Learning from Gemba Walks

comment on: What’s the Right Way to Do a Gemba Walk?

Well said. Both "treating people as individuals and showing them respect" and "learning how they wish to influence outcomes in their lives and work" are very important. I also think one of the keys that makes gemba walks valuable is for the person doing the walk truly seeking to learn; a curiosity about the nature of the work at this particular gemba seems present in those that make it a valuable process (that curiosity continues and grows it isn't satisfied on a walk instead it is stoked to encourage more learning).

Related: Deming Wanted Managers to Understand the Systems They Managed and to Visit Where the Work was Done - Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno - Out of Touch Executives Damage Companies: Go to the Gemba

Avoiding Difficult Problems

Response to: Toyota is Admired for Good Reason… But About Those Rotating Job Shifts…

Thanks for another good post. It points out that while Toyota does many things very well they have opportunities to improve. And I am sure they agree they have a huge number of things to improve.

I agree, this rotating shifts seems like something important to try and improve. One of the things that happens in many organizations is that working on things that are going to make lots of people mad are often avoided. This rotating shift work seems like something that is likely to make people upset.

Even if you worked on improving it, likely during those PDSA cycles many people would be annoyed. And if you were working on it, you could get blamed, you could be tarnished as someone people didn't like it and didn't appreciate "you doing this to them." If, on the other hand, no one is making significant efforts to improve, even if people are annoyed it is at some amorphous policy and usually doesn't stick to 1 person.

If the dis-satisfaction does accumulate toward 1 person (say the plant manager) that person then often will push through and deal with it - or assign someone to deal with it and stay on them to make sure they do the difficult work (even if doing so will make that person's life much more difficult).

Now I would hope Toyota is better managed than that and doesn't shy away from important work just because the people that would take the lead have strong reasons to avoid working on that task.

There are often so many things to improve that it isn't too hard to shift the focus away from something that no one wants to take on. Sometimes though things are so important they must be taken on. Usually those would be more direct and obvious problems. Systemic problems that cause great damage but in a less visible way (such as rotating job shifts) are less likely to be addressed.

Coping with this issue (of avoiding unpleasant, systemic and long term rather than acute problems) is one of the things that separates great corporate culture from decent or bad corporate culture.

If there are fairly obvious or fairly easy improvements those would likely be acted on. There are, rarely, but still sometimes, instances where those vocal or politically powerful individuals who would lose out in a fairly obvious improvement will prevent action.

I am pretty sure Toyota doesn't have fairly easy improvements on this issue, that they must realize is important, that they are just not getting to. I am a bit less confident that Toyota isn't avoiding trying to find solutions using a PDSA type effort because it would be really hard and risky work for whoever takes it on. Also Toyota can try to rely on the good will built up through their many efforts to expect enough employees to say that they will accept the suffering caused by this policy for the good of the everyone.

I am not convinced there are not ways to improve the situation. And I am pretty confident it is important enough to try. And I believe (though I might be wrong) with a concerted effort of knowledgable people improvements that would make a big difference in the quality of life could be achieved. I am not so certain those people involved in leading the effort would be seen in great lights though even if they "succeed." People are much more likely to remember negative consequences to them personally, even if they gain much more than they lost overall. And most will remember the effort negatively if they lost only a little but overall the gains (to the overall organization) were much bigger: in such cases many will hold onto feelings that they were harmed by those that took action.

Related: Respect for People Doesn’t Mean Avoiding Any Hint of Criticism - The Importance of Critical Thinking and Challenging Assumptions - Unpacking the Components of Hard Work to Design Better Work Conditions

Earning the Trust of Employees

My comments on: Why good employees (should not) leave (good companies)? – The employer perspective

One of the very challenging tasks as a manager is to get people to trust bringing up difficult topics. Often people are punished for doing so. Most people learn to keep quiet about management problems. Even when managers say they want to hear there are many instances when they then punish those who speak up.

I agree with you that for organizations to flourish management must know what needs to be improved. But few executives or managers put in the effort to earn people's trust. But building that trust is what organizations that want to flourish need to do.

Related: Ignoring Unpleasant Truths is Often Encouraged - How to Create a Continual Improvement Culture - Practical Ways to Respect People - The Problem is Likely Not the Person Pointing Out The Problem - Build an Environment Where Intrinsic Motivation Flourishes

The Importance of a Work Culture That Values and Supports Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is tremendously important. I have come to think it might be the most important precursor to management improvement (evidence based management, continual improvement...).

