GA 207 | How to Determine the Role of People in Lean with Jon Miller

When implementing a Lean system, it's only a meaningful question if it's fit in the context of what's the Lean system we're trying to build.

If you've been following the Lean movement over the last few years, you've likely heard the phrase, yes, the tools of Lean are important, but in the end, it's all about people. Heck, if you've listened to this podcast, you've likely heard me and past guests say this exact phrase many, many times. And while there aren't likely many people who would disagree that people side of things is important, my guest today argues that using language such as it's all about people may in fact need to be challenged. His name is John Miller, and regular listeners to the podcast likely know that John is one of my business partners here at Gemba Academy. And as I've mentioned before, John has likely forgotten more about Lean than I'll ever know. And while I'm definitely biased because he's such a good friend, I stand by the statement that I believe John is one of the brightest Lean thinkers walking the earth today. Now, on today's show, John and I dig into the question, is Lean really all about people? And if it's not, what is Lean all about? John also shares some really cool insight into his early days as a translator for some Taiichi Yohno trained consultants. Now, show notes for this episode, which will include links to everything John and I discussed, can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 207. You can also check out Gemba Academy's Lean Learning system over@gembaacademy.com with a fully functional trial. Now let's get to the show. All right, John, well, welcome back to the show. How's it going?

It's going well, Ron. Nice to talk to you again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, John, just in case folks don't know who you are or don't know about your background, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about who you are, how you first came to learn about all this continuous improvement stuff and then obviously what you're up to these days.

Sure, sure, I'll keep it brief. 25 years ago now, hard to believe. 1993, after university, I got into working with Japanese consultants as an interpreter, translator, and traveled all around the US all around the world, basically repeating back and forth what they were, what these commonly called the Shingijutsu company consultants. But there were a couple other groups as well, students of Taichi Ono and extraordina guys who were out there teaching this stuff. I was in the thick of that, which taught me a lot.

And you knew Japanese because.

Yeah, yes. Born in Japan, parents lived there as working with the church and so forth. So then. So I did that for five, six years and then liked it enough and was interested enough, intrigued enough that I started a consulting company called Gamba Research which. Which took about. Was in that role for about 13 years. And then that organization joined with Kaizen Institute, which is. Which is kind of the granddaddy of the Lean consultancies. They've been around 30 plus years and Masaki Mai, the author of Kaizen founded it and all those things and served in leadership role with that company for four years and then kind of looked around and realized that my kids were growing up and I was on the road all the time and decided I needed to take a break. So three years ago, I guess I took myself off the road, off the market in a way and refocused efforts on working here with Gemba Academy. So Gemba Academy to go back a few years. Ron, Hugh and Kevin and I co founded Gamba Academy in 2009. And this has allowed me to not travel nearly as much. So stay connected with the family and community and yet contribute to the lean. Lean community, the lean world in a way. So yeah, that is what I'm doing these days.

And you also got really good at making like rhubarb pies. I understand and stuff like that. Right. You know, and all your stuff.

Rhubarb pies I don't know about. Did I make a rhubarb pie for you?

I remember I was visiting you and you were bragging about how you were growing your own rhubarb and you were making pies or something like that.

You think of somebody else. I do like gardening and I did go through a phase where I was baking stuff, but I can't lean into that. But anyways.

Okay. All right, well listen, so a few weeks ago you started a blog series and you had a pretty controversial topic name or title of the article really caught my attention when it came through my email for the first time. It says Lean is all about the people hyphen. Or is it. You know, I could. I'm exaggerating. Or is it. And it was a two part series and what link to that in the show Notes for everyone so they can go actually read the. The article. So GembaPodcast.com and this will be episode 207207. So go check it out. But let's. Let's talk about it. So, John, we, you know, we often say, I mean, heck, I've said it probably a million times on this podcast, that Lean's all about the people, you know, and you really. If you don't get the people side right, you know, nothing else is going to matter. So. So what's your take on that? Is Lean all about the people?

