LEADERSHIP IN YOUR COMPANY

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.

-                                -                          -                         -                          - 

The teaching objectives for this section are to:

1.     Identify the ideal state for leadership in your organization.

2.     Present 5 statements for you to compare to your current state.

3.     Give you an assignment to email your LLI coach with answers to key leadership questions. 

"RATE YOUR ORGANIZATION'S LEADERSHIP"

Now we have reached the point where you can see how you're doing compared to the current idealized image I gave of Toyota. Let me say that not every leader who went through Toyota Way training, Toyota Business Practices, On-the-Job Development was a star; some did great; some were not so successful.

After the early stages a small group at the North American level were coaching and then the assumption is that the leaders will then coach the next level and will need less support; they've been weaning the organization away upward support. In fact, the person who first started this training has moved to a different job. Did everybody get perfectly trained and did they do a great job at coaching? The answer is no, there was a lot of variation as it came down to the organization during six to eight years.

Toyota is far from perfect, but they try and their effort is heroic; it's remarkable compared to what most companies do. 

Figure 1. How are you Doing?

Please assess your organization under the assumption that in most cases you have pretty big gaps. See Figure 1. First you need to define the ideal state for your organization. What would an ideal leader look like? Now, I'm assuming some things in my questions here; for example, I'm assuming that in your ideal state leaders are going to be leaders and coaches. If you don't think they should be, then probably you got confused on the internet and found the wrong course; that's the basic assumption of Lean leadership. So I wouldn't expect you to disagree with that, and this is the Shu stage where the student and I am the master and tell you that leaders should be teachers and coaches. But the core values that your leader should be modeling can be subject to variation. Again, what are the core values of the company? Revisit those values.

_________________________________________________________________________

RECEIVE DR. LIKER’S AWARD-WINNING AUDIOBOOK FREE (codes are available)

To receive your promo code = email [email protected] with “Provide Promo Code” in the subject field of email.

Then, wait for a reply email with the instructions.

Enjoy the book!

If you have any problems, please contact George directly at +1 (204) 880-6363.

Would you like to be coached? Register for an online course at https://leanleadership.guru – ask for George as a coach.

_________________________________________________________________________

In words that are meaningful to you, what is an ideal leader doing, thinking, and saying? And then, based on that ideal vision, what's the current state of your leadership? So Toyota might have minor gaps, and they might have major gaps, but is it a critical gap so huge that it requires immediate attention or your company is going to be in trouble? Or is it a serious gap but it's not quite so urgent? Or is it quite minor or are you “there” or at the ideal state? I would say if you're “there” on even one of these things, you're grading too high; it's a good case of grade inflation, because nobody is really “there.” But if you have a few minor gaps, then that's great. Most of you will have anywhere from one to three gaps.

Figure 2. Leaders’ Abilities

Are leaders developed to be teachers and coaches? See Figure 2. Are leaders at all levels of your organization skilled and active at teaching and coaching improvement?

 Again, if you say that they're all doing that, then I would say go to the Gemba and look some more; go back to the basics and stand in a circle and watch; tell me if they're really teaching and coaching improvement.

Leaders at all levels value people’s development enough to allow space and time for learning by doing. There's really a good story about this; when I was working on Toyota Under Fire and I interviewed Akio Toyoda, I asked him, “What have you learned from the recall crisis, from the reaction in America, and all the negative publicity Toyota got?” I also said some analysts are saying that Toyota's problem was that they were growing too fast. Do you agree with that?” He said, “No I don't agree that we're going too fast; growth is good. I would say that the rate of growth was faster than the rate of people development. That we were falling down in how well we were developing people as we were growing; we were bringing on a lot of new people.” He wouldn't concede that it was impossible to develop those people at the right he would just concede that they aren't doing it and they should have done better. He gave this new example.

When he was first hired into Toyota, his dad agreed that he could come work for the company, but only if he started at the bottom like everybody else. His dad wanted him to take the toughest possible assignments possible and that assignment was called the Operations Management Consulting Division, which is the boot camp for learning the Toyota Production System. That's where the tough sensei are and they send you a supplier, and they give you an impossible project, and you're in over your head, and you sink or swim.

Akio Toyoda said that the first assignment he got and the supplier required that he understand the root cause, and it took him three months. He said if his boss had worked on the root problem, he could have easily done it within three weeks. His boss could have done it within three days. The head of OMCD could have done it within three minutes. You had this gap from three months to three minutes. So now if you're the head of OMCD, and you have a bunch of people working on projects and they're taking three months to do what you could do in three minutes that can be very frustrating. They flailed around and in the meantime, the project was not advancing and the boss was unhappy because they wanted results. So what's the natural response? Tell them the answer. You give them three days and then tell them the answer. Akio Toyoda said what was happening, not in OCMD, but in other parts of the organization. The coaches that were supposed to be coaches were giving the answers too early. They weren't giving people the space to struggle so they could actually learn to develop the root cause. To prove that, they then started to go back to the basics of how to teach; how to coach and they added layers of management particularly in Engineering where they ended up in the growth period with perhaps one manager for every 20 or 25 engineers. Not a good ratio for coaching, and they added = a layer of management so they had one manager for every 5 engineers, going back to the way they always used to be. 

