Chapter 4

Power to the People

In This Chapter

Exploring the human side of change

Teaming in Lean

Understanding what it means to be a Lean leader

Everything about business comes down to people. Where in business can we escape the impact of human care, human creativity, human commitment, human frustration, and human despair? There is no reason for anything in business to exist if it does not serve the needs of people.

— Bruce Cryer, Re-Engineering the Human System

One of the oldest clichés in business — you’ve heard it a zillion times — is “People are our most important resource.” From the Lean perspective, these words are both critically true and utterly false. On face value, it’s true that people power an organization more than anything else. Without the people, there is no organizational performance. People are more important than facilities, equipment, capital, or other resources.

But in the Lean world, you don’t think of people as a “resource.” You don’t categorize, value, measure, and manage people the same way you would manage financial, capital, or intellectual resources. In Lean, people are not the most important resource in an organization; people are the organization. In Lean, you trust and respect people to make the most effective use of resources in order to add value to the customer.

Lean will not happen without the people. Lean affects every single person in the organization — and each has her own unique role and response. Often, when embarking upon a Lean journey, managers and practitioners focus on the tools and techniques of Lean. They spend too much of their time advocating Lean, and not enough time inquiring — checking in with people, getting their ideas and reactions, developing them and bringing them along. Investing time and energy in the human side of change is not only a critical component of success; it also pays long-term dividends when the organization is fully engaged in continuous improvement.

In this chapter, we show you the human side of change, and let you know how you manifest it in a Lean implementation. You discover how Lean managers act and support change at various levels of the organization. You find out about Lean teams. This chapter includes an in-depth examination of the individual’s role in the transformation.

The Human Side of Change

Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.

— Stephen R. Covey

People love to change when change is their own idea — they have a sense of control, the feeling that they’re in the driver’s seat. Even if the control is limited, the feeling is there. Whether it’s a big change (like taking a different job, having a child or moving into a new home) or a small change (like buying a new pair of shoes or upgrading to the latest technology gizmo), when it’s your idea, you’re motivated. You determine the effort, the risk, and the rewards. You balance the equation — and you’re willing to go for it!

Now alter one critical element of the scenario: The change is no longer your idea. Immediately, you don’t feel the same sense of participation. You don’t feel in control. You’re not sure where it will all lead. Fear, doubt, uncertainty, and perhaps even anger are among the flood of emotions you feel. If it’s someone else’s idea, do you still trust the opportunity?

Fight, flight, freeze, fake, fall in line, or fade away — the choice is yours. Every individual — facing the same situation — will have her own unique response. In the context of a Lean journey, people will experience the total range of emotions — from excitement to resistance and everything in between. They’ll experience stress. They need support. They need you to hear them. They need to be educated. They need to develop new capabilities.

Whether you’re a practitioner, manager, or participant of Lean in your organization, you have to work through your own reaction to change. You have to adjust your actions and attitudes and evaluate your emotional responses. There is no magical incantation. It takes real work — work that people usually don’t like to do. Ultimately everyone has the ability to become a Lean student, actively engaged in continuous improvement and lifelong learning. First, you have to get over the hurdles of resistance that appear as you move down the road of Lean.

Change and the individual

After living with their dysfunctional behavior for so many years (a sunk cost if ever there was one), people become invested in defending their dysfunctions rather than changing them.

— Marshall Goldsmith

As an individual in an organization moving toward Lean, you have choices. It doesn’t matter where in the organization you fit, what your title is, or what job you perform — you will experience change. The attitude you choose to adopt is up to you and no one else. You may choose to jump onboard immediately and become a change agent. Or, you may wait and see. You might also choose to leave rather than change. You may play the victim or you may play the trailblazer — or something in between. It’s all up to you, but understanding the dynamics and science behind change helps you in the process.

The basics: Change 101

Independent of the circumstances of change, people experience change in their bodies and minds. In this section, we explore the basics of change and stress.

Perceptions are reality

Have you ever gone to a school reunion and noticed that some of your classmates just can’t seem to move beyond their time in school? It’s as if their lives stopped at age 17. They long for the “good old days.” They relive every moment of the big game. They wish they could go back. Other classmates never even think of coming back to a reunion because they’re so over it — they’ve moved on and embraced the future.

What makes one group able to let go and move on while others just can’t? The answer is perceptions — perceptions create reality. Figure 4-1 depicts how perceptions completely overlay a situation, causing a person to act, think, and emote in a certain way. People who think (or perceive) that their lives were at their best a long time ago will see the reflection of that perception in their actions, emotions, and attitudes. They may not be able to see a way forward, because their perceptions leave them living in the past.