Yeah, I think this is really an interesting question, because I think it's one of those things that once you hear it, you agree with it and go, yeah, that makes sense. I agree with it. But you never question it. I think the more we question the things that we agree with strongly and take for granted, the better chance we have of gaining deeper insight into them. So if I agree strongly with it, why so? And is this. Is this just an emotional reaction or is there some logic behind it? Am I right or am I wrong? So if you oppose something, it's the same thing. Right. If you strongly against something, it's easier to see it clearly in the light of day. When you agree with something, it is now as easy to look at it, question it. Like, if you have strong faith in whatever something that you believe in, your country, your family, your values, your religion and so forth. And it's not always, you know, it's not always. You don't always want to shake your belief. But in the case of something practical, like, how do we be. How do we be successful? How can we be successful? Lean, the people side is important. It's very important. Absolutely. It may even be the most important. But is it? I think that's the question. Let's challenge that. And. Yeah, so is it.

Yeah, well, so if it's not, let's just maybe start it that way. What are some. What are some other characteristics of what we call lean that might be as important, if not more important than the people side of things?

Yeah. I think it's valuable to kind of start with saying that when we say something is all about people or all about something, if you say I'm all about that, it doesn't mean that I do nothing but focus on that. That's the hundred percent key to success. This recipe is all about rhubarb. There's no sugar, there's no egg. It's all about the rhubarb. No, rhubarb is the most important ingredient you can say, because without it, it isn't. Rhubarb pie, for example, it just becomes just goo, a sweet goo. It doesn't have the rhubarb. It doesn't have the tanginess to it. So I think if you say it's the main ingredient, it's the characteristic that makes it unique though, that's it's important to use our words carefully because otherwise we don't communicate and if we don't communicate, we don't inspire people to act in the right way. So what are the ingredients? I think people. It's a socio technical system, right? Lean is a socio technical system. It involves people and it involves understanding of scientific mechanisms, of how things work, how work works, how supply and demand, how supply chains, how all these things work. You can't, it's not a, it's not a feel good sort of a fuzzy wuzzy belief based magical thing. It's quite scientific. But at the same time there's a lot about it that is hard to reduce to science. Partly because we don't understand humanity thoroughly scientifically and people also don't like to reduce humanity to. Reductionism has its limits. So what are the other elements of it? Well, I get into that in the, in the article and I think it's three things. So if you can boil lean down to kind of three critical aspects, then it's the people. It's what we call flow, which is really everything connected to enabling us to transform our time and energy into something of greater value. So it's in that there's lots and lots of Lean methods linked to that and it ultimately gets into reducing batch sizes, cues and speeding up the flow, making it smooth. And then the third element is the ability to detect and manage abnormalities which we often call visual management because that's how we do it. You have eyes that are more sensitive than our other senses, but you can call it visibility, you can call it something else, but it's essentially those three things. And you could, you could argue that, you could say well what about this or that? But you could put basically all the lean methods, tools, Six Sigma, all those things underneath one of those three legs or pillars or brackets or whatever. And some of them are obviously like Kanban is about flow, but it's also about making abnormalities visible. And of course it also triggers continuous improvement because the goal of Kanban is to reduce Kanban. So then you have to get into the thinking part of it, the human part of it. So it's not like one thing is only ever in one of those categories, but it's a interaction of those three things. You need all three. So if you were to say Lean's all about the people, that's the most important. When you say Something's most important, you put the most priority on it. It's almost saying, well, I can to some degree put fewer resources in the other two or even neglect it to a degree. If I have to choose one of those things, rather than work on flow, I'm going to work on people. Well, that may not be the correct answer. Depending on the situation that you're in. Focusing all on the people and getting their engagement in buying may not get you what you need. If your company is dying because of a critical lack of flow, you may have to say, you know what, we're gonna have to be a little bit more directive and a little bit harsher about these things and maybe hurt a few people's feelings. Not because that's what you, that's not the intent. But as a consequence, you know, we're gonna have to just transform things a little bit more abruptly here because otherwise we're going to, and I'm not talking about be rude to people on a day to day basis, but if you look at it and say, let's spend six months doing change management and communication versus okay, we need that, you can't have zero of any of those three areas, but we need to actually cut our batches down, get it on the correct side of the U curve, that is the economic order quantity. At what point do you reduce batches and then stop reducing them because your transaction costs go back up? You have to find that position. And so if you say it's all about people and we'll figure it out versus going after the science and saying, well, it's actually all about getting to this point. So we need to cut the batch size in half or cut the inventory in half, like the Taichi Ono style or Shingijutsu style, people would say like, well, no, I'm not going to teach you the logic, I'm not going to help you understand, I'm going to cut it in half. Then you're going to struggle and realize, wow, okay, this is hard or it's easy or this was doable, which is also a teaching moment. But it's not putting people in education first. It's putting the drastic change in the queue first.

