Lean Isn't...rocket science

Sometimes Lean can be a four letter word. But don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

These days everyone has an approach to Lean that they assure you is the "right" approach for your organisation. And in many cases they are right. But unless you are running Toyota where the Lean ideals are part of your DNA, simply having the right approach might not be enough.

Ultimately improving the performance of your organisation will involve getting your people to act differently. In order to act differently they will have to make different decisions. And in order to make different decisions they will have to think differently.

Most approaches to Change Management focus on getting people to act differently. The reason for this is very practical especially if you are a consultant. You are under pressure to show quick results. So you need to do anything in your power to get your clients to act differently even if it means bullying people or simply doing most of the work yourself.

Some approaches focus on "training" people to make different decisions. These usually involve taking people through carefully planned examples in an attempt to get them to learn what decisions they should make when they get back to their "real" world. The problem here is these 'perfect' situations never happen in the real world. And ultimately you have not helped people to think any differently.

But to truly leverage the power of "1 + 1 = 5" you want to get people to "think" differently. My high school physics teacher taught me the following two things:

1. The force exerted on an object is equal to the objects mass multiplied by the acceleration or F=ma. Who cares unless you happen to be a rocket scientist.
2. You can't push on a rope.  Infinitely more useful to know.

What I have come to learn is that telling people to do something or teaching them a series of steps to approach a situation is the Behaviour Change equivalent to pushing on a rope. They might try something new while you are standing there guiding (harassing) them. But once you leave they will probably go back to making the same decisions as before because you have not got them to think differently.  If however you can get people to think differently you will find they will grab onto and pull any rope they can get their metaphorical hands on.

Let me give you a practical example. My wife (pushes) says to me "we need to buy some new patio furniture. The stuff we have is old and worn out." I think to myself (like I always do) "sure its a little ratty, but its patio furniture, who cares. As long as it can support my weight, its all good. And even if it doesn't there's nothing you can't fix with some wire and duct tape, am I right?"

Later we are invited to a backyard party at the neighbours house. Upon entering their back yard I notice how nice everything looks. In particular their patio furniture which is brand new and just looks great.

The next morning I go out to our own back yard and look at our own furniture with a new perspective. "Maybe she is right" I think to myself. "We have had it for quite a while and we do use it a lot." I then go find my wife and (pull) suggest we check out the sale on patio furniture that was advertised in the flier.

Make no mistake about it. In either case we were going to end up with new patio furniture. Believe me when I say the laws of Behavioural Change physics do not apply in my house. But I think everyone can see how much more effective (sustainable) the change in my behaviour was by getting me to see my back yard (waste) with a new perspective.

A tactic I use with clients as well as myself is I let my customer decide what adds Value and what therefore is Waste.  For example the next time this question comes up say to yourself "....ok let's call the customer and see what they think.  Hello customer, we are sitting in a meeting trying to decide which phase of the Project Lifecycle we are in and we just want to make sure we are adding Value for you."  You can imagine the confusion on the other end of the phone.  All of a sudden when you do this things like status meetings, weekly reports, inventory, work in process, quality inspections, creating schedules, updating schedules, backing up files, driving to work, walking between meetings, reviewing scorecards, storing raw materials, approving purchase requisitions, status meetings, steering committee meetings, update meetings, safety meetings, and better than 90% of everything your organisation does adds no value to your customers. Talk about looking shabby.

If this sounds harsh then maybe you are right.  If it sounds soul-crushing to discover that almost everything your organization does adds no Value to your customer, I hear you.  We recently did an assessment of our firm's Value chain and in the cold, harsh light of Value as defined by our customer we found that we generously added value 5.6% of the time.  That's the bad news.  The good news is we took this new found insight and developed a far superior product that we can now deliver at a 10th the cost and a 10th the effort.  Jealous?  You should be.