The KaiZone

Improving the business of life

Lean(?) Soda Machine

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The KaiZone Community OutreachLean thinking is a journey of learning.  I believe that we learn best when we learn from each other.  The KaiZone Community Outreach is a monthly series designed to promote interesting, thoughtful and entertaining discussion on a wide variety of Lean-related topics.  By contributing to the discussion, you help us all to move forward on our personal Lean journeys, one comment at a time.  That’s The KaiZone Way.

This month’s Community Outreach topic comes to us from one of the most dynamic and passionate Lean thinkers you’ll find, Paul Akers via his blog at 2SecondLean.com.   Do check out Paul’s site, which contains a ton of great videos focused on what really matters in a Lean organization . . . developing the problem solving skills of the people that do and manage the work.  If you can spare the time, I highly recommend the video “Kaizen – FastCap Style” to demonstrate how small, rapid improvements can transform a process.

Recently, one of the videos posted on Paul’s blog set off quite a debate between a few of my colleagues and me.  The video was contributed by Phillip Cohen from Cohen Architectural Woodworking to provide an example of how their organizations has created a culture of problem solving.  Their motto is, “If you see something that bugs you, fix it!” and in the video below the problem that they are trying to fix is the factory soda machine.

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The Pareto Problem

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The Giving Tree

The world, according to Vilfredo Pareto:

 At the bottom of the wealth curve, men and women starve and children die young. In the broad middle of the curve all is turmoil and motion: people rising and falling, climbing by talent or luck and falling by alcoholism, tuberculosis and other kinds of unfitness. At the very top sit the elite of the elite, who control wealth and power for a time – until they are unseated through revolution or upheaval by a new aristocratic class. There is no progress in human history. Democracy is a fraud. Human nature is primitive, emotional, unyielding. The smarter, abler, stronger, and shrewder take the lion’s share. The weak starve, lest society become degenerate: One can compare the social body to the human body, which will promptly perish if prevented from eliminating toxins.

Mr. Pareto was many things: an engineer, a sociologist, a political scientist, an economist, a philosopher, a mathematician and an all-around mega-mind.  However, an optimist he was not.  His scathing observations on the unequal distribution of wealth and power throughout human history would fuel the emergence of the Fascist party, inspiring would-be dictator Benito Mussolini on his rise to power in Italy.

Pareto is perhaps best known in today’s world for his association with the 80-20 Rule.  Near the dawn of the 20th century, Pareto developed a mathematical formula based on the observation that, throughout human history, about 20% of the people tended to control 80% of the total wealth.  In the late 1940’s, business management consultant Dr. Joseph Juran discovered Pareto’s work and used it to evangelize a strategy for quality improvement based on his observation that 80% of defects  tend to come from only 20% the sources.  He would name his idea the Pareto Principle.

Today, Pareto Principle, has evolved from a simple quality improvement strategy to a popular and widely-adopted philosophy for the conduct of business and even for life. Pareto thinking dictates that by focusing our efforts on the critical few inputs (the 20%), we maximize the impact of our efforts by generating – or eliminating – the majority of the outputs (the other 80%).  Ironically, in stark contrast to its namesake, it’s an idea that has endured because of the optimism it creates, and not because of its effectiveness as a management philosophy.

In the world of continuous improvement, the Pareto Principle is pervasive, as is evidenced by the widespread use of its graphical representation, the Pareto Chart.  While it’s certainly appealing to hope for the existence of, in Juran’s words, the “critical few and the trivial many”, it is simply not an effective or desirable strategy for sustainable improvement.  Here are three ways in which Pareto thinking may be undermining your improvement efforts:

 Pareto Promotes Paralysis

There’s a little-known corollary to the Pareto Principle, which I have dubbed the Pareto Chart Principle based on my real world observations on how we tend to apply Pareto thinking.  Please refer to the figure below.