Recognize that people judge situations through their own unique biases and perceptions. Some of the people in your organization will want to hold on to the “glory days”; others will be so committed to change that they run forward without a mere glance back to the old way of doing things. A whole range of people will fall somewhere in between. But eventually, they all need to get on the Lean path.

How people perceive change colors their responses. During an initial communication, many people will check out and won’t hear most of the change message. Almost immediately they’ll start thinking, “How is this going to affect me? What’s going to change? Are they really serious about this? Am I going to lose my job?” How each person perceives the change dictates how quickly they overcome their natural resistance.

The reality of resistance

If you want to create a truly Lean organization, you have to overcome individual resistance to change. Certain attitudes appear — these attitudes are symptoms of resistance. You may recognize some of them:

“Been there, done that”: If someone feels like this resembles something that failed in the past, she’ll resist. She won’t willingly jump on the change wagon. Withholding trust, lack of faith, and sarcasm are just a few of the blocks that you have to remove. How? Through two-way communication, demonstrated commitment and consistency, new leadership practices, early results, and reinforcement.

“A rose by any name”: This attitude manifests in several ways. If the most draconian of supervisors is now anointed a coach or mentor, no one is likely to believe it possible or sustainable. If you’ve had previous failed attempts at Lean or other continuous-improvement initiatives, you have to show how this time is different. Both of these situations require two-way communication, consistent, active and involved leadership, ongoing monitoring and continual training and development. That supervisor will have to prove that he did more than attend “charm school” to win over the people who work for her — she has to demonstrate her belief that her job is to create capability and ensure standards are followed and eliminate the barriers when they are not.

“Not invented here” or “Doesn’t apply here”: These attitudes will derail a Lean initiative. In the worst manifestation, people may understand how the tools and methods of Lean might apply in some other kind of company, but they don’t see how Lean applies in their company. To overcome these attitudes, you must constantly demonstrate how to find and eliminate waste in your processes. This takes creative leadership. You may need to adjust the language or demonstrate a concept to show people how Lean applies in your organization.

“Fear of failure”: This attitude prevents individuals from actively participating. Being a perfectionist is different from striving for perfection. Perfectionists get scared, stuck or stopped, if you don’t reinforce the importance of trying something new — independent of the outcome — to improve the situation. In a Lean culture, when you try something new, it’s rarely perfect the first time out. Remember the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle (see Chapter 9); the Do phase of that cycle is all about trying — testing is part of the process. And improvement is incremental, so the next step is never the final step.

Creating a blame-free culture is the best way to overcome a fear of failure. You do this through the way you respond, guide, and mentor people in the learning process. Encourage them to use the tools of Lean, change only one thing at a time wherever possible, and keep the changes simple. When things don’t go as planned, ask questions like “What did we learn?” “What is the true problem we are trying to solve?” “What is the next thing we will try based on our learning?”

It’s okay to fail if you learn from it.

Stress: The natural response to change

Stress is a naturally human response to change. It’s unavoidable. Stress happens on a continuum, from positive-and-motivating to negative-and-debilitating. In the Lean transformation, the stress you need to watch out for is the negative stuff.

When stress starts to go to the negative side, you may feel tense, anxious, or angry. You may become depressed or frustrated; find yourself easily distracted; become short-tempered or even apathetic. You may also find yourself eating or drinking more than you normally do. And you may not show up where you’re supposed to.

You can manage stress in many ways. You can monitor your own behavior, and choose to deal with your stress in healthy ways — through diet, exercise, laughter, and rest. You may also find a friend to confide in and to give support — talking helps you work through stressful situations.

It’s a good idea to have a formal mentorship structure in a Lean organization. This may be directly related to the organizational chart, the social network, or you may want to base it on capabilities that you need to create in your people and organization.

Reactions beyond reason

In extreme cases of stress or change, your body can actually have a physiological response — fight or flight. Deep inside your brain is a tiny, almond-shaped cluster of neurons called the amygdala. The amygdala receives a fear or danger signal from the thalamus, which causes it to secrete chemicals in the body, even while the rest of your brain is trying to process the information for the appropriate response. As Daniel Goldman describes it in Emotional Intelligence, the amygdala can actually hijack your brain, preventing rational responses.