One of the big issues is for people to understand thinking critically about ideas isn't an insult to whoever came up with the idea being discussed. This isn't something I would have thought of as important until seeing so many cases where people are not comfortable discussing ideas (and weaknesses in those ideas) in the workplace.

Comments prompted by: thinking critically

Related: A Good Management Culture Encourages the Debate of Ideas - Respect for People Doesn’t Mean Avoiding Any Hint of Criticism - Dangers of Forgetting the Proxy Nature of Data

Change and the Management System

comments on: Better Change Leadership as a Countermeasure to “Resistance to Lean”

I agree, the problem isn't change but the process for change. There are many smart things to do to help the process work better.

The most important thing though is the entire management culture. Tactics can help change efforts be more successful. But if the culture is hostile to continual improvement (fear based, performance appraisal based, target based, blame based, imposing from on high...) the tactics are working in a difficult situation. Still a good idea, but no matter what tactics are used it will be a challenge.

When the culture has the right environment (PDSA, seek to continually improve the system, respect for people, support for innovation, understanding of variation in results, seek process weakness to improve not people to blame, provide training...) change is set in a system where resistance is much lower (and in very highly functioning systems it is encouraged not resisted).

Change tactics are still sensible but often they are baked into how things are done. As you grow more toward becoming such an organization change tactics fade into the normal process and the resistance fades too.

Related: Communicating Change - People Take Time to Believe Claims of Changed Management Practices - Encourage Improvement Action by Everyone

Customer Service is Often More Like a Mugging Than Service

It is so frustrating to deal with most companies with monopolistic positions in the USA (which is a lot of them).

I find dealing with those companies a matter of being confronted by someone trying to pick your pocket while they both ignore and insult you and give you orders about what hoops you have to jump through if you want to stop one of the things they are doing to harm you.

Some are not that bad, I get water and garbage from the local county, they are actually the best service I get from a monopolistic provider. The electricity provider is just designed mainly to make their lives easy but they don't make it horrible to deal with them.

Getting broadband (Verizon and Comcast where I am) is horrible - dealing with them is exactly what I wrote above. Health insurance (and I don't even make any claims) is bad, and if I actually got any service I imagine it would be horrible dealing with the service providers seeking to rip you off and the paperwork being a nightmare.

I avoid dealing with the monopolistic providers as much as possible but you often are stuck. For example, I can (and have) only use sensible providers to get my mortgage, but then they are sold to service companies that are horrible and I have no say in the matter.

Much more than the costs taken by companies when they can buy politicians in order to allow the abuse of the market by dominant providers I abhor the pain of dealing with these companies as a customer and the constant vigilance required to protect yourself from them ripping you off. It is like being forced to commute in a packed subway with bought off police that allow pickpocket teams to work without interference.

Related: Worst Business Practices, Fees to Pay Your Bills - Customers Get Dissed and Tell - Incredibly Bad Customer Service from Discover Card - Don’t Let the Credit Card Companies Play You for a Fool

Deming Wanted Managers to Understand the Systems They Managed and to Visit Where the Work was Done

Comments on Deming wasn’t a fan of Management by Walking Around

Deming’s view is entrenched in Lean management practice in the form of “Genchi Genbutsu”, literally “go and see” at the “real place”. Where practitioners of Management by Walking Around merely visit the workers for a chat, practitioners of Genchi Genbutsu stay with the workers to understanding what is going on.

True, and the details you provide are important. It wasn't managers going to the gemba Deming was against. What mattered is the system. Some people did Management by Walking Around (MBWA), even decades ago, in a useful way - with understanding. But most did not.

Gemba walks are much more likely to be useful (because the expectations are for a more engaged leader) but there are plenty of times those are not done well, and are no better than bad MBWA. Jim Womack has a book out on Gemba Walks which provides good details to managers on what they should do (and what Deming wanted them to do).

Related: Out of Touch Executives Damage Companies, Go to the Gemba - Leadership and Management - Jeff Bezos Spends a Week Working in Amazon’s Kentucky Distribution Center (2009) - Customer Gemba

Replying to Tweets Usefully

My response to: How can I reach out to Twitter users who have an immediate need for my services? I can see local tweets from great prospects but a reply would be spam.

I do not agree replies would automatically be spam.

