GA 185 | How to Use Lean to Create Value with Steve Kane

You're listening to episode 185 with Steve Cain.

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. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day and your week to listen to the show and for watching our Lean and Six Sigma trading videos over at Gembacademy.com, we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now, today, I'm excited to share a keynote address that our own Steve Cain recently gave at a conference in Michigan that was attended by primarily folks in the government there, the city governments. There were some put on in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but there were other folks from other government agencies that came in. And Steve gave a nice talk focused on what he called kind of this Lean philosophy. So he does cover some of the basics, some of the 14 principles that Toyota has laid out and that we've all read about and various Lean books. And so he gives a really nice overview of that. And then he just dives into some other. Some really interesting stuff that I think you're going to find value in. So even if you're a so called, you know, experienced Lean thinker, I think it's good to kind of, you know, sharpen the saw, so to speak, and go back to basics from time to time and make sure that the foundation is strong. So show notes for this particular episode can be found over@gemba podcast.com youm'll just look for episode 185 again gembapodcast.com and look for episode 185. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show.

So please welcome Steve Cain from Gemba Academy. Thank you very much. It's certainly a pleasure to be here and speak with you this morning. Lean is kind of a fuzzy topic that's a little bit difficult to really clearly define. We ask 100 different lean consultants what lean is. You might get 100 or so different, slightly different definitions, but the underlying themes are the same. And what I want to discuss today is having a philosophy background, the philosophy of Lean, really, the thinking behind all of the actions, all of the tools, why we do this. So Lean is about solving problems and developing people. And that comes from John Miller, author of Creating A culture of Kaizen. John Miller's also a co founder of Gemba Academy. And that really is the essence of Lean. The idea that we can do better. No matter what it is that we do, we can do it better. And when it comes to what we do at work, we kind of think about what is it that we're trying to achieve. And in Lean, that's often referred to as creating value. What is the value that we create? Or what is. What is our value? Creating purpose and what is the purpose in our role? So to give you an idea of the struggles of Lean, or why it's so fuzzy and difficult to define, what is your value? Creating purpose. And if anybody wants to share that. So that silence is just kind of an example of the struggles that we deal with in Lean. Like, what are the problems that we're trying to solve? Where Eric was Talking about the A3, the whole idea behind that A3 is we really don't know at first glance. Right here, we're presented with a challenge. Do we really understand the problem or the clear problem statement? Can we get that down to fewer than 10 words? And it takes teams of people hours and hours, repetition, repetition, to get that problem distilled down to a point that we really actually understand it. So Lean is about struggle, dealing with the struggle of change, dealing with the struggles of improvement and the struggles of learning. So here's an example. It's an exercise I learned from somebody else. But if you indulge me here for just a moment, just cross your arms and get comfortable so you feel comfortable. You've done this a million times. Cross your arms the other way. How does that feel? You feel bizarre? It feels a little strange. Is it uncomfortable? You don't like it? You want to go back to the way it was, Right? So that is classic lean learning. Here we come in. Somebody comes in. I'm the lean consultant. We're going to do things differently. It's going to be more efficient, it's going to be better, it's going to be easier, more fun, and we're going to do things differently. And you're facing somebody who's, I've been here 30 years and I do it this way, and now you're telling me to do it that way. I don't like it and I don't want to go along with it, right? Because I want to do what's comfortable. And we're going to get into why people want to do that. Now, that's often perceived as resistance. I don't want to Go along with it. It really isn't. It's just a lack of understanding. So we'll get to that in a minute. So Lean is really rooted in principles or purpose, people and process. So these are the things, the foundation of Lean or continuous improvement. So if we think about the fact that we want to change an organization that has existed for a very, very long time and done things the same way for a very, very long time, and now we want to upset the apple cart, we want to change things, how are we going to do it? We're going to do it by focusing on principles, people and process. So first principles, just as an example, I'm borrowing Toyota's 14 principles. They're very popular, very commonly understood in Lean. And these might apply to you, your organizations and what you do, and they might not. But the philosophy is there, right? The idea that we work according to our principles. So at Toyota base management decisions on a long term philosophy, even at the expense of short term financial goals. So Toyota's philosophy is we'll take a hit in the short run if we can build a stronger organization and create greater value for our customers in the long run. So think long term, create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface. So the some of the early examples of creating continuous flow, Henry Ford's assembly line, that was actually invented in the 16th century by King Henry building his armada, he had a ship coming off of an assembly line every hour. Imagine a wooden hand built ship, one every hour, that's creating continuous flow. How does that apply to government? Well, think about any kind of a process, even email or paperwork going through. If you're doing one step of a process, do you want a whole pile dumped on you at one time and then you have to work through