Going Deep into the Basics

Had a wonderful conversation this morning with one of our supervisors. The ostensible topic was a scheduling question. But, from that, she asked a most wonderful, telling and profound question.

“So just what does ‘single piece flow’ mean anyway?”

This supervisor has been in on and supportive of our Lean efforts from day one. She knows about single piece flow. Yet, as she explained the context of her question, it showed a growing depth of understanding. She was no longer mimicking the simple answer to the question; now she was grappling with the principle underneath the technique.

We went into the specific matter prompting her question. It had process criticality, major quality demands as well as logistical challenges.

“So just what does ‘single piece flow’ mean anyway?”

The seemingly simple question was actually deep. We grappled with the application in this setting. We left it for her to assess how best to apply it. She does, after all, know the setting better than anyone else in the company.

And, more encouraging, is asking the question. It challenged me to keep asking basic questions. I hope it does you as well.



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Debating Gemba

This is not a post about politics, though it flowed from last night's Presidential Debate.

It struck me that John McCain regularly mentioned how he had been to various trouble spots around the globe. How he had gone directly to opinion makers. How he had been present at the place things were happening.

I don't think Senator McCain knows anything about Lean, nor did he cite Lean as a strategy for competitiveness. Yet he appealed for credibility by stating he had physically been where important issues were taking place. In Lean parlance, this is going to gemba.

Intrinsically, people ascribe credibility to those who are at the point of action. Our modern idiom "been there, done that" illustrates this further.

So, if a politician knows this intrinsically, why is it so hard for many mangers to physically show up at the place value is added?

Perhaps this is a time to learn from, rather than criticize, those running for office.

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There's Clutter, then there's Clutter

When I posted recently about clearing out clutter, I had a couple of queries deserving response.

One of my work associates read the post, slipped quietly into my office and asked, in a hushed tone, “Joe, who did you tick off now?” I got a good laugh; the post was not directed at anyone. I simply was fed up with my own propensity for junk to pile up on my desk. As most of my posts, I wrote this one to myself.

Then, Joanna Rothman posted a comment asking about those who stay organized with everything out. Is this clutter? She poses a great point.

Many jobs require horizontal surfaces to be covered with relevant material. In particular, architects, project managers and building planners often need to work with large sheets of paper. They do no good rolled up in a drawer.

As in many things Lean, identical issues can be value-added in one setting and pure waste in another. Recall our usual revulsion at conveyor lines; yet in the chocolate factory it can add value by letting the gooey mix solidify before going to the packaging line.

To Joanna, I’d suggest the difference is in the intent. To answer the question “Is this piece of paper out because I need it or because I’m procrastinating trashing it or filing it?” If the former, leave it out; if the latter, well, it’s just plain clutter.

And each of us knows the difference.

So, keep getting rid of clutter. It just gets in the way.

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Clutter

Why do we tolerate clutter? Is it a crutch? Is it an effort to hide the work we don't want to get done? We'll never know while it surrounds us.

Gotta get rid of the messes. The physical messes. The email messes. The relational messes. The structural messes.

All of them are clutter. Getting in the way. Distracting us.

The leader has enough distractions already. Why do we put more in our way?

Start with your desk. Then de-clutter your email inbox. Then, go make an apology to someone you’ve offended.

De-clutter. Daily.

It is essential.

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Passion and Tools, Part 2

I wrote recently about passion for a topic and the tools to excel in that topic. Here’s an example.

GTDtimes is a blog surrounding David Allen’s excellent book “Getting Things Done.” GTD is a wonderful system to help us deal with the crunch of “stuff” coming our way. In mid July one practitioner published Cool GTD Gear to Motivate Everyone in your Organization. A very good post, well conceived on tools for doing GTD.
In the comment section of the post, one reader said:

I was enthusiastic to the point of trying to mandate GTD among my team of 20 about two years ago. I only had spotty success and found myself doing what you have just described here…REMINDING people to follow the program. I have found that this road is a tough one. A different road I chose was to have everyone work on projects together in a group collaboration system. At least for those projects, we were getting things done and communicating about it. if they were not working on a project for me, I learned to let them do what worked for them.

There you see it. A leader gave out tools and sought to motivate his team. Yet it didn’t really take.

