1. Creating a Sustainable Lean Culture (Breakout)
“Leaders have to be Learners”
Process
Tom Shuker
People

2. The Leader’s Job at Toyota…  Aligning purpose, process, and people is the central task of management.
Management
Process
People
Based on John Shook Lean Management Columns, lean.org 2009

3. The Leader’s Job at Toyota…
First, get each person to take initiative to solve problems and improve his or her job.
Second, ensure that each persons’ job is aligned to provide value for the customer and prosperity for the company.

4. The Leader’s Job is to Develop His or Her People
SPIRIT of Lean Mentorship:
“If the learner hasn’t learned, the teacher hasn’t taught”

5. Role of the Lean Leader
Lead – define purpose, priorities and role requirements
Engage – deploy meaningful responsibility appropriate to level
Enable – manage the work environment and support systems
Coach – develop problem solving skills and job-handling capability
In other words, HELP Problem Solvers carry out their problem solving responsibilities

6. Lean Culture Transformation
(Top-Down or Bottom-Up?)
It’s easier to act your way to a new way of thinking than to think your way to a new way of acting.
Values
What We Do
ASSUMPTIONS
People do “follow” your lead if not always your orders.

7. The Social Side of Lean People
Creating the Environment for Problem Solving and Learning
Engagement and Change Through Modeling
Practice of Humble Inquiry for Deployment and Engagement
Grasping the Actual Condition of Process Execution
People

8. Three Significant Points
“What sets the operations of [Toyota] apart is the way they
Tightly couple the process of doing the work with the process of learning to do it better as it’s being done.
Operations are expressly designed to reveal problems as they occur….
And managers constantly develop and encourage their subordinates’ [problem solving] ability to design, improve and deploy such improvements.”
Steven Spear HBR, Sep 2005
Problem Solving
Capability
Designed Value Streams
Developmental
Leadership
People

9. Role of the Lean/CI Leader
Lead – define purpose, priorities, role requirements and accountabilities
Engage – deploy meaningful responsibility appropriate to level
Enable – manage the work environment and support systems
Coach – develop problem solving skills and job-handling capability
Helping other carry out their problem solving responsibilities like scientists

10. Employees Who Think like Scientists?
“The key is to understand that the Toyota Production Systems creates a community of scientists. When Toyota defines a work process or standard it is establishing a set of hypotheses that can then be tested. In other words it is following the scientific method. To make any change Toyota uses a rigorous problem-solving process that requires a detailed assessment of the current state and a plan for improvement that is in fact an experimental test of the proposed changes. The system actually stimulates workers and managers to engage in the kind of experimentation recognized as the cornerstone of a learning organization.”
from “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production Systems,” Steven Spear, HBR September-October 1999

11. Let’s try an experiment.

12. Bringing two leader skills together:
COACHING for Helping Others Develop Problem Solving Skills and Thinking:
Bringing two leader skills together:
Questioning to facilitate the seeing and thinking of others
The PDCA Thinking/ Problem Solving Process

13. Practice Coaching Divide into triads Problem Owner Coach Observer
Three rounds
Instructions will be provided

14. Round One
LEAN TRANSFORMATIONS GROUP, LLC.© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

15. The Traditional Model of Coaching
Specify the performance discrepancy.
Get agreement a problem exists.
Give feedback.
Ask for solutions; provide suggestions.
Agree on next steps and follow up.
“Focus on the problem, not the person.”
Coaching for Correction

16. What was the Focus of your Response?
Telling the problem owner you’ll look into it?
Telling the problem owner how to handle it?
Giving the problem owner suggestions how to handle it?
Asking the problem owner to explain what happened?
Asking questions to find the underlying cause?
Asking questions to better grasp the situation?
Asking what JD knows about the situation?
Asking how JD wants to handle it and why?
Key Question: Who’s doing the thinking?

17. The Leadership Picture
“Energetic attention to detail grounded in the belief that leaders have to have a deep understanding of how things work if they are to develop people, guide people, and make decisions”
from “The High-Velocity Edge,” Steven Spear, 2009

18. Three Common Problems in Problem Solving
Assuming you know what the problem is without seeing what is actually happening.
Assuming you know how to fix a problem without finding out what is causing it.
Assuming you know what is causing the problem without confirming it.
In other words - Not Grasping the Situation – the ACTUAL CONDITIONS

19. Questioning Mind Lean is not acting on assumptions
What do you actually know?  How do you know it?
What do you need to know? How can you learn it?
Lean is not acting on assumptions
or jumping to conclusions.

20. Your Role as a Lean Leader
4/4/2019
Your Role as a Lean Leader
Increase others awareness by asking what they know about what is actually happening…and how they know it
Prompt them to question Why it is happening…and how they can prove it
Get them engaged in thinking about how to address problems and run experiments to test their ideas
In other words develop a fundamentally different relationship with your employees

21. Round Two
LEAN TRANSFORMATIONS GROUP, LLC.© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

22. Mr. Cho’s Description of Coaching
Give him or her the job as
their own.
Let them think; let them try.
Help him or her see.
Force reflection.
Coaching for DEVELOPMENT
through the Job to Do the JOB

23. What was the Focus of your Response?
Telling the problem owner you’ll look into it?
Telling the problem owner how to handle it?
Giving the problem owner suggestions how to handle it?
Asking the problem owner to explain what happened?
Asking questions to find the underlying cause?
Asking questions to better grasp the situation?
Asking what JD knows about the situation?
Asking how JD wants to handle it and why?
Key Question: Who’s doing the thinking?

24. Type of Question that Gets the Most FACTS for Grasping the Situation?
Closed
Yes/No
Leading
Reactive/
Restricted
Open
Factual/
Detailed
Type of Information Obtained

25. Types of Questions (From “Helping” by Ed Schein)
Pure Inquiry
Diagnostic Inquiry
Prompting Inquiry
Process Inquiry
Develops Trust
Coaching to develop problem solving skill
You are doing the thinking
“What is happening between us right now?”

26. Go to Gemba Make Non-judgmental observations
Ask open ended observations
Support and respect the operator

27. Making the Commitment Questions
Are we willing to commit to try something different?
What problem areas can we focus on together?
What lean leadership behaviors are we willing to practice?
How should we institutionalize the discipline of PDCA problem solving and learning?

28. What Does it Mean to be a Coach?
What do you think of when you hear the term, “Coach”?

29. What Was Your Best Experience Being Coached?
Who comes to mind as the best Coach you’ve known personally?
What did he or she do that made an impact on you?

30. Telling is seldom Teaching …and seldom is it Coaching.
And Coaching for Development is NOT the same as Coaching by Correcting

31. You Cannot Command People to LEARN.
You have to let them be engaged in responsibilities that are meaningful and respect their capability.

32. What is Meaningful Responsibility?
Delegated tasks and assignments?
Responsibility for the outcome? The Deliverable?
Responsibility that carries with it the requirement to think plan, initiate, problem solve and take leadership to achieve the outcome.
Responsibility for the Ends without being told the exact Means to use to achieve them.
Responsibility to participate in Catch-ball give-and-take to come to agreement on the specifics of both the ends and means

33. And why is Meaningful Responsibility Important in Lean?
Discretionary Effort
“You hire my time and are due a full day and a good effort. You can define my responsibilities, program my activities and evaluate my performance. You can control what you see. But I can decide how far I go beyond that and for what.”