Hey John, so back when you were young man translating for these old former Toyota guys or Taiichi disciples, what was their approach as it relates to what we're talking about here? If there's a stool with three, three legs on it, people being one, Flow and visual management, how well did they do at recognizing that? That stool with three legs?

Yeah, if they saw Somebody on a stool. Their approach was to kick the legs out from under you, get you onto the Gemba. But that's a different topic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's. I think for most of the people that I learned from and interacted with from Japan, they were not nearly as aware or self aware or reflective of what they were teaching. They've been taught in a very sort of a physical way, if you will, where it's like, do this, do this, do this and you do it and you get it versus understanding the theory and so forth. So for them to. There wasn't a lot of abstraction that had gone on. There were a few people that had studied it or had come at it later in their career after they'd been executives, but most of them came at it very bottom up. Shop floor or shop floor, frontline manager or production manager, plant manager. So some level of management, but not a lot in terms of management theory or supply chain theory or any of this science element of it. So they understood the math. Basic math for most of Lean, they understood. They were often engineers, so they weren't by any means uneducated or not smart about it, but they hadn't abstracted it and said, here's why it's important and here's how the different things interact. And some of it was just.

They've seen it so much. Yeah.

That it worked hard for them to remove themselves from the water and say, okay, that's fish in water. You don't recognize the water around you. That sort of a thing. Where people who observed it couldn't describe water as in quite the same way, but they could as an outside observer. So it's an interesting. It's an interesting question. But I think a lot of times the better teachers really understood the importance of both being, I suppose, tough teachers, where they had a limited amount of time, literally they had five days in many cases. Kaizen events. So you had to show up on a Sunday, get to know the people through dinner and golf, and then Monday morning start kicking butt and then Friday, try to end on a good note and then you're off to the next client and you might come back to that same company after a few weeks or a few months. So there was a lot that had to go on in terms of having impact in a short time and yet not losing the people. And a lot of them did lose the people some of the time or much of the time. But why?

Because they were too hardcore or what?

Yeah, that's a good question. Probably a topic for another Time to get into more deeply. I've often thought about it. Is it that they didn't recognize, Is it that they were intimidated? Because here they are in America, which, you know, America was the. It was the champion that they were chasing all those years as they were growing up in the 50s and 60s and 70s, and now they've caught up and now they're coming to America and sort of standing up to the giant and saying, here's what you need to do. And the giant sort of standing at them and going, no, I don't believe you. And then you don't understand what the American is saying in English or very little of it. And they don't understand what's going on a lot of the time, except what the interpreter filters through to them. And sometimes that interpretation isn't crystal clear. So you just have to sort of bark back and say, no, just do what I say. I don't have time to listen to you because I'm only getting 70% of what you're saying. And even if I got that, it's. It's off topic, so just shut up and do what I say. Yeah, there's a lot of that that went on.

Yeah.

And then there was a lot of sort of monkey see, monkey do, where when you see the previous Japanese consultant do that as a younger person coming in, you might say, well, I guess that's the style I need to follow. Some of them didn't. Some of them spoke more English and had worked in North America and were more thoughtful. And as I was getting out of that interpreting work, we saw. I saw more people who were of a different kind of a breed, if you will. And they, I think, were more popular in the sense that they were more. They were more sensitive to the people aspect or just had better. Better people skills, I think.

Yes.

So we didn't have as much fear.

So Ono was obviously like their, Their. Their. One of their main teachers right. Back in the day, Toyota today, or, you know, say, when the Toyota Way was kind of published and they came up with some of their principles and whatnot that we've all grabbed onto. Respect for people, continuous improvement, all the rest of it. Respect for people is a very important part of the way Toyota operates today. But was it back then with Mr. Ono and those guys, do you think? Like, if Mr. Ono were to hold the Toyota Way in his hand, what do you think he would have thought?

