>> Thank you for attending the Lean Conference.
We are -- we have Robert Brown presenting
on The Dark Matter and Dark Energy of Lean
Thinking, How to See and Make Sense of the
Critical, Invisible People Side. So, please
welcome Robert Brown.
>> Bob: Thank you. Thank you very much. Good
afternoon. And I say that with some degree
of happiness. My main challenge in my presentation
today was to remember to say “good afternoon”
rather than “good morning.” So, it’s
going to be smooth sailing from now on.
But thank you for coming and welcome.
Normally, when I give a presentation, like
most speakers, I like to start off with a
funny story. But today I am not. I’m going
to tell you how I would like you to emotionally
be throughout my presentation. And if all
goes well, my presentation will be between
30 and 40 minutes, so there’s plenty of
time to discuss the topic of dark matter and
dark energy.
I lost my switch here.
Whatever you’re feeling right now, whatever
mental state you’re in right now is fine.
We’ll continue that through some of the
dark matter, dark energy discussion on what
happens in the cosmos. But when I begin talking
about some of the weaknesses of the Toyota
Production System and Lean thinking, I would
like you to begin to have a feeling of dismay.
You don’t have to. But the process I’m
looking for is for you to say, “Gee, I didn’t
know this was going on. This isn’t good.
I don’t really like it.” So, it will create
a sense of need and desire on your part.
When I get to the part where I’m explaining
what Lean dark matter is, I’d like you to
get a sense of optimism, to say, “Hey, Bob
has some pretty good ideas here. I like it.
I think I can do something with this.”
Then last, when I’m talking about Lean dark
energy, I’d like you to get a feeling of
determination: we’re going to be able to
do this. When we’re finished, when I’m
done talking, you’re done talking, I would
like you to feel like you can leave this room
running at full speed, yelling and screaming
at the top of your lungs, waving your arms
saying, “We’re going to do this. We’re
going to do this. We’re going to do this.”
That’s what I’d like you to do, at least
metaphorically, when I’m done.
What I want to talk about next is the context
of dark matter and dark energy in a cosmological
sense so you can get a feel for what we’re
going to be talking about, then we’ll apply
that kind of thinking to the Toyota Production
System and Lean thinking itself.
I hope you can see this relatively well. It’s
a photograph from the Hubble Telescope that
orbits the Earth and altitude of about 400
miles. This is called a ultra deep field.
To take this kind of picture, I’m told that
the area of space that it looks at is what
you would see if you held up a soda straw
to your eye that was six feet long, an incredibly
tiny area. On the right-hand side of this
photograph about, oh, two-thirds of the way
down right-hand side there’s a star. I believe
that’s a star from the Milky Way. All the
other objects are galaxies. Some as far away
as 12 to 13 billion light years. It’s a
phenomenal telescope, gives us phenomenal
information.
About 30 years ago by using the information
by the Hubble Telescope scientists were able
to determine that galaxies are rotating faster
than they should. They’re rotating faster
than the amount of matter in the galaxy would
have it move. So, the assumption is made,
and currently studied, that there is dark
matter that causes the galaxy to rotate as
fast as it does. Dark matter meaning there’s
matter there that we can’t see.
Similarly, about 20 years ago using the Hubble
Telescope data it was determined that the
universe itself is expanding faster than it
should, which means that there’s more energy
in the universe than we can see, and it’s
postulated that there’s dark energy that
we need to see.
So, I’m using that same concept to make
sense of Lean thinking.
This is why we’re here this afternoon. Over
about the last 25 or 30 years people have
been researching change management and including
Lean thinking in change initiatives, change
management, how we’re improving what we
do. And the success rates vary from about
2% to upwards of 65% or 70%.
If you remember what Mark Twain once said,
that there are lies, there are damned lies,
and there are statistics. This is a statistic.
How you measure something can vary so much
that the number is a little bit squishy. But
for our purposes today, I would like you to
assume that Lean thinking is successful 30%
of the time or less. And I think you would
win most bar room arguments.
So, we have to ask ourselves, if 30% is the
true number, is that a good number or a bad
number? If you were a major league baseball
player and you were up to bat and you get
a hit 30% of the time, you’re hall of fame
material. So, a 30% success rate is very good.
However, if you’re, let’s say, piloting
an airplane and your landing success rate
is 30%, you’re probably dead.