So what does this have to do with you and a Lean transformation? If you find yourself reacting irrationally to situations — like during a kaizen event — you may be a victim of that emotional hijacking. One of the best responses is to walk away and cool down — it can take as long as an hour or more — until your body can actually clear the chemicals and let you think rationally through the situation.

When undergoing any change, it’s natural to experience strong, impulsive reactions from time to time. You can learn and grow beyond the knee-jerk reaction. With each change you experience and accept, you train yourself that the situation is okay and the amygdala doesn’t need to charge in to save you.

Embracing change the Lean way

In the previous sections we covered the fundamentals of individual change. In the next sections, we show you what the individual can do to embrace the change to Lean.

Know yourself

Assess where you are personally with the changes; this will help you move through the Lean transition. What are you feeling? Are you overcoming your natural resistance? Where can you contribute? What attitudes, emotions, or actions might be getting in the way of participating fully as an individual or a team member? How does working closely around people affect you? How ready are you to learn new things and stretch yourself?

You’re the only one who can change you, but how you react to situations can influence a heck of a lot of people — positively or negatively.

Most people are uncomfortable with the unknown. In the absence of information, they anticipate the worst. This “pessimistic” approach is a form of self-protection. Kaizen and PDCA help you learn to become comfortable with ambiguity and have the courage within to try something new. Everyone has to go through the phase of letting go of the old and move on to grab the new. When you understand what new can be, and begin to make incremental progress towards it, you find it easier to let go of the past. For this reason it is important that top leadership articulate a clear vision of where the organization is going — like Toyota’s True North (see Chapter 3) — and then create specific, well-aligned, near term targets — measurements and descriptions — that they want the organization to achieve.

Some Lean practices — like taking before and after photos of an area — actually help people let go. Creating ceremonies or events to symbolize letting go can also help. The movement of a monument, burying an old manual, or throwing a party in new floor space — these are all examples of ceremonial letting go. Conducting ceremonies may sound hokey, but it works.

Think about other changes you have experienced in your life that were successful. Identify how you adjusted your attitudes, emotions, and actions to make those situations positive. Build on that track record to propel you forward into the Lean transformation.

When you start to see progress, you’ll have an easier time adapting to the changed environment. The concept of Lean will become more concrete for you. This shift in perception usually happens after you’ve participated in kaizen activities — small, continuous improvements in your perceptions will drive you to change your thoughts, attitudes, and, ultimately, your actions.

When you truly start thinking in a Lean manner, you look at life differently. You tend to see ways to improve any situation. You look at waste in a totally different way. You want to make things better — and you know you can! Whether you’re standing in line at the money bank or volunteering at the food bank, you have ideas to improve customer wait times or more effectively pack food boxes. Ultimately your actions, attitudes, and emotions will all be colored with a Lean filter.

Personal principles: Alignment with Lean

When an organization shifts to Lean, its principles shift. For an individual to get behind the change, he needs to understand what the impact is on him and his principles. People whose principles are closer to Lean principles will have an easier time making the adjustment then those whose aren’t.

How do you align principles? You start by knowing your own principles. Then you identify and understand the organization’s Lean principles — both as stated and manifested. When you compare your principles with the Lean ones, you’ll see where there is misalignment and how severe it is. Then you can choose how to close the gap.

Although the majority of people enjoy working in a Lean environment, some people may decide that they would rather work elsewhere and choose to leave the organization. That’s okay; the people who stay are the ones who want to live Lean.

Speak up, step up: The individual’s role

When people are told that there will be a change, they might give their power away. They might not engage, ask questions, or actively participate. Through their actions, they might abdicate their responsibility. What can you do as an individual in a company that’s embarking upon a Lean journey?

Ask questions to clarify expectations and understand new roles.

Focus on solutions — how can we make this work?

Stay open and positive, and don’t fuel the rumor mill.

Actively learn about Lean tools and concepts.

Identify what you can change in your world; for example, how can you reduce waste?

Request training in topics like PDCA, statistical tools, coaching skills, teaming skills, and change management.

Volunteer to participate in early kaizen activities.

Hold yourself accountable to your own thoughts, emotions, and actions.

Commit to following standardized work for your activity

Work with your team leader to identify and improve your work area and remove barriers to performing to standard — daily, if possible.

Ask yourself questions about your perceptions, reactions, and behaviors in the workplace.

Get comfortable with ambiguity. Realize that you can’t control the situation or know exactly what is happening all the time.

