GA 047 | Developing a Lean Ecosystem with David Mann

You're listening to episode 47 with David Mann.

Welcome to the Gemba Academy Podcast, the show that's focused on helping individuals and companies achieve breakthrough results using the same continuous improvement principles leveraged by companies such as Toyota Del Monte and the U.S. department of Defense. And now, here's your host, Ron Pereira.

Hey, there.

This is Ron Pereira with Gemba Academy, and I'd like to welcome you to another edition of the Gemba Academy podcast. As always, thank you so much for taking time, your day and your week to listen to the show and for watching our Lean and Six Sigma training videos over@gembacademy.com now then, today I'm excited to welcome David Mann to the show. Now, David, as many of you likely know, is the author of the book Creating a Lean Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions, which is now in its third edition. Now, this is definitely one of my favorite Lean books of all time, and I'd highly recommend you check it out if you haven't already read it. Now, today, David and I explore many different topics, including the relationship between a lean production and lean management system. And we also explore some ideas on how to go about holding the interest of senior executives throughout the lean journey. Now, show notes for this episode, which will include links to David's book, can be found over@gembapodcast.com 47 and that's 47447. So gembapodcast.com 47 and I do apologize. I apologize in advance. I got a bit of a cold, and I'm battling some wicked allergies down.

Here in Texas, so that's why my.

Voice is a little bit wonky. But enough for me. Let's get to the show. All right, David, thank you so much.

For coming onto the show. Where are you calling in from today?

I'm calling in from Michigan today, where it's a rare day in West Michigan in February because the sun is out.

Yes.

So it's. There's snow on the ground, and it's brilliant.

Yes. Yeah, we're actually headed to Daymond Products next week there in Indiana, close to South Bend. So we're gonna be relatively close to you up in the Midwest up there next week. So we'll bring our winter jackets, I guess, for sure. All right, well, David, thanks for. I really appreciate you taking the time. I'm a big fan of your work and got your book, your third edition of Creating a Lean Culture right here in front of me. And so it's an honor to talk to you. So. So thanks for coming on.

First of all well, I'm happy to be here, Ron. Thanks for having me.

All right, well why don't you just share just maybe a quick background on yourself and, and how you first came to to learn about lean and didn't maybe what you're up to these days?

Well, so my background is sort of the background being around peg in a square hole. I'm a psychologist by training, have worked in industry for a long time, have always been interested in sort of the way things work. I describe myself as a lifelong steam shovel watcher and had the opportunity to get involved in the very beginnings of thinking about a lean implementation at the manufacturing company where I worked and was initially involved in change management and communication I guess, but was interested and would hang out with the lean teachers that we brought in, were very excellent, all card carrying Toyota production system guys from work in the auto industry and just sort of picked it up. So I've been in the wrong place, you know, technically for most of my career for somebody with my background. But I'm happy the way things have turned out.

Yeah, very good. All right. Well David, the way that we like to start all of our shows is with our guests sharing a continuous improvement or leadership slanted quotation that inspires them. So do you have a quotation that inspires you, David?

Yeah, this is from Shigeo Shingo and it is Drew Dillon's translation of he was the productivity press original translator of Shingo's work into English and he put together a book of things that he, that nuggets that he found in Shingo's work. And this one is the one that really strikes me the really the most and that is that lean is not so much about eliminating waste, it's about finding waste.

What do you think Mr. Shingo meant by that?

Well, you have to be looking carefully and as well as setting up systems where when waste or problems or misses occur, they show up right away. And I think that in one of the most fundamental elements of a lean production system is standardized work. And standardized work gives you the ability to predict what's going to happen, how long it's going to take, how many units we're going to get, what have you. And when you have an expectation of what's going to happen, you can be surprised. And most often that surprise is something didn't go the way you thought it did. And when you see that that often is going to be among the best next clues for places to work on process improvement. So I think that it's finding it, it's seeing it first, once you see it, then there's a range of tools that industrial engineers, among others, have had for over 100 years for doing something about the waste. But you can't do anything about it if your system has so much varia in it that, that you don't, that you can't tell what's going to happen anyhow. So you can't be surprised in that, in that more specific kind of way.

Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Okay. You know, I actually, I know we've kind of reviewed what we're going to talk about today, but I'm going to drop a, drop something on you that we didn't talk about because it just popped in my mind. So apologies in advance, but. So I have to ask you, you wrote this book, Creating a Lean Culture, and I think it's one of the most important Lean related books any practitioner should, should read. I mean, it's a must read, in my opinion. Tell us a fun story about this book that most people don't know. There has to be some amazing stories that, that have gone along with the creation and various editions of this book. Tell us something that most people don't know.

Well, let's see. It is said in certain medical fields that pain has no memory. And when I. This would be most applicable in the most recent edition, which took me about as long to do as it did to write the original one. And, and I had forgotten how much work it was. And I think with the original edition I would write a draft and it was a book length draft, so it was sort of a three ring binder full of paper and then I would go through and I'd edit it and then I'd transcribe it again and print it again and go through it. And I think I wrote every sentence, I think I've written every sentence in this book six times.

Okay.

Because there were six binders of drafts before I finally said, I don't want to see this anymore, I'm sending it off.

Yeah.

So I don't know that I would call that a fun fact, but it's like theme. There's more to it than meets the eye, I guess you would say.

Yeah, it's a process, right?

Yeah, that's for sure.

All right, well, the first question I have for you, David, is when we think about just lean in general, what comes first? Lean production or lean management? And how are they related?

Well, it's a really important subject. And the short answer is that lean production comes first. Certainly the way I think about it and the relationship between lean production and lean management is that without lean production, lean management is not meaningful. And without lean management, lean production is hardly ever sustained. So they are very closely related to each other, very tightly linked, and together. I would say that these two related lean systems form a lean ecosystem. And if you pull an element out of an ecosystem, that element is unlikely to survive. If you pull several elements out of an ecosystem, those elements or that subsystem is unlikely to do very well. So the lean production system produces a need for a lean management system, and the lean management system sustains the lean production system. So if you think about a kaizen, the way I was taught, the last step in a kaizen, talking about a one week intensive improvement focused activity, the last step in the kaizen is to write standardized work for the newly changed or newly developed process. That's the outcome of the kaizen. I would say that from this ecosystem perspective that the new last step in a kaizen, immediately following writing standardized work for the new process would be creating a visual control that will allow you to frequently focus on the health of that new process. And that visual control is the first element that I recommend implementing of a lean management system. So the lean management system is providing a close focus on process as the process cycles, both to sustain the newly standardized elements in the process, but also to be in effect setting a setting a snare or a trap to catch the next problems that remain in the system that may have been not visible, blocked by the. By the difficulties that you resolved in the kaizen in the first place. But those imperfections which remain in the process will emerge. And if you've got a visual control, and by that I mean like hour by hour production tracking chart or whatever, the frequency of tracking is more frequently for faster cycling process, less frequently for slower cycling processes. But the production tracking chart is designed to catch problems, to catch the misses where you had an expectation for what was going to happen from the standardized work and it didn't happen. Holy smokes. You know, we missed, you know, we missed pitch in this last half hour or this last container quantity or whatever the interval of observation is. And when you know that you missed, then that tips you off, there's some degree of instability or problem that remains in the process. Now let's take it through a cause analysis and then root cause corrective action process and we will have improved the process further. We're sustaining the initial gain, improving the process beyond that by catching these remaining imperfections. And then if you think about it, what you're doing, starting with the visual control and then the other core elements of the management system, an accountability process and leader standard work. You're catching a problem, you're doing something about the problem first to understand it and then to resolve it. That's the accountability piece. And then you're following up on what is now a new process change. That's the improvement you made based on the problem you found. And the follow up is an element that you would add to leader standard work so that you don't assume that just because we fixed it, it's going to stay fixed and people are going to do this now new, different thing. So you monitor it, you reinforce it, you have conversations with people about it. And as you go through that process that describes a virtuous circle, the outcome of which is improved stability and continuous improvement. So you put those two systems together. The production system that brings stability in the first place and makes it worth following up on. That's the value proposition in the management system. If you follow up on this new improvement, you'll sustain it and turns out you'll drive further improvement as well.