Pareto Chart Principle

The Pareto Chart Principle states that, when creating a Pareto Chart to assist in solving a problem, we spend:

  • 80% of our time making the graph
  • 10% of our time analyzing the results
  • 5% of our time denying that the bars could all be the same height
  • 3% of our time cursing the damn bars for all being the same height
  • 1.5% of our time making the case that the data were meaningless to begin with.

And after all of that, the remaining time is what we typically devote to taking action to improve the situation.  For your convenience, I have colored the bars in Figure 1: red indicates non-value added work and green indicates value-added work.  Please don’t strain yourself looking for the value-added work.

In my experience, it is not uncommon to see organizations take weeks or even months to collect and analyze the data required to construct a meaningful Pareto analysis.  Why do we invest so much time?  We do it to make sure that we are only working on the critical few inputs – those that are creating 80% of the problems.  In other words, we try to save time by wasting time.

But here’s the catch.  If the Pareto problem is indeed true, there’s an 80% chance that any problem we address will be caused by the critical few that we seek.  Why waste weeks or months performing an analysis that would only tell us what we would be highly likely – 80% to be exact – to discover by taking action at the onset of a problem?  And even if we would spend time working on lower priority problems, that time is still value-added and contributes to our learning and the development of our people.

Unless the analysis can be done on the gemba in real-time, ditch the Pareto chart. Save time and add value by maintaining a bias toward action.

Pareto Tells Us Only What Used to Be

As Mr. Shigeo Shingo wrote, when solving problems,

“We need to remember that neither the past, nor the future, is written in stone.” ~Shigeo Shingo

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All things, problems and processes included, change with time.  Problems do not exist in isolation, waiting to be picked off one-by-one.  Problems are connected, interdependent and layered; when we solve one problem we uncover new ones and the effects produce new and different outcomes.

Remember that a Pareto analysis provides only a snapshot in time.  For all intents and purposes, it presents a view of the world that no longer exists.  And the longer that it has been since the data were captured, the less accurate the image becomes.

Although some processes change faster than others, remember that the only truly accurate view of reality is now.  Focus on solving today’s problem, because there is no guarantee that yesterday’s problems will be tomorrow’s problems.

Pareto Thinking is Myopic

Perhaps the greatest flaw in Pareto thinking is its tendency to make us short-sighted.  All too often, in seeking the critical few, what we are actually looking for are the quick-wins and the low-hanging fruit.  We chase the biggest bang for our buck, but we fail to realize that the fruit will eventually be picked clean, and the quick wins won’t always be so quick.  This approach to improvement only works in the short-term.  To fight clichés with cliché, what happens when the going gets tough?  Unfortunately, the tough and the not-so-tough alike all get going.  And not in a good way.

What inevitably occurs is the downfall of short-term continuous improvement strategies, and the pattern is very predictable.

Short Term Improvement Cycle

Because we fail to develop the requisite skills in our people to address increasingly more complex problems, the initial results generated by quick wins are not sustainable.  And in the absence of a long-term management commitment, the pattern continues until the very program itself is questioned and ultimately follows suit.

We often fail to realize that Lean is about the people and the journey more than it is the results.  Along the way, it is the concept of True North that provides direction for our actions.  Long-term commitment to continuous improvement requires the endless the pursuit of our True North ideals.  On the path to True North, all problems must eventually be solved.  Do not waste time going around problems to figure out which one to solve first; take the long-term view of addressing each problem as it is encountered, learning from it, and moving on to the next.

Conclusion

Think twice the next time you have the urge to create a Pareto chart to address your problems.  Pareto thinking prevents us from taking action by telling us what we would have been likely to discover by taking action in the first place; it keeps us looking backwards, rather than looking to the future and staying ahead of our problems.  And it contributes to the short-term thinking that hinders our learning and the development of our people.

Perhaps the greatest condemnation of the Pareto Principle came from Dr. Juran himself.  Citing the tendency for organizations to ignore the other 80% of causes, Juran actually changed his terminology from “the vital few and the trivial many” to “the vital few and the useful many”.  Indeed the other 80% is useful, as it represents our level of commitment towards improvement. Only when we commit to addressing the whole of our problems over a long time horizon do we truly commit to continuous improvement.