Managers can help by conducting forums where people can ask questions and voice their concerns. To make these sessions beneficial, keep them real and positive. People need to feel that managers hear them, will help, and will convey feedback and status of their concerns.

Acting Lean

In traditional organizations of all types, people learn to do a task with or without a connection other parts of the organization or to what the end customer or consumer requires. Stockpiling, working in isolation, hiding mistakes, working at an erratic pace, and only bearing good news may be common in a traditional workplace, but such behaviors have no place in a Lean environment.

To eliminate waste or wasteful behaviors, you first must admit that they exist. Have you ever been in a meeting where presenter after presenter discusses dire current business conditions and yet their future trend predicts miraculous recovery? When you venture into Lean, you must accept the current situation and to change your mindset — how you achieve your results is as important as the results themselves.

Many people (including managers) have learned to create crisis situations so they can become heroes who fly in like Superman to save the day. Managers reward this type of behavior — sometimes to the point where if the company is not in crisis, no one knows how to act. In a Lean organization, you learn how to thrive without daily disasters and then respond systematically when issues arise. Leaders understand that their job is to foster problem identification and resolution in their people and at all levels of the organization. Managers learn how to reward problem avoidance, root-cause resolution, sound problem solving, working to standards, and continuous improvement.

In traditional environments, people provide information on a need-to-know basis, usually on someone’s desk or in files. You can’t just walk into an area and know exactly what’s going on. People have learned how to hide problems, protect information, and to shirk responsibility. By contrast, a Lean environment is a very open, transparent, and visual environment. It delivers accountability and enforces standards. In Lean, the old saying that “rules are made to be broken” shifts to “standards are made to be followed — and improved.”

Team leaders and managers are responsible for ensuring that people are following standards and understanding why, when they are not. When the leaders identify a deviation, they identify the specific condition causing the problem and work together with the people doing the job to eliminate the condition. If required, they should involve appropriate support departments.

Some organizations choose to post the standards facing away from the work area where they are more accessible to the managers, who use them to compare the standards to what is actually happening.

Many organizations are full of individuals who stopped trying to learn after they left school. They don’t take classes. They don’t really analyze mistakes or failures. After school, they checked the “education box” and they checked out. By contrast, Lean organizations reward and thrive on learning. Like the kaizen philosophy of improving something every day, Lean also promotes learning something every day — learning from mistakes, learning to identify the right problem to work on, learning to solve root-cause issues, learning new ways to eliminate waste, learning more about your customer, and learning the capabilities of your organization.

Looking at different learning styles

Not everyone learns the same way — individuals have different learning styles. Most people have a dominant style, but may also exhibit other styles at times. The four common learning styles are

Visual: They remember what they see.

Verbal: They remember what they hear and what they say.

Logical: They conceptualize information.

Kinesthetic: They learn by doing and explaining what they’ve done.

Because so many new concepts and changes affect the way you do business in a Lean environment, you have understand your style. The people leading the change and developing training materials need to appeal properly to each individual and to you as an individual learner.

Kaizen events may be a dream for kinesthetic learners, but a nightmare for logical learners. The verbal learners will want to talk about what’s happening to grasp the change, and the visual learners may want to hang back and watch the first time, so they get it. When you have a kaizen activity, try to identify each of the team member’s learning styles. Pay attention to the language the participants use because you may hear cues to their style. You may hear cue phrases like “I think,” “I see,” or “How can we do” as the teams are interacting.

Learning happens formally and informally along the Lean journey. Formally, you will hold classes, workshops, kaizen events, or training sessions. Topics range from team building to problem solving and everything in between. Informally, you will learn from daily actions, individual problem solving, mistakes, and interpersonal interactions.

Appealing to specific learning styles will help individuals learn more effectively and help reduce resistance to change.

Change and the team

In Lean, you rely heavily on teams of people working together to improve the effectiveness of the business. But what, exactly, is a team? A team is a collection of individuals working toward a common purpose. If you don’t have that common purpose, you just have a group.

Lean environments have many types of teams. There are natural work teams, cross-functional teams, teams that come together for kaizen events, teams that include members from upstream or downstream of the organization. The type of team formed and length of time the team stays together is dependent upon the reasons for the team’s existence and the performance objectives. The team environment takes advantage of collaboration between individual members to identify better solutions, eliminate waste, accomplish an objective faster, and make bigger gains.