It’s my thesis today, what I’m going to
document for you as well as I can, is that
the 30% success rate of Lean thinking is suppressed
by Lean dark matter and Lean dark energy.
I’m going to try to document that for you
through a series of experiences I had directly,
and through my research of the literature.
My search for Lean dark matter began about
10 years ago. I was leading a Kaizen event,
also known as a process improvement workshop.
We were in Day 4, which meant we were creating
new standard work and testing it out. My job
that morning was to follow a medical assistant
who’s following the new standard work to
see how well that was going.
It was probably a 20-minute process and she
was maybe about halfway through, and she was
reaching each cycle within one second of the
time that we were thinking it should take.
So, she was doing really well.
Until she had to cross over a corner of the
waiting room and saw this elderly woman in
a wheel chair under some distress. So, instead
of going this way, she went this way, over
to the elderly woman. She found out that this
woman had brought a piece of paper to show
her doctor and she had lost it. She didn’t
know if she had left it at home, lost it on
the way, whatever.
The medical assistant helped her find it,
calmed her down, and all was well. And she
proceeded back into standard work. After she
was done, I chastised her for ruining our
standard work and upsetting all of the downstream
processes that depended upon her doing her
job correctly.
You know what she did? She smiled. Said, “Thanks,
Bob.” And she said that because she knew
she’d done exactly the right thing. But
it wasn’t part of the standard work. There
was a disconnect between doing the right thing
and doing the standard work. And that concerned
me. I thought especially in knowledge work
Lean thinking is missing something.
So, I thought I would share with you five
clues that I’ve come across to suggest to
me that there is dark matter and dark energy
within Lean that we need to identify and do
something about.
Clue number one. I thought I would go back
to the Toyota Production System, out of which
Lean thinking has evolved, and take a look
at what did they give us? What’s the best
they can give us, and is it good enough?
I read the descriptions of some of the other
presentations today and tomorrow, and quite
a few are talking about this respect for people.
When I first heard about the two pillars of
Lean, I thought this was wonderful, this is
what Toyota was really, really good at. The
two pillars were part of a document that Toyota
put together in 2001. They decided that their
tribal knowledge had to be captured and written
down. So, they put together this document
that they published internally in 2001. And
they said that their success rested on these
two pillars: continuous improvement and respect
for people. And as I said, I thought that’s
glorious.
But I looked at it. And something doesn’t
seem quite right to me. Now, pillar one: continuous
improvement, eliminating waste, I think that’s
a slam dunk. I think we all realize that that’s
very useful to do. And any process has waste
in it, we get rid of the waste, we’re creating
value for the customer.
Where I had some suspicions was the second
column: respect for people. What did that
really mean? So, you can tell here, it means
worker input, in part. You go to the worker
and say, “Worker, you do the work, you know
best what’s not working, you probably have
some great ideas on what we can do to make
it work,” and thus, we’re respecting that
worker.
But what’s that conversation all about when
we’re respecting the worker? We’re respecting
the worker’s ability to improve the process.
Not improve himself/herself, not get along
better with others, not problem-solve better
with others, but to do the process better.
So, I thought the first part of respect for
people isn’t about people at all, it’s
about how to use people to improve the process.
I thought, “That’s a trick.
The second part of it, knowledge, training,
is a similar kind of thing, if you think about
it. We want people to do be well-trained before
they do the job so they have confidence in
the ability to do the job, and we want them
to be trained well enough and courageous enough
to offer suggestions on how to improve the
work. But again, it’s going through people
to improve the process.
The more I thought about that, the more it
became very clear that in a production environment,
in an assembly environment, this isn’t too
much of an error because it’s the assembly
line, moving that as smoothly as quickly as
possible that’s the real key. Everyone is
oriented toward the assembly line, not each
other. But if we take this concept of the
two pillars and give it to Lean thinking outside
the production environment, this small flaw
as far as assembly work is concerned may be
monumental.
And that was one of my first clues that there’s
something going on with people that might
be suppressing the success rate that we’re
enjoying, or maybe not enjoying, in Lean thinking.
So, that’s clue number one.
Clue number two. Shingo Prize. I don’t know
how many of you know about Shigeo Shingo,
but he’s one of the forbearers of the Toyota
Production System and Lean thinking. I believe
it was University of Utah that decided to
honor him by putting together the Shingo Prize
for companies that did extraordinarily well
in their Lean thinking efforts. So, they give
these prizes to the best of the best.
