Your Problem Solving Team

This post is the second of at least three posts in my problem solving mini-series.   Think of this as “more lessons learned along the way”.  In my career, I’ve been part of a bunch of problem solving activities/projects/blitzes etc.  Over time, I’ve developed a sort of ‘radar’ that clues me in that I am dealing with people who aren’t plugged in or who think they already have the answers.  These clues don’t lead me to knowing who is “in” and who is “out”, just who might need to be dealt with differently than others.  Without further ado, here’s my list of red flags:

- Saying “I think” – Unless you are brainstorming or there is a very specific reason, problem solving is not usually the time for a soapbox.  It should be a time to focus on data and facts.

- Ignoring data – Often, people come in to an activity with the ‘solution’ in their head or a bias towards some particular actions.  These folks can cause a lot of havoc in sidetracking others.

- Placing TOO much faith in data – The flipside of the above problem.  Some folks become so data focused that they fail to see potential pitfalls with the data being used or the real world impact of what is happening.

- Talking about the way they solved this problem “in their old job” – While the problem you are solving is probably not unique to the world, solutions aren’t generally ‘copy and paste’ ready.  And, even if they are, the cause and effect needs to be understood in your specific case before implementing the solution.

- Being overly confident in the skills of the team – I’m a firm believer that people can learn and contribute at whatever level they may be at.  However, sometimes you need to consider the limitations in skills and/or experience that the team has so you can learn how to augment it.

These aren’t hard and fast rules, but some of the key flags I’ve come across in the past.  What about you…any red flags you have found?

Game Changing Improvements Hard to Discuss

Kaizen events are multi-day improvement activities aimed at creating change to a process.  During the event, the improvement team understands the current state, defines an ideal state and then develops a plan to create change headed in the direction of the ideal state.

Sounds simple enough, right?

Most teams don’t have any trouble discussing the ideal state.  The team can state the ideal state of a process but don’t necessarily believe they will get there anytime soon.

The hard part comes when discussing how the improvements they can make happen will change the process. Too many times I have seen groups scale back the improvement ideas.  They try to just change a few things within the current process.  The team has a hard time making bigger changes, even if it is just a recommendation.  In organizations where lean is not prevalent and traditional management behaviors have created silos and squashed improvement ideas from the employees, the employees do not believe the bigger changes they want will be put into action.

There can be time during the event spent convincing the team it is the right thing to recommend the bigger changes even if they think the leadership will not accept the changes.  It is about painting a picture.  The team has to walk the leadership through the current state and have them understand where they are.  Then paint a vivid picture of the ideal state.  More times than not I have seen the intermediate future state accepted by leadership when a vivid picture is painted and current and future state maps are made to make the process come alive.

Improvement teams cannot be afraid to recommend what they believe is truly the best option.  If the team feels strongly the leadership will not like it, then there is nothing wrong with having a Plan B.  But, never start with Plan B until you have tried everything to get Plan A bough into.

Visual Management…It’s Elementary, Watson.

Each year I spend one day as a volunteer at my kids’ elementary school.  It is a lot of fun helping out in their classroom, in art class or the library.  My kids are still at an age where they are excited and proud to have dad around so it is very enjoyable.

What I really like about the school (I’m sure other elementary schools are this way too) is their use of visual management.  The school uses it in several ways.

The school uses visual management for learning.  All the classrooms have big calendars on the wall in the early grades to learn days of the week, months, and time.  3rd, 4th, and 5th they use visual management to learn about the solar system, the phases of the moon and animal habitats.  This is just in the normal classroom.  The music room, art room, library and gym all have their own visual management for learning.

Another simple visual management is for easier cleanup in the cafeteria.  Here is a picture showing what tub to put the silverware in.  Grouping the silverware makes it easier for the helpers to clean and separate the silverware for the next lunch session.

Finally, they use visual management to show status.  The picture shows which classrooms earned their falcon tickets (falcons is their mascot) for good behavior for the month.  They get them awarded by other teachers and earn them as a class, not individuals.

These are just a few ways the schools uses visual management.  The kids are so used to it and know where to go to get the information they need.  When do schools stop doing this?  Why?  If it never stopped would it be easier to transition this to an everyday practice as an adult?

Visual management.  If the elementary schools can do it so well, why can’t we?

 

Lean Lesson from the Book of Proverbs

“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, But a wise man is he who listens to counsel.”

Proverbs 12:15 (New American Standard Bible)

During service last Sunday, our pastor used this verse during his sermon.  It struck me as a great verse about lean leadership and learning.

Too many times I have seen someone rush in with the answers without asking questions because they believe they have the right way.  Quite honestly, I have done it myself.  That was hard lesson to learn.  And in the end, I did feel like a fool.