Characteristics of a winning team

Winning teams exhibit certain characteristics. They look a certain way, and they behave a certain way. Although you may define other important characteristics for your high-performing teams, most have the following essential characteristics:

Clear purpose and direction with motivating goals. Winning teams know where they need to go and why they need to go there. They understand how their part contributes to the success of the whole and how it serves the customer. They have short-term goals that move them in the direction of the long-term goals.

Commitment at both the individual and team level. They have clearly defined roles, and they develop and maintain healthy relationships. They rely on the diverse talents of each team member. They show mutual trust and support. They resolve conflicts productively.

Multi-directional, effective communication. Communication flows effectively within the team and beyond. It is productive, solution-focused and proactive.

Clear processes, decision making and continuous improvement orientation. They have and follow clear processes. They are empowered to make decisions and do so in a timely manner. They have a problem-solving and continuous-improvement mentality.

Demonstrate creativity, innovation and adaptability. They utilize all of the talents of the team to create new product and process innovations. They learn to adapt to changing market and customer situations while maintaining a commitment to their core principles. They effectively solve problems in a systematic way.

Quality leadership. The leadership is from within and it is congruent in words and actions. Managers eliminate barriers, provide direction and mentoring, develop capabilities, and foster growth and development opportunities. They trust the team to perform, and they empower team members to problem-solve and make decisions in a timely manner.

Celebrate progress. Winning teams recognize the value of celebration and acknowledgement. They celebrate the incremental successes as well as lessons learned when things did not go as planned.

The most effective teams typically have five to seven people. Each team member is a unique individual, who has something special to offer the team. Ideally, during the formation process, you identify these unique traits.

Many assessment tools — such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the DiSC Classic Profile, the Kolbe A index, or Now, Discover Your Strengths, by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton — can help a team understand its players and their roles. Be sure to find a qualified person to administer an assessment and help the team interpret the results. The best teams consist of very different types of individuals. You may find it difficult to work with people who think and act very different from your style, but an assessment can help you and the other team members understand how to optimize working relationships, facilitate effective communications, and capitalize on strengths. Assessments also provide a common language, context, and understanding.

Teams must have a variety of perspectives, talents, and types for innovation and creativity to materialize.

Team formation

Dr. Bruce Tuckman, noted psychologist and organizational behavior expert, identified the now-famous five phases of teaming:

1. Forming: People join forces to achieve a common goal. Members get to know one another, identify commonality, and begin to develop ground rules.

2. Storming: Members are trying to figure out where they fit. Hostilities and emotions may run high as people jockey for position, figure out who they can trust, and claim a role. Leaders emerge.

3. Norming: Members learn how to work together. They understand leadership, roles and positions. They establish principles and standards of behavior, and not necessarily the same as the overall organization. They form a team identity — formally or informally.

4. Performing: Members work together to get the job done, deliver the outcomes, and generate the results.

5. Adjourning: The team completes its work and the either disbands or addresses a new scope of work.

Team leadership is determined during the formation process. Although there may be an official leader, a different leader may emerge as the team matures. Changes to the makeup or direction of the team can cause regression into earlier phases. As your team forms to eliminate waste and improve processes, remember that it will have to develop as an entity. The team will experience these phases. If the team is struggling to get to the performing stage, management may need to provide an intervention — such as facilitation, guidance, change of membership, or clarification of expectations.

External facilitators can help a team get off the ground. A facilitator is someone who guides the process of the team and ensures that all members are participating and being heard. Ideally, the facilitator is not a team member and does not to contribute content to the team’s project.

Collaboration

For people who are used to working in a hierarchical environment, the idea of such extreme collaboration may seem difficult. The result of a true collaborative environment is the win-win solution. It requires that team members contribute ideas, analyze the situation objectively, and negotiate a best next-state solution. It requires that the individuals let go of an idea or position, if others find better, alternative solutions. It requires that each individual sees a situation not only from his point of view, but from the points of view of others involved — and from the customer’s point of view.

In a Lean environment, teams work to eliminate waste. But sometimes, what one person views as waste may be valuable or even vital to another. When individuals within an organization develop collaborative skills, they are able to see both sides of the situation and, with a Lean mindset, propose alternatives that can minimize, if not eliminate, non-value-added activities within the value stream. Ideally, when you collaborate, you gain new perspectives about a situation, which you then use to adjust your perceptions and influence your own attitudes, actions, and emotions.