A few years ago, they decided to revisit some
of their winners. And to their dismay -- remember
I talked about dismay earlier, now you can
begin to feel some dismay. To their dismay
they found out that some of the best companies
in implementing Lean weren’t doing well
anymore. That clue to me was the Shingo Prize
people who ought to know the best about how
to evaluate a really good Lean organization
can’t do it successful. They are missing
something, too. So, I continued. I need to
find out what this is all about.
Clue number three. Chihiro Nakao, I don’t
know if you know much about Nakao, but he
is a student of Taiichi Ohno. He is probably
the number one Lean thinking consultant in
the world. And at Taiichi Ohno’s request,
Nakao created this Shingijutsu consulting
company a number of years ago, founded it,
and this consulting company is arguably the
number one consulting company in the world
for Lean thinking.
My point is, if anybody knows Lean thinking,
it’s Nakao. Have I made that point well
enough? He knows stuff.
It so happens that I had the pleasure of being
trained in Lean thinking by Nakao, amongst
others. And I was afforded many opportunities
to be in advanced Lean seminars with him and
maybe a dozen other people.
I took the opportunity one afternoon to ask
him about waste and I made it clear I wasn’t
interested in process waste. I was interested
in learning his point of view about the waste
that can be caused by a bad leader. What does
a bad leader do that creates waste in the
system that we need to know about?
The way Nakao works is he knows some English,
but he usually works through an interpreter,
so the interpreter changed to Japanese what
I was saying and he started speaking. My Japanese
vocabulary is about 30 words, but I could
tell he was floundering. I could be tell because
of his pace of his words and because of the
look on the face of his interpreter. So, I
think she was wondering, “Well, how am I
going to change this into English?”
So, he was finished, she interpreted it, and
what he said didn’t make sense. It was gobbledygook.
Nakao didn’t really understand the people
stuff of Lean thinking. That was a huge clue
that there is dark matter and dark energy
in Lean that we needed to find. That’s clue
number three.
Clue number four and five. Clue number four.
Norman Bodek is not as well known as some
of the other folks in Lean thinking, but he
is the godfather of Lean in the United States.
He’s been to Japan more than 80 times looking
for the best thinkers in the Toyota Production
System and in Lean. I believe he was one of
the first to translate a book by Shingo into
English through Bodek’s company called Productivity
Press, which he sold a few years ago. But
I believe he published more than 100 books
on Lean thinking. He is a friend of [everyone
important] in Lean thinking. He probably knows
about Lean thinking as much as anyone, including
Nakao.
Have I made the point? He knows stuff.
Norman Bodek happens to be a mentor of mine.
I was having lunch with him and explained
the situation with Nakao, saying, “I don’t
think Nakao knows about the people side of
Lean thinking at all.”
And Bodek laughed and he went on to tell a
number of stories about all the people he
knew that were Lean experts, none of which,
in his mind, knew very much about the people
side of Lean thinking. And that pretty much
confirmed my suspicions that there’s something
going on that we’re missing, especially
outside a production environment.
The last clue I needed also came from Bodek
and some others. Norman Bodek years ago proposed
that we should have an eighth waste to go
along with the current seven classic productivity
wastes, and it had to do with underutilizing
people’s potential. I love that idea.
There’s another guy named Bob Emiliani who
is a professor at Central Connecticut State.
He also proposed an eighth waste.
Canon USA, the company Canon, in their training
suggests there’s an eighth waste. A lot
of people have. So, that gave me the conviction
that we needed to look at the people side
of Lean thinking, figure out where we’ve
missed the boat along the way, and fix it.
Which is what I’m going to be talking about
today. So, I’m hoping you’re feeling some
sense of despair and dismay. I can’t see
you, but hopefully you are.
Whoops.
This is where we are. I have decided that
instead of waste, human waste, which is the
eighth waste, that we need to look at people
completely differently. And so, I’m going
to propose that to balance our understanding
of the seven wastes, that we find the people
assets that people bring to the table with
their enthusiasm, their optimism, their hearts.
So we have what I’m going to be calling
in a minute Balanced Lean. We have process
improvement, which is eliminating waste, and
we have people assets, which is the positive
side. We can begin being optimistic in a moment.