Yeah, I really like that ecosystem analogy. I've never heard that put that way, but it's a brilliant analogy. So I think I know the answer to this next question and I think you just kind of touched on it, but I want to make sure that I have it right. So when we talk about implementing this lean management system, you mentioned the importance of visual controls and so forth and standardized work. Is that where you recommend organizations focus first?

Yeah. So if you're implementing a lean management system, the management system is paired immediately following a lean tool application in a lean production system. And for me, the first thing to do is that close focus on process, the frequent focus on the health of the process process, and that's the visual control. In several instances that I've seen over the last several years, organizations have sort of seized on leader standard work. That's a good idea, that's something that we want to do. And they'll bring, they'll develop leader standard work. In some cases, very careful engineering analyses of, of what different classes of leaders do in an organization. So you have a lean team doing these observations, doing interviews, collecting data, analyzing the data, producing leader standard work, going out and then telling people, hey, we have a great tool for you. It's leader standard work. And without, you know, without having made any, any process improvements that produce a better day at work for a supervisor or an operations manager or wherever the line leadership position is, the leader standard work isn't meaningful. When you ask people to do something new and leader standard work, or any of these elements would be examples of asking people to do something new. Fill out this visual control, lead this accountability meeting. Here's your leader standard work. People will have a question almost always, but they will almost never ask the question. And the question is, well, what's in it for me? Why should I do this? How is this going to give me a better day at work? And if you can't answer that question, if you can't describe the value proposition for doing this new thing, you shouldn't expect that people are going to do it. They'll comply for a while, you know, while you're watching them, but if it, if it's not helping them, they're not going to do it. People are pragmatic. Yeah. Give them a tool that's going to. That's going to provide a better day at work, that's going to keep problems from, from reemerging. Yeah. They're likely to do it, but if you, but if you, if you haven't set it up that way, then it, then it's a. Then it becomes a bureaucratic exercise, a check the box exercise, and they never last. Yeah.

It's almost like you always have to come back to, what problem are we trying to solve and what's our purpose?

Right.

Why are we doing this?

Yeah, exactly. And I'd elaborate that a little bit. A good lean practitioner has lots of tools and can solve lots of problems. And it occasionally happens too frequently, probably, that the first problem that we're going to work on is the problem that the lean practitioner identified. And that's not a good place to start, it seems to me. The place to start, it seems to me, is so you have, so you're. If you're an internally practitioner, you are acting in a role as a consultant, as a service, in a service position.

Sure.

And if you're an experienced lean practitioner, there's no problem that anyone can give you that you're not going to be able to deal with. So start with. So treat the people that you're working with, treat them as customers, think of them as clients, treat them as customers. Values defined from the point of view of the customer. So go to your customer supervisor, plant manager, whoever it is, and say, so what are the, you know, what are the. What are the problems that aggravate you the most? What's the one that you would put at the top of your list? And then let's go tackle that one. Yeah, yeah.

Love it, Love it. So Speaking of these, these internal lean practitioners, you know, we often hear the stories of how it's sometimes difficult to hold the interest of senior executives while you're on this journey. What do you think might be going on there?

It's very interesting and unfortunately it's a pretty widespread problem. I encountered it myself as an internal lean leader and I've talked to lots of other internal leansters in various organizations and it's a problem for them. The long and the short of it is that we as lean practitioners believe, and rightly as far as it goes, that the best way to learn lean is probably the way we learned it, which was by doing it. You know, you show up with your steel toed shoes and your jeans and you do kaizens, or you're actually, you're doing this hands on work. You're trying to, you're experimenting with different approaches to problem solving or to process improvement. And you learn how they apply by being involved in applying them, by doing them. So it's a master apprentice model for learning and teaching and for learning to be a lean practitioner. It seems to me that's the best way. It's too lean, is tricky and it seems simple. But what you read in a book or hear a podcast or go to a seminar, here's how you implement lean. You really don't know what it means until you do it.

Yes.