Multifunctional workers

Lean advocates the development of multifunctional workers, especially in natural work teams. Train each member of the area in the activities of the others. Track training progress and develop a level of competency before an employee performs the task unsupervised. This is easy to envision in a manufacturing environment, but apply the same philosophy in non-manufacturing environments like accountancies, industrial kitchens, retail outlets, or hospitals. By having a well-trained workforce, you’re insulated against the effects of absenteeism, vacations, and variations in demand.

Post a tracking chart showing job qualifications and competencies by person (see Chapter 9).

Change and the managers

Managers directly influence the adoption of Lean through their behaviors, decisions, and communications. As the face of Lean leadership, they have the challenging role of leading the organization to success in spite of their own personal reaction to the change. In this section, we discuss what managers can do to make the unknown more known and advance the organization’s Lean progress.

Creating the vision

Declaring that the organization will become Lean is easy; actually making the change is harder. Managers should start by creating a clear vision for the organization — not some lofty visionary statement, but a straightforward image of what it means for the organization to move toward Lean. This vision includes performance expectations, timing, expected outcomes, interrelationships to other company initiatives, and commitments to the organization.

In successful Lean organizations, Lean is not an initiative. It becomes the way you do business. Include this as an assumption in your long-term vision.

If you don’t want your Lean efforts to look like a Dilbert cartoon of screwy nonperforming ideas, you have to pay attention to the human element of change. Management must lead by example and with a constancy of purpose. Eighty percent of change initiatives fail due to human factors, according to studies by noted organizational researchers John Kotter and Daryl Conner.

Engage people early in the process after you make the decision to implement Lean. By involving them in the planning of how to implement Lean, you enroll them in the process.

Communications

People need to be informed and they need to be heard. Make communications clear, consistent, multidimensional, and frequent. One-time declarations don’t make a transformation. Develop a communication strategy to support the implementation plan. The communication plan needs to be a two-way effort. One part is what you want to say; the other part is what your employees want you to hear. You’re dealing with a collection of individuals, with different needs, learning styles, and perceptions.

Remember the basics of communication when adopting Lean:

Who: Who is the audience? Is it an internal or external audience?

What: What is going to happen? What does the audience need to know about it? What do you expect them to do as a result of the communication? What does the audience fear? What could prevent them from embracing the change? What are they saying or thinking?

Why: Why are you making this change at this time? What are the business conditions that are precipitating the change? Why is this the right method at this time?

When: When will you communicate? How frequently?

Where: Where will you make your communication?

How: How will you engage the audience? How can you solicit input? How will the message permeate all levels of the organization? How can you prevent the message from being changed as it’s relayed? How can the company leverage technology to make the communication more effective?

Feedback loops are vital to an organization undergoing change. You need to know how your original message has been filtered by perceptions and misinterpretation. Based on the feedback of the response, you can adjust your message and delivery method in the next round of communication. Figure 4-2 shows a model of a feedback loop.

In the beginning of a change, it’s nearly impossible to over-communicate with people. People need to know what they’re in for. Supplement the formal communication plan with informal communications. Nothing can derail a change movement faster than misinformation and coffee-pot rumors. In the absence of information, people fill the abyss with speculation and fear.

Frequently, managers excited about a new initiative fall into the advocacy trap. They’re so focused on telling people why they should be excited and the benefits of the change that they forget to listen and ask for input. Practicing inquiry is vitally important to your long-term success.

Developing the ability to listen to and truly hear your employees is a critical skill for every manager. People need to be heard. Some may need to vent before they can move onto the new ways of doing business. Providing different forums for communication, including the following, will address the various needs of the individuals within the organization:

One on one: Invest sufficient time (at least 15 minutes) with your employees and colleagues to hear what their thoughts, ideas, and concerns are around the change. Use this information to understand where blocks in the organization are happening, to monitor trends in the organization, and to craft follow-up group communication. Strive to have these conversations in or near gemba (see Chapter 13).

Small group: Conducting regular small-group interactive sessions will help you address larger issues and gather ideas. These groups can be diagonal slices across the organization, functional groups, project teams, or natural workgroups. And remember that people need a mechanism for inputting questions before the sessions.

Large group: Make a point to conduct large-group briefings regularly. Recognize accomplishments, show the state of the business and progress towards long-term visions, and recognize both individual and group efforts. Provide a mechanism for people to input questions and concerns.

