Wow, this is a big and unexpected honor that I received a couple of weeks ago from John Hunter, who asked me if I would like to participate in his traditional End of Year Management Improvement Carnival.
John asked me for which blogs I would like to give my yearly review on, and we agreed that I would take on The Lean Edge with authors Jeff Liker, Tracey Richardson and Art Smalley, which I will talk about today, and then, tomorrow, the brilliant Gemba Coach Column by Michael Ballé.
The Lean Edge is a blog for which I share the review with Michel Baudin, and he has already published his article, so I’ll build a bit on it. I agree with his article, and also with John’s comment, that The Lean Edge is not a collaborative environment, even though it’s goal states otherwise. It is not a Forum, because a Forum means that there is a dialog between the orator and the public: someone tells something and other people are there to freely share, critique or comment on it. It is exactly the contrary of Forum: it is a closed environment, where more then once I tried to comment on the articles and wasn’t able to do that because I couldn’t even register… I hope this will serve the authors of the site as a feedback to do some kaizen…
But the idea behind the site, of the questions, is great. Because I wasn’t able to answer questions or comment on them on The Lean Edge, I answered them right here, on Encob Blog. I’m not such a recognized author like others on The Lean Edge, but I self-published a couple of lean related ebooks in italian language (Sicurezza Lean, available also in english, and Progettare Costi e Valore, Designing Costs and Value, not yet available in english) and I felt like I could give my humble opinion on the questions asked. If you make a search here about The Lean Edge, you’ll find all my answers on all the questions ever posted on The Lean Edge, with the only caveat that the answers are in italian language…
Enough about me, back to The Lean Edge. I chose to evaluate posts by Jeffrey Liker, Tracey Richardson and Art Smalley. They didn’t answer all the questions, but were amongst the most regular participants and that is why I chose them and not others.
Let’s start with Art Smalley, co-author of Understanding A3 Thinking and author of Creating Level Pull:
Regarding Executive Performance Evaluation question, Art shares a contrary way to evaluate it: What not to evaluate, before asking what TO evaluate. I find this answer to be close to the real A3 thinking, of which Art is a true expert: First, define the problem… And it is also a Matthew May’s way of seing the problems first through subtraction…
This same A3 thinking is very present in his second post of 2012: Sorry, no buzz word, where he doesn’t try to give you a buzz word regarding what lean leadership is or isn’t, but gives a series of questions about what the leader should DO and how they need to help their companies achieve what was envisioned.
The same thinking is present in the answer to Why there is resistance to creating learning organizations, and where he redefines the learning organization as a Performance Organization, but also this doesn’t satisfy him because we’re wired to thinking about how to call things and not WHY they exist in the first place, and HOW to get the facts about the actual situation in order to change them for the better…
Regarding work standards, he underlines the fact that we are all just a little Confused…
Then he doesn’t want to give a five points answer to How to trasform silo based organization in business processes. He points out that the Toyota is an organization that works in functional departments and it is nevertheless the best existing example of lean thinking that we can find. It is the WHY that really counts…
His other articles published were: Hoshin Kanri and PDCA to maintain the constant focus and momentum of lean transformation, Nemawashi in Toyota to explain the difference between nemawashi and lobbying, Lean Versus Historical TPS to explain lean in the press shop, and in the end he explains why Lean is sometimes a bad name when we try to capture the imagination of a sales team…
I continue with Jeffrey Liker, bestselling author of a series of books on The Toyota Way:
I loved his answer regarding takt time, where he talks about the ideal of “working to achieve production to takt” versus “thou shall always build to takt”.
Then regarding lean leadership, he cited a quote of Akio Toyoda that resonates with my thinking: ”We are all growing and learning, and we all need teachers and coaches to help guide. We say at Toyota that every leader is a teacher developing the next generation of leaders. This is their most important job.” Much like the recently published book by Norman Bodek and Takashi Harada, The Harada Method, where he teaches us how everyone of us should become more self-reliant person and achieve his/her purpose through continuous improvement with a help of a coach that will guide you along your path.
Regarding learning organizations, he uses a beautiful analogy with physical health to explain the quick fixes…
Other articles are regarding Individual and group standards, How to teach teamwork, Why self development leads to developing others, What is the meaning of nemawashi, he explains the difference between the JIT shipping and JIT system, and How we should think about the whole enterprise as a continually evolving system.
Finally, Tracey Richardson. I really love her practical advice from the gemba on her Toyota Gal blog.
She explains everything from the point of view of a person who lives in the gemba and needs to cope every day with zillions of small problems for which he/she needs to find effective countermeasures in order to keep going on. So her explanation regarding standards is about value of standards in the gemba, about how without standard there can be no kaizen, how engagement and involvement of people must be a foundation to ensure focus and momentum of lean initiative.
But the article which made me think most was about nemawashi, where she explains the process from ex Toyota employee perspective, and it’s great to hear frontline testimonials like that!
Other articles by Tracey are How to empower people through standards and How to understand the value stream from order to customer.
Tomorrow I’ll review the year of blogging of Michael Ballé at Gemba Coach. Thans again to John Hunter for allowing me into this year’s carnival and I hope that this will become a tradition in the years to come.
Thanks for participating in the annual review. I share the feeling expressed in your comment about the closed nature of the site. Lean Edge provides great content but has room to improve.