Look Before You Lean!

This week The Nobby Works gives over its valuable cyberspace to a dear friend who has just finished a book to be published this August, titled Look before You Lean: How a Lean Transformation Goes Bad--A Cautionary Tale. I trust loyal readers won't find the topic too terribly esoteric since they have stood by the blog when it has ventured far afield in the past to ruminate, say, on the essence of the Speedo and the sex lives of alligators. Lean, for the blessedly uninitiated, is a business methodology that rose up from factory floor of Toyota in the 1950s and has been rapidly spreading out of the manufacturing environment and West for the past 20 years. It is not without its valid points, its skilled practitioners, and its true believers. Those positive aspects combined with some stunning results in certain work environments have continued to lure more and more companies to embark on what are called lean transformations. Yet, by the lean community's own admission, the number of companies that quit on their "lean journey" is over 90%. In his book, my friend, who has written under the pen name Employee X, chronicles the imminent collapse of one such journey. Each chapter in the book pivots off a children's story. The first story being Hansel and Gretel where the reader is introduced to Employee X's company and the company hired to lead its lean transformation. Thereafter, Employee X's company becomes known as Woodcutter Enterprises (WE) and the lean company is Witches and Tyrants Federated (WTF). This excerpt is from chapter five, "Magic Beans."
Magic Beans Let it not be said that WTF came to the grand party WE insisted on throwing for it empty-handed. Its bag was chock full ‘o tricks that, if not exactly useful, would create for our executives at least the illusion that one day a giant beanstalk would sprout in our parking lot and rise upward into the sky where a pot of corporate gold would be waiting--ours for the taking.
Speaking of that parking lot, the first visible sign to staff that WTF had arrived was when we received notice that there would no longer be executive parking spaces…that, in the democratizing spirit of Lean, all parking spots would be equal. This fanfare for the common man was echoed when the first RIEs began to roll out and we were told that a key feature of them would be that titles are left at the door. Inside the RIE all men and women would be created equal.
In both instances, the implied nobility was undeniable. But as I’ve said before, much put forth by WTF did not hold up well to closer scrutiny. The first-come, first-serve parking directive struck many employees as trivial. The assigned executive spaces opened up by the new policy did not positively impact enough spaces or distance to make it at all recognizable as a benefit to employees. Nor were employees in any measurable number harboring resentment toward executives who had earned their reserved spots through their positions and needed those spots due to their often busy travel schedules.
As to leaving titles at the door, well WTF was not the first to try that stunt. Titles do not get left at the door just like that. Most companies live by org charts…highly paid people have a great deal invested in their place in the pecking order. Employees instinctively understand their place, even those employees who believe they deserve a higher place...or don't like the people in higher places. The very idea that you might break down this fundamental aspect of corporate culture with a mere announcement of “Please leave titles at the door” was naïve at best and willfully deceptive at worst.
Because over time I came to believe the worst of WTF, I’m inclined to believe that deception was the intent…and deception not just aimed at staff to make them believe that for the hours spent in RIEs their bosses were really their peers, but deception aimed at the executives as well, to keep them humbled in the presence not of their staff, but their sensei.
If these democratizing gestures had been reinforced and expanded through the course of our Lean transformation, I may very well have come to a more favorable conclusion about WTF’s intent. But quite the opposite happened as WTF increasingly warned against dissenting voices—“change the people or change the people” entered our company lexicon for the first time--and the democratic trappings proved to be a sham.
By the second year of our Lean transformation, trust the process had replaced change is hard as the all-purpose conversation stopper and answer to any difficult question. The “process” seemingly was a shape-shifting creature of myriad appendages and faculties. Its constant movement and metamorphoses made it difficult enough to track let alone trust.
There were the RIEs of mostly 5-days’ duration with detailed plans for each day, Thursdays being the most ambitious:1.    Observe and document new conditions2.    Brainstorm solutions to problems identified on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday3.    Implement solutions4.    List actions to be taken within 30 days of RIE5.    Define system to sustain the changes implemented6.    Verify changes to be made to the process7.    Prepare current and future skits and slide presentation for Friday report out
Then there was A3 thinking, the process of getting all your thinking down on one piece of metric-sized paper called an A3 (similar to an 11” x 17” piece of paper…which raises the question for all those let’s go Japanese Leaniacs out there, how’s that metric system translating to the US of A?) The A3 is divided into 9 steps:1.    State the problem2.    Measure the initial state3.    Set the target state4.    Find the root cause5.    Develop a solution6.    Test the hypothesis 7.    Create the plan8.    Track the benefits 9.    Share the knowledge
The A3 should capture the logic of solving a problem on a single sheet and be able to stand on its own without explanation, or so we were told.
Early in year two, the X-Matrix appeared. Our Lean leadership spent a week in an RIE with a sensei learning its seeming lightsaber-like powers. When our leaders emerged for their Report Out, they could tell us how hard the X-Matrix had been to master and how wonderful it was once you did, but they could not explain it to staff and admitted as much, nor could they adequately demonstrate its usefulness to us…or in Lean terminology: WIIFM (what’s in it for me). 
