issue.