Is Knowing Less the Secret to Lean Success?

Ralph Waldo Emerson was quoted as saying, “I hate quotes.”  Luck you.  As I’ve been told by countless college writing professors – not to mention readers of this blog – I’m no Emerson!  There’s nothing I like more than a good quote, which is why every month I am shamelessly stealing and expounding on the wisdom of others to bring you Quotes from @TheKaiZone.  

Deep down inside, I’d like to think of myself as a fairly well-adjusted person (although, those of you who really know me might beg to differ).  But I am definitely not without my share of . . . let’s just call them “quirks”.

For example, I suffer – gloriously, I might add – from a mild case of obsessive-compulsive disorder.  This is my personal hell.

How to Torture Someone with OCD

How bad is it, you ask?  

Let’s just say I cannot write without a pencil in my left hand (because the thought of crossing out a mistake in ink sends shivers down my spine) and one of these doohickeys in my right hand (you know, to keep my margins aligned, draw that perfectly round circle, and even to ensure that I cross my t’s with the requisite precision).

It’s all fun and games until you realize that I’m not joking.  I actually cross all of my T’s with a straight edge.  It really is that bad.

On slightly more serious note, I have also been blessed by a fairly high-level of anxiety which complements the OCD quite nicely.  Lucky me, these two personality quirks create a fairly repeatable pattern in my life:  at any given time, it is likely that there is something that is stressing me out, which I will obsess about until I am able to make it go away.  As a matter of fact, right now I am envisioning my subscribers jumping ship at the realization that they are taking their lean advice from a lunatic.  But, I digress . . .

So, what does this all have to do with this month’s Quote from @TheKaiZone?  Turn a few pages backwards on the calendar, and you will have found me smack dab in the middle of one of my vicious little stress cycles.  Ron Pereira from the Gemba Academy, of which I had been a loyal follower for years, had reached out to me and asked me to be a guest on his podcast.  I jumped at the chance before realizing I had absolutely zero credentials, outside of three whole months of blogging experience, on which to form the basis of an interesting interview.  I could just see the title on iTunes:  “Some Pretentious Kid You’ve Never Heard of Tries Not to Bore You to Tears Talking About How He 5S’d His Pantry”.  Or something like that.

Trying to alleviate the anxiety I was feeling, I started to catch up on a few past episodes of the Gemba Academy Podcast, thinking that I could perhaps draw from the inspiration of past guests.  The very first episode on my playlist featured an author named Matthew May.  (Side note:  If you have not yet read Mr. May’s book, The Laws of Subtraction, stop reading this post immediately, click on the link to the Lean Book Shop and get yourself a copy from the Self-Improvement section.  You can thank me later.)  Ron began the interview by asking Mr. May to share a quote that he found inspiring.

What followed had such a profound impact on me that the stress I was feeling about being a guest myself disappeared in an instant.  Because I knew that, no matter how much energy I would pour into my preparation, nothing that I would ever say could be as powerful or as insightful as the quote that flowed out of the speakers of my Toyota Camry that morning.

In the end, my own appearance on the Gemba Academy Podcast was one of my proudest moments (even if my OCD won’t allow me to actually listen to the interview).  However, of the entire experience, it was the quote shared by Mr. May that has had the greatest impact on me, shifting my own personal paradigms about how we learn and grow in world of lean and well-beyond.

So, for this month’s Quotes from @TheKaiZone, we travel back through history to ancient China via author Matthew May:

Knowledge vs. Wisdom

On the surface, knowledge and wisdom may sound like they are two words with very similar meanings, but that is not the case.  There are subtle, yet critically important differences between the two.

Knowledge is the accumulation of what we know.  It’s the hard facts and figures in life.  It’s external and explicit.  Adding new knowledge is relatively simple and straightforward – just grab a book, article, paper, manual, website, journal, etc . . . knowledge is literally everywhere.  And thanks to the age of information technology, it’s almost effortless to share our knowledge with others.

Wisdom, however, is the ability to put that knowledge to use, to separate that which matters from that which does not, and to deepen our understanding of how the world works in order to make better judgments and decisions.  It’s internal and tacit.  Gaining wisdom is an complex process by which we continually refine our understanding of the world through repeated cycles of experience and feedback.  We cannot directly transfer wisdom to others; we must invest time and energy  to develop wisdom in others.

