GA 255 | The Elements of a Sustainable Lean System with Jon Miller

What does our knowledge of human behavior, human psychology, organizational behavior tell us works?

I'd like to begin today's show with a question. Is there a minimum set of elements or practices required to have a successful lean system? And if so, what are they? Well, obviously this is a very big question and one that requires much thought and reflection. And while we don't want to pretend to have all of the answers, guest today offers his take on what these minimum elements or practices may look like. 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. Now, during the show, John shares five specific elements or themes that he believes to be important for any lean system to survive and thrive. And as you'll hear, we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Do you agree with what we share? If so, why? Perhaps you think we're wrong. That's totally fine, too. We'd really like to hear your thoughts. Now, we'll post this up on LinkedIn and other places, but you can also go to the blog and leave a comment on the show notes page. To do that, Simply go to GembaPodcast.com and look for episode 255. And as always, you can also check out Gemba Academy's Lean Learning system over@gembacademy.com with a fully functional trial. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. All right, John, welcome back to the show. How's it going?

Well, Ron, all right.

All right. Well, I. Well, I should have done some more research and figured out how many times you've been on, but you've been on a bunch and we'll. Jessica will link them up in the show notes. So thanks for coming on again. I think we were talking a little bit before we hit record on our idea here and I'm excited to see where it goes. And I'm not sure either of us know exactly where it's going to go, but I think that's what makes it kind of exciting. Right. Unknown elements. So, John, just in case folks haven't heard any of the previous episodes with you on it or don't know who you are, just tell us a little bit about your background and how you got involved in all this. Continue some preprint stuff.

Sure, sure. My background. So I'm one of the founders and co founders and partners in Gimba Academy. I've been involved in Lean as a career for what, 26 years now. Started out as an interpreter. Interpreter. Translator. Working for Japanese consultants Shingijutsu Group and others and did that for eight years or so, followed by starting a company called Gemba Research, which was a consultancy, followed by joining with the Kaizen Institute, stayed with them for a while and then in the meantime, 2009, with Ron and Kevin, started Gemba Academy and I'm continuing on. I've stayed with Gemba Academy through that time and that is my full time, full time gig at the moment. Yeah, so that's short career. Career snapshot, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. Awesome. All right, well, so I guess really what we want to explore today, John, is maybe, you know, there's a lot of discussion out there on what Lean is or, you know, how we can go about practicing these, these principles, these behaviors and depends on the book you read, the video watch or the blog article you read. There's a, you know, a number of, of, of ideas out there and I guess what I'm interested in picking your brain today is maybe looking at if there's almost taking some of the terminology from our Lean startup friends, you know, minimal. They talk about the minimal viable product, you know, like when you're designing some new business or whatnot, you know, small thing, a small trinket and test it and see if it works and then, yeah, it works and then we can build on that. So as it relates to Lean, I'm curious if there's a minimal viable set of elements or practices that, you know, one should work to, to have in order to have a sustaining and healthy lean management system.

Yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a good question. And we kind of talked about before the call what's on our mind and how do we put that into words? So I think you've done, done a good job of that. Ron. I think that's, I don't know. I hear people that I talk to not asking that question directly, but things they're asking like, where should I start? What do I need to do? How do I, how do I make sure we get results? How do we make sure this is sustainable? How do I get my leaders engaged? What things should I look for? What are the pitfalls? Those kind of questions I think lead to beg that question. What is that minimum set of things to do? So people. Lean is practical. People want people. Well, actually lean is philosophical practical. It exists at different levels, but people want to, want to know what to do and how to get started and how to keep it going. On the other hand, there are people that write books and like to philosophize and say, here's what it is. And then somewhere in the middle are people like us who think about it and do it. Don't just do one or the other because we're consultants or educators or whatever you want to call it. So yeah, it's, I'm always so I don't know the answer. I mean, I can take a guess at it. And that's kind of the goal for today. I'm interested in hearing what others think about this as well. What are the things that, the practices, the behaviors, the elements of Lean, Lean management, Lean thinking that you minimally need in order for it to work. I'm always concerned when somebody is very certain that they have that or they know that or here is what's in our Lean program and here's what's out and, and this is it. We're certain. I think there's, people should embrace a certain amount of uncertainty and willingness to learn and so forth. But at the same time, I don't believe that the answer to this is unknown or unknowable, that it's situational. 100% that for every company the minimum viable amount is not the amount, but the minimum viable set of principles and elements is going to be different. I think there is a universal common set of things. It might be, might be small, but I think there should be. That's my hope. That's my. Yeah, that's my. Yeah, yeah, that's the thesis. Right. So what would that look like? And, and then if that's the case, and some people don't like the idea of Lean being prescriptive, like you must do this. But then again, life is prescriptive. You have to breathe, you have to wake up every morning. So there are certain things I think in Lean that, that we can and should prescribe and that's kind of that minimum viable elements and how you do it, how much you do, there's lots of flexibility, there's. But I think there is some non negotiable content there.

