DailyKaizen

As we move forward with our enterprise wide transformation there are so many new skills and capabilities that we will need to teach leadership across the organization. In order to prioritize and focus this year there are two main parts of our management system that we are focusing on improving our leadership development activities. The first is to institute a rigorous check and adjust system and the second is to teach leaders new ways to drive improvement. We have deployed a plan through the Hoshin system, but being the first year we know that many of our hypothesis will turn out to be incorrect. This is exactly why we decided to focus on these two critical areas. This way leaders are able to quickly identify the problems that we know will come up through the checking process and provide teams with new ways to adjust through the learnings from the improvement capabilities.

Underneath the checking system there is a very important capability and process that we are putting in place that many organizations call Gemba walks. At Group Health we refer to them as workplace rounds. Several leaders have been conducting gemba walks with great success for the last year, but this last week our CEO and several other members of the senior leadership team began these very important workplace checks. There are many reasons why we need to put this system in place and build this capability in our leaders. First and foremost, we need to change the behavior first in order to change the beliefs and thinking. This means focusing on how leaders spend their time and in this case getting leaders to deepen their understanding of the work processes, defects, root causes by going to the place where were takes place.

As many of you know a gemba walks serve many purposes. They allow leaders to audit the standards of the strategic plan to ensure that we are on target and if not, why not. They strengthen the discipline of the management system and build accountability up, down and across the organization. Finally, they allow leaders to play the role of teachers and connect associates work to the larger picture, advance teams thinking to the next level, drive daily accountability and help identify opportunities for improvement.

At first our focus will not be on the quality of the walks. Instead we will focus on the adherence to the schedule. In other words, we will focus on getting leaders into the rhythm of doing walks on a regular basis and with a standard process. This is the best way for them to learn, because without practice there is no way to get better. Over time, if they stay the course I believe gemba walks to be one of the best way for us to begin to shift the culture of the organization. Leading with your feet instead of your mouth is the best way to get people to follow and gemba walks go right to heart and soul!

The title of my post is a corollary to Lee’s previous post, which I loved, because besides talking about the issue of going to see things, it also alludes to the idea that LEAN creates leaders who are able to reflect on to themselves what they reflect onto others.

My little add is to always go see as part of what I do. Now that I’ve been working this way for 3 years now (and I can’t believe that it’s been 3 years), I realize that I am more and more uncomfortable hearing about anything in the absence of seeing.

This has really hit home in the last two weeks, actually, as I wind down some of my sabbatical work, and schedules have gotten a little tighter. I found myself about 3 weeks ago having a conversation with a great group of physicians about their launch of a patient portal….in the conference room of their headquarters. It just wasn’t the same for me, and at some level I felt I was being disrespectful by offering any advice at all in the absence of seeing the care that these physicians provide.

Last week, I spent time in California, and I was able to get close to the work, but I didn’t actually shadow the patient process of care, and that still felt a little uncomfortable. Same feeling - what do I have to offer someone who experiences a set of facts that I did not see? At the same time, I saw more than I did in the experience above, and it was very important and meaningful, judging by the fact that my blog posts on them were much richer with information.

Fortunately, no communication is ever over in life, and I asked for the chance to go back and shadow the first set of providers. They said sure, and I really want to do this.

If there is anything from this experience that I could impart, it would be that your approach to where you do your work will change with LEAN. You will feel more natural being close to the patient, and more unnatural being farther from the patient. What used to seem like the easiest, most comfortable thing, going to the same conference room watching Powerpoint slides, connected to your iPhoneBerry, will begin to seem like the hardest, least comfortable thing. And you’ll love what you do more than you ever have.

The VP over the Model Line and I had the pleasure of hosting Jon Miller, a friend and Sensei from Gemba Research join us for a Gemba walk this last Monday. If managed correctly having regular site visits can be a valuable opportunity to recognize staff and gain feedback from an outside set of eyes. In this case we were able to achieve both objectives and hopefully added some value for Jon as well.

We started out with our standard process of providing a high level overview of our journey as an organization thus far as well as a more detailed discussion of our objectives and tactics with the Model Line. We then spent two hours on the floor where we visited two different teams as part of the VP’s standard work on gemba walks. It was a great opportunity for me to get back out on the floor with the VP and witness firsthand how far he and his organization had developed. Almost a year ago we began the process of gemba walking and neither of us had a clue what we were doing, but we went out any way and did our best (with support from our Sensei). During the early walks the VP was always uncomfortable with both being in the gemba and attempting to teach and the teams were uncomfortable with him being there. By the time I was redeployed he had come a long way and the teams were responding very positively. This Monday he showed how much he had advanced since then. I had to stop and reflect that here is a VP over 650 employees who has made it his number one priority to teach all of his employees PDCA thinking. He has mastered the content and gained their confidence and the results are speaking for themselves. How foreign to traditional management, yet, how powerful.

At the conclusion of the visit we gathered for a debrief and exchanged ideas and feedback. I was impressed by how much Jon was able to pick up during the brief exchanges we had with team. He pointed out that the VP needed to provide a standard for each team in advance so that they could hold him accountable to his process. In other words, the VP needed to practice what he was out to teach and share with teams his purpose and process and then have them evaluate if he was able to hit his intended outcome. Additionally, Jon pointed out that the teams seemed ready for a suggestion system and that we should benchmark Toyota to understand their processes around empowering employees to PDCA their work. Both great ideas that we will move forward with implementing.

Its always fun to have friends come to the Gemba!