DailyKaizen

This might sound simple and maybe show my inexperience, but I wanted to confess a big learning of mine from the last year:  Lean is not about process!  Wow, there, I said it.  Lean is all about people.  It is about teaching people how to think differently about their work, and then, eventually to get them to behave differently so that others will follow their lead.  We may organize and teach around the process, but it is the people that we really need to change if we want to show long-term sustainable improvement.  This is exactly why every organization that treats Lean as a process improvement methodology or a set of tools fails in their efforts. 

So why this confession now one might ask?  Over the last couple months we have had to slow down the pace of change significantly in the Model Line area, because we often got overly focused on the process and lost sight of the people.  This in neither bad nor good, it just is. 

Let me explain.  When we first started laying out our plans for 2007 we had done all of our due diligence.  We had value stream mapped the production and support areas.  We had an aggressive project plan that included multiple RPIWs (Rapid Process Improvement Workshops) all sequenced correctly and staffed appropriately with consultants.  We had a change management strategy with supporting HR resources.  Luckily, we also have put in place a PDCA process with a heavy emphasis on the adjustment.

So why have we had to adjust so often?  Mainly, because people cannot change their thinking and their behavior as quickly as consultants can change the process on them.  This is evident when looks at our challenges thus far in sustaining the improvements we have made during RPIWs and other Kaizen events.   Managers and staff throughout the Division have embraced this work and have been incredible to work with, but you can only ask so much of them over a short-period of time.  This is not to say that we have not made considerable progress.  We have raised the competency and knowledge of over 700 people in a short-time and the improvements to the process will most definitely follow.   

As a consultant I have learned a lot.  For example, I know now that in the early stages of Lean transformation improvement should not be measured by project charts or number of improvement events.  The foundational work of changing the way people think and behave needs to be done first, done correctly and done at the rate it can be absorbed by those that are doing the work in the first place. 

This week’s quote comes from the great interview with Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe that was published in this month’s Harvard Business Review.  For those of you that have not had a chance to read this interview I would highly recommend it.  Much of the interview is focused on Toyota’s challenge to balance growth with the availability of talented leaders that are skilled in the ways of the Toyota Production System.  It was fascinating to me to see how disciplined Toyota is in their people development processes.  Watanabe remarks in the interview that it takes more then twenty years to develop a leader that can master the Toyota Way.  Twenty years!  What US company has that type of long-term focus and commitment? 

At the conclusion of the interview Watanabe talk about his vision for the future, and the creation of a “dream car.”  A car that will transform both the experience of driving and the environment in which one drives.  As I read his vision I almost rolled my eyes, but then I came to the final paragraph of the section where he claims that engineers are already making great progress on the technologies to get Toyota there.  Very inspiring. 

For the quote I chose a paragraph where Watanabe discusses the companies new found focus on radical change:

“People can use revolutionary approaches while making incremental improvements.  You can do that.  In fact, while trying to come up with incremental improvements, many people come up with revolutionary ideas.  The two have different focuses; there’s continuous change in kaizen and there’s discontinuity in kakunshin.  I am only trying to get people to make the leap from incremental improvement to radical improvement whenever possible.”

This weeks quote comes from the Rapid Process Improvement Workshop (RPIW) that I attended on Friday.  It was the largest and most complex kaizen that we have ever run, with more then 35 people attending for five full days with the final outcome of a completely different job for more then eighty employees.  It was an exciting, yet very difficult week for the team.  Attending the workshop was a full spectrum of employees from a Senior Vice President to a front-line administrative processor and everything in-between. 

The week was challenging, because the change was so vast.  Employees, especially on the front-line are not used to change, especially this far and fast.  Many people in the room had been with the organization more then twenty years with the average tenure probably around fifteen.  This meant that many of the processes that the team was redesigning were built by the people on the team.  Throughout the week there was an strong undercurrent of excitement for the future running through the team, but often it was necessary for us to stop and pay tribute to the past.  I was impressed by how open and honest team members were to voicing their concerns and their feeling toward the change.  In my short tenure in the organization (two years) it was the most forthcoming I have seen any team.  I think it was a good demonstration on just how far the culture had come.

During the last day of the event each team member went around and said what their one hope and one fear was for the future.  Almost everyone said they hoped the transformation would continue and the organization would maintain its course, and their fear was the organization would not.  This fear was driven mainly because of many other attempts for change that the organization had led, but that ended up in the “flavor of the month” club.   The quote below came from a team member in response to this exercise and I think it left a last impression on the group.

“The past is not bad, it is just gone.”–L. Sterling

PS–Happy Fourth of July to everyone.  I will be taking the week off from the blog, but will be back on the 9th of July with new content.