P.S. My very LEANable Wife recently started a blog, asimplyenchantinglife.com where she will be linking to some of the posts that I write here at The KaiZone in order to put her own spin on how they can be applied within the home.  Read her take on the Pareto Problem here.  And do subscribe to her blog for more great Lean @ Home content.

 

Contest: Make Your Own Leanable Moment

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A3 Examples

Guess what, KaiZone Community?  You emailed, clicked and commented . . . and I took note!  You said, “make The KaiZone more interactive!”  Done.  You said, “Leanable Moments are a hit.  Give me more!”  You got it.  You said, “Your articles are too long!  It’s a blog, not a novel!”   My bad.  I’ll keep it short and sweet . . . at least for today.

The number one request that I’ve received since starting The KaiZone is to share the form – known in Lean organizations as an A3 report – which I use for my Leanable Moments series of posts.  If you are not familiar with the term, the A3 report is the primary vehicle used to teach and practice the problem solving methodology within a Lean organization.  For a much more detailed overview of the A3 management process, I highly recommend that you read the book, Managing to Learn by John Shook and Jim Womack.  Alternately, head over to YouTube and check out the terrific A3 overview videos from Karen Martin or from Gemba Academy.

Free, Downloadable A3 Report Templates

Now, you can make your own Leanable Moments, and start eliminating the waste from your lives, using the free problem solving A3 templates located on the new Free Downloads page.  To download a copy, simply click on the text links above the image to open the file in the .pdf format.  On the page, you will find two different A3 report templates.  The Problem Solving A3 Template has been designed for you to practice the Lean problem solving methodology on the problems that you encounter in your everyday life.  The second was inspired by my previous post, Leanable Moment #2:  Problem Solving Skills for Your Children.  You can use the Problem Solving with Kids A3 Template to practice and to develop much needed problem solving skills with your children or students.

Make Your Own Leanable Moment Contest

I started The KaiZone with the purpose of helping others to bring Lean thinking into their business and personal lives.  I know firsthand the power of problem solving and my primary motivation is to develop The KaiZone into a platform that helps you to continually eliminate the things that get in the way of your happiness and your success.  To encourage you to start your own Lean journey, I am announcing the official kickoff to the ‘Make Your Own Leanable Moment’ contest.  The rules are simple:

  1. Use one of The KaiZone problem solving A3 templates as a guide to solve a problem in your life.  Any problem, no matter how big or how small, will suffice!  The main objective is to practice the pattern of Lean thinking and to develop your skills as a problem solver.
  2. Send to me a scanned copy or clear picture of the completed A3 report.  You can email it to joel@thekaizone.com, or message it to me on LinkedIn or Twitter @TheKaiZone.  Include a brief overview of the problem you solved and the results you delivered in your message.
  3. Submissions will be accepted through May 31st, 2014.
  4.  In early June, I will post a gallery of the submissions on TheKaiZone.com at which time you, TheKaiZone Community, will vote for your favorite Leanable Moment.
  5. The winner will receive a free copy of the book, Managing to Learn by John Shook and Jim Womack.

Please share the link to the contest with anyone who may be interested in developing the skills needed to improve their business success or personal happiness.  Organizations that are beginning their Lean journey can also use it as an opportunity to have some fun while getting practice at problem solving.