Before we dive in and you know, start throwing out some suggestions or some, some things to, to, to consider, would you think it's dependent on if you're a, you know, 50 person company, single owner versus a, you know, multinational $5 billion company, you know, 200 facilities, speaking 48 different languages and whatnot. I mean, I assume these are going to be, there's going to be some differences, but then perhaps there are going to be some, some, some common elements between those two.

Yeah, I think the, the goal of this particular thought exercise in this conversation is from My point of view is to find that common denominator, the minimum viable set. And it's probably true that for a large multinational, multi site, complex business, the minimum is going to be different because what they are setting out to accomplish in a common frame of time, and I think you have to put a time axis against it because otherwise, otherwise life is meaningless. As you know, we perceive our existence in life across time. So that 50 person company, what they want to do in a year versus what that 50,000 person organization wants to or needs to do in a year, those are very different things. How much you can achieve in one year in a 50 person company, that's, that's, that's going to be very, you could do a lot more, more quickly, but you might have a lot less of an impact across the world. So I think that's the question of there's a, these are, there's a question of what are you trying to accomplish? And then that has to be, that then says okay, beyond the minimum, if I need to roll it out worldwide right away, that's different. But the need to roll out worldwide right away is not that situational. That's not really a need of lean inherently. That's a need of the user of Lean saying here's what I needed to do for my bottom line, for my culture, for my customers, etc. But this is where sort of taking that context away, if it's possible to take that context away, what are the minimum things that you should strive for? All things being equal and all things are not equal. But I think that's the goal is to say yes, do, do tweak it and adjust it based on your, your needs and your goals. Obviously this has to be practical. But, but separate from that, if you skip any one of these sort of core minimum viable minimum necessary elements, sooner or later you're going to fail.

Yeah.

And so, and so build it into your plan. I guess that's the idea. Or build it into your system.

Okay, so what do you think? I mean again, I think we'll preface this conversation with that we don't, we don't, we're not writing an ebook here or blog article with the 10 things that you must do to be lean. Right. This is more of a thought exercise, throwing at ideas. Perhaps we'll put this up on LinkedIn. Get, get the community out there and our blog to see what other folks think. But let's start with one thing, John. One element, one practice, one behavior that you believe might be a minimum.

Yeah. So I mean it's easy to rapid fire list of half a dozen things and the challenge is to, is to put them into some kind of interlinked, cohesive, tight minimum thing. Right. So obviously making things better, wherever you want to put that, whether it's innovation, problem solving, Kaizen, whatever you want to, however you want to state that is to progress, to change, to have an impact on reality around you, you know, that's to alter reality in a way that benefits us. And however you want to define us, you and me, all humanity, all life, it doesn't matter. But you own alter reality in a positive way. Yeah, that's kind of the goal of Lean. And so how do you do that? And who, whose responsibility is it to do that? And how do you define good? And how do you define who we are? And then how do you define the methods in which you go about altering reality?

Well, let me stop, let me, let me, let me stop you there. I mean just again, this is maybe a hot topic. You know, depending on again which blog article you read or video watch podcast you're listening to, some people might say Kaizen events are amazing. If you do three 5 day Kaizen events and you just keep doing them, you're gonna, you're gonna alter reality in an incredible way and someone's gonna come on and say, you know what? Kaizen, Kaizen events are stupid. Toyota doesn't do Kaizen events. Why would you do Kaizen events? You should do this. And so it's, it's this, what's the word? It's like this dogmatic way that you must do it this way. And I think what I hear you saying, John, is that there's not necessarily one best way to make things better, to impact reality or to alter reality in a positive way. There might be a number of ways that are worthy of experimentation and learning.