it? Or would you rather have one go downstream and then now your next one comes in? So creating continuous flow. And one of the biggest thing about this is so that when there are problems, we see the problems immediately. So one item, one problem, we stop, we fix it. Use poll systems to avoid overproduction. So again, you're working on something, you want somebody pushing a bunch of work onto you, or do you want to complete something and reach for the next and keep things moving smoothly? Because that big batch of whatever it is that you're working on, that's hiding problems. And when we see one at a time, we're more likely to see the problems and we want to be able to see the problems. That's our job, is to find the problems, level out the workload, work like the tortoise, not the hare. So Keiichi Ono from Toyota, he's one of the great lean thinkers of the 20th century. He. He referred to the tortoise over and over and over. And not that the tortoise moves slowly, but the tortoise is consistent. And that consistency is going to lead to a better result in a shorter period of time than harebrained thinking. Right? So if you think about it like physical Fitness, if on January 1st, you get all motivated, you get your new membership at a health club, and you go and you work out really hard on the second, and then the third, and then you consistently don't show up after that, what will be your results? But if you do show up just Monday, Wednesday and Friday for 30 minutes, and you do it for the whole year, what's going to be your result in December? So that's work like the tortoise, not the hare. Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time. In manufacturing, there's a saying, we don't have time to do it right, but we have time to do it twice. That happens all the time. We won't take the time to do something correctly, but we'll rush through things and we'll go back and we'll fix the problems later. So stop and fix problems. And this can be particularly difficult when there's some sort of a deadline. We've got to get things done and rush and fix it. The idea here is we're better off doing it late and correctly than doing it incorrectly on time. Standardized tasks and processes are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment. So everything that we do at work is part of a process. And every process, every task should be standardized. And that doesn't mean that it has to be necessarily an ISO document. If that's appropriate for your organization, then please go ahead and do that. But it needs to be written down. What is the standard? Because without a standard, there is no improvement. We don't know where we're starting from. We have no idea what an improvement looks like. So we standardize our work, use visual controls so no problems are hidden. So what does that mean? We have some examples up here on the table, and when we take the tour, we're going to see a very simple, very elegant example of a visual control to prevent problems. And, Alan, I might steal some of your thunder here. There's a. In the water department, there's a need for straight copper piping for some repairs. And this copper piping in the city of Grand Rapids is a Consumable, so it's not inventoried, but we need to make sure it's always there because it's used for emergency repairs. These repairs are often done in the middle of the night. So when somebody shows up and they need just a foot or so of this straight copper tubing, where do they get it and how does anybody know to replenish it? So there's a board that has stands, I don't know, six, eight feet tall, three sections, red, yellow, actually green, yellow and then red at the bottom. And that pipe just stands against it. And that's inventory control right there. Somebody comes in for an emergency repair, they cut off two feet of it, they leave the rest and they go out and do their job. Next time they cut off a little bit more. Now it's in the yellow zone. Somebody walks by and sees that could be a problem, soon gets into the red. Now we really have an issue. We have to make sure we never run out. That's a simple visual control. And the idea is that we want to use visual controls everywhere we can to make problems stand out. So having that pipe in the red, we just want to see it use only thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes. In the private industry. ERP systems, MRP systems are used quite a bit. I'm sure there's a lot of software used in government as well. And what's really common is we buy software out of the box and then we adjust our processes to fit the software. Toyota, their philosophy is that they create the software to fit the process. As an example, they needed to do some work on the accounting module of their ERP system. The code writers who create that ERP system had to go to Toyota and work on their assembly line building cars for six months before they were allowed to write any code for that ERP system. The idea is you have to understand who we are, how we work, what we're doing with this software before you can begin to write it. So very easy for me to say because I don't buy these multibillion dollar software packages. You've got to buy any kind of technology that suits you, suits your organization, your value driven purpose before you begin to use it. Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy and teach it to others. In the lean world. When we look at our entire staff and we see some people are really becoming passionate about continuous improvement, we look at those people to be leaders and maybe they're a good fit for supervision or management. Maybe they're better fit to be champions of the Philosophy of the ideas and to help grow people, develop people in teams, develop exceptional people in teams who follow your organization's philosophy. Lean is really all about people. From the first slide, from John's statement that it's about solving problems and developing people. And something that's a little bit different from conventional leadership or management in the US or the west is that Lean really supports the idea of we move as much responsibility as we can to the people who create the value. So those who are doing the work, those who are facing the customer, they take on as much responsibility as appropriate for their position, and the decision making is driven to them. And now managers, supervisors, executives, they take on the role of leader as opposed to manager. And the leader's role is to teach, coach, mentor, and inspire. So if somebody has the decision to make, that manager might be right there, right next to them. What do you think you ought to do? How should you do it? Is this within your realm of responsibility? Great, go for it. Rather than telling people what to do. So we want to grow people and we want to develop teams, help others. Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve. So everybody within your value stream, anybody who might supply you, want them to be on the same wavelength, adopt the same philosophy of, of Lean. And the better you can work together, the better the extended value stream will be able to perform. Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation. This is a classic issue for leadership in the US in particular or in the West. You won't ever solve a problem. You won't make an improvement from inside a conference room, right? You go to the place, the work is done, you thoroughly understand it. Now all the work done to make the improvement is going to be done out there. It won't be done inside a conference room. So go and see for yourself. Wherever a problem is, don't rely on reports. Go and see it in action. Make decisions slowly, by consensus, thoroughly understanding all options. Implement decisions quickly. So this is also something about Japanese culture, really thinking, reflecting on all of the issues, understanding thoroughly before jumping to a reaction. Think the tortoise versus the hare. Is that something that's common in the U.S. do you think? Best information at the moment. Let's make a decision. Let's move. So the lean principles would tell us, okay, yep, yep, the building's in flames. Let's take a moment, right? There are a few firefighters in the room. Does anybody go running into a fire? No, you walk into a fire, right? But once you arrive at a decision, now you move Quickly. So reflect and improve. Become a learning organization through relentless reflection and continuous improvement. And Hansai kanri in Japanese. This idea of reflection actually even has this connotation of repentance. It's almost to the point of beat yourself up when you made a mistake, really understand what you've done and focus on how you're going to improve. So now, not all these principles might be good for your organizations, but you kind of get the idea of we want to be principal, principle driven to start with, right? And that's how we want to run. Our business is based on our principles, and we align ourselves as individuals with the principles of the organization. So that brings us to people, right? The most important aspect of any organization, right, Is the people. Any organization exists solely for the purpose of serving people. All business, all government. So all of the stakeholders, who are our customers, who are the people within the organization, who are the suppliers, Those are the people that we serve. So six basic human needs. You've heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, those five needs. This is actually from Tony Robbins. It really parallels Maslow, but Tony Robbins breaks it down to six basic human needs. And there's a foundation to the needs, and those needs build up to what is most important, right? So we start with consistency. We all have a need for consistency. This relates to survival, security. We want to know where our food is coming from. We want to know the sun will rise tomorrow. Variety, significance, belonging, growth. And then last is contribution. So if we really think about it in the context of employment or the workplace, what is it that we can do as employers to provide people with their fundamental five needs such that they're able to return by giving the greatest contribution possible? So in terms of consistency, why do people come to work in government? If you took a survey, you might find some commonalities there. And for people who really want to be assured that they have a job that is least likely to have layoffs, government's a great place to look. Although there are layoffs in government. So consistency. We want to make sure that we are contributing to each individual employee's needs for consistency, variety. So now that we have all of our basic consistency, survival needs met, well, we want a little bit of variety. We want to spice things up. We want things to be a little bit different from time to time. The interesting thing is, as Tony Robbins puts it, you like surprises, but you only like the surprises you want. You don't like just any surprise, right? Things go drastically wrong, that's a surprise. But that doesn't mean we really like it. So how do we meet somebody's need for variety within the workplace? And many jobs are doing the same thing over and over and over. So as an example, you discovered this problem and thanks very much for bringing it to light. This is a very big issue for the organization. We'd like you to participate on the continuous improvement team to address that. That's introducing some variety significance. We all have the need to feel important, to feel wanted, to be recognized, to be respected. This is a fundamental need for all of us. So how do we do that as an employer or in the workplace? How do we do that as a co worker? Any thoughts on that? Become some sort of subject matter expert. Become a subject matter expert. Any other ideas? What can somebody do to help you feel significant in the workplace? Give you a voice. Give a voice and value your opinion? Absolutely. How about thank you. It's a sign of respect. Your opinion matters. One of the things that we've done actually in one of our departments is we have a Kaizen employee of the month parking space. So as they implement or bring forward these great new ideas, we reward them with having a front and center parking space for the month. Fantastic. So people get to be recognized for a month by taking advantage of the parking space. So they get status. All right, so a sense of belonging. So that belonging is typically not discussed this way in the workplace. But it's love, right? We need to be loved. We need to feel a sense of belonging. And that's belonging to a family, a tribe, an organization. We need to know that we fit in. So how do we do that in the workplace? This