After X-Matrix came POP and Sprint (and their offspring the agile POP Sprint board). In between, Standard of Work reared its ugly little head. This is what WTF prescribed as “typical standard work elements:”•       Monitor your area managers’ standard work daily•       Monitor takt attainment (every value stream) daily•       Gemba walk with operations managers daily•       6s audit—one area per day, randomly & in rotation—follow-up action items from last audit, daily•       Daily monitor standard of work of all team members--area manager, team leader, lead, operator--randomly and in rotation•       Gemba walk with at least two team leaders weekly•       Weekly monitor MDI metrics.
Oh, yes, almost forgot: MDI—Metric for Daily Improvement. Somewhere along the line you would have created an MDI board with your daily improvement metrics spelled out in particulate detail.
And WTF would tolerate no slackers, warning our top people:“•Leader’s (sic) disciplined adherence to process makes lean management work (or not)--Leaders at all levels must be the most disciplined, from Cell Leader to top executive--Consistent disregard of abnormal situations cause them to ‘look’ normal•Leader results are ‘core’ to develop an effective lean culture--Insist on adherence to standard work•LEAD BY EXAMPLE!!”
Well, one person’s discipline is another person’s anality. I’m rather happy to report that in a year and a half I never saw one of our leaders adhere to that standard of work…not even come close. I really do look upon this as a good thing. The atmosphere WTF managed to create at our company was oppressive enough without having top executives wander through the work areas on a regular basis checking to see how well we were all doing at sorting, straightening and scrubbing our workstations. And even if our top people didn’t have the good sense to ignore most of the anal retentive aspects of the Lean process, the nonstop carousel of RIEs they were required to attend made it impossible to perform their standard of work to WTF’s specifications. 
I don’t want to come off as some kind of troglodyte here. I’m all for change that makes life and work better. For years I started my writing projects…or any complex project…with a legal pad. I’d outline what I wanted to write about or make columns for pros and cons and deadlines on whatever other project I was about to undertake. I also started each and every day with a Post-it of my "things to do." But then along came writers’ software to help with my outlines; “thinking” software to help with brainstorming, organizing, and charting; and a smartphone to replace my need for Post-it notes with both writing and vocal functionality. Lean’s affinity for Post-its and wall charts is quaint at best, but at worst it is that highest of Lean crimes: wasteful. For months on end we watched as long strips of butcher paper lined our company walls to become populated with different color Post-its with hand scribbled ideas, directions, insights, and answers to questions no one but WTF ever thought to ask…or needed to ask. The strips would later be photographed and carefully moved room to room to be transcribed for reports and archived, leaving those of us working in the Information Age rather than the Industrial Age to wonder: Hasn’t anybody here heard of digitizing? Web connecting? Mobile devices?
The reliance on Post-its and handmade charts seems more a matter of Lean branding than Lean efficiency. These are artifacts passed on from Lean’s roots in factory settings where computerized tools were nonexistent. Lean practitioners, or at least WTF, appear reluctant to modernize their practices for fear of losing their Lean identity even as they attempt to modernize their portfolios with more Information Age clients.
But this isn’t just a matter of style. In fact there are more serious issues of substance. On the matter of A3 thinking, for instance, I would argue that the A3 is much more a tool for organizing thinking than thinking itself. It really isn’t much different than a simple pluses and minuses sheet, except it asks for more product or detail from your thinking. But for getting at the actual thinking process, it is immaterial.
We are on the new frontier of neuroscience. This discipline abounds with data as to how we think—or, as they say, what makes us tick. There is enough information out there in the early stages of neuroscience to tell us how certain people are likely to fill out an A3, which people are likely to make the most use of an A3, which the least likely.
Daniel Kahneman breaks our thinking process down into two types—fast and slow.  Fast is what psychologists call System 1; slow is what they call System 2. Writes Kahneman:

 “When we think of ourselves, we identify with System 2, the conscious, reasoning self that has beliefs, makes choices, and decides what to think about and what to do. Although System 2 believes itself to be where the action is, the automatic System 1 is the hero…effortlessly originating impressions and feelings that are the main source of the explicit beliefs and deliberate choices of System 2. The automatic operations of System 1 generate surprisingly complex patterns of ideas, but only the slower System 2 can construct thoughts in an orderly series of steps.” 

 I am all for that System 2 construction of thoughts into orderly steps. And I truly believe that is a genuine plus of what its proponents like to call Lean thinking. And I’m happy to report that I saw an example of this process in practice when I was on that Lean tour I mentioned earlier. At one of the companies on the tour, we were shown their proprietary problem-solving matrix, which they used to get at the root cause of a bottleneck in account receivables. On completion, the matrix revealed that the conventional wisdom that held that the company’s credit department was the source of the bottleneck was wrong. The credit department played a minor role compared to two other departments, which were largely responsible for the bottleneck. And in the best of Lean fashion, these results led to fixing the problem, rather than fixing blame.