A3 Hints and Tips

If you’ve never completed an A3 report, here are three tips for getting the most out of the problem solving process and for maximizing your learning potential:

  1. The Best A3s are Ugly!  Too often, I see A3 reports that are works of PowerPoint art.  While they may look professional, they often miss the mark on the true purpose of the A3.  The value of the A3 report is not created on paper, but in the mind of the person doing the problem solving.  Because of the experimental nature of Lean thinking, we are constantly adding new knowledge, eliminating failed hypotheses and updating our view of how the world works.  As a result, the A3 report should be used as a living document that is updated frequently to reflect the current knowledge of the situation.  Forget the PowerPoint.  Use pencil, erase frequently, update as new knowledge is gained and don’t worry if it doesn’t look pretty.  Real problem solving rarely is!
  2. The Best A3s are Visual!  Simply put, pictures convey more information than words, and they convey that information more effectively.  Moreover, as I previously wrote about, the act of drawing significantly enhances the extent to which we learn when solving problems.  Be creative and seek ways to draw what you are learning instead of writing lengthy descriptions.
  3. The Best A3s Tell a Story!  Stories, by their very nature, must be cohesive.  The outcome of one event must feed in directly to the next event.  In the end, we are able to connect the dots, tracing the development of the plot line from the start to its final resolution.  The same characteristics are desired when solving a problem.  Problem solving is a process of thought, and the logical connections we make between the phases of the problem should add up to a clear, and logical story in the end.  Furthermore, the very act of storytelling is extremely beneficial to what we learn from problem solving.  Telling a story activates many, deep regions within our brains – the same regions that would be active if we were actually experiencing the events of the story – which significantly enhances our learning potential.

If you have any questions about the contest, please feel free to post them in the comments section below, or use the Contact the KaiZone link at the top of the page.  Good luck!

 

Why You Should Jump to Solutions

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Fail. Shcool. Order is important in Lean thinking.

Is Order Important?

Dsteipe waht rasreech form Carbgmdie Uinretvisy may laed you to bleevie . . . we learn at a very young age that order is important.   First we crawl, then we walk, then we run.  Ready, Set . . . wait for it . . . Go!   I before e (except after c, but that’s neither here nor there).    In life, when we do things in the wrong order, the results can be downright disastrous – at least if you are an unsuspecting trombone player.

By definition (literally), processes are governed by the rules of order:

Definition of a Process

In the Lean world, improvement is a process, which means that the order of steps when solving a problem is critical, right?  Isn’t that why we follow Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA)?  Lean thinking requires that we first identify the problem or opportunity.  Next, we understand the root cause.  Only then do we even begin to think about solutions.  In fact, according to Mark Graban’s Lean Blog, bucking of the established order represents the two biggest errors we make when solving problems.

If all of this seems obvious to you, I’m going to warn you in advance.  The following statement contains controversial advice and may not be suitable for all Lean practitioners:  When solving problems, I deliberately choose not follow the established order.  In fact, I start by jumping right to solutions.  And you should, too!

What is the Value that Lean Thinking Adds?

As I’ve previously established, Lean thinking is a cognitively demanding effort that consumes a large amount of our available budget of energy.  Furthermore, it takes a significant investment of time to thoroughly break down a problem and to drill down to root cause, instead of jumping into action.  Despite the substantial upfront outlay of time and energy required, we willingly pay the cost because we believe it will be returned in the form of more effective and more efficient problem solving.

Each and every PDCA cycle presents the opportunity to learn on two different levels.  When we attempt to solve a problem, we can learn both about the problem itself, and also about the methods we use.  For the vast majority of problems, we dedicate most of our effort to the former and very little time to consider the latter.  In time and with plenty of practice, Lean thinking becomes second nature to us.  Eventually, we cease to ever question the process.  We take it at face value and it simply becomes what we do and how we think.  The value-add is a given.  But, is it truly?  How do you know?  What proof do you have?  If we never turn an inquisitive eye towards the process of Lean thinking, can we really be certain that the ends justify the means?

The best way I see to truly understand the value-add of the Lean problem solving process is to treat each problem as scientific evaluation of the methodology itself.  Consequently, by stating the proposed solutions prior to the application of Lean thinking, we create a control for the experiment that allows us to test whether or not the rigors of the PDCA cycle contribute significantly to the outcomes of our problem solving efforts.  Therefore, I start by jumping to solutions precisely to show the folly of jumping to solutions.  I start in the Act phase, to demonstrate that we should first Plan, Do and Check.  I break the established order to prove that problem solving is a process of thinking in which the order contributes greatly to the outcomes.

