Yokoten: Best Practice Sharing

I have to admit to a certain fascination with Japanese management methods.

I love the idea of the 5S approach to ordering and organizing a workspace:

• seiri - sorting things to be where you need them
• seiton - systematizing your workplace to make it efficient
• seiso - sweeping up to keep it clean and tidy
• seiketsu - standardizing your processes
• shitsuke - sustaining your good habits

I may write about some more of them in future. But today, I want to tell you about a term that is new to me. I discovered it earlier this week.

That's one way I learn and remember stuff. By sharing the new idea with others as soon as I can.

Yokoten

Yokoten is a Japanese manufacturing concept that is especially relevant to Project Managers.

And, what particularly tickles me is that, in telling you about Yokoten, I am doing Yokoten. 

Because Yokoten means 'Best Practice Sharing'

It's the best translation of a term adopted by Toyota. It reflects the idea of transferring ideas and information among peers.

Yokoten builds on another, more familiar concept: 'Kaizen'

Kaizen is a continuous flow of improvements. Everyone on your team has the right - and responsibility - to spot ways to do things better.

Once you find an idea that works, through Kaizen, the next thing to do is to share it. That's Yokoten. In Toyota's usage, it carries the ideas of:

• sharing a new idea
• transmitting it across the organization (rather than top-down)
• allowing others to copy it
• co-operation between teams
• a shared sense of responsibility and success

Yokoten binds teams and work-groups together into a larger team. For Toyota, it has a big impact on results. It is a 'success-multiplier'.

Lesson Learned Meetings are not Enough

Your team members could go further. Encourage them to share new discoveries among themselves. Give them permission to see what other team members are doing.

Your role is to encourage this and get the word out. Simply copelling people to copy innovations and improvements is a step. But for sustainable personal growth and team performance improvements, you need more.

It's attitudes and thinking that people need to share, copy, and adopt. We only really learn lessons when we adopt new ideas and the thinking behind them.

Take care - and always share

Mike

PS: Here's a coincidence... This week's article, which we published at OnlinePMCourses on Monday, is an example of Yokoten.

One of our readers asked about start-ups, getting a blog going, multi-media marketing – and how to project manage them.

So, I wrote an article: 'Building an Online Business: Project Management Lessons', sharing what I have learned in building OnlinePMCourses. Do take a look.