Yeah, I think that's, that's, that's the part of it that it's, it's, there's a, there is a dial on the one end of the dial is use all the methods, do everything. The other end is just do this one thing.

Yeah.

And when you talk to people and it's very, the polar message, the, this is the one thing that's very simple, it's very attractive. You know, when people say two second lean, that's all you need. Oh great, that sounds simple. I can do that. And that's, that's a positive, affirming way for people to get started. Toyota Kata teaches scientific thinking, applies everywhere, anybody can learn it. Very positive, very Empowering, you know, Kaizen events from a senior leader standpoint. You mean in five days I can achieve these results? Wow, great. Let's put a team together and I'm going to see more in five days than I have in six months of talking about it Project planning than Six Sigma. You got to do big sophisticated data driven projects that you couldn't do through a two second lean, can't do through a Kaizen. You've got other ways. You got to build a hospital that's going to take a different set of practices and plans, planning methods and learning and data share. That's, that's a project bigger than a Six Sigma project. Right. And yet in all cases you're improving and you're altering reality. So it, do you then is a minimum requirement to understand all these things from the 2 second to the 2 year or is it just to do something? So this is where so, and people's heads start to, you start to head start to explore. Because it's like John, you're making this way too complicated. Why do you have to think about all these things? Just start with whatever. But that's, that's the question that I, that I have. I'm, I'm personally I am, I'm afraid of simple things because. Or simple things that appear to be successful. Simple things that appear to work because I'm always afraid that we are missing the underlying complexity or contextual complexity and we are fooling ourselves into thinking that we know how to win. You know, it's, it's, hey, I see a pattern in these stock charts. They always seem to go boom, boom in the morning and then boom boom in the afternoon. So if I buy here and I sell there, I'm going to win. Well, that's good. Until they go boom, boom and go down, down, down and you find yourself holding the bag.

Yeah.

No, and that's, that's one example that you have to understand a little bit more, have a little more financial literacy than just being able to look at a chart and, and decide, this is when I get in, this is when I get out. Oh, it worked three or four times in a row. I'm a genius. Well, yeah, well, until, until you realize you were just in a. Yeah. Caught in some kind of, you know, manipulative upward trend where everybody was buying that particular stock because of whatever you got to read the news. You got to be. So that's, that's the part that I want for people who are just getting into lean or who need to continue with lean to have Some guidance, some, some way of, of judging.

Let me ask you, when do you start with this?

When you. Yeah, go ahead.

Let me ask you this. Since it's just a thought session or thought jam session, whatever you want to.

Call it.

What would you define? Earlier you just said something about winning. Like, what is winning? Like, let's, that's a deep philosophical question in life. And I don't mean life like religion or anything like that, but I mean like winning in a sense of a business. What is winning?

I don't remember saying that. Yeah, you said winning.

You said winning. I'll go back and play it back.

No, that's all right. I just, I can't remember what.

Yeah, but no, it was more in the context of, you know, let's do this and we can, we can, we can win or we can be successful or something like that. But I'm just curious, like, just in a business perspective, let's just keep it business focused. What is, what is winning for a, for Gemba Academy, for, you know, Boeing, for anybody? Like, what do you believe winning is? Is it. I mean, obviously there's financial things that need to, to be in place, right. To stay viable and pay the light bill and your employees.