Communications in action: an example

Assume you’re a manager of a large facility who has just received news that your company has won a new contract, but you don’t currently have the floor space available in your facility to accommodate the new work. After working with key people in the organization on the right vision and strategy for the new contract launch, you start the communication process. Initially, you gather your organization together, tell them about the new business, and tell them that we’ll need to free up 10,000 square feet of floor space in the northeast corner of the facility in two weeks. You tell them that they’ll be involved in kaizen activities to make this happen and that you expect there to be no negative impact on the customer during these kaizen activities. It will require teamwork, commitment, and cooperation. You announce that Pat will be responsible to organize and oversee the activities. You tell them that you will be following their progress closely and that you expect the next gathering will be in two weeks in the newly freed-up area.

Later that day, you go to the northeast corner of the facility and hang a sign saying “Future Home of Whizzo Production.” You talk to employees as you walk through the plant, asking them what they think about the new contract and what they think it will take to free up the space. The next day, you and Pat walk the floor again, informally communicating with the employees. You both decide to add a sign showing progress to the 10,000 square feet. You also decide to personally lead or participate in the first kaizen activity. After each kaizen activity, you meet with the teams, recognize them, and thank them for their efforts. You use a company blog and other social media to communicate the progress, new business updates, and recognize efforts.

Every day you walk the floor to review the progress. At the one-week mark, you gather all your staff and the supervisors in the area to review the status and subsequently make any adjustments to the plan. You record an update that is played in the cafeteria. Finally, at the two-week mark, you gather everyone into the area, recognize their efforts, and announce the next challenge.

Whatever you communicate, be prepared to back up the message with actions. If you say that you’re going to do something by a certain date, do it, or explain why it didn’t happen. Part of the population is expecting failure — don’t let that part win.

Find the best way in your organization to foster multidirectional communication as part of your culture, and make it part of your daily activities. What you should do initially may be different than in the long term, but your long-term vision should guide your short-term actions.

The changing role of management

Two of the biggest challenges managers in an organization face when shifting from a traditional organization to a Lean organization are (1) recognizing how they must do their job differently and (2) recognizing the importance of how the team achieves results is as important as the results themselves. Living in a Lean organization is not like a traditional organization; it requires you to develop different mindset and an updated leadership style.

The following 16 essentials characterize a Lean manager at any level in the organization:

Stay true to the long-term focus, even in a short-term crisis. The top of the organization sets the long-term vision and strategy for the enterprise. You define the long-term vision for your organization, considering as many as ten or more years in the future! When a crisis occurs, like the Great Recession of 2008, the short-term decisions you make must be congruent with your long-term vision. You may choose to invest in further development of your workforce or use the down time to relentlessly eliminate waste in all your processes. Whatever action you decide must be consistent with the long-term vision and investment in the organization.

Maintain unrelenting commitment to delivering customer value through elimination of waste in all aspects of the business. Understand that your organization exists to deliver value to its customers: what they want, when they want it and how they want it. Always do it in the most effective and consistent manner possible.

Provide servant leadership at all levels. Serve your teams; help them break down barriers to eliminate waste and better deliver customer value. Challenge, ask questions, show respect, lead from knowing and understanding and never be satisfied with the status quo.

Focus on both process and results. How you and your organization achieve results is as important as the results themselves. Put your efforts into developing sound processes, ensuring people meet the standards, and are relentlessly improving these processes — ultimately leading to the achievement of the results you require.

Maintain integrity and congruency in words, actions and vision. Create long-term and short-term visions. Independent of the circumstances, lead consistently. Be the same person, whether people are watching or not. Through your leadership, create an environment of trust.

Engage in deep reflection; understand “why;” accept mistakes, and pledge improvement. The Japanese call this hansei. Whether things are going well or not, reflect to understand why a situation is as it is. By understanding cause, you can direct even more your improvement efforts. Especially in this 24/7, crazy-busy, global business climate, this reflection is vital to success. If you do not understand what worked — or didn’t — and why, you cannot repeat success or learn from your efforts.

Attract and retain talented, willing people. Focus your hiring processes on finding the right people for your organization. After you’ve hired them, treat them as a long-term asset, not just a body filling a role.

Lead by going and seeing (genchi genbutsu). Do not delegate understanding; go to where the action is (to gemba) to understand the true nature of problems or solutions. From this knowledge, you guide and direct problem solving. (More on this in Chapter 13.)

Be nonjudgmental and blame-free. Do not expect perfection; Murphy’s Law is a statement of probability. How you respond when people make mistakes or when solutions don’t work determines how well you respect and engage your people. You must create a blame-free culture and never make failure personal. Focus on what can be learned and what is the next thing needed to deliver value or achieve the target.

