70 - Management by Walking Around

Good morning.  I hope things go smoothly for you as you get back to work after a long weekend. 

It looks like more things are trying to open up a bit this week: schools and the NFL primarily, but we’re still a long way from the normal we were used to before the pandemic.

Today, I want to offer leaders some help in staying connected while letting go.  Remember, the theme for this month is Letting Go, but it’s difficult.  How can we satisfy our own need to be in control when we let go and empower everyone to act in the interests of the organization?  How can I make sure people have all the support they need to do the work they’re assigned?

The answer is by walking around.  Of course, if everyone is working from home, it’ll be a little different.  But this idea of Management by Walking Around or by Wandering around isn’t new.  Effective leaders have been doing this from the start, thousands of years ago.  The term itself, Management by Walking Around, seems to have shown up first in the book In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman way back in 1982.  Others trace it back to the 70’s at Hewlett-Packard.

Regardless of where it started, it has lasted because it works.  In the lean world, we call it going to the gemba.

Peters says that MBWA should be mostly random and its purpose is to understand the status of the work system, but the expected benefits include improving morale.

When I teach leaders about gemba walks, I remind everyone that while we have to check our systems to make sure everything is functioning properly, the underlying purpose of the gemba walk is to build more effective relationships with the workforce.  We go and see, we ask questions, we show respect.  But we also connect.

These days, we might have to do a gemba walk via zoom.  And that’s okay.  I think it’s important to use the video if you can’t actually be there.  You can even have someone on FaceTime walk you through areas where there might be problems.

Later this month, I’ll get into a little more detail about how to do specific gemba walks for a specific purpose, but for now, just go out and connect with people.  I promise it will make your day better too.

Have a great day and I’ll see you tomorrow.

69 - Cultural Innovation

Good morning.  Happy Labor Day.  I hope you'll get a chance to relax a little today, no matter what work you do.  I also hope you get to work, if you've been idled or furloughed by COVID-19.

Every month, I want to force myself to pull out the latest Harvard business review magazine and
read through an article that I can share with you.

The article I fell upon today is Cultural Innovation: The secret to building breakthrough businesses, by Douglas Holt, former professor at Harvard and currently President of Cultural Strategy Group.

It did exactly what I hoped it would do:  make me think about related things and give me some more dots to connect.

Briefly, the context is that most companies take a "better mousetraps" approach to innovation, improving a product's functionality.  Sometimes that's just right and produces a big win - lots of tech companies have done this. 

But overall, the results are just average.

Holt's different approach is a Cultural Innovation approach, where a company, often a start up, identifies a weakness in the existing category and then reinvents the category's ideology and symbolism.  That Ideology and Symbolism really form the basis of any culture, whether corporate or societal.

The author cites two specific examples that really illustrate his point, and since I lived through both of them, I can attest that he's right on the money.

The first is the Ford Explorer.  In the evolution of the "family sedan," I guess it starts with the Model T and evolves into the station wagon.  During this period, we had lots of trucks and enclosed trucks or panel vans that were very utilitarian - built for work not for anything else.  But then, Chrysler creates the minivan and changed the game.  Minivans provide space and comfort and easy in and out access - the perfect vehicle for families with kids, and focused on the kids.

Because of that focus on kids, we kind of lost track of the parents, who in our youth still yearned for great adventures and we hated that we had to bend to the boringness of the soccer mom mobile. 

In the late 80's Ford must have sensed this and started outfitting their enclosed F-150 with more creature comforts and 4 doors, and called it the Explorer.  Ford made $30 Billion off the Explorer before a tire-related/design-related set of failures led to a string of fatal accidents that destroyed the Firestone company and the 103-year-old relationship they had with Ford.  It was just the ticket for those parents who needed to shuttle kids, but could also pick them up from soccer practice and head to wilderness in all-wheel-drive safety.

The other example he provided was Blue buffalo pet food that turned the industry on its head by
focusing on ingredients you might eat yourself instead of how cute and energetic your dog was.  They got a boost when a wheat gluten problem with the big pet-food makers killed thousands of dogs and cats in 2007.  That's a story for another day though.

The critical piece of this article to me is this paragraph:  Better-mousetraps innovation is guided by quantitative ambitions:  Out do your competitors on existing notions of value.  Cultural Innovation operates according to qualitative ambitions: change the understanding of what is considered valuable.