So Lean dark matter, I’m going to make the
case, Lean dark matter, which is suppressing
our Lean success, is comprised of the seven
people assets. I got to seven people assets
two ways. One was I was investigating everyone’s
thinking that I could find as to how are people
involved in change management? It went from
the eighth waste of Bodek and Emiliani and
some others, it went to John Kotter’s seven
-- eight steps for change. And everywhere
I could find, I listed a people concept or
a people attribute, or a people asset. I had
a huge wall of sticky notes. I started to
put them together in constellations.
I was nearing the end of that, I thought,
“I could come up with seven.” I could
have come up with 4 or 12, but I thought if
I come up with 7 people assets that will balance
the 7 wastes and I might be able to sell the
idea. So, this is my sales pitch. I’m going
to tell you what I believe are the seven people
assets. There might be 12, there might be
3, but this is my proposal and see if you
like it.
First asset: teamwork. Taiichi Ohno in one
of his books in one sentence said every worker
should be on a team, and I can’t tell you
how important that is. It’s my belief that
my belief and my experience that unless you
have a team, and I mean a high functioning
team, your chance of Lean success is dismal.
Teams are special. I’ll explain why in a
little bit.
Leadership. I think you all know this. Leadership
in a Lean organization is different than leadership
in a non-Lean organization. Part of it is
leaders are teachers. They’re mentors. They
don’t hang you if you try something and
make a mistake. They’re supportive.
I don’t think there are very many leaders
who are trying to lead Lean who really have
the idea in their hearts and in their brains
on how to do it well. So, I think that’s
another, I think significant, bit of Lean
dark matter.
Communication. One of the attributes that
Toyota has is that it communicates throughout
the organization top to bottom, bottom to
top, and side-to-side. If one work group discovers
a really cool bit of standard work for themselves,
everybody knows that through the organization
that needs to know that. They don’t have
too much information. They don’t have too
little information. They have enough information
and it’s true information. It’s not couched
in terms that are politically correct. It’s
“We screwed up here and cost the company
$14 million. So, we need to fix that.” When
they went through that debacle of the acceleration,
they recognized that they had lost their truth
north. I think that’s critical. So communication
is another one of the seven people assets.
This is my favorite. For 40 years I’ve been
working on helping groups of people solve
problems better than their Neanderthal forbearers
did. My presentation last year was on the
neuroscience of continuous improvement. And
I made the case then that the way our brains
work isn’t really useful for good Lean implementation.
So, I think group problem-solving is another
area that I believe is true Lean thinking
dark matter.
Engagement. Many of you are probably familiar
with the Gallup study that 29% of employees
are emotionally engaged in their work, 71%
are not. How receptive do you think that 71%
will be to all the stuff that we want them
to do for Lean thinking? They won’t be.
Which is why we have such a failure rate.
It’s interesting to me, although I don’t
think there’s a connection, that 29% of
people are engaged in their work and we’re
using the number 30 for Lean thinking success.
I don’t know if there’s a correlation,
but it’s an interesting number. Emotional
engagement on the part of employees is another
asset that we need to do something with.
Reward. There was a glorious study in the
19 -- late 1940s by the federal government
listing the 10 things that employees want
from their employers. That list of 10 was
jumbled up and given to managers to rate:
what’s the number one thing employees want?
What’s the number two thing, number three
thing?
And the top three wants by employees were
put at the bottom three by managers. And that
study has been replicated every two or three
years ever since. The last 60 years. Managers
still don’t know who’s coming through
the door to work for them that day.
And lastly, knowledge. One of the things that
I see a lot is someone who’s good at a job
gets kicked up to be supervisor with absolutely
no training and the expectation they’ll
figure it out as they go along. Same is true
of a lot of workers. They’re not given the
information they need; they’re not supported
to ask the right questions, they’re left
to flounder. So, I think knowledge is probably
-- it’s one of the reasons why the Toyota
Production System said we have to have this
respect for people. You don’t want to put
employees into a situation that’s going
to harm them in any way.
So, these are the seven assets which comprise
the dark matter of Lean thinking. So, I’m
hoping you’re still feeling a sense of optimism
and say, “All right. I think these are important.
But what do we do? What do we do with them?”
We need to energize them somehow. If we just
look at those seven assets and say, “Aren’t
these delightful? Isn’t Bob incredibly smart
telling us about these things? And now we
can go home happy with the knowledge that
we know the seven assets.” Not going to
work.
Lean dark energy is enhancing the seven assets.