Yeah. So I guess that, I guess that raises an important question of do you, do you include as a minimum viable element of lean thinking and lean management to define winning within a lean thought process, or do you subordinate, make lean, basically the servant of whatever your definition of winning is? And practical example, okay, Corporation X wants to maximize return for the shareholder that's winning. It doesn't matter what the long term impact is on the environment, on the community, on the viability of their company. We're going to do whatever it takes to maximize shareholder return. And then five years, 10 years from now, things are going to be bad. But it's okay because we got our golden parachutes in the meantime, people that were stockholders were rewarded. Now certainly there's, there's the, if you maximize shareholder return for the long term, you have to do all those things. But that's really the case because humans don't, as a habit, think long term, and especially if your incentives aren't lined up. So then, then do you say, well, for Lean to work, you have to do all this respect for people, respect for humanity stuff, which includes how are you treating the workers, how are you treating the community, your customers, the physical environment? Are you, are you practicing fair labor practices? Because it's the right and humane thing to do. And it also helps retain customers and Long term creates more political stability around the world so you're not having to suffer economic ups and downs and wars and things that will disrupt your business. So that's an interesting question and it's probably too big for this podcast, but it's. Yeah. Is that those are the kind of things that one thinks about when one thinks about how do you make this lean thing work beyond just the next two, three, four, five years? And I think not to take it to Toyota, but as a company that we look to, that has been on a lean thinking kind of journey a long time. It's one data point and there's many companies maybe like them that have been on this journey and not thought that way. But they've certainly put sort of a clear definition of winning and a sort of humanistic, humanitarian slightly definition of winning out there or human centered, we should say. So I'm leaning towards that being more the correct answer that a good definition of what it means to win in business. Good meaning not meaning, more of a moral, like a human centered in a sense of good. Right. Or I guess moral is a better way to put it that I think is necessary for lean to work. And I think it's part of the minimum viable. But is it minimum viable again in the very short term? Do you have to be good and moral in the beginning or can you get there? I don't know. I think if you're not aiming for that, if you're not aware that that's a condition, that respect for humanity is an enabling thing, enabling element, then it's likely that you won't start practicing lean in that way. It's likely that it won't sustain.

Yeah. Well, and I guess maybe on a related point to like kind of understanding what winning might be for your particular situation, perhaps a derivative of that thought is what why are we doing this? Right. Like we have a deep understanding of why we even want to entertain this idea of lingering.

Yeah.

I think, you know what, because winning is different for everyone. Let's just all assume if you are for profit organization, you want to be profitable. Right. And you want to have some level of growth, whatever that might be. I don't think it's appropriate for a lean system to say you must grow by 10% or 20%. This is up to the individual. But I think, I think it's safe to say that a minimalist element of lean is that we do have an understanding of why we are trying to do this and what some sense of success might look like from a organizational level which Includes the humans, obviously, that are part of this organization.

Yeah. And I think that's a specific instance of one of the larger minimum viable elements or core elements, whatever you want to call it, which is. And this has been stated in various different ways, and there's probably a philosopher someplace that has a concise way of putting it. But you need to have. What shall we call it? You need to have an aim. You need to have a leaning, you need to have a tendency. You need to have a goal, a target, a standard, something that you're trying to. To hit. You need to have a yearning, you need to have a burning desire, whatever you want to call it, a purpose. The why. I mean, people, all kinds of different people, have stood up in front of a camera or a presentation screen and put words around this, and people's eyes open up and go, you're right, we need purpose. You're right, we need to know our why. You're right, we need to have a target condition. It's all the same thing. You need to be knowing where you're going, knowing why you're doing it. You need to have a reason to get. Jump out of bed in the morning going, oh, man, oh, man, I'm gonna get to work on this. Right? Something that makes your heartbeat, heart pound and. Well, hopefully for hope and looking forward to rather than dread and fear. Right. That also makes your heart pound. So it's not. That's not. Sometimes that's the reason you have to get started with lean. But ideally it's. There's something there that says, yeah, I can see a brighter future. I have an ideal, I have a vision. And I see that there's ways, using modern management methods at Dean and continuous improvement and all these kinds of things to structure ourselves and the work we do and how we communicate and all those things to move us in that direction. Whatever kind of organization you are, this is super bowl weekend coming up. So the athletes who compete and who train and who dedicate their lives to this, they want to, of course, become wealthy and be healthy in the process of doing that, but they're willing to give up a lot to. To become a champion and to become recognized as the best at what they do. And that's as an organization, right? The coaches, the trainers, the front office that they're the recruiting, everyone has that goal to be recognized and to go in the books as a Super bowl champion. Different sports, different titles, but that. It's that kind of thing and that's competitive. That's. You have to beat the other Team down. So in business and in life, it doesn't always have to be beating the other side, but it's proving it's competition with yourself and within your team. Can we be the best organized? Can we do have the best recruiting and the best training and the best mental preparation to overcome the ultimate challenge, which is a team that is just as good as us and is trying to win? So I think that's. That's part of it. Right. Is. Is unless it gets back to defining winning. But it's also defining the idea that whatever we do, from starting with lean to how you do a process, needs to have a sort of an image of what good looks like, a target condition, whatever you want to call it.