So, What Are the Outcomes?

For the last five years, I’ve started nearly every single project, workshop and kaizen event with the same question:

If we were to take action based only upon what we know right now, what would we do?

I note the response and never speak of it again until after the PDCA cycle has yielded the final action plan.  After the application of Lean thinking, we reflect on the actions that were proposed at the beginning of the initiative; in that moment, the effects of Lean thinking are placed in to sharp relief, becoming apparent to all.  In the last 5 years, I’ve asked teams and individuals to jump to solutions on over 50 occasions.  Lean thinking has resulted in significant changes to the originally proposed course of action in more than 75% of opportunities.

To put that into context, consider that the pre-PDCA actions were not contributed by individuals with little knowledge about the problem or process.  These were deliberately constructed teams of individuals, selected specifically because of their subject matter and process expertise.  These were people with years of collective experience, most of whom worked directly with the processes of interest on a daily basis.  Despite the massive breadth and depth of knowledge within the teams involved, Lean thinking drove significantly different outcomes in more than 75% of problems investigated! 

What Can We Learn from the Other 25%?

It should not come as a surprise that, for a finite number of instances, the actions required to counter a problem were well understood prior to the use of the PDCA methodology.  When taken together, these instances share a critical few commonalities which provide great insight into how they were able to be well-understood without the deliberate application of Lean thinking.

  • The problems were observable to the human eye.
  • There was little distance in time or space between the observation of the problem (symptom detection) and the cause of the problem.
  • The environment in which the problems occurred was repeatable and predictable.

Collectively, these three characteristics do not cast doubt on the value that Lean thinking provides, but rather the management of the organization.  Think of it this way: if a problem is readily observable, with a cause that provides timely feedback all within a highly repeatable and predictable environment, why hasn’t it already been solved?  In these cases, Lean thinking is still the correct answer, but to a very different and much more fundamental question for the organization.

Why Should You Jump to Solutions?

Five years of research has proven to me, unequivocally, that the process of Lean thinking adds value.  Many would view my study as a failure; five years of effort to prove something that was already widely accepted as fact seems like a less-than-successful outcome.  However, the question for me was not one of yes (the thinking adds value) vs. no (the thinking does not add value), but to what extent.

Changing the way people think is difficult and stressful work, but it is necessary for Lean thinking to truly transform an organization.  When I am facing resistance from the targets of a change, or when I publicly challenge the mandates of a well-respected leader, or when I’m perceived as a roadblock to a team that just wants to take action, I need to believe in the strength of my convictions beyond a shadow of a doubt.  That is why I jump to solutions.  Because I believe fully in the power and in the value of Lean thinking.  And you should, too.

 

Leanable Moment #2: Problem Solving Skills for Your Children

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Leanable Moment 2 Leanable Moments take you inside my home life to show you how I apply Lean thinking to real-world problems.  Each Leanable Moment is presented in A3 format – simply click the image to enlarge – and includes discussion focusing on the finer points of the problem solving process – the type of things they don’t necessarily teach you in Lean training!  Each discussion will conclude with a summary of key lessons learned, going beyond the boundaries of just one problem to take the waste out of life.

Name one skill that is more widely applicable to life in general than the ability to improve your situation through problem solving.  Despite the high degrees of relevance and value in business and personal life, the development of problem solving skills is not given a high degree of emphasis in most school curricula.  I do believe that school children learn skills and information through the act of problem solving.  However, learning how to solve specific problems is wholly different than learning the skill of problem solving.

The difference is context.  In a school setting, it is rare when the context for a problem is not provided by the teaching materials.  Typically, problems are pre-defined and the methods required to solve the problems are presented.  Students are evaluated based on their ability to apply the prescribed methods to the given situations.  However, this is not how reality usually functions.

