Learning Lean - Collaboratively

From John Shook To rajkattan@vsnl.net Date Fri,27 Jan 2012 03:28:59

Dear Rajasekaran, I wish I knew more about learning. I know quite a lot, just not nearly enough. Like you, Ive been educated hopefully even learning throughout that process for many (too many?) years. Ive again hopefully continued to learn outside of formal education throughout my life, as have you, in work and personal life. Ive also read a library full of books on just about every dimension of learning you can imagine: child development, adult learning, socialization as learning, organizational learning, the neurological science of learning, and of course the various principles and techniques of learning as they apply specifically to lean practice. If youve read this far, you know by now that lean practice is in fact all about learning. At the individual level, at the organizational level. If many corners of the lean movement started out with an unbalanced focus on tools and techniques, most lean practitioners know by now that no lean effort will succeed on the operational side without success on the social side the dimension of people working and learning together. So, heres an observation. Recently I was part of a passionate discussion with a high-powered group of leaders regarding the requirements of successful lean leadership. The group listed a list of things that leaders need to do to lead a successful lean transformation. The only thing I added was the following. There is one characteristic that is common among every successful lean practitioner I have met: they love to learn. They are curious by nature, but more, they are willful learners. You could say that, as humans, we all learn all the time, right? Maybe, but here are two things to consider. First, that modifier of willful is important. You can usually learn more effectively if you are intent on learning from the beginning of each activity, rather than sit back to passively expect that learning will happen. Listen to your favorite athlete or musician describe how he or she attained their skill. Secondly, sometimes we become content to fall into the more complacent frame of mind of the knower. It feels comforting to think you know the answer in each situation. In fact, most traditional organizations encourage such a mindset. In such settings, leaders at all levels are expected toknow, to know the best way, the right way, to know the solution, no matter what comes up. While knowing things is important, such an attitude so often so pervasive can disregard the value of stopping to ask simply, What do we truly know about this situation, and what do we need to learn? In The Learners Path Practices for Recovering Knowers, author Brian Hinken explores the minds and behaviors of knowers and learners. In reality, we all switch from being learners in one instance to knowers in the next. But, the more we train ourselves to embrace the learner within us, the more we will learn. LEI faculty member and lean coach Jim Luckman makes that distinction among others a key component of our intense three-day Transformational Leadership workshop. If its a challenge to maintain a learners mind as an individual, its exponentially harder when we are working together as a group, with deadlines looming, problems rampant, and the demand for knowing the right answer omnipresent. Its a challenge to do this, and thats why lean systems (the ultimate social-technical system, where the operating processes are the people developing processes) respond to this challenge with specific tools and methodsmechanisms for lean learning. There are a handful of core lean practices whose purpose is to serve as mechanisms to enable the practice of PDCA and willful learning, notably: Standardized Work, Kata, Strategy Alignment (aka hoshin kanri) and the A3 process among others. Each is a PDCA based learning cycle the key to learning faster and deeper in dynamic real-world circumstances is to cycle willfully and cycle fast.

Consider the story of my longtime friend and colleague Gary Convis. In the excerpt (which you can find in our lean.org A3 dojo) from his new bookThe Toyota Way to Lean Leadership, co-authored with Jeff Liker, Gary shares the story of how he learned the power of the A3 process at NUMMIwhere he learned that his role was not to oversee and order his engineers around, but to learn how to coach them to become effective owners of their problems and countermeasures. In an interview we will post next week, Gary will expand on his use of the A3 as a collaborative process that enabled him to achieve learning and alignment among the far-flung members of the global organization of Dana Corporation. Still, I wish I knew more about learning. And thats why we made Collaborative Learning and its application to lean practice as the theme of this years LEI Lean Transformation Summit. We chose to focus on collaborative learning not because we think we know everything about it. Rather, we know we want to learn more about it and recognized there would be no better way to learn than to gather together with you to share the experiences of the Lean Community. We asked prominent lean practitioners with extensive experience in leading lean consortia, networks, and clubs to share their learning in the, well, collaborative learning environment that is the gemba of our annual Summit. Click here if this sounds interesting and youd like to join us March 7-8 (in person in Jacksonville Florida or through internet streaming, which makes it possible this year for the first time for you to join us no matter where in the world you may be).