is a fundamental need. And then growth. We all have the need to grow. We wouldn't be satisfied with the same task that we were handed on day one of our career. Many, many years in, right? We've mastered that. Now we want to move on to something else. And that feeling of growth, that feeling of accomplishment is a fundamental need for all of us. So what does this all mean and why does it Supporting contribution. What's the whole point here? So in lean, we often. We often encounter what we think is resistance. We were talking about that a little bit earlier. That resistance isn't so much I don't want to do it. It's one of these needs isn't being met. And I might not know what it is, but it's up to you to figure it out to help me meet that need such that I can give you the greatest contribution possible. So when we go in and change things, we're upsetting Someone's sense of consistency. And once we've done this, if this is broken, then nothing else matters because it's foundational. The lower we are, if anything on the bottom is threatened, anything up above is not going to be realized. So in Lean, we often refer to continuous improvement and respect for people, the two pillars of Lean. And those two pillars hold up creating value for the customer. Continuous improvement, very scientific. The respect for people part can be difficult. John Miller, who is a native Japanese speaker and a native American English speaker, he's an American, grew up in Japan, he says, actually respect for people is a bad translation. It's really respect for humanity. And we have to respect people's humanness. What is it that makes them human? And when we're able to do this properly, then we can get the. The greatest contribution possible. All right, so that brings us to process. Creating maximum value with a minimum resources. Another way commonly stated in Lean is eliminate waste. So we want to create value for the customer without creating anything else. So if somebody wants a building permit, we want to give them that. With doing absolutely no other work, if there's no need to go take a step and put that document in a bin, we don't want to do that. If that bin can be closer, well, that's where we want to move it. These subtle things really do make that. That kind of a difference. So, first of all, everything at work is part of a process. Absolutely everything. Even showing up to work is a process. And if you think about it, you get up in the morning and you do. You follow a process, whether it's written or not, you follow it. You do the same thing every day, and you get to work at the same time, more or less every day. Right. So what is that process? As an example, an employee of a company that we interviewed had some difficulty getting to work on time. About every two weeks or so was about five minutes late to work. And it was a real problem for his team because the team needed to be all together before they could start their work. So rather than just chastising this person and disciplining, writing up and all that, the manager took the time to sit this person down and say, hey, look, there's a problem with the process, because in Lean, we don't attack people. We don't blame people, we attack processes. We blame processes. But the data tells us you're late about once every two weeks. What's up with that? What is the process and why are we late? And we also notice that you're about five minutes late when you are late. So break it down for me. What do you do? Well, the alarm goes off at, you know, six o' clock in the morning. I get up, I start the coffee maker, I take my shower, I drink my coffee and I da la la la la and go through the whole process. So I get in my car, I drive to work, I stop at the speedway station, I get my Red Bull, and if the traffic is good and I hit all the right signals, I get to work on time. Sometimes I don't get all the right signals. Too many red lights and I'm about five minutes late. Interesting. How long does it take you to get off of the road, into the parking lot, out of the car, get your Red Bull through the cash register, back in the car, back on the road? How long does that take? It takes about five minutes. So let's try one thing. Let's say you buy all of your Red Bull at the grocery store over the weekend and then you just take it out of the refrigerator and now you skip that stop. What would happen? Let's just try that as an experiment and let's just see. Well, it turns out the guy was like late. I don't know, once every three months or so, not every other week, but making that small adjustment. But the key is that we looked at the issue as a process as opposed to a blame. So what does it mean to improve a process? We want to make things, and in this order. We want to make the work easier, we want to make the quality of the product better, we want to do it faster and we want to do it cheaper. Many organizations say, no matter what, safety first. Okay, so we'll add safety there. So always in this order, these are your only reasons for improvement. There is nothing else make the job safer, easier, better, faster or cheaper. And why is it this way? Many organizations would say we focus on quality first or we focus on cost first. The reason for this is if you can accomplish this, you've probably done these other things. If the work is easier, it's more likely to be of higher quality. The work is easier, it's more likely to go faster. And if it's easier, it's more likely to be cheaper. That's why we focus on it in that order. So what does it mean to focus on it in that order? Well, we have this process. There are many improvements we can make. One improvement would make it safer, one improvement would make it easier, one improvement would make it faster. Which will we focus on first? Right. So we cover our safety first, then we make it easier and then if we made it easier, did we make it faster? Do we even need to work on the other improvement or the speed? So always in this order, as counterintuitive as this might seem. So again, Lean is about solving problems and developing people, and we focus on principles, people, and process. Thank you very much for letting me share this with you today. Certainly been a pleasure talking to you. Thanks for listening to the Gemba Academy podcast. Now it's time to take a free.

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