So we assume, lean practitioners assume that we would be the one who has gone before the teacher or in this model, a master apprentice model, that we would be the master. And we're going to gamble, walk with our apprentices and ask them questions that they've never thought of before and show them processes that may be unfamiliar to them. And that's the way you learn. Well, it turns out that's the way you learn lean. And it turns out that in my experience, most senior executives, even if they came up through the technical or operations ranks, are no longer interested in learning how to calculate the kanban replenishment quantities for a shared resource supporting multiple value streams. They got people like us to worry about that. Don't bother me with calculating high junk algorithms. That's your job. So what keeps me up at night if I'm a senior executive? Which would be your worst nightmare. But what keeps me up at night are the commitments that I've made to the board of directors or to the CEO for my year on year improvement goals. That's what I'm focused on and I've signed up for. I may have been talked into it, I may believe it But I've signed up for a lean strategy to hit these performance improvement goals. And so I have. As a senior leader, I'm now dealing with strategic issues. I'm no longer dealing with tactical issues. So the lean management system, as I first came to understand it, is really focused at a tactical level, say from a plant manager on down, something like that sort of line, you know, line leadership positions. But the, you know, the senior vice president for global operations is on the hook for a lean strategy that's supposed to produce X percent reduction in cost of goods sold or inventory turns or floor space or, you know, whatever you have. And so the strategy is what's important to that position.

Well, it comes back to what we were talking about earlier of that practitioner who's trying to potentially identify problems. It's not important what they think is a problem. Instead they should go to this executive and say, Mr. Or Mrs. Executive, what problems are you trying to solve and how can we help? Right. And you get that alignment throughout the organization.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So it turns out that if there are these two unique managerial responsibilities for a senior executive, one is that, is that, is that the fidelity of the implementation of the lean strategy, and the second is the integrity of the chain of command that stretches from that executive down through the. Down through the operator, down through the value added task operator. And so how, and how can I tell that the strategy is working? Because what I get is I get these sort of highly refined, sanitized reports of activity, and I'm really thirsty to have a much clearer sense of what's actually going on. So what I found and what has worked, not just in a place where I had known people for 20 years, but in organizations where I'm just the guy who, you know, stepped off an airplane and drove to the plant, is that what, what helps executives in their, in their responsibilities, in these strategic and managerial responsibilities is to gemba walk? Yes, but not to gamble walk. The technical lean production system is to gemba walk the lean management system. This is something that occurred to me, well after, like, I don't know, years after the first edition of Creating a Lean Culture was published. So if you think about it this way, the lean management system is very easy to learn. It's not technical at all. You can pretty much tell by looking at it and by asking people some simple questions. So is that if the. And go back to this idea of the ecosystem, if the lean management system is healthy, you can be confident that the lean production system is healthy. So we teach gimbal walks to master assessment of the lean management system. And in most cases this is a one trial learning proposition. So we'll go out and gimbal walk visual controls using a Gemba worksheet. It's got a five point rating scale on it, it's got diagnostic questions. Highlight two or three of the questions. Give this one pager to the executive. Say we're going out to the, you know, flux capacitor assembly line and you know, don't worry about the, you know, about the zip nerd puller but just, just look at, just let's. We're going to assess the health of the visuals. Yeah, well that's easy to do. So you go out and look at the visuals, the, and then walking off and there are these two or three questions now that the executive needs to find answers to. So we've put the executive responsible for his or her own learning. Yeah, so they're not in a passive position, they're in an active position. They're driving the bus. Yeah. We may ask a question or two just to get things going. So the executive is asking people questions, making observations. The executive is prepared. The Gemba worksheet is the staff work. So I know what to do and then we're walking off the floor. I asked the executive, so what'd you think? How would you rate the visuals in this area?

Yeah.

Oh, I don't know, Ron. They looked, you know, they looked pretty good. They were, you know, neat. You know, boards look good. There's stuff written out of my five point scale. I'd say, I'd say I, I'd put them about a four.

Yeah.

Oh, David, no good, says Ron, because they're really, you know, they're more like a two.

Yeah.