 Leaders at all levels were engaged in selecting and developing future leaders based on their abilities at leading, teaching and coaching process improvement.

So not all people are created equal; not all people are going to learn at an equal pace; not all people are equally motivated and determined and purposeful. So you have to watch people and you have the luxury if you're watching them at the Gemba of seeing them in action over a long period of time. This is not the three-day interview process where you have to judge a person and make a commitment to hire them based on seeing them in artificial situations for a few days. You're now getting to see these people over a period of time, and as you see these people--and in Toyota's case it would be Managers working with Human Resources--Human Resources has a huge role in selection and in promotion. You're deciding who should be promoted based on their ability to follow the Toyota Way, their ability to execute, their ability to lead and teach others and their potential. Who's ready for an assignment to take on more people to coach and teach? Who needs to stay where they are because then you develop the wrong capabilities before they can take on the responsibility for others. The selection and development is based on potential, abilities, and potential for leading, teaching and coaching process improvement. 

Then, leaders of all levels are modeling the core values of the company. So expect low scores in this case. I would expect lots of ones to threes. The ones are obviously going to be a higher priority than the threes. If you do have minor gaps, then feel you are unfortunate because it's not so usual. 

This is a general, overall assessment of leadership in your company; if you decide to do a formal survey of hundreds of people, you're probably going too far. If you decide to let me get a team of people together to individually rate where we are, and then we're going to have a discussion among ourselves to try to come to consensus on these five things, that would be a very good process. 

"WHAT IS YOUR NEXT STEP TOWARD ATTAINING LEAN LEADERSHIP"

If I were doing this live, this would be done in small groups at tables, and I'd encourage you to do this in groups. I’ll remind you that we have coaching support from George and his group to help coach you through this process, so you're going to have to talk to them anyways about the course.

Figure 3. Email Your LLI Coach or [email protected]

Summarize key points you hear about how to coach others as Lean Leaders, and then ask yourself how you might apply this exercise to your organization. See Figure 3. You're not going to summarize this to the group, but you're going to share this with your coach. Now as you think about how to apply this to your organization, think about the problem solving process. Again, don't start brainstorming ideas for a hundred ways you're going to apply this to your organization. Think about where your organization is compared to where it should be; we did that on the last slide. Think about how to break down that big gap into some targeted, measureable project that you can work on as a first step. Then plan that; what do you think is the root cause of the gap? What are some potential countermeasures? Then what can we do to start implementing those countermeasures, to begin to develop Lean Leaders, and to begin to train leaders to be coaches.

So if you follow the same PDCA process, you will come up with good steps, good first steps directed toward your vision. You'll make progress, the problem is not I'm here, the leaders aren't coaches, they don't know how to teach, they don't know how to problem solve but I want to be here. The problem is that now I see an ideal vision, and I see how far we are from that vision and I need to take a first step toward that vision, and I need to have a clear first goal for my first set of steps. So if you think about it that way, it's a little more manageable; it's not so overwhelming. So as you do this, you'll be better prepared for the module which now focuses on developing relatively self-reliant work groups who are continuously improving. They're following the improvement process. They're doing daily Kaizen, and they're doing it in the right way through PDCA. They have clear targets; they have measures of performance; they're meeting every day to see how they're doing compared to their targets. They're seeing where they're red out of line and green on line; they're discussing with their Coach how they've done today and thinking about what to do tomorrow. The next step is to develop that process of daily Kaizen so that it starts to become rooted deeply within your organization. So thank you all for listening and I look forward to talking to you next time. 

One-Minute Review

●    Not every leader who went through Toyota Way training, Toyota Business Practices training, and On-the-Job Development was a star.

●    There was a lot of variation as training was rolled down through the organization over 6-8 years.

●    You should start by identifying your organization’s ideal state in which leaders are going to be teachers and coaches.

●    Leaders need to give people space and time to learn by doing.

●    Akio Toyoda admitted that they did not develop their people at a rate that was necessary to support their growth.

●    One countermeasure to this was to introduce a layer of management in their engineering departments to support the learning process.

●    A good step would be to ask yourself what key points of leadership you heard about, and how you can apply it to your organization.

●    Don’t forget to break down the big gap into a targeted and measurable project that you can start to work on.

  ................................................................................................................

George Trachilis is setting up the first North American (Internet-based) Lean Consortium. If you are interested in hosting in your city – or being one of the first companies – call or email George directly.   [email protected] or +1 (204) 880-6363