I love that.  Could you reshape you messaging by thinking this way?  You can see the article in Harvard business Review, September-October 2020.

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.

68 - Reflecting on the week

How did last week go or you?  Did you make a point to learn something?

I've had a couple of new opportunities show up in the past couple of weeks that have been forcing me to rethink a lot of things, particularly about what I'm going to be doing in the future.  Which I still haven't quite figured out.

But hey, I'm only 60 and have my whole life in front of me, right?

Both opportunities will force me to learn some new stuff, so that really appeals to me.  I think I can probably take advantage of both of them instead of having to choose between them.

I've been late this week more than previous weeks getting this little video ready because I've been taking advantage of my learning energy, which runs strong first thing in the morning.  So I've been reading and reviewing new things instead of writing up what I plan to say for the video.

I like doing these videos, but others ask me if I'm including calls for action and "what are you trying to accomplish with them".  I started doing them with the hopes of having more people join me in discussing the topics I'm covering and hopefully, by some indirect magical connection, that they might lead to more people learning more about what I do and how I help people, leaders, and companies.

I've had a couple of great discussions with a couple of folks, but I haven't gotten much traction, but rather than quit, I realized that I enjoy creating something in the morning.  So I'm doing these for me as much as for anyone else.

I have some client work returning this month and I'm trying to figure out how to stick to my schedule while working with them.  I think I have it figured out.

This coming week, I have an array of topics for you that seem kind of random, but remember, everything follows this theme of "Letting Go" this month. 

Stick around.  Make some comments.  Ask some questions.  Let's have some fun with this.

Congratulations to Authentic, winner of the Kentucky Derby yesterday.  Sad to see the shots of the empty stands, but it was a pretty good race!

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.

67 - Empowerment

Do you feel empowered?  Empowered at work?  Empowered in general?

What does that feel like?

Being empowered should make you feel confident that you can change whatever it is that you think needs to be changed.  Whether it's a societal change like women's rights, black lives matter, or something more mundane, like your work.

What's the source of that empowerment?

Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines empowerment as the granting of power, right, or authority to perform various acts or duties or the state of being empowered to do something: the power, right, or authority to do something.

In the first case, it refers to someone giving someone else power.  Like a leader letting go and empowering their team.  Leaders who are good at doing this without abandoning the team generally are considered better leaders than those who don't.

But while I usually focus on leaders and leader development in this space, today I want to focus on the second definition - the state of being empowered to do something: the power, right, or authority to do something.

We are, as humans, here for a purpose.  We were born empowered to realize that purpose.  We may have to search for that purpose.  We may have to scrounge up the resources for that purpose, but you see this every day in those people who are constantly giving and supporting.

We as Americans are also empowered by our constitution.  We the people determine who governs and how we shall be governed.  If we don't like the way our country is being led, we are empowered to vote to remove the leadership.  If we do like the way our country is being led, we are empowered to vote to keep that leadership.

We are empowered to vote.  But we still might have to round up the resources to make that happen.  We may have to overcome obstacles that have been put in place, like fewer voting places or requirements for identification - but these we overcome. 

In Australia, they have elected to make voting mandatory.  Here, it's our obligation as citizens, but it's not a legal requirement.  If it were, would that change our feelings of empowerment?

Being empowered doesn't mean that we've been given everything we need to succeed.  But it does mean we can round up whatever we need and make something happen. 

You are empowered.  Find out what for, and get busy. 

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.

Definition of empowerment

1: the act or action of empowering someone or something : the granting of the power, right, or authority to perform various acts or duties

Malcolm X, the eloquent spokesman for black empowerment who, in 1965, was gunned down at the age of 39 in New York city, continues to influence the political, social, and cultural climate of our society.— Joe Wood

Therefore, part of the cure for poverty was empowerment—training the residents of a poor neighborhood to organize themselves and learn to get things from the power structure.— Nicholas Lemann

2: the state of being empowered to do something : the power, right, or authority to do something

Education does not automatically result in women's empowerment, as the social and economic context in which women live can pose overwhelming constraints on their choices.— Erin Murphy-Graham

The focus on getting a candidate elected is a way for voters wary of broken promises to gain a sense of empowerment.— John Dutton

Amid the uproar, he and his fellow students felt a budding—and maybe false—sense of empowerment.— James Graff

Like John Lennon, he brought the idea that through music, empowerment and words, you can really come up with world peace.— Wyclef Jean

“Empowerment.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empowerment. Accessed 5 Sep. 2020.

