by Lee Fried, on 26 Jan 2008 03:46 pm
The Journey
Gaining a Problem Consciousness
Our Sensei once told me that he knows when right from the start when he begins working with a company whether or not they are really applying Lean. If he walks in the door and all they can talk about is how great things are and how great they are he knows that if is a charade. On the other hand, he knows when he has entered a great Lean company right from the start, because they are always the organizations that are the most humble and most open about discussing their problems. These companies not only have cultures that reward making problems visible, but they also have employees that have been trained to develop a problem consciousness.
Over the last couple of years it has been very interesting to watch my own organization begin to shift is culture and begin to develop an awareness of its problems. We are young on this journey, but have made a lot of progress. At first, it was hard to get leadership to talk about problems in concrete terms. It was rare that a manager would step forward to ask for help, because this would imply that they were not doing their job. The culture was not supportive to making problems visible. I remember when I first started working with the VP of the Model Line area and he began to shift his thinking on management as he spent more time in gemba and more time reflecting on his own behaviors. He stopped blaming other departments and began to become more open about the problems that were coming from his own operations. It was like a collective sigh of relief came from all 650 employees under him. Slowly others began to open up about their own challenges. He had made it right through example for other to open up.
I think the organization has made great strides over the last year in following the VP leads. Every day the conversations seem to become more open and honest. We still tend to soften problems and often we find ourselves falling back on old behaviors, but overall the organization has learned to become hard on the process and not so hard on the people.
What has been even more interesting has been watching leaders develop and gain greater consciousness of the problems that they have. We are now three months into applying the methods of a Hoshin System, which require leaders to bring data and go through root cause analysis. At the same time many leaders are spending more time in Gemba then they have in the past. This collectively has allowed the organization to begin to understand not only where the problems are, but the breadth and depth of these problems. It is not like these problems did not exist before Lean. We just could not see them, did not understand them or did not think they were problems at all. For many leaders this transformation is humbling, overwhelming and relieving at the same time. The more you know, the bigger the challenges you become aware of the better the opportunity to focus on what is most important. Powerful.
on 27 Jan 2008 at 1:17 am 1.I see a problem here, and here, and here, and here… « Engineering industry since 2008 said …
[...] see a problem here, and here, and here, and here… Problem consciousness, crafting an environment where everyone seeks out problems, it makes sense. The challenge is to [...]
on 29 Jan 2008 at 3:58 pm 2.Ed McKlousky said …
It will be interesting to see as healthcare moves towards greater transparency (even if it is forced) if this will change. From my experience, most of the managers really have no concept of how their unit is truly functioning.
I have seen in a lot of cases that hospitals just throw money at the problem. Perhaps money in healthcare is similar to inventory in a factory. It is not until you start lowering the level that you become aware of all of the problems hiding underneath.