The passion never took. And, left only with tools, the implementation was spotty.

Last week I heard a consultant present on the change process. He described two needs. The first was for alignment; getting all folks to understand the direction of the organization, in the right spots, equipped to achieve organizational results.

Yet, a second need remained which he termed atunement, the ability of people to buy in, at an emotional level, with these goals.

Alignment gives tools, yet atunement breeds passion. How does this happen in an organization? How do we, as Lean Leaders, build this passion? I’m learning this myself and welcome your input.

Be passionate and live it.

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I want to build a house; What hammer should I buy?

My favorite marketing writer, Seth Godin wrote this brief bit of wisdom last week. I quote here the essence:

I want to write a novel. What word processor do you recommend?

Yesterday on the radio, Jimmy Wales was talking about the Wikipedia movement. A caller who identified himself as a strategist at Amnesty International asked: We're going to build a website to promote freedom and democracy and human rights. What software should we use?

Really.

If you want to do something worth doing, you'll need two things: passion and architecture. The tools will take care of themselves. (Knowledge of tools matters, of course, but it pales in comparison to the other two.)

Sure, picking the wrong tools will really cripple your launch. Picking the wrong software (or the wrong hammer) is a hassle. But nothing great gets built just because you have the right tools.

This hit me at several levels.

How often have I failed in explaining Lean because I focus on kanban cards or kaizen events rather on a passion for operational excellence?

How often have I failed by talking about seven wastes rather than the enjoyment of every work day for all workers?

Do I provide an example of a passionate operational leader or a bureaucratic box-checker-offer?

Lean offers tools which the passionate individual and company can use. The passion needs to be for the result, though, not the tools; even we need to know the tools every bit as well as the finish carpenter knows her miter saw and laser level.

This hits me deeply…I hope it does you as well. Let your passion show.

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A Tale of Two Meetings

In attending back-to-back meetings last week, I saw much.

Meeting one involved three of us trying to solve a logistics problem. The organizer set it up at the spot of the problem and involved just the people who had a stake in it’s solution and had the tools to fix it. We stood up for about 35 minutes, touching the offending product problem. The organizer had compelling and clearly presented data, plus she offered some solutions. The meeting had both facts and emotional punch. We settled the issue quickly and the solution was soon implemented.

I then attended a more traditional meeting. We gathered around a conference table in comfortable chairs. We looked at Power Point slides of black text on a white background. One person attending brought some product samples, which added a visual clue to the problem we were trying to solve. Yet, it didn’t have the energy or the punch of the first meeting.

Now, the Lean folks among us will say, in Pavlovian fashion, “Yep, that’ll show ya, gotta have the meeting in gemba, get to the workplace.” True. But why?

My favorite marketing writer Seth Godin wrote recently about how to organize the room for a meeting. Well worth the read, he makes the point we all walk into a meeting room, look around and quickly pick up clues about how we should behave. Often, this is at cross purposes with what we need to get done. So, he says, change up the clues! Make it look different…you’ll get a different response.

Which is why meeting in gemba so often works. It changes the clues. What do I do when I don’t have a chair? What do I do when there is noise in the room? What do I do when I’m faced with a wall full of product rather than a nicely paneled wall?

Try it.

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Getting to Email Zero

Following my recent post on Minimizing Work-in-Process for Knowledge Workers, several folks wrote and asked me to write more on getting their email inbox to zero. I put together an outline for such a post.

When I discovered I didn’t need to write anything further.

In Yes, You Can Stay on Top of Email, Michael Hyatt describes all you need know to empty your email inbox. Daily. Yes, daily. Hyatt writes the blog From Where I Sit. As the CEO of a major publishing company, he’s a busy guy who also thinks a lot about process. Long time blogging buddy Frank Patrick clued me to Hyatt’s blog a while back and I’ve come to appreciate his input.

Go read Hyatt’s post. Then, start applying it. Today. Not tomorow. Now. I highly commend his outline. And add two more points.

First, find a way to turn off email. In July 2007, unannounced, I started only sending and receiving emails once an hour at work. I found the way in Outlook to automatically send and receive email once an hour. I write them anytime I need to...but they only go out once and hour. Amazingly, not one single person I work with has asked me about this. For a full year. Now maybe they think I'm a jerk and haven't told me. I suspect, though, it simply hasn't been an issue. In fact, the only way any of them will know I do this is if they read this post! Yes, you can do the same. It really eliminates a LOT of distractions.