66 - Just in time

One of the key principles of a lean system is Just-In-Time.  This is the principle that says that material an assembly line or assembly cell needs to do its thing should arrive just in time for the line or cell to consume it.

The principle also extends to finished goods, usually in the form of producing to a specific order
rather than producing to a forecast.

Just-in-time was the brainchild of Kiichiro Toyoda.  He was building a new plant for passenger cars before world war 2 and needed to change the production system to conserve cash.  Too much inventory was tied up in storage because they were making pieces in large batches.

To free cashflow for necessary components, they had to limit production of any part to just what was needed that day.  This was a huge deviation from what everyone had been doing their whole lives.  Eiji Toyoda described it as needing to brainwash the workforce to think differently in his book Fifty Years in Motion.  That might be a good description of how we can help leaders and others Let go of bad habits or old thinking.

To make Just-in-time work, the system has to flow smoothly from end to end.  To create that flow, Toyota created work cells where as many steps as possible could be done in one place. 

Next they limited what they made to just what was needed.  That evolved to smaller lot sizes, with the ultimate goal being one at a time - single piece flow. 

They also needed to regulate that flow, so they created signals that told people when to switch to different parts based on demand.  So they created a Pull system using signal cards they called Kanban.

So, in a nutshell, Just-in-time means doing as much as you can in One Place.  Making One Piece at a time.  And Building in response to a pull system that set One Pace for the operation. 

One Place.  One Piece.  One Pace.  It works for cars and car parts.  It works in Software development.  It works in project management.  It'll work almost everywhere.

Need help to figure it out?  Call me.  Let's see how much it will save you to switch.

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.

65 - Learning New Stuff

I've been spending this morning learning some new stuff instead of preparing for my normal episode for you on Facebook Live.

The things I'm learning are all about measurement systems:  How can we make ourselves more profitable by the way we measure the way work progresses through a system?

I'm sure once I discover and learn more about this, I can talk more intelligently about it and we'll have a couple of good conversations about it.

Till then, what I want to do is encourage you to go and pick something for you to learn today.  Once you learn something, it doesn't really do any good unless it either changes your behavior or you share it with somebody else.

All learning is relational.  If we all just sit back and learn by ourselves, it's not really doing much.

So go learn something new, share it with somebody else, or teach it to somebody else and then keep going.  Find something to learn tomorrow and the next day.  There's plenty out there, believe me.

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.

-DSV

64 - Measuring Quality for Better Results

If you're not getting the results you want, it's probably because you're measuring the wrong things.

One of the things I do in my coaching and consulting business is help companies define measures and build visual management systems.  Contact me and let's have a chat.  I can help.

Since the theme for this month is Let Go, one of the main systems that allows a leader to let go is an effective visual management system. 

Yesterday I mentioned a measurement system, and that measurement system is the heart of that effective visual management system. 

Today, let's focus on measuring quality.

Whatever kind of work you do, there should be some way to measure the quality of your results.  In some environments, that's often hard to see. 

The very best measures are always objective measures - those that are easy to see.  In manufacturing it's usually easy because you have a product to put together and measure to see if it meets the customer's requirements. 

In other environments, you may have to shift your thinking a little to recognize that where ever you produce some kind of product or service, you can measure the product against a customer requirement.  It might be a contract, or a purchase order, or a reimbursement request, or a query to a database, or breakfast at a restaurant, or the education of a student, or spraying a house for bugs. 

How you measure that quality component needs to reflect the quality of the PROCESS as well as the quality of the PRODUCT.  We have to be able to see where the weaknesses in the product and process design are so we can prevent problems from occurring. 

Sadly, our first instinct when quality is poor is to blame the person closest to the error, yell at them or figuratively slap their wrists and tell them to do better or else.

If instead we examine the process and ask "how can we prevent this error from ever happening to anyone again?"  then our thinking will be in the right place. 

So whatever you measure and post in your visual system should encourage people to share when they make a mistake and where the process is difficult.  That's probably not going to happen if you measure defects in "parts per million."

Your measures also need to be easy to collect so you don't burn good, productive time just collecting data to update your board and your database.

Send me your questions about measuring quality and I'll post an update soon.

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.