And there’s two ways of doing that. So,
Lean dark energy, part number one, is a collective
power of people who care. When I have observed
organizations implementing Lean, it was implemented
to everyone, not just the people who cared.
And I’m sure all of you know what the response
of people who don’t care is to Lean implementation.
For many it’s, “Well, if I just keep my
head down long enough, this will go away.”
And they’re right. It’ll go away because
it doesn’t work. So the number one concept
of what Lean energy is, is if there are people
in every organization, if you can collect
them together in a meaningful way and say,
“I have some ways that we can do what we
do much, much better, are you in?” they
will say yes.
This is what they will say yes to. This guy.
Chihiro Nakao. Arguably the number one Lean
thinking consultant in the world. Runs arguably
the number one consultant company in the world.
I was at another seminar with Nakao, I was
listening, he was talking, and he went to
the whiteboard and in English wrote down the
word Tool. And I was curious. He’d been
speaking Japanese and then he wrote the English
word tool. Then his interpreter said -- I
should do this. Every process should have
a tool.
And I wrote a book about this dark matter,
dark energy, Lean thinking. And in the book
I described when he said that I almost fell
of the chair, and I did. I almost fell off
my chair because this was the missing link
of what I had been searching for for years.
Part of my background is psychology. I was
a clinical psychologist, consultant, that
sort of thing, for about 20 years. And I was
always looking for what’s the best way for
people to interact with one another, to solve
problems with one another, to connect really,
really well with one another?
And I couldn’t figure it out. When Nakao
said every process should have a tool, what
that mean to me was if people interactions
can be considered a process, then we can enhance
that with a tool. And if people interactions
are not a process, maybe we can make them
a process by using a tool.
What came to mind immediately that afternoon
was Stephen Covey’s Five Step Delegation
model. That would be considered a tool, in
my mind. If you’re going to delegate something
to somebody, you use Covey’s five steps,
and you’re doing it about as well as it
can be done. If the person you’re delegating
to knows the five steps, they’ll make sure
you do it right, and it will be done well.
So, I thought all I have to do to figure this
stuff out is attach a tool to the seven assets
and we’re powering, we’re enhancing Lean
dark matter. I want to take you through that.
First asset is teamwork. Two years ago at
this conference, along with Tim Rhoden, a
colleague of mine, we presented the concept
of the critical first 60 minutes of a Kaizen
event. What we’re talking about is the benefit
of taking time out from a Kaizen event to
have those participants become a high performing
team. This is the tool that we used. We started
off with a compelling task, asking the participants,
“Is this important to you, or is this a
waste of your time?” We discuss that. Made
sure it was important to people.
Sense of membership was, “Do we have the
people we need? Are you important to us? Do
we need you?”
The idea there was everyone on the team had
to know beyond the shadow of a doubt why he
or she was important to the team. Likewise,
everyone else on the team had to know why
each person was important to the team. And
in that way you have done of the important
team components of accountability.
Influence on the team. If someone can’t
influence a function of a team, you don’t
have a team.
Fourth part -- and then -- or fourth part
is personal reward. What’s in it for me?
If I’m going to be on this team, what do
I get? For many it was the vision of the team,
or the compelling task. But for others, it’s
“Do I get a better job? Do I get a raise?
What’s in it for me?”
So, if you want to enhance the asset of teamwork,
I’m proposing that if you use a tool like
the four-part teaming model you’ll be able
to do it, things will work.
Leadership. This is a tool I invented 40 years
ago to save my life in a downtown Detroit
gym. I’ve understood that other people have
invented the same concept. The idea is, is
that we’re all different and if you want
to impact somebody, if you want to have influence
on somebody, you state what you think and
ask them what they think.
The way this tool works in leadership is you
could go to somebody and say, “Tom, I really
admired how you’ve improve the quality of
your department’s work over the last six
months.” That’s what you observed. And
you can ask the question, “Where do you
see your team in six months?” And that creates
a fruitful discussion. Simple tool. Two parts
to it. It’s part of what leaders can do,
which I don’t think they do. They don’t
have the tools to do it.
Feedback. This is a tool that I teach in my
workshops and somebody once said it was Dr.