Second, find a way to separate personal and business emails. Most of us with regular jobs have a mandated email program for work. So use it. I strongly suggest getting a web-based email for your personal use. I’ve used several and Gmail is my vastly preferred choice.

Don’t let email run your life…get on top of it. Now.

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Minimizing Work-in-Process for Knowledge Workers

We all know the drill; work-in-process is a problem in manufacturing. It ties up cash, limits flexibility, masks problems, decreases customer satisfaction. We’ve seen the “lower the water level; expose the rocks; fix the problems” illustration.

It’s no different in non-manufacturing setting. Making it personal, it’s no different for me, either. I’ve been bugged the last few years by this concept and, finally, have seen some progress over the last few months. Let me illustrate, in hopes you might find something useful.

My first step was to isolate just what constitutes WIP for me in my managerial role. I concluded it is all in two places:

• My physical in-box. This is all the physical junk that lands in my office. Papers, forms, mail, memos.
  
• My email in-box. All the electronic junk that comes my way.

Some folks might add Voice Mail to this list, making three piles. For me, VM is not a big deal so I simplified it to two.

And these two are crucial. Virtually everything I do which does not involve face-to-face meetings flows through these two portals. And the degree to which I do or do not deal, promptly, with both flows does all the things WIP does in the manufacturing setting. It ties up cash (slow decisions), limits flexibility (“we’re waiting on Joe”), masks problems (I don’t respond), decreases customer satisfaction (“he's avoiding me”).

The breakthrough that hit me a few months ago is classic lean. I have always tried to minimize and optimize these two queues. Not good enough. I realized I had to take them to zero. Empty. Zip. No email in the in box. No paper in the in box.

Zero is easy to measure and observe. Impossible to fudge. And, I have found, amazingly liberating.

The further breakthrough was pragmatic. In a dynamic business environment, I can't keep the boxes empty. So, my quest is to get to email zero and/or in box zero once in every business day.

Here’s my current metric. A simple blue 3x5 index card. With an “E” for days I get to email zero and an “I” for in box zero.



You can see I don’t get it done every day. I've had some bad streaks. The metric, though, is huge. It sits there on my desk as a brutal reminder I have not flushed out email for 3 days, that I’m avoiding something in my in box.

It’s not perfect. But it is way better than my other efforts. And, as goofy as it sounds, it's fun to get to zero and record the "E" or "I".

How to get to email zero or in box zero? That’s another discussion…if you’re interested, please let me know and I’ll write on either.

But, until I settled on a) the location of WIP b) the zero standard for WIP and c) the simple measurement of WIP, I was not making progress at all.

Hope you can find something here you can use.

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Why do visuals help?

Several recent observations converged for me.

• A colleague drew a Value Stream Map for a new process we were developing. Two major barriers became clear. In 45 minutes, we had a plan to overcome them, problems that had bugged us for six months.
  
  
  
• We had a struggle over a particular system of nomenclature; the group of six were stuck. One member then walked to the whiteboard, drew a simple diagram of his understanding. Then another person modified this diagram with her perspective. Soon, all six people had added to the drawing. And a solution became obvious.
  
  
  
• A vendor was preoccupied with the splendor of his proposal and talked and talked. One of our engineers then asked him to draw how his system worked. Reluctantly, he began putting boxes and arrows on the board. And the conversation turned to solutions. Egos faded.
  
  
  
• A friend of many years invited me for lunch to discuss an important decision he faced in his career. A visual person to begin with, he had put an elegantly simple line drawing capturing the history, context, and trajectory of his options. Making the drawing, coupled with the active discussion, made choices clearer.

Why do drawings make decision making clearer? People a lot smarter than me have looked hard at this. I simply see that it works.

Somehow, the drawing, however simple or clunky, engages a different part of the brain. Flowing through both the eyes and the ears, the idea finds a different path to the processing parts of the brain. In this way, new understandings of tough problems emerge. The original idea then burns more brightly, more clearly, with more focus.

Go doodle somewhere. It usually helps.

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