In the world today, we have access to a limitless amount of information.  We have the amazing ability to find out anything that we may want to know, whenever we want it, and where ever we need it.  And the lean world is no exception.  The proverbial google search for the phrase “lean manufacturing” yields over 2.5 million results and there are more than three thousand books on the topic of “lean” on Amazon.com.   If knowledge on the topic is so plentiful, then why do the vast majority of organizations fail to achieve truly lean operations?

It’s Not a Lack of Knowledge That is Holding Us Back . . .

A famous saying states that knowledge is power.  If only we realized how true that statement really is!  For knowledge, like power, is equally crippling when in short supply or when provided in excess.

A lack of knowledge is a major roadblock to any endeavor.  Acting without knowing is like fumbling around in a dark room looking for a light switch.  We fail to understand whether the actions we take bring us any closer to our goals, or whether we are helping or hurting ourselves in the long-run.  It may seem counter-intuitive (as so many lean concepts undoubtedly are) but too much knowledge can be equally problematic, and no less prevalent.  Information overload.  Paralysis by analysis.  The curse of knowledge.  All are real phenomena that severely restrict our abilities to make timely, effective decisions or take meaningful action.  In other words, too much knowledge actually inhibits our ability to create wisdom.

Let’s illustrate the point by considering the impact of information overload on the process of managing performance.  Specifically, let’s consider the metrics that an organization uses to create knowledge of its performance.  A common mistake that many organizations make is to manage to too many independent and poorly aligned metrics.  The thinking goes that if some measures are good, more will be better.  These organizations are often overwhelmed by the sheer number of red flags that arise (which are important?  which are urgent?  which should we prioritize?) and the often conflicting signals in the data (are we having a good day or a bad day?).  In fact, due to the inability to discern a meaningful signal through the noise, this cornucopia of information is more often used to justify which actions NOT to take, than to make visible the critical few required actions.  Measures of excess, as I have dubbed the condition, generate a bounty of knowledge, but do so at the expense of clarity, simplicity and effectiveness.

 . . . It’s That We’re Not Very Wise

In most organizations undergoing a lean transformation, there is typically no shortage of data, of facts and figures . . . of knowledge.  The problem arises when there is a severe lack of wisdom to make sense out of this abundance of knowledge.  Without the fruits of experience to filter out what only distracts and misleads us, we risk becoming Pavlov’s dogs, unable to distinguish between the trivial signals and that which nourishes us and sustains us.  The result?  We starve – i.e., we fail to improve the organization – in spite of there being opportunities to eat all around us.

Although the effects of  information overload are certainly damaging, lean leaders can go a long way in distilling wisdom from a midst the fog of knowledge by focusing on a small set of actions and behaviors.

• Focus on what matters and remove the rest.  Wisdom is not a function of how much we know, but of how well we can discern what we need to know from what we don’t.  As consultants and self-appointed senseis become ever-more skilled at packaging “new” concepts and tools, repackaging and rebranding existing ideas, and pushing their own self-serving agendas, organizations can easily be crippled by an illusion of complexity.  Lean leaders, throw away the Japanese dictionary and focus on developing what matters most:  your people.  Develop your people to define and align to meaningful targets and standards in pursuit of a True North vision.  Develop your people to understand the importance of the gemba and of making the current condition visible.  Develop your people to close performance gaps by solving problems.  DEVELOP YOUR PEOPLE.  If have gained any wisdom on my own personal lean journey, it is this:  we can do “Lean” without developing our people and generate short-term gains, but we will never truly become lean without changing the hearts and minds of all those involved.

• Create the conditions to learn by doing.  First and foremost, wisdom is a product of experience, but not all experiences are equal teachers.  Leaders need to craft an environment suitable for learning by maintaining integrity to the core principles that are fundamental to any lean organization.   Go and see.  Show respect.  Do not blame.  And at all times and in all things, plan, do check (or study) and act (adjust).   All are central to any lean management system, all accelerate the creation of wisdom through learning and experience, but each must be carefully fostered and developed within an organization, starting with its leaders.

• Endure over the long-term.  It’s been said on this site a thousand times before, but it bears repeating:  becoming lean is a journey, it’s not a destination.  As with all journeys worth taking, the path is not without its share of perils and pitfalls.  Some stretches will be rocky.  There will be setbacks.  There may even be casualties along the way.  Stay the course.  When all things go exactly as we plan, are we any better for it?  Likely not, as success simply confirms what we already knew to be true.  It’s only when outcomes do not go as we expect that we ever learn a thing.  With failure  comes wisdom, and with wisdom comes everything that we need for a successful journey.

Do you have a lean or continuous improvement quote that has made an impact on your lean journey?  Use the comments section below and tell us about it!