Problem solving in the real world is mostly absent of these contextual elements.  They must be defined by the problem solver.  Mostly, our problems are not identified for us and our thinking is not constrained to any particular methods to drive to a solution. Therefore, sound problem solving requires the development of skills by which we learn to define and breakdown our own problems in highly diverse situations using a wide variety of possible methods.

Like any other skill, strong problem solving ability requires many, many hours of consistent practice and feedback.  Therefore, my wife – a former 5th grade teacher – and I believe that it is vital to begin developing these skills in our children at a young age.  We use moments from everyday life to reinforce the basic thought processes underlying Lean problem solving.  Rather than punishing our children for their mistakes or bad behavior, we try to instead see them as opportunities for learning.

One of the core tenets of Lean thinking is the emphasis placed on respect for people, which teaches us to improve the system, rather than blame the individual.  By incorporating these principles into our parenting, we not only improve everyday family life by continually refining our internal systems, but we also develop a critical life skill in our children.   Thus, it is by incorporating our children into the problem solving process that we show them the ultimate sign of respect.

We use the A3 format with the kids simply because they like to draw.  Knowing that they get to draw a picture of the problem that they were having and the solutions they come up with keeps them very engaged in the activity.  Although they cannot complete the entire A3 by themselves, we ask them the same set of 5 questions each and every time to help establish a pattern of thinking: What happened?  What should happen next time?  Why did it happen?  How do we keep it from happening again?  How will we know if it works?  We have discovered that, with a little consistency and some patience, using the A3 to solve problems with the children is a much more effective – not to mention fun – way to improve our family life than typical parental approaches.  Just ask Anna!

Anna and Her 1st A3

What follows is an example of how we apply Lean thinking as a family.  The attached A3 tells the story of how my two-year old daughter, Anna, and I solved the problem of spilling her water at the dinner table.  I have a hunch there are quite a few parents out there that may be able to relate to this one.

The Current Condition (What happened?)

Problems arise when we can identify a difference between how things are and how things ought to be.  Children often struggle to identify problems simply because they have not yet developed the understanding to truly comprehend how things should be.  Therefore, we have started to apply Lean thinking with the children only when it is truly obvious that something went wrong.  In this case, a large puddle of water on the floor at our favorite restaurant provided a crystal clear signal to Anna that there was a problem.   This was reinforced to me when Anna was able to tell me (and even draw) that she spilled her water when I asked her the first question, “what happened tonight at dinner?”

The Target Condition (What should happen next time?)

When asked the next question, “what should happen next time?” Anna understood that she should try to not spill her water at dinner.  The rewarding part for me as a parent was that she was not ashamed that she spilled the water.  Because we were having fun drawing the pictures and talking about it, she saw the activity as constructive and not as something that she needed to feel bad about.

Cause Analysis (Why did it happen?)

To be frank, I expected that we would struggle working through cause analysis because of the complexities of the thinking that are required.  But we actually didn’t.  In fact, Anna was quite good at working through the 5-whys analysis with me.  It didn’t dawn on me until later that she was likely able to follow the lines of thinking because the 5-whys mimics the way that children naturally think when they want to learn.  I’d guess that most parents of young children can relate to being asked why something happens.  And then why that happens.  And then why that happens.  Again and again, until the discussion inevitably ends with, “BECAUSE I SAID SO!”

With a bit of probing, Anna was able to tell me that the water fell on the floor because it was setting on the very edge of the table [because that happened to be where she set it after taking a drink] and because she hit it with her elbow.  She hit it with her elbow because she was turning around in her seat.  She was turning around because, in her own words, “the fire was pretty colors, daddy!”

Countermeasures (How do we keep it from happening again?)

The 5-whys discussion revealed two ways to attack the root causes of Anna’s spilled water:  create the good habit of placing her drink in a better location or eliminate the bad habit of turning around in her seat.  As we did in Leanable Moment #1, since we’re either relying on the creation of or the elimination of a habit, we’ll refer to the habit loop coined by Charles Duhigg in his book The Power of Habit.

