Over the last year I often get frustrated by the pace of change.  I am one that quickly jumps to action, loves the thrill of change and as a result am often accused of being inpatient.  Which is probably pretty accurate.  One area where this gets me in trouble is with the learning process or more specifically the teaching process.  My action orientation often means I forget to slow down and spend the time with the people I am suppose to be helping to teach.  Instead I give them the answers and sacrifice the long-term sustainability for the short-term progress.   Realizing this challenge I have been working hard this year to spend more time asking questions and learning how to balance the needs for results with the learning process.

From an organizational perspective I have also found myself frustrated with the amount of effort we are investing in Lean focused education.  We have gotten far better with our learning methods.  We have move away from the classroom and have integrated our learning into the work activities, but even so I often have to stop and remind myself of the importance of this work.  I realize the need for this education, but it is so very hard for me to slow down and wait for others to come along.  My Sensei often reminds me that to get different results you need different thinking, thus for this to happen learning must take place. 

What has been really exciting is on a broad scale, for the first time, I am starting to see the fruits of all of the investment we have made in Lean related education.  We have focused on teaching the top 120 leaders in the organization the basic Lean competencies through action learning.  We formed cross-functional teams that have mapped core processes, develop visual systems, etc.  At the same time the executive team has made a significant commitment (12 days in a year) toward learning point, cross-functional and system kaizen.  Slowly, over time I have seen this learning begin to change thinking.  Leaders are starting to think process.  They are asking to see process data as opposed to just results data.  They are learning about functions outside of their own.  There is a common language of improvement beginning to take form.  The conversations have changed.  The thinking has definitely started to change and hopefully next the results.