In the KaiZone Friday Favorites, I present my top ten favorite articles from the last week (give or take a few days) in the world of Lean – and beyond. With leading content from the world’s foremost improvement authors and future Lean leaders, I do the research so you don’t have to!
Is Home Depot’s Expedited Checkout Lean? by Ron Pereira. “Skeptics may see this as a bandaid to a broken, unbalanced, process. In other words, instead of attempting to fix the root cause of the problem (checkout capacity) they’re throwing people with scanners at it.”
Top 5 Ways to Gain the Support of Management by Matt Elson. “Our enemy is complacency, resistance to new ideas and “this is the way we’ve always done it. We have to fight that enemy every day, every hour and every minute.”
Behaving Your Way into a New Way of Thinking: Leadership Standard Work and Personal Change by Bill Kirkwood. “Even if a leader sees anew how current habits and behaviors are impeding positive change, the true change occurs by doing. The adage “behave your way into a new way of thinking” is essential and can be successful and less risky with a coach by the leader’s side.”
How to Change Your Beliefs and Stick to Your Goals for Good by James Clear. “The root of behavior change and building better habits is your identity. Each action you perform is driven by the fundamental belief that it is possible. So if you change your identity (the type of person that you believe that you are), then it’s easier to change your actions.”
Scatter – Our Nemesis by Pascal Dennis. “Big Company Disease has many causes. One of the most subtle is our inability to ‘wrap our arms around’ the PDCA cycle. Myriad improvement cycles begin – but they become fragmented: Group A develops the Plan, Group B deploys, Group C checks the Plan, and Group D adjusts it. I call this Scatter,”
The Power of Hope in Improvement by Karen Martin. “Part of what the transition phase between the current state and future state is about is giving people hope. We don’t talk about hope in business circles. But when people are beaten down and frustrated with the amount of chaos that they deal with day in and day out, hope is a great antidote to resistance [to change]. And hope is the way forward.”
The Road to Lean by Bruce Hamilton. “Regardless of the particular best practice we choose to implement, be it huddle boards, schedule boards, workplace organization, set-up reduction, mistake-proofing – you name it; if its intent is not to help employees, to remove their struggles and make it easier for them to continuously improve their processes, then it is worse than uninspiring. Small wonder this approach does not “sustain.”
Look Below the Water Line to Understand Lean by Hakan Forss. “The artifacts and behaviors we can easily observe at Lean companies are only the tip of the iceberg. Waste reduction and other Lean practices, principles and tools like A3, kanban, andon and heijunka, are all important parts of Lean but it is only the tip of the iceberg. You need to look below the waterline.”
In Toyota, Improvement Ideas Were Expected by Voluntary by Dave Meier. “ When I worked at Toyota it was “expected” that everyone contribute their ideas and efforts toward continuous improvement, BUT it was voluntary. That seems a bit paradoxical, but getting people to be “involved” comes in many ways . . . Improvement is not something done in addition to the work, it IS the work! That is the Toyota philosophy.”
Fighting “We’ve Always Done It This Way” in Workplaces & Baseball by Mark Graban. “When we ask what we’ve always done that way or why we’ve always done it that way, sometimes there is a good reason. If so, we should understand WHY we are doing something that way and ask if we really should continue it that way. . . Sometimes, we shouldn’t be doing it that way and we shouldn’t continue. Can we find a better way of doing something? Should we reinvent the process and method instead of just tweaking it?”
Have a good weekend, friends!