Bob’s Glorious Feedback System, and I felt
flattered by that, so I kept the name. But
feedback basically is someone has a blind
spot and you’re telling them what the blind
spot is in such a way that they’re willing
to listen to you and to change. It’s been
my experience that many of the tools or models
on feedback have a flaw. I’ll get to what
that is in a moment. But there’s a giver
and receiver in feedback. In my system, the
giver of the feedback, the person who wants
to tell the other person that they screwed
up says, “Joe, can I give you some feedback
about your presentation yesterday?”
And Joe can answer, “Not right now, thanks,”
or, “Sure, go ahead.”
Then the feedback giver describes the behavior.
In this case, the feedback giver says, “Joe,
you were telling some incredibly good stories
about losing your first job.” Joe’s job
is to listen.
Feedback giver describes the outcome. “Joe,
I’ve never seen an audience more engaged
in a story than your audience was yesterday.”
Joe is still listening.
Have you ever asked the relevant question,
in this case, that relevant question is, “Joe,
did you realize that you were such an impactful
storyteller?”
Joe says, “Thanks. I didn’t realize that.
I’ll see if I can tell more stories.”
If both parties are aware of this tool, how
to use it, do you see how much better communication
would be? Works.
As I said earlier, this is my favorite thing.
I created Harnessing the Speed of Thought
as a problem-solving process for groups probably
about 30 years ago as an offshoot of my dissertation.
And what I realized 30 years or so ago is
people do come to situations with different
points of view. And as I research the neurology
of thinking, there’s a concept called System
One Thinking, which most of use most of the
time, which says that our brains immediately
go from a problem to a solution. That’s
what we’re aware of. We’re aware of the
problem and the solution.
In a committee, this means that the 10 people
on the committee are mostly discussion solution
options and debating the solution options.
That’s why they swirl so much, don’t get
very much done. With a tool, you can better
manage the problem-solving steps that a group
of people will take to solve a problem. I
want to go through this really quickly because
it’ll take two days to really understand.
But the idea is you get everybody to identify
a mutual issue. The decision is what’s important
for us to discuss right now? And you don’t
go off this step until everybody says, “Yes,
that’s the issue we need to resolve.”
Second step is you define a mutual goal. How
will we know if us, as a group, have solved
this problem? So, you define the outcome.
When you do that, you’re starting to form
an immediate team because you’re not going
to debate things anymore, you’re going to
work together toward your mutual solution,
an incredibly powerful element of this tool
to solve problems.
Third is: you list hurdles. What do we have
to worry about? Are there time constraints?
Are there financial constraints? Do we have
to buy new computers? What things might we
have to take into account to be able to reach
our goal? This is important as step three
because in normal group problem-solving a
hurdle is thrown by the opponent to the proffered
solution. “That won’t work because it’ll
cost too much money. That won’t work because
we tired that already before.” Hurdles are
used as ammunition.
Here they’re used as insights to help us
choose the best solution. And you can have
the most curmudgeonly negative thinkers on
your team and you say, “Tom, you’re the
most negative person we have here, tell us
what do we need to worry about?”
And Tom will say, “Yes, I will tell you.”
And he’ll feel good [inaudible] feel good
because he’s coming up with things that
you need to worry about and take into account.
Step four, be innovative, be creative. Come
up with any possible solution, any not possible
solution. Just come up, be creative.
And the last step is you choose the best solution.
You do that by finding solutions that best
overcome the hurdles and reach the goal. This
works monumentally well on difficult problems.
People don’t use it because they don’t
use a tool. And Lean thinking, it’s really,
really helpful to use this sort of a problem-solving
process.
Engagement. The tool that I propose you use
is personal mission statements, which is normally
not on anyone’s radar. But when I work with
an organization, this is one of the first
things I talk about, that when employees come
through the door they’re still human beings.
They have expectations of what can I get out
of my work today? What can I get out of my
work this year? Where do I fit my career into
what I’m doing now?
When I was a manager, I had one employee who
told me his personal mission statement, which
was he wanted to work the absolute least he
could and still keep his job. And I felt great
that he was comfortable enough with me, his
boss, to tell me that. And I made him a promise
that if he did everything I needed him to
do, he could keep his job. I had my mission,
he had his mission, and all we had to do was
understand each other’s mission.
It’s a wonderful tool. I don’t know how
many of you are leaders, but if you asked
the leaders in your organization what are
the mission statements of the people you supervise,
they’ll say they’re late for lunch, they
have to go to lunch. They won’t know. But
this is the essence of the people that are
walking through your door. This is them. And
it’s a simple tool, once trust is developed,
to help them be themselves the best way they
can be AND help you out.