Unless you're the Saints, you need to get totally. You know what? That's for another podcast.

That's a. That's a question of what's the purpose of the NFL?

Yeah, right.

Versus what's the purpose of the team? There's. That's. When you have, when you don't have alignment between, you know, the gemba, the people that make the money and they create the product, and the people who own and set the policy, you end up with screwy things in the middle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's part of it too is alignment and transparency and, and a combination of. There's a balance of command and control versus local decision making. That has to be one of those. Perhaps has to be one of those elements of being able to put it to adjust or to know. It's not just. It's not just saying let's have autonomous teams everywhere. It's. It's not saying let's have really strict leader standard work. You can't have. It's got to be situational, but you have to know what's. What are my parameters in reorganizing my organization and making it flatter or less flat? What am I aiming for? And what do human behavior. What does our knowledge of human behavior, human psychology, organizational behavior tell us works and how far are we from that? What are the things that we need to fix? I guess one of the elements is designing our organization around what around how humans work best and lean to some degree provides answers for that, whether it's you have a supervisor or a leader or manager and what's their span of control and how close are they to their team and how do they communicate and work in agile teams or work with daily huddles and keep them together as a cohesive team versus as a large, highly structured, highly bureaucratic command and control organization, which. It works in some contexts. Like when you need. Well, it works in some contexts and it doesn't in others. And so it's not only one thing or the other, but you need to have to be. You need to be a student of those kinds of things that work and be willing to put them in practice. So. So we've named right off, you know, we kind of wandered through and named four or five things that.

Well, we've named. Let me just review for the sake of the listener.

Okay.

Just listening right now. In some airplane or in their car. So what I've. I've made notes here, and number one was. And I'm just. I tried my best to summarize what you were saying. Making things better Kaizen Impact reality. Alter reality in a positive way. This was the kind of. The first element that we talked about. The second element that I noted was that we need to have an aim, a goal, a target, a yearning, a burning desire, a why our purpose. And then maybe related to that is understand what winning might look like. The third one was what you just talked about was alignment. We need to know the parameters of the organization. We need to design an organization around how people work best. So those were. Those are three things that I've. That I've.

Yeah. The winning. I think you raised the winning question. I think that's a separate thing. I think that gets more in the. Okay, when you ask, you know, what does that really mean? I think that goes back to is it a win lose, or is it a win win? Is it. Is it a. Is it a. What's the word? What's the phrase I'm looking for? Is it a zero sum game or is this not a zero sum game? I think that's what that question is. And that goes back to the respect for humanity question of. Can you have all the benefits of lean without giving back? In other words, can Lean be just a take, take, take endeavor where I'm using Lean to constantly streamline my business, squeeze more and more profit out of it, get better and better and better, beat down the competition, be completely dominant. And okay, maybe my. My people also enjoy working here and they're getting great pay. But are you, in the meantime, polluted, Polluting the earth and eventually taking off your customers to where they say, I don't care how lean they are, I'm not going to buy their product. So I think that's what winning has to. Has to. We want at least has to ask that question of what does winning mean? Is it what's what's win win. What's. What's non zero sum. Winning in a lean context. And how does my, my, my engagement with Lean support that?

Okay, so I separated that as a number three.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah.

What does winning mean? Got it.

And if there's a, if there's a fifth thing, and there's probably more than five, it's probably something that is on the theme of, or related to the theme of abnormality. Management, visual management. Being able to know and sense what's bothering you, what's not meeting your targets. Being able to look at reality clearly. Being honest with yourself and others. Having the kind of safe environment to expose problems and just systems around that which I think it's, I won't say it's overlooked, but I think it's, there's more to it than meets the. Meets the eye, which is ironic because it's supposed to. Visual management, you know, but there's more to it from a, again, a human element, human behavior, human psychology, letting things slide, not addressing things, not speaking up, not putting yourself at risk in order to do what's right for yourself and for others because of policies. Because one time somebody said let it go or get results at any cost. And okay, there's no success. Failure is not an option. When you hear that, then you go rob from, you know, you rob from one side of the ledger to pay the other side of the ledger. Well, that works for a while, but you haven't addressed the abnormality. So it's those kinds of things. Beyond just 5s and visual management, it's the deeper, whatever you want to call it, commitment to that element of it. And that's. To what degree do you need that? Very early on? I don't think it starts with just visual controls. I think it starts with a commitment to the truth. And, and that's going again. If you want to, if you want to.