So, two different questions, I guess. Was it an important. Was an important point? I think it's always been. So there's A couple different levels. We can answer this. The traditional Japanese corporation or company is an extension of Japanese society. Japanese society is very group oriented. It's an island nation, don't have immigration, everybody, you have a very historically and traditionally connected group of people. They are a tribe. So you continue that tradition. When you join a company that you're, you're, you're serving that company as a, as part of your duty to serve as a member of society, where in America it's much more about the individual. You can move from coast to coast and change company to company, and it's all about you and your family and your faction and, and maybe even your race and your religion to some degree where you don't have that level of diversity and variety in Japan. So when you join the company, company takes care of you. And until maybe the 90s, you work there until you retire, you work there 30, 40 years. And, and so you did invest in people because they were going to be around for a while and you taught them everything about the company and you came out of college or high school without much in terms of skill. And we teach everything you need to know. We're in North America, Europe. You, you come out of an apprentice system or you come out of university with a degree or skills that are immediately employed in that they expect you to come out knowing how to do your job versus the opposite. In Japan, they often teach you your job and they expect you to have certain educational background or family background or have gone through certain rites of passage in certain clubs, certain groups, certain elite groups of schools or sports or what have you. Sort of, there's that, there's sort of a base level of difference in what it means to treat people. I won't use the word respect because that's culturally sort of specific, but how to treat people within a company context, that's one of it. That's one part of it, I think. Second part of it, which again may be topic for another time, but the religious background of the Theota family, the type of Buddhists that they were, I think they were maybe more intentionally, I guess, concerned with respect for people and respect for. And if you look at the Therade precepts, it's respect not only for people, but respect for the spiritual nature of existence, you know, respect for the gods, it says, and by the gods, it's an animist country, and lots of Buddhas and so forth. So your ancestors and many of these things. So that's very clear in the Toyota precepts of sort of the founding values of the company. So I'm sure that filtered through to how respect for humanity became, you know, one of the parts of Toyota way going back into what does it mean for Taiichi Ono? What would he say today? He wasn't a big fan of having things written down and working from a manual, so who knows what he would have thought of that. But yeah, content wise I'm sure he wouldn't have had any issue with it. He was always very respectful of the people on the shop floor. He was tough on engineers and managers who weren't, who weren't as open minded or didn't go to the shop floor and get their hands dirty. So that, that was part of it. But yeah, I think it would be, I think it's consistent.

Yeah. You know, before we started recording I was, we were kind of just chatting a little bit and I was thinking about my own, my own journey with continuous improvement and I was thinking about those three legs of the stool. Right. And I think in the beginning, at least for me, and I don't know, I don't want to speculate about our listeners, but I'm guessing there's a fair few folks out there who are similar to me in that we really learned about the tools over Six Sigma Lean. You know, I've met this guy named John Miller and he taught me how about value stream mapping and that changed, you know, my world and all the rest of it, right. So it was tools, tools, tools. And honestly I did a lot of good with it, you know, I mean I made a lot of things better. I learned a lot myself. But then I did hit a sort of a professional plateau, if you will, and hasn't been really. I guess it was my time here at Gemba Academy when we're really running a company and we have employees and all the rest of it where the importance of people really smacked me in the face, if you will. Like, like you gotta, you can't do this all on your own, Ron. You gotta get other folks involved. And so, so that, that gets the people leg of my stool began to, to grow and maybe the visual management or you know, identifying abnormalities, maybe that was always there as well. But the people part of the stool wasn't there. So I don't know, I'm curious. That might, My speculation is I'm wondering when people say what's next for Lean, you know, in the next 10 years. Like I wonder if the folks that, that obviously you can't master any of it and will never master any of yet. But let's Say people get proficient and at the balancing, you know, balancing the people side of lean with maybe some of the more technical sides of lean, and they're doing a fair job of it. But I'm wondering if eventually we're going to have to go back, back to the tools, like maybe at a deeper level than we, than we ever have. Like, hey, Junka, you know, every, we've. Everyone, everyone's read about it, but not many people outside of Toyota and Danaher probably practice it. Right. So I, I don't know, I don't know what your thoughts are on that, John. Like, do you think that, I don't know, like the next 10 years, people, if they do understand the people side of things, like where things will go.

