by Lee Fried, on 20 Aug 2007 06:14 pm
The Journey
Tools are just tools
I had a good first day back from vacation and am excited to jump back into things. Before I left for vacation as well as today I had a couple of conversations that worried me a little. My worry is that management may be getting so focused on the application of Lean tools that they may be in some incidences loosing sight of the purpose of the effort in the first place. For example, I had a discussion with a line manager who is pushing to have a rapid process improvement workshop (RPIW) in their area, but when I asked what problem they were trying to solve I did not get a very clear answer. The manager had heard about others success with the tools of Lean and wanted their chance to put in “rings of defense”, steady flow and a heijunka even though they did not really understand the underlying reason for applying the tools.
I was not surprised by this conversation, and believe it is just an outcome of where we are as an organization on our Lean journey. In the early stages of our Lean efforts we put a heavy emphasis on training and deploying various Lean tools with moderate improvement. Our primary vehicle for improvement was events and they have served their purpose well. At first we needed the exposure, sponsorship and focus on the RPIWs in order to make cross-functional change happen quickly. The high profile nature of the events as well as the visibility of many of the tools have created a lot of energy and excitement that have caught the attention of leadership across the organization and the pull is very strong. Moving forward we need to make sure we shape the use of tools and events in a way that leads to deeper learning. Learning the context in which the tool is applied and not just about the tool itself.
Recently, with the start of the Model Line work we have begun to be more strategic with our training and deployment activities. We have begun to shift away from a tool driven approach to one more centered on improving our management systems. This makes the work far more difficult, yet far more rewarding. Difficult, because it means that leadership needs to significantly change their behavior and roles. Rewarding, because its no longer just about following the steps in applying a new method.
Tools and events will continue to be important components of our strategy, but they are simply tools and they should only be applied when system changes will result. My worry is that as an organization we will need to get all 10,000 employees to understand this difference.
on 20 Aug 2007 at 7:11 pm 1.John Hunter said …
Great post. Great goal. I agree quite a challenge. I don’t think you can really hope to get all 10,000 to understand in the short run. My personal belief is the time of when you are trying to make this change (which takes years) to become an organization that acts as a system you balance education (investment - one of the best forms of investment often) and improvements today.
Often the two go hand in hand - there is little more educational than actually applying tools and concepts yourself to solve your own problems. That is the best way to educate. But I think when you see this dual role of current improvement efforts it changes your measure of success - not just measuring improvement for today (or improvements in the value stream that will pay dividends for years) but also valuing the new knowledge gained by the participants. I have never been able to quantify that second gain but that doesn’t bother me.
on 20 Aug 2007 at 7:21 pm 2.Lee Fried said …
Hi John,
Thanks for the post and I could not agree more. Learning Lean does not happen in the classroom, it happens in the Gemba. We have been very focused on teaching from within the work and have begun to see a very strong correlation between the success of an improvement and then number of times a leader has participated/lead a kaizen effort. The hard part for us right now is that most of us are very green and the lack of experience often makes the going very slow.
Thanks for your input,
Lee
on 21 Aug 2007 at 5:50 am 3.Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog » Improvement Tools and Improving Management said …
[...] Tools are just tools by Lee Fried We have begun to shift away from a tool driven approach to one more centered on improving our management systems. This makes the work far more difficult, yet far more rewarding. [...]
on 21 Aug 2007 at 9:47 am 4.Mark Graban said …
Don’t let anyone forget the good Dr. Ted’s quote from my podcast with you guys –
“What tool do we use? Our BRAINS!”
I love that quote and can’t get enough of it.
Podcast Link
on 04 Sep 2007 at 1:08 pm 5.Randy Fisher said …
I respect your admission that you were ‘very green’. My question then, is if you are so green, then how were you able to convince / persuade senior management to invest in this current course of action?
- Randy