Oh, this is mine. I was going to share mine.
My career mission statement is very short-term.
At the end of the day, if someone says, “Thanks,
Bob,” I’ve fulfilled my mission. So, if
you see me, say, “Hey, Bob, thanks for that
presentation. That was good.” I’m good
to go.
Reward. In my conceptualization of initiating
Lean thinking and sustaining Lean thinking,
as I said earlier, the team is the most important
component of that.
The fourth part, the fourth element of this
four-part teaming model is what’s in it
for me -- I’m sorry -- yes, it is. I’m
trying to around in my head. And if you know
that as a team leader and if everyone on the
team knows what everyone else’s personal
reward for being on the team is and you’re
fulfilling that, then you also have mutual
accountabilities to make sure everybody is
getting what they need from being on the team.
It’s not an isolated thing. It’s us working
together to make everybody fulfilled. Hugely
important tool, this four-part teaming model.
And last is, for knowledge, the skills map.
This is one of the thing is learned from Lean
thinking that is, I think, an incredibly powerful
tool that we don’t use enough. And that
is, the team decides what’s important. What’s
important for us to know and do really well?
I’ve chosen three things here: feedback,
personal mission statements, and personal
rewards. So, you discuss how are we going
to do that?
And these particular four people, they said,
“We will give you an X that you’ve accomplished
this task for feedback if you have successfully
given feedback to everyone else on the team
and we’ll give you credit for that.”
So, in this instance for this small department,
Tom has successfully given feedback to everybody
on the team and everybody knows that. Ted,
same thing. Sue and Alley haven’t done that.
Do you think they’ll be motivated to learn
how to give good feedback? Yeah. Personal
mission statements [two] people have identified
their personal mission statement. One person
has identified his personal reward.
Even if names aren’t on here on a skills
map and it’s a confidential identifier,
research has said that if it’s up on a wall
for all to see it increases people’s motivation.
They’ll do it. And if you have a team environment,
this is huge. This spirit of camaraderie,
of working together, of succeeding or failing
together is monumental. Again, it’s the
dynamic of the team.
I can’t tell what time it is, I can’t
see where my helper is.
>> Audience Member: One o’clock.
>> Bob: One o’clock. We have until when?
>> Audience Member: 1:15.
>> Bob: Okay. I wanted to give you plenty
of time. So anyway. These are the seven assets
and these are the tools. I don’t know if
you want to remember these, but this a kind
of thing you can have up somewhere for your
team to say, “On this asset, we’re working
on this tool. On the other asset we’re working
on this other tool.”
So these are -- this is my proposal for a
new way of understand the two pillars of succeed.
One is the same: continuous improvement, eliminating
waste. The other is people assets, enhancing
those people assets with people who care,
and using tools to enhance those assets.
And this is my projected result. You’ll
be putting people first and the process second,
which is exactly the sequence that it should
be. Outside an assembly environment, we are
making a monumental mistake unless we put
people first, process second. When you do
that, this will be the other outcome. People
will own the process and they’ll own the
outcome because that will give them a feeling
of pride and dignity and a sense of fulfillment.
That make sense? We have to change fundamentally
how we approach Lean thinking in a non-manufactured
environment, otherwise, we’re stuck with
a 30%, at best, success rate.
So, this is what I hope you do rather than
charge out the door waving your arms and screaming
at the top of your lungs, introduce the concept
of dark matter and dark energy to your group,
to say, “Are we missing something in our
implementation? Does it feel complete to you?
Or is there something going on that we need
to take a look at?”
And then propose, “Well, I know about these
seven people assets, let’s chat about them.”
Team decides where to begin, put together
a plan, and you monitor it daily, weekly,
as often as seems reasonable. According to
Darryl, who runs this thing, we’re not supposed
to use our presentation as an infomercial,
so I won’t. But these are some of the references
that I think are brilliantly written and well-thought-through.
They specifically attack what I just talked
about, and I have -- I’m part of two booths.
They’re -- Jack here is part of Instant
Impact, which has asked me to join them. And
Carlos Venagus, who some of you know, has
a Lean office Innovation, I’m there. So,
we can chat a little bit.
But for now we have, I think, maybe 15 minutes
left. I’d be interested in what you’re
hearing? And Jack will have a mic or somebody
will have a mic.