Build capability in the people by mentoring them through problem solving. Because Lean leaders go and see, they have a better understanding of the situation. This doesn’t mean you necessarily have the answers or solutions, but you will have foundation for directing the problem solving. (Ideally your managers have matured through the organization and have firsthand knowledge of how to do the work.) You may point an individual where to go look, but do not tell people how to solve their problems. Use Socratic methods — open ended questions — to guide people to find their own solutions. Insist on rapid, simple, systematic solutions first; change one thing at a time. See PDCA in Chapter 9.

Challenge the organization in a constructive manner. See the vision as achievable. With this as a foundation, question the organization. How can we achieve this? What do we need to do to eliminate this barrier?

Build long-term partnerships with your customers, people, suppliers, and community. Recognize that you are part of a greater community. By creating long-term productive, supportive, and challenging relationships, you can create broader change. Consider the long-term consequences of your decisions and legacy, beyond the time you are in your role. Guide your supply partners to improve and be successful in the long term.

Never be satisfied with the status quo. Even if you have the best cultures and processes, they will decline if no one invests in them. Adapt the mindset that “there is always a better way” to move your organization toward your long-term vision. When you have no problems, you have a problem!

Treat the long-term vision as attainable and a given; eliminate the barriers that block progress to the vision. Traditional-style managers waiver; they don’t believe a long-term vision is achievable. This ultimately causes chaos in the organization. You must accept the long-term vision as a given, and guide people to make short-term, systematic actions that close the gap. Shepherd your organization through the unknown, using PDCA to break down barriers to achieving the long-term vision.

Oblige a safe and clean workplace. A clean, safe workplace is non-negotiable. Your respect for people obligates you to ensure their safety. Eliminate unsafe or potentially harmful conditions in processes and environments. Use 5S (see Chapter 11) to create a clean workplace and facilitate the identification of waste.

Ensure people follow standards and eliminate barriers when they are not. Accept that you are responsible for ensuring that people follow standards. Without standard conditions, you do not have a platform for consistency or improvement. Nonstandard actions are signals that something is amiss. Understand the nature of the nonconformance. Don’t assume that it is a training issue; investigate the root cause to learn what’s causing the problem and the singular countermeasure that will create a standard condition. (See the Lean toolbox in Part IV.)

Now that you understand the characteristics of a Lean leader, it is time for some deep reflection on yourself: To what degree have you developed these characteristics in your leadership style? What is the next most effective area where you can develop and grow your leadership ability? What do you need to do or to learn to develop yourself?

Bringing people along

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.

— President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Bring individuals along by addressing their needs. Every organization, team, or department contains individuals who all have their own needs, filters, perceptions, and timelines. To move the entire organization down the path of Lean, meet each individual where he is. Table 4-1 shows some of the differences to consider in your communications activities, strategy development, and implementation steps.

Table 4-1 Organizational Development and Strategy Considerations to Evoke Change

Aspect of Change	Impact on Change
Cultural/organizational	People’s perceptions are influenced by all the groups that they’ve belonged to — from family units to other business organizations. Respect that this will color individual beliefs about the “right way” to do things and influence the willingness to change.
Generational	At least four generations are currently in the workplace, each with different values and guiding principles. You must get them to work together and communicate effectively within a Lean environment. People may resist change as they progress in their careers and in position. Fear of loss becomes greater.
Educational	Your organization may have a broad range of people — from those who cannot read to those with PhDs. You may not even share the same first language as your coworkers.
Learning styles	People learn in different ways. When introducing any new concept or change — and Lean is full of them — present in a multifaceted manner.
Personality styles	Understanding personality styles will help you evaluate how best to respond to the needs of the organization and how to get them to respond to the change.
Change motivators	Not everyone is motivated by money. Matching the motivators — such as time off, public recognition, or money — to the individual will help bring people along.

Among employees’ biggest fears is the fear of losing their job. Some companies implementing Lean have learned to guarantee that no one will lose his job as a direct result of performance gains made by implementing Lean improvements. This guarantee goes a long way to allay fears. If you make such a policy, be clear that it is only in effect for Lean-based improvements, and ensure managers live up to the promise. Be certain people are very clear in their communications and open with information, because if they aren’t clear, they’ll cause a credibility and trust problem — and create another unnecessary impediment to change.

Be careful not to succumb to thinking, “Why do I have to baby people and go to all this effort?” If you want to succeed, you must address the needs of the individuals. What is the price of success? It is worth investing time in your people for the long-term payoff!