I suggest you provide links to useful information. If you have a blog or web site that provides useful information that can also share that your services may be of value.

Certainly responding could be done in a spamming way. And that should not be done. But you can respond by being helpful. And rely on some of those seeing that you provide useful information wanting to learn more.

A measure of if you are providing useful replies see how often it is retweeted. I am very surprised how often mine are. I would guess it is over 50% of the time that I (@curiouscat_com) suggest a link would be useful they retweet it.

When I just send a reply without a link they are retweeted rarely. Also when I just post links to useful stuff I find those are retweeted much less often than my direct replies (I imagine if you have tens of thousands of active readers, not just "followers," this data would be less useful because everything you tweet someone retweets...

Another measure would be if people reply by saying you are sending them spam or wasting their time, etc. I have had 0 of these.

The combination of these results has led me to offer suggested links more often. I was nervous at first about people seeing it as spam. 90% of them are links to my blogs because those blog posts are what I know well enough to link so often (I also suggest other articles, blogs or products but less often).

Related: Your Online Presence and Social Networks for Managers - The Benefits of Blogging - Networking is Valuable But Difficult to Quantify

Hopefully Other Countries Will Save Us From USA's Attempt to Sell Us Out to Aid Big Political Donors

The Trans-Pacific Partnership has been atrocious.  Essentially the USA has been strong arming other countries into secretly selling out their citizens to provide benefits to large USA political donors.  The Obama administration has once again done the opposite of being the open and honest organization candidate Obama promised.

The hopes of stopping the corruption of the USA political system, in this case, wrests with other countries protecting their citizens (and the citizen's of the USA from the corrupt practices.  Vice President Bidden seems particularly focused on paying off his donors and friends with this horrible treaty.  The USA administration realizes the selling out the innovators and rights of citizens for large political donors is so toxic it would likely not survive if there was the transparent government candidate Obama promised.

The TPP should be stopped.  I would not trust politicians that don't speak out against it publicly now.  Politicians have become adept at hiding what they promote behind secrecy and misdirection.  Many are hoping they can hide behind the secrecy around the trampling of innovators and citizens in the TPP to pay off their donors while claiming the appose the horrible policies of the TPP.  If they are not speaking out now, all they are doing is taking advantage of the secrecy the Obama administration has made its policy for trying to hide government action that harms the country from public view.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership being pushed by Washington is nothing more than a corporatist power grab by William Pesek.

American lawmakers and civil liberties groups have complained for some time about the opacity surrounding the treaty's terms. Mild grousing turned into outrage last month after WikiLeaks did what Barack Obama's White House refuses to: share portions of the document with the public. The draft of the intellectual property rights chapter by Julian Assange's outfit validated the worst fears - that TPP is a corporatist power grab.

Rather than heed the outcry, the US doubled down on secrecy, refusing to disclose more details.

Hasn't the US wondered why so many of east Asia's most promising democracies have avoided the treaty? The popular excuse for why Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand aren't among the 12 TPP economies is that they aren't ready or are trapped by their own timidity. A better explanation is that their leaders realise that truly transparent and accountable governments, to borrow Kerry's own words, shouldn't be leading their people into the unknown.

The root cause of this situation is the corrupt USA political system. At a bit less abstract level the TPP seeks to worsen the deadly diseases of the broken patent and copyright system (and also worsen the broken health care system). The TPP is an attempt by those that understand systems thinking to mold the system in secrecy to benefit those giving USA politicians lots of cash. We can only hope that other countries are not willing to do the bidding of the USA in this case (though the USA is willing to provide incentives and threats to allow it to deliver for those giving USA politicians cash).

Related: Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation - The People We Elect Recently Are Dramatically Falling Us - Cash for Votes subreddit (political corruption) - Why Copyright Extention is a Very Bad Idea

Trust People but Verify Processes Provide Desired Results

The idea that freedom is the only important thing is flawed. Some people want to swing from poor management systems that don't allow employees to provide help customers need to total freedom (thinking respect for people means not process controls). That isn't right.

We need to trust but verify and use processes that are successful (even if some employees think that "cramps their style"). Usually that feeling is just temporary until they learn to understand process thinking and what comes with it.

Reaction to: Quality vs. Innovation: How Much Structure Do You Need?

Related: Improving Processes Helps Innovation Efforts - Process Improvement and Innovation - Long Term Thinking with Respect for People