What is truth? Right. Pontius Pilate, you know.

Yeah. What is true? That's. But that's, that's what you've got to keep asking, right?

Yeah.

If you, if you're going to. It's not. Maybe the truth is a truth tends to get a little bit subjective because it gets into personal belief and so forth. But it shouldn't be about belief, it should be about reality. If you want to alter reality in a positive way, you have to face reality. And if you can't face reality, you're not going to alter it. Or if you alter it, you're going to be upset because. Well, that's not what I expected because in my reality, this is. This is what happens and I just improved it and something else happened, so. Well, either. Either you didn't really improve it or your understanding of reality was incorrect. So, yeah, I think those things go hand in hand.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. I mean, we've again talked about five elements. I know we're not saying this is it. Write it down and write a blog article and copy it and you'll be good. Right. But I think.

I don't think we're done, but I think it's the kind of philosophical wandering that one does when Ron asks you to come up with a podcast article in a couple days.

Don't tell all my secrets.

Yeah, you can edit it out.

Yeah. So. Yeah, well, so someone's listening to this and, you know, maybe they haven't started. Maybe they have. It doesn't really matter. I don't think if. Where they're at on a journey, perhaps, like, what do you want, what do you want people to walk away from this episode? Do you want them to walk away nervous, excited, cautious? What's your. What's your. What's your feeling here, John?

Yeah, so I suppose this as it. As my, as my blog articles tend to be and as these podcasts sometimes can be, it's more sort of a what's interesting to me, what's in my mind, and if other people find it interesting, great. But I don't always start with the customer in mind or the reader in mind. In this case, I think specifically, I haven't started with the listener in mind, but certainly the question of where should I start? What should be in my. My. What are the elements that should be in our lean journey or lean curriculum? Those are things that are commonly coming in. So I think, yeah, at a minimum, I think people should think as deeply as they're comfortable thinking about these things and I guess challenge or question their assumptions of their certainty about what works and what doesn't work, especially based on your experience or experience you've seen. If you go see a company that seems to be doing something really, really, really great, and you think, I'll copy what they do, really challenge you. What's the context or what. What is it that makes it work? What is it that we're not seeing? What's behind the scenes or under the surface? And even if you see it, even if you see a visual control, what's. What's behind the scenes that makes that possible? The way to ask that question is if I put that If I took that same visual control or Visual Management board or the Huddle process, Huddle meeting process, copy and paste it into my company today, why would it fail? What is it about our people in our systems, in our bureaucracy and our rules that would cause that to stumble and then kind of go deeply into okay, then what are the minimum things we need to do to prepare the ground for something like that? And you can ask the same question for all the other, other elements of it. And even, even that I think it just, I guess, yeah, I mean it's, it's thinking ahead is really what it is. It's part of, part of Lean is the here and now and the daily, but part of it is looking ahead and looking at what are we going to do in the future, the next time around as we, as you build capability, what's the one area that we think we need to work on more?

Okay, hopefully you've enjoyed the conversation so far. Again, we want to hear what you think, so please head over to GembaPodcast.com and look for episode two to leave us a comment. Now, at this point in the conversation, I actually made an impromptu call to totally pivot and take the conversation in a different direction. Now this led to a fantastic journey through John's professional career with a special emphasis on all the things he's Learned over his 26 years of being in the Lean world. Now, we released this conversation. Next week is episode 256. So we'll speak to you then. Thanks for listening to the Gemba Academy podcast. Now we invite you to take a no strings attached, fully functional Test drive of Gembaacademy.com gain immediate access to more than a thousand Lean and Six Sigma learning resources, all free of charge at Gembaacademy.com SA.