Yeah, well, I think there is, I think you're talking about mastery there, which is, which is learning something and then recognizing what you thought you knew and then what there's yet to learn and then applying it and then, you know, sort of going back through what you thought you knew and just you keep practicing and you keep seeing your faults and you keep working on it. And I think mastering meaning you're. I think perfection is by definition something you won't achieve. But mastery, I think is definitely achievable. Yeah, I've experienced the same kind of thing because one of the things that Japanese consultants I worked with would say was, where are the QC circles? I think that was probably one of the early indicators that there was a fundamental people element of it that was missing. The sort of the conflicting nature of management versus labor unions was also an eye opener for a lot of the Japanese because a lot of the unions in Japan were either company unions or entered into negotiations in a very sort of a win, win, proactive way because they had years and years of growth and because generally speaking, companies treated employees fairly well. And there was a different industrial history. So not only was the Japanese and American culture different, you had a different history of industrial relations between labor and management. So when you have that and you try to bring in a respect for people in an environment where you don't even have basic trust, that's challenging. You have to sort of start with, let's establish basic trust and respect and not stab each other in the back and not have systems, not allow systems that have been built up over decades to remain there and then try to put lean on top of it. It's building your house on a foundation of sand. So I think that's where, that's where there's more you have to consider when you're doing lean than just these three pillars. Obviously the legs of the stool. You've got to sit on a foundation. And the foundation is basic stability in lots of things. Right? Lots of environmental, contextual things. If you're, if bombs are dropping on you, forget about lean. Get out from under the bombs. You know, if your market is collapsing, you've got to figure out a way to not go out of business. If you're being raided for illegal activities, you need to take care of that before you embark on a lean journey. So all those kind of things come into play. But if you're in a kind of a stable, legal, moral, ethical, business market condition and you can build on it, then you can ask the question of, okay, what does it mean? Is lean all about the people? Where does the people element play in? And I would say for implementing a lean system, it's only a meaningful question if it's fit in the context of what's the lean system we're trying to build. You're not trying to build a people system. You're not trying to build a system of engagement. You're not trying to build a high performance work team. You're not trying to build a system where employees are or the best, most happiest engaged, whatever. That's one of the factors and features. But what you're trying to build is flow more value through in a limited amount of time and have a way to alert you and respond as quickly as you can see feedback. So whether it's the market isn't buying it, we need to reduce or quality is bad, we need to address or we launch the product it needs. Here's, it's, here's what we thought was a minimum viable product, but market's telling us something else. It's that response system. And how do people, how does the people element of it, I guess, or people factor of it enable those two things? And then how do those two things enable people and build people? Yeah, so.

Yeah, well, maybe, maybe instead of saying lean is all about the people or making really strong statements like that, I think it's safe to say that people is an important part of lean. How's that?

I think it's true, but people don't say that because I think it's not a strong enough statement. That's the interesting part is are we making this very strong statement because traditionally people have been ignored as not important. Like you said, we've looked at tools and technologies and the engineering side of it and not the people aspect of it. Therefore we're Sort of making a comeback and saying, no, it's all about the people. Don't forget. We're not saying don't forget. We're saying it's all about. It's the most important. So.

Or the way that I would phrase it, it was like the tools are obviously important, but, you know, it's all about the people. You know, I think that's probably how many of us would, would phrase it like in my. I do believe people sometimes go maybe a little bit overboard with it's all about the people. And I'm like, yeah, except four. You don't know anything about, you know, basic stuff like 5s, the 7 ways values, any kind of tool. So I suppose like maybe in a. I don't be abrupt or unkind about it, but it's kind of like we could all stand in a circle and sing Kumbaya, but if we don't have any clue what to do after we're done singing, I don't know how much we're going to help each other. Right?