Helping someone solve their issue means a person must listen and take counsel in order to learn.  This learning will help provide better teaching to the person that is being helped.  I have found this to be true in my own work.  My help to resolve the current issue  is appreciated and more complete when I deeply understand the current condition through listening and taking counsel from others.

As we lead organizations through lean transformations, it is much better to be seen as wise and not the fool.

Importance of Sponsorship

One of the most common tools used in lean is the kaizen event.  This is where a group of people supporting a process, as well as the customers and suppliers of the process, are sequestered for 3-5 days to improve the process.  There is a facilitator that leads the team members through the improvement process.

There are many important aspects of a kaizen event that have to be done correctly to make it as successful as possible.  The most important of part of preparing for a kaizen event is making sure you get the correct sponsorship.  It does not matter how much you improve the process, without the right sponsorship the implementation plan and sustainment can fail miserably.

There are two types of sponsorship that I usually work with: executive and primary.

Executive Sponsorship is usually a senior level leader or leaders.  Usually, a director level or higher but this may very depending on your organization.  The responsibilities of an executive sponsor is to:

• Initiate and drive the case for change/improvement
• Have the authority to approve the future state and implementation plan
• Actively and visibly participate in the change
• Promote the change with their subordinates
• Partners and links with other Senior leader to ensure the change is approved & implemented across the entire process

Primary Sponsorship is usually a middle to senior level leader who is vested in the process.  These are sponsors that the kaizen event facilitator will work closely with to ensure it is successful.  The responsibilities of the primary sponsor is to:

• Implement the future state within the stated time frames
• Actively and visibly participate in the change
• Promote the change with their subordinates
• Authorize the change
• Provide resources to enable and support the change
• Link with other middle and senior level managers to ensure the change is approved & implemented

Sponsorship of the kaizen event is critical in order to gain buy-in and help sustain the improvements made by the team.  So be sure you have the sponsors’ buy-in to support the kaizen event and the changes that come out of it.

 

Tailoring the Message

I was paging through some comments and found this one about a post I wrote a while back.  I was going to reply directly to the comment, but my response tended longer than the comment section and I thought I’d post it by itself.  The intent of my original post was how to work in Lean with people who were against it. The response was that I might have been asking the wrong question in asking how to sell Lean.

I totally agree with the idea that everyone wants higher quality, lower costs and better delivery.  However, the willingness or individuals and groups to try ‘new’ ways to get there is at the very heart of why there are thousands of lean resources out there.  It’s like saying lots of people would like to climb Mt. Everest, but not many are willing to put in the time, money and physical effort to prepare for the climb.  The disconnect between an interest in the destination and a willingness to undertake the journey is often huge.  That’s before even getting in to the many corporate cultures that smother or punish the different, regardless of results.

The other aspect of this that I have found over time is that not all areas are interested in the same benefits, at least on the early part of a Lean journey.  The point that excites the plant manager may not have the same weight with a front line supervisor.  The benefits that an accountant might find would be mostly irrelevant to the team members on the shop floor.  Or, put a slightly different way, what group of people are directly affected by reduced lead times through the plant or reduced inventory?  Those things as stand-alone benefits don’t really provide much interest for many people.  The side effects of these like the reduced inventory allowing the existing inventory to be better organized and easier to store/find/retrieve are what a lot of people will actually feel.  Just as the solution has to be right for the problem, the message has to be tailored to the audience.

The comment did make me reflect on the overall delivery of my message.  It is a great point to make sure that the overall business value of the effort is clear.  I’m sure that I can lose sight of bringing concepts back to the big picture when I’m working on some of the finer points.

I do appreciate the opportunity for dialog that this outlet creates.  Hopefully we can all continue to help each other think more deeply or more broadly.

Trust Fear and Options

I often get inspired to write based on conversations with other people about what they are seeing or experiencing.  This is one of those times.

I recently had a conversation with a good friend where he talked about ‘Trust’ being the big buzzword where he works.  He was talking about trust in the sense of management starting a slogan campaign saying that ‘we all need to trust each other to be great’.  I asked his thoughts and he told me that the only thing that he trusted was that if he made a mistake he trusted that he would get yelled at for it.  Almost as an aside he also said they were starting to talk about implementing Lean.  I guess I should be excited that another company is “going” Lean, but this seems doomed from the start.

I’m always struck by how prevalent the culture of management by fear really is.  It strikes me because it almost always comes from one root cause high enough in the culture who treats people like crap and this behavior gets emulated by others in the organization.  The weirder part is that the behavior is usually poorly copied by people who fall in to sort of a groupthink of treating people like disposable widgets and reinforcing a culture that very, very few people would ever say they want.