And so, and so these executives are people who for the most part have gotten an A on every test they've ever taken. They're highly competitive, highly achievement oriented and when you tell them that they did not pass the test, you've just created about a 90 second teachable moment where you can tell them what you saw and why it's important and why you gave them a rating of a 2 instead of a 4. And then you take them out two weeks or a month or a week later to gemble walk visual controls in another area and they'll be on top of it. They are typically very quick studies and they're paying attention because they want to get an A on that test next time. So right there I can, when I, when I, when I go to the floor And I ask an operator, say, so tell me how this, tell me how you use this tracking chart. And the operator says, oh, I don't know. You know, we put stuff on there. Nothing really ever seems to happen about it. The executive has just identified a problem with the fidelity of implementation of the lean strategy, and in parallel, a problem someplace in his or her chain of command, someplace between me and this task level operator, the message is getting lost, that the management system is important and the reasons why it's important. So I know my strategy is at risk and I know there's a problem in my chain of command. And those are two things that only I can do something about, about. So when executives learn to do this, and again, it doesn't take them very long, they have much more confidence in their grasp of what the actual health of their strategy deployment is, and they have a much clearer picture of is their chain of command working for them, or do they need to do some coaching, go find the weak link in the chain of command gimbal walk with them, see if they understand what they're looking at, reset expectations, give them a 90 second sort of bit of coaching, and then in the following weeks and other areas of that subordinate executive's responsibility, see if things begin to change. And if they don't, then now you have a different kind of problem, and that's your problem to deal with. So the executives understanding what they value and giving them the tools that will deliver value to them is really important. The thing not to do, and it really, it does them a disservice, is to assume, well, this person is a senior executive. They must know what to do, they must know what to look for. And for the most part, there's no basis for that. If they haven't come up through a lean organization, why should we think that they know how to gimbal walk? And why should we think further, that they're interested in gimbal walking, the stuff that we think is important, because it ignores what actually is important to them.

Good stuff. All right. Very good, David. Well, let's go ahead now and transition into what we're calling the quick fire. And we do have some new questions here for regular podcast listeners to enjoy. So the first question, David, is what does respect for people mean to you?

For me, Ron, it would be for people in leadership positions to share the discretion that they have to define problems that are worth working on, to share that discretion with the people actually doing the work. Managers typically know how they want the work to be done. They think they know how the work actually is done. But it's extremely rare that they know what people have to go through every day just to get there, just to get done what we're asking them to do. They have lots of problems and interruptions and frustrations and delays. And if we share our discretion with them to define a problem that's worth working on and then give them the support for working those problems through resolution, I think that is a very meaningful way of showing respect for people.

What's the best advice you've ever received?

Well, it's, so you may be able to tell that I'm a bit of a talker. And the best piece of advice I ever received was from one of our lean teachers. We were talking about something and he said, well, David, that's all very interesting, but tell me, what can you do today? What can you do today? And I think from Aline perspective, that's really important in a couple of ways. First of all, it says, you know, we don't need a project charter and an act of Congress and a project team. In fact, we want to, if the, if we're following our own advice of smaller quantities more frequently and plan, do, check, act, what, so what, what step can we take today that we will learn from? And part of it will be an advancement, and part of it will, will, will, you know, check and, and, and adjust and, and then try something a little bit different. So it, it, that's, I think that's really, I found that very helpful.

No, I like it. Do you have a personal productivity habit that others might benefit from?

I, you know, I don't know if it's, if it's so much a productivity habit, but it's, it seems to me that it's important when people are trying to get in touch with me, and this was when I was working on the inside as well as now on the outside is return a phone call or an email within 24 hours of getting part of that's respect, part of it's, you know, just polite and, and then something isn't going to sit.

So are you an inbox zero kind of guy?

Oh, I don't know if you looked at my inbox. I don't know if you say that, but, but I definitely try to respond to things quickly. Yeah, I, I, my inbox is sort of, sort of a bulk filing system. So I, you know, I'm not, I'm not that disciplined about it. Yeah, but someone once told me, hey, if you can find it in three minutes, you don't need a Better system. Yeah. And I, you know, that seems to work for me.