To be fair, through its efforts WTF actually had a few qualitative breakthroughs like this at WE. Unfortunately these quality wins were buried under an avalanche of quantitative data. Rather than taking the few, small victories and leveraging them throughout the company in a way dedicated to showing employees what was in it for them, WTF chose to trumpet its vast collection of numbers…how much staff put through how many RIEs in how little time; how many tons of material discarded during 6S; how many new tools introduced to company leadership.
The last was the most damaging to our entire Lean transformation. Our leaders didn’t so much get a tool chest opened up to them as they had it dumped on their heads. One top-level person—and one of our company’s savviest--confided to me one day that even though he (or she) had participated in numerous RIEs and had achieved WTF’s proprietary second level of Lean expertise, she (or he) still couldn’t say with any certainty what Lean was.
Such refreshing bits of skepticism, however, were counteracted by others in management positions who were possessed of an unseemly degree of certainty about where the company was going and what their role was in getting it there. The new manager of my department was one such booster. She was installed because upper management believed she had an eye and appetite for enforcing the Lean ideal of visual management, which was all about being able to manage by scanning the work area and all that it entailed: were the workers in their places, were tools at the ready, were daily maintenance boards visible and current, were any abnormalities on the horizon ("race to red"). “The Night’s Watch” standing lookout for invasions of “Others” in Game of Thrones had a less daunting task. But our new manager had a zest for the job, which earned her the nickname Little Miss Horner for her self-satisfied vigilance from her desk in the far corner of the department.
After an intensive week learning about standard of work as a key component of visual management, Little Miss Horner announced that the entire department would go on what she termed standard company hours, 8-5, five days a week. Not to quibble, but the company had never held to any standard work hours. There was a passing reference to 8-5 in the company handbook, but that was pretty much neutralized by a directive that each department would set its hours according to its needs. In fact, the needs of the department that was the company's main income generator required work hours from 7-4. Our department was a hot bed of flex scheduling. Some of us arrived as early as 6 a.m.; some as late as 10 a.m. Some worked four-day weeks with Mondays off; some four-day weeks with Fridays off. Some schedules were due to the need to care for children; some in order to care for elderly parents; some because some folks preferred to put in long 4-day weeks in order to have long 3-day weekends. It was all very employee-friendly...and had been for the 13 years I was employed there.
I realize how this may all seem disturbing to an outsider, especially an outsider peddling something called visual management, but it all pretty much worked for a long time. Our department met most deadlines, produced high quality work, which drew glowing praise from upper management and outsiders, and had our fair share of Staff of the Year award winners, including those who had some of the most unorthodox schedules. 
Historically, this change in our hours came down shortly after Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced a ban on telecommuting at her company. I don't think WTF needed such encouragement to push standard work hours at WE. That's pretty much part of their stated agenda. Yet I have little doubt that the Yahoo news was used to push our management to decide that our entire department would now be held to standard hours, five days a week. (I also have little doubt that Mayer's decision will eventually backfire on Yahoo in ways perhaps different in kind, but not effect, from how Little Miss Horner's decision will eventually blowback on WE.)
Under the regime of standard work, within the purview of visual management, under the ever watchful eye of Little Miss Horner (and with my own executive-approved project suggestions for the company idling somewhere in somebody’s queue), I commenced serious work on this book. At my work-station. In plain-sight. All during the newly imposed standard work hours. With WTF placing mind-numbing emphasis on tracking every working hour, with charts galore tracking every employee with a dizzying array of arrows and stars and bars, with a pervasive and oppressive company push to get everyone on the Lean transformation bus, I sat undisturbed documenting all that was going wrong with the process.
According to the standard of work elements detailed for each of our leaders up the chain of command, in the time I spent writing this book I should have been visited hundreds of times to be asked what I was working on, how I was progressing, was I having any problems. Just one Gemba walk should have raised the question of why I was busily working on my personal iPad while my company iMac with its 16-inch monitor sat on my desk mostly idle. Ironically, in the three months I spent writing this book, only one person in a management position came by to look over my shoulder. He looked at my iMac and said, "You can't be reading that on company time." This was remarkable because this was the man who was replaced as our department manager by Little Miss Horner because upper management doubted his ability to see us through our Lean transformation. In my 10 years of working for the man, he had never once come to look over my shoulder and question my work--and I should add, I had never failed to deliver on any assignment he gave me. This history made an embarrassing pass between us at that moment of him calling me on my activity. I said, "Scotty, this is the Lean material they've uploaded on our intranet and asked us to read. I can't very well read it at home."
His sheepishness gave way to bemusement. He rolled his eyes, shook his head, and muttered, "This process is making fools of us all."
In the period I spent writing this book on company time, I had a total of 48 assigned hours of work and a grand total of 525 hours of unassigned work. Occasionally I would look up from the writing of this book to peer into the adjoining meeting room where yet another WTF sensei would unveil yet another chart that promised to take WE to the promised land. Our managers and directors and cell leaders would gather around it in awe, reaching out to touch it and chattering deliriously among themselves, resembling nothing less than the hairy humanoids in 2001: A Space Odyssey when they found themselves in the presence of a big, black, totally baffling monolith.