John Shook Chairman and CEO Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc. jshook@lean.org

THE A3 PROCESS -- DISCOVERY AT TOYOTA AND WHAT IT CAN DO FOR YOU

Shook, John 10/30/2008 You may know that I just completed the book, Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process to Solve Problems, Gain Agreement, Manage, Mentor, and Lead. This corner is to some degree the result of the heap of leftover ideas sitting on my desk after finishing it. I wont try to summarize the book here (you can find a summary and excerpts at lean.org), but you may find the background of its creation interesting. LEI had wanted to publish a book about the A3 for several years before we finally created Managing to Learn. My dilemma during this time was that while I was honored to be asked and could see the value of the A3 as a process, I also saw a major problem with a book about it. The challenge isnt in teaching how to write an A3 but in how to use the A3 as a managerial process. If the A3 was presented as a narrow tool, the deeper and broader aspects of the overall process would be lost. I really didnt want to just introduce yet another narrow tool. It has long been my view that using tools for tools sake (where everything is a hammer looking for a nail) is one of the very biggest problems in LeanWorld. So, working with the LEI editorial team, we quickly explored the idea of telling the story of how an individual prepared and used an A3 proposal. But even well-executed, that alone wouldnt necessarily resolve my problem. I needed to tell the story from both sides, since it takes two (as least) to fully exercise the A3 process. Initially I suggested actually writing two books, with each one telling the same story (of the same improvement) from the two perspectives of a mentor and mentee. Now, LEI is open-minded, willing to experiment, and occasionally even adventurous, but that idea was deemed a little too radical, or maybe just stupid. After some discussion and even rapid prototyping (!) we landed on the equally radical but more practical (and smarter) idea of telling the story through two perspectives in running parallel columns. Tell me if you have, but Ive never seen a book structured quite like it. From the first draft, some readers expressed difficulties with this dual format. Readers have a choice in how to read the book -- read the left column first, then go back and read the right? Read them both more or less at the same time? It reminds me of real-life conversations at the gemba in which two people are talking to you at the same time: Listen to me first! No, listen to me! I became convinced that the two-column, side-by-side structure of the book was the most effective way to dynamically show the dual or multifaceted way of thinking embodied by the A3 process. It must generate learning for both the mentor and mentee. It must simultaneously address a problem while exposing new ones. My own experience many years ago revealed to me the many dynamics of using A3 thinking. I discovered the importance of the A3 process firsthand, as do all Toyota employees. In my case, my first managers, Isao Yoshino and Ken Kunieda, and co-workers desperately needed me to learn the thinking and gain the skills so I could begin to make myself useful! But, the process I went through was in no way special. When I joined Toyota in

Toyota City (where for a time I was the only American) in late 1983, every newly hired college graduate employee began learning his job by being coached through the A3 creation process. The new employee would arrive at his new desk to find waiting for him a problem, a mentor, and a process to learn for solving that problem. The entire process was structured around PDCA and captured in the A3. The problem awaiting the newcomer had been determined by his manager and scoped out by the mentor the manager assigned. The new employee would begin solving the problem by first understanding the situation. He would define the problem, analyze it, investigate its causes, brainstorm potential countermeasures, evaluate those solutions, and then propose -- i.e. sell his recommended countermeasure, which would often involve a simple trial or small experiment. The selling, however, is an inclusive process in which the owner continually improves the content and accuracy of the A3 report as a result of obtaining greater input, and as a result, agreement and support from others. As an example, my work team used the A3 process to solve a simple office problem. The story is common to anyone who has worked in an office and encountered the question, Wheres the damned file? The tools the team used were unremarkable. What was remarkable was the effort and discipline the team put into such a mundane problem. Our team did get some benefit from an improved ability to find the right information at the right time, the essential office problem. But, more importantly and fundamentally, our team was training itself. By learning to apply the problem solving tools in this situation, all the team members learned how to apply them in other situations and they deepened their own thinking skills which they can apply to every issue they encounter, every day. Practiced students of TQM would quickly recognize the example as a very typical QC Circle project report. What is significant is the way Toyota has systematized A3 thinking throughout the organization as a core discipline of management. Wheres the damned file? was a simple problem, but the value of the process extended far beyond its face value of enabling us to find files faster. Education and learning were embedded in the process of working on the A3 (the improvement project) itself. It exemplified learning through doing at its best. The more A3s I wrote, the better I became at the thought process. Internalizing the thinking is the objective, not technical mastery of the format. The more cycles of reflection and learning that can be experienced, the better it is for the individual and for the organization. The most fundamental use of the A3 is as a simple problem-solving tool. But the underlying principles and practices can be applied in any organizational settings. Given that the first use of the A3 as a tool is to standardize a methodology to understand and respond to problems, A3s encourage root cause analysis, reveal processes, and represent goals and action plans in a format that triggers conversation and learning. A good A3 has sound problemsolving -- science -- embedded inside, but it achieves much more, exemplifying this great quote by a great scientist: Science is built of facts the way a house is built of bricks, but an accumulation of facts is no more science than a pile of bricks is a house. - Henri Poincar In exactly the same way, a good A3 is more than a collection of data that solves a problem -- it tells a story that can coalesce an organization. See you next week. John Shook Senior Advisor, Lean Enterprise Institute