Yeah. It's not an either or thing. And it's. That's why the all about phrase is inherently inappropriate. I think if you liken it to team sports and you say, well, American football is all about the players. Obviously it's the talent you have on the team. That's true. But it's also about the training and the scheme and the coaching and all these other things that happen on the field and whether or not they have the right technique. And it's also about whether or not you have accountability and discipline, or you let people go out and get into fights and get drunk and not show up for practice. You know, abnormality management, you can't have any one of those be substandard and survive. But if you, if you coach or manage a team with a inherent philosophy or explicit philosophy, I should say that says it's all about the players or it's all about. I think rarely people are going to say it's all about the scheme and the system in a player sports environment, because players do have an outsized impact. But just as much of it is about the accountability, discipline, the abnormality, management part of it, even among, you know, when the coaches realize, hey, this season isn't going the way we want or this quarter isn't going the way we want, or the guys aren't executing, they're not staying, they're not filling their gaps, they're running after the ball instead of being where they should be. Those kinds of things are to take it in any kind of a context, I think you have to. It's a different way of looking at it. If you look at lean as a system you're trying to implement to create value, I think you end up with the conclusion that it's not all about the people, because it can't be all about one thing and it's about the system. But the people are necessary.

Yeah, very necessary.

At least at the moment. I mean, at the moment, at some foreseeable future future, AI could be asked to respond, to, detect and respond to abnormalities once the system is in place, could look at the data and adjust for lot sizes and flows, could look at market data and adjust Kanban and do the whole hedge and good calculation. And they could even come up with improvement ideas based on deep learning. And they could even say, well, based on what you're telling me about, based on what you humans have input to me about what value is what you want as a level of profit, a level of social equity, a level of, I don't know, environmental degradation, a level of all these things, here's how I'm going to decide what to build, how to build it and how to price it. These are questions that humans answer imperfectly and maybe AI could answer them as well or better. So you could say, yeah, maybe it's not about. I mean, it's all for the people, obviously we build it for us. But you could get to a system where we get to a lean system foreseeable, Maybe not in 10 years, but you could imagine this where humans were 10, 20% of the equation rather than right now, which it could be 30 to 60% of the equation.

What happens if Elon Musk becomes President of the United States and then just robots running around everywhere or something? I don't know.

Right.

Sort of a joke, but not really.

I don't know. Yeah, no, I think. I wouldn't worry about, I wouldn't worry about that. You got other things distracting them, so.

Yeah, yeah, Good stuff. All right, John. Well, man, it's always good to have you on and, and I was really fascinated by the blog article series and I wanted to have. I obviously want people to read the blog article. So again, GembaPodcast.com this is episode 207. So we'll link to those, those two articles. So go give them a read and, and let us know what you think, leave a comment or whatever it is. But, but John, any, any final thoughts or parting words that you want to leave with folks?

Yeah, I want to end on a positive. I Mean, it's not about. It's not about, you know, Elon Musk and robot flamethrower, AI Apocalypse. It's about thinking about this question of. Of is it all about the people, about the people element of the work we do. More, I guess, more being more aware of it being more, rather than just accepting it at face value. Because it sounds right, which I think a lot of us do. And like you said, if you come from a background of. More of a technical Lean, Six Sigma background, and now you're becoming more aware of importance of the people aspect of it, don't just take that at face value and take it for granted, but really question it. Really think about what does it mean. And if the answer is that you don't think it's all about the people, it's only 30 or 50 or 70%, that's fine as long as you've thought about it and as long as you can keep thinking about it and come up with good answers and explain it and be willing to change your mind rather than accepting it as dogma. Because I think it's become dogma that Lean's all about the people. But it's almost an empty statement. And that's dangerous because in 10 years people could say, well, 10 years ago we thought Lean was all about the people. Then we learned it's all about something else. And you'll still be wrong. Yeah. Yeah.

Good stuff. All right. Hey, John, how can people connect with you?

You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me through the Gemba website. I don't know.

Yeah. All right, email Ron and I'll get you to John Ronimba academy.com.

How'S that? If you like.

Yeah, no, it's all good. It's all good. All right, John. Well, hey, thanks for coming on. And I. I do. I do know one thing for sure. Since you've. You've quit all that crazy traveling, you know, 50 weeks a year, I. I know one thing that you've gotten a lot better at, and it's talking American football.

Oh, yeah.

Much, much better at this. That so? Yeah. Good stuff. All right, John. Well, hey, I'm sure we'll talk again soon. And thanks for coming on. Thanks for listening to the Gemba Academy podcast. Now we invite you to take a no strings attached, fully functional Test drive of GembaCademy.com gain immediate access to more than a thousand Lean and Six Sigma learning resources, all free of charge at GembaAcademy.com.