>> Jack: Anybody with questions?
>> Bob: And answers would be good. Answers
would be good, too.
>> Audience Member: Hi. Thank you, Dr. Bob.
I had a question about your skills map. In
the company I worked for previously, we used
what’s called a Skills Competency Checklist,
which seems similar to what you’re talking
about. And it seemed -- we got the results,
but more on the aspect of the -- using the
stick versus the carrot, so people actually
getting the skills competency checklist filled
out because they didn’t want to, so it was
more from an aversion versus positive moving
forward. So, I’m curious if you could speak
more about that aspect of using the skills
map from a positive perspective?
>> Bob: The question is straight -- just perfect.
When you use tools of any sort, you can use
them as a club or you can use them as an endorsement
of the person, the people.
So, the first order of business is to create
a team and have the team decide what’s important.
And once the team decides what’s important,
then it is comfortable and a positive thing
to say, “What do we need to improve to get
where we want to go?”
The negative of it is that people who are
slackers who really don’t want to contribute
are identified. People feel bad about that.
But if you truly want to succeed and you truly
want to have a highly effective team, and
you want to apply Lean to that team, then
the cost of that is everybody on the team
has to deserve being on the team and contribute.
If they’re not contributing to the welfare
of the team, and thus the company, you can’t
have them there.
So, if something like a skills map or other
tools are not being seen as useful by the
participants, there’s either a leadership
issue of judging people rather than supporting
them, there isn’t a team, or there’s a
fear that we need to have everybody part of
the team no matter what. So, in usage, a skills
map never has to be negative even though it’s
accurate and true.
Does that make sense?
>> Audience Member: Yes.
>> Jack: Next? Questions?
Oh, okay.
Why don’t you give us your name and where
you’re from?
>> Audience Member: My name’s Max Colette
and I teach business management at Skagit
Valley College, and just a point to her question,
who’s pushing that negative use of the tool?
Somebody has to be -- have a mindset, right,
that is saying -- as having an “or else”
attitude, which makes me think of Dan Pink’s
Autonomy Mastery Purpose stuff. But something’s
going on in that organization that’s pushing
that negativity.
>> Bob: Everyone get that? Sometimes I have
a little bit of difficulty hearing it with
the echo, but let me answer the question -- or
respond to the comment that I think you made.
The element of judgment of right or wrong
has to be eliminated in places of work. Currently,
we have a military hierarchy. There’s the
boss, there’s the managers, there’s supervisors,
that sort of thing. And each level judges
the lower level.
I’m writing another book with a colleague
of mine where we’re trying to create instead
of a triangle authority structure, one that
looks like an amoeba and it’s always moving
toward what’s the best thing for the customer?
So, I think one of the hallmarks of Lean thinking
is to figure out what true north is for the
company, and if you have a well-established
true north, what is our purpose here? How
are we going to fulfill the needs of our customer
and our employees in a way that improves both?
And if you have that true north, you can make
mistakes and people will forgive you for it
and help you do better next time. If you create
the same hierarchical structure or you retain
that, then it’s not going to work because
part of Lean is to fail forward fast and unless
you have that mentality, you’re going to
just simply fail forward.
Does that answer your question? I can’t
see you anymore.
Where’s Jack?
>> Jack: I got it. And you are?
>> Audience Member: My name is Cindy Rust
and I work for Adult Protective Services.
My question is do you have examples of personal
rewards that employees might have for themselves?
>> Bob: Personal rewards. When I was a manager,
I would ask each of my people, “What’s
your reward? What do you want from this work?”
And often times, it’s part of that personal
mission statement. That one guy said, “I
don’t want to work very much, but I want
to keep my job.”
Other people say, “I want to get into management.
Can you help me get into management?”
Other people say, “I want to learn enough
here so I can go off somewhere else.”
It’s simply a matter of sitting down, more
than once, usually, because people don’t
trust bosses because of the problem of judgment
and everything else, but over a period of
time, if you’ve created some credibility,
people will tell you what they want and you
make sure you give it to them. Simple as that.
They’ll tell you.
Are we out of time? I see other people...
Five more minutes? That’s great.
>> Jack: Next up?
>> Bob: Are we done early? I think we’re
done early.
>> Jack: Going once. Going twice. Thank you,
Dr. Bob.
>> Bob: Thank you very much. Have a good day.
[Applause]