The Habit Loop model states that habits are created when a cue triggers an action, which in turn brings about a reward or a consequence.  It follows that getting Anna to place her cup in a better location after drinking requires the creation of a cue and a reward for doing so, neither of which exist in the current state.

Conversely, as anyone who has tried to give up smoking or stick to a diet will attest, breaking an established pattern of behavior is much more difficult than creating a new one.  Unlearning a habit requires the substitution of a different action in response to the existing cue that produces the same reward.  In other words, when Anna is triggered by a pretty fireplace (or anything else new or interesting that may catch her eye), a new behavior must be inserted in place of turning around in her chair which still yields the desired result (she learns something new about her world).  Breaking a habit is difficult to begin with, but trying to eliminate one that is tied to a very important biological imperative – curiosity – may be next to impossible.  Therefore, we chose to focus on the slightly more feasible countermeasure of creating the habit of proper cup placement.

We started by observing Anna at dinner for several nights.  We saw that there was a clear cue, in this case the need to put the cup down, and so we focused our efforts on creating a reward or consequence around the act.  On the first attempt, we set a rule with Anna that would provide her with positive or negative feedback:  the cup must be placed above her plate to keep it out of the heavy elbow traffic area of the table.  However, the main reason that this did not work was because the feedback (the reward and/or consequence) was not consistent.  The enforcement of the rule required the watchful eye of my wife and I, and with two other children, it was difficult for us to be aware every time that Anna took a sip of water.

Our next attempt tried to provide even more clarity around drink placement in hopes that we could be more vigilant in monitoring the process.  We tried using a napkin as a makeshift target that would designate where the cup was to be placed after drinking.  We found that the behavior improved, but not to the point where a repeatable habit was created.  My wife and I were still inconsistent with providing feedback – creating a system in any walk of life that relies on constant human policing is futile.  On top of that, there simply was no real reward driving Anna’s behavior.  When we did take notice, the chorus of “good girl Annie!” was simply not enough motivation for her to seek it out every time she took a drink.

On our final attempt, we focused on creating more of an immediate reward for Anna to driver her behavior.  We stuck with the concept of a target, but switched it from a napkin to a coaster.  We then let Anna decorate the coaster, and on top, we placed a picture of a fish.  Why a fish?  On one hand, Anna likes fish.  On the other hand, Anna knows that fish live in the water and can’t be left outside of the water for too long.  See where this is going?  We told Anna that in order for her to take care of her fishy, she needed to return the water to the fish on the coaster when she was done with it.  With the fish coaster, Anna finally has a reason and a clear reward for following the proper behavior, and with some consistent practice, the habit loop eventually formed for the placement of her drink.

Standardize (How do we know if it worked?)

The fish coaster is now a mainstay in my wife’s purse and we bring it with us whenever we go out to eat.   As is represented in Anna’s drawing, she knew that the coaster was working if the water didn’t fall on the floor anymore.  So far, it hasn’t.   I won’t say that the problem is solved because some level of spillage is inevitable as long as toddlers are given cups full of liquid.  However, solving this specific problem is tantamount to developing within our children the skills that they will need to solve their own problems, whatever life may throw at them.

Lessons Learned

1.  Developing strong problem solving abilities within our children requires consistent practice and feedback outside of the school environment.

2.  The five questions below provide a simple and practical method for establishing a pattern of Lean thinking that can be followed by even young children:

  • What happened?
  • What should happen next time?
  • Why did it happen?
  • How do we keep it from happening again?
  • How do we know if it worked?Breaking existing habits is much more difficult than establishing new habits.

3.  To alter a current habit, we must identify an alternate and desirable action that can be performed in response to a trigger which yields the reward that is being sought.

Be part of the Lean at Home movement!  Use the comments section below to share your personal experiences, struggles and tips/tricks in teaching kids problem solving skills. Have you solved a problem in a unique or innovative way that you would like to contribute to Leanable Moments?  Simply click here or use the Contact the KaiZone link at the top of the page and tell me about it!