Why do I think this is even remotely relevant?  Mainly because it seems to me like the root cause of a tragedy of inefficiency.  These cultures have a tendency to becoming self-sustaining because those that remain to be promoted either have the same inclination to disrespect others or give up their opposition in order to fit in.  Those that can’t go along end up leaving for a better fit.  These companies run off some potentially fantastic talent because they aren’t aware of the need to change.

What I told my friend is that he has 3 choices:  he can spend the rest of his time there waiting for things to change, he can let the culture kill his natural temperament, or he can leave.  I realize that not every culture is a fit for every person, but these shouldn’t be the main options.  Maybe that’s the ongoing incentive to companies who have a strong culture of people being treated well.  They will attract the best talent who value that type of behavior.  The rich will get richer and the rude get ruder.

The Best Leader

As I have kind of been on a kick of thinking about leadership this week, I wanted to share some thoughts on the person that stands out as the best leader that I have worked with.  I don’t think this person will ever read this, so this isn’t a kiss up, not is it a eulogy.  It’s just a bit of information that I can’t quite categorize.

I consider myself a Lean thinker, so I would expect to be able to tap back in my mind of a great Lean leader that has shaped my thinking and been my role model.  I can point to a bunch of individuals that have helped develop my thinking and taught me more than I can ever repay.  But the best leader that I have worked for frankly didn’t teach me much of anything.  I can’t point to more than a handful of things that I learned from this person either about the execution of my job or the industry of our business in general.  This person told me they wouldn’t support Lean and that they didn’t believe that it would work for our business.  But, at the end of the day, of the things that you expect from a leader, this person was the best.

There was a consistent vision and roadmap of where we were headed.  There was a clear expectation of behaviors and consistent feedback for those that didn’t meet expectations.  People were encouraged to create their own solutions and plans.  The leader offered support to execute the plans and was firm when those plans fell short.  It was the best example of leadership day in and day out that I have ever been involved with.

Now, how do I rectify these leadership behaviors with my Lean mindset?  Frankly, I have no idea.  Maybe this goes back to the understanding that not all combinations are the right fit for every person.  Just because I didn’t learn what I wanted to learn doesn’t mean this person was a bad teacher.  Just because we didn’t see eye to eye on some topics doesn’t mean either of us was right or wrong.  I like to think that what I learned about leadership outpaces what I may not have learned in other areas.  Leadership, much like Lean, is a much more complex topic than any simple outline can explain.

Coaching It or Allowing It

I was recently browsing around for information on Mike Leach, the current football coach at Washington State University and formerly of Texas Tech.  In my reading, I learned about a saying that he had in his office that said, “You are either coaching it or allowing it to happen.”  I’m not sure I’d claim that there is anything especially Lean about the phrase.  For starters, it seems to violate the Deming anti-slogan thinking.  The other arbitrary test that I apply is that it doesn’t sound like something I would see or hear at Toyota.  It also seems pretty convenient to have a phrase like this in an environment where you have a group of 18-22 year olds whose future prospects are more or less dependent on their ability to earn or keep a scholarship that you sign off on.

I still like the quote and I think the reason it stands out to me for the completeness of it.  There really isn’t any gray area at all.  If you are leading people or teaching them (or both), what occurs is often a result either of your action or lack of action.  A lot of what marks companies or facilities that are either starting or in the middle of a transition to Lean is the lack of a complete, consistent, compelling vision that people are following.  Navigating the gray area during a Lean transition sometimes doesn’t lend itself to everyone being on the same page.

To my frame of mind, questions like this go back to how deliberate you are in where you are going and how well people can understand the ‘True North’ vision.  Little checks like this are sometimes a stretch, but I have found that they help to keep me on track with what I am trying to do.

Making Work Agreements Visual

Whenever doing work with another group or person, it is very important that everyone has agreement with what needs to be done and how it will be done.  Discussions happen between the parties and everyone seems to agree.  Then people go off and do the work and the next time the two parties meet there are odd looks and comments about that was not what the other person meant.

Recently, I wrote about the benefits of writing an A3 around problem solving.  When agreeing to what work will be done and who will do it, writing it down in an A3 format is very beneficial also.  The A3 can help foster a discussion about what was really meant.  Seeing the thoughts on paper in text or drawings makes it easier to communicate.

Another benefit I have found, is when there are disagreements and the thoughts are written on paper the focus seems to be on the content and not the person.  It doesn’t completely eliminate somebody wanting to attack a person and become defensive, but it does help to reduce the likely hood of this happening.

The more people can communicate verbally using a written format, such as an A3, to enhance the discussion the easier it will be for people to agree on what needs to be done and how it will be done.  And the next time the groups meet, the better chance of their being no misunderstanding as to the work that was done.