Yeah. All right, Very good. Very good. So here's a new question. What's one thing that surprised you during your last year of playing, practicing, or implementing Lean?

What surprises me, and this is something that goes back a little bit more than just in the past year. But there are a lot of ways that people used to define what lean is, and a lot of them really look like lean to me. Like, you know, we've been, we've been working on lean for X number of years, but there's, there's no standard work anywhere. I'm like, how, how does that, that, that, that just doesn't fit with me. So there's a, so it's a. People, people launch on, on, on these initiatives without what seems to me even, you know, a modestly broad understanding of what's involved and, and how the different pieces relate to each other. That, that continues to surprise me. Yeah.

Okay.

What's.

What one routine or ritual you follow when things aren't going well or perhaps you just need to recharge and refocus.

Well, particularly recently, I think I've gotten a little bit better at this. If we're talking about something and, and, and someone has an idea to do, you know, to, you know, well, we're going to do this or we're going to do that, and I, if I, if I might think that that's, that's not, you know, the, the best way or even a very good way, it sort of, it comes back to trying to take our own advice, and that is take, take an experimental approach to things. You know, try it. You know, try it. See, See what works. You know, don't, you know, try it in a, in a PDCA kind of mindset and keep the pieces that work and change the pieces that don't. Let. Let your experience. Let your experience be. Let your experience teach you. So in, in theory, there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is a difference. So, you know, rather than, rather than getting into a theoretical, you know, argument with someone, hey, let's, you know, let's go to the real world and see what happens and, and learn from it.

Yeah. Okay. Last question I have for you, David, is what's one knowledge or skill area that you feel you need to improve in order to become a more successful practitioner of Lean?

Yeah, I think it's, I think it probably, I think it probably has to do with patience and. Related to what we were just saying. Yeah. One of the things that I've learned is that there are a lot of ways of doing this. Right. That Lean and Lean management are this, you know, are this. It's sort of a single interlocking system. And if you enter the system any place and stay with it, you will eventually get around to all of the other elements of the system because they're all connected. They're all related to each other. Yeah. So I think being less concerned, and this is sort of who's the customer kind of thing, being less concerned about what I think is the way to do it, and encouraging people to be informed by their experience. And if they want to do something, go ahead and do it. Your experience will convince you much faster than talking about it will, no matter who you're talking with. So give it a shot. But, you know, but. But think about these as learning cycles and try to make them, you know, try to make them quick.

Yes, yes. All right. Well, very good, David. Thank you so much. I know you're super busy, so I really do appreciate you taking the time to visit with us today. Why don't we just wrap this show up, David, with you sharing some final words of wisdom, and then why don't you tell people how they can connect with you on social media or perhaps your favorite website?

Okay. Words of wisdom. I don't know. I feel like I've talked a lot. So let me, Let me. Let me leave it at that. I'm pretty easy to find. You can find me on my website, which is dmanlean.com man with two N's. Yes. My. All my contact information is right there. I have a Twitter account at which I would not say that I'm particularly proficient, but I've got one which is. I think it's Leanman with two N's.

Okay.

And that's about as far as I've ventured into social media. I think I have a Facebook page, but I couldn't. I couldn't swear to it.

All right, very good, very good. Well, like I said, creating a lean culture on your third edition. Is there going to be a fourth edition down the road? You think?

I don't. Well, I don't know at the moment. I think I've said about all that I know to say, but if I, you know, if I last long enough doing this and learn something else that seems worthwhile. Yeah, I might, but I'd say I'm thinking three might be it.

Yeah. All right. Well, it's a wonderful, wonderful book, so thanks for taking the time and putting the effort into writing that It's a wonderful resource. So, David, again, thank you. And hopefully we can meet in person one day and perhaps we'll chat again down the road.

That'd be terrific. Thanks a lot, Ron. Thanks for your support.

All right, bye.

Bye. Bye, bye.

Thanks for listening to the Gemba Academy podcast. Now it's time to take a free, free, no strings attached, fully functional test drive of Gemba Academy's School of Lean and Six Sigma. Over@gembacademy.com gain immediate access to more than 500 Lean and Six Sigma training videos free of charge@gembaacademy.com.