Managing by Means and Not by Results

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Toyota has been successful at what they do for several years. Many have tried to imitate them only to be limited by their understanding of the “know why”. One of the main philosophical difference between Toyota and many others trying to follow their methods is that Toyota truly manages by mean and not by results. I just started to read “Toyota Kata” by Mike Rother. It was the interesting conclusion of the foreword written by H. Thomas Johnson which inspired me to write this post.

Lean Philosophy is less discussed topic for the practitioners who merely want to get on the “me too” boat. The blame partly goes to our existing management system which is too focused on end results than on the means to get there.

What are the means and why are they important?

Adopting the continuous improvement of process is the means for financial success and long term growth of the company. But if you focus on the financial results only and not worry about the means your people use it will harm the long term growth and success of the company. The means come before the profits. This wisdom is captured in the verse of “Bagvath Gita”:

Karmanye Vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana,

Ma Karma Phala Hetur Bhurmatey Sangostva Akarmani

It simply means “Do your duty, without the being obsessed about the results.” Our duty here is continuous improvement the process that delivers value to the customer.

Here are some of examples where ends become important than the means for short term gain, but ultimately causing long term harm:

  • When you ask to ship all orders o same day. It could lead to bad practices like having excess inventory or working overtime
  •  When you want better utilization of labor without considering the demand, it will lead to practice of over production

We see similar examples in our day to day life yet we fail to understand the subtle difference it makes when you put the right means ahead of the profit. What are your thoughts? Are you truly focused on the means or just the end?

 

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Build Your Own Stand-Up Workstation: It is Free to Get Started

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This is for anyone who wants to try a standup desk for their office or home office

1. Free to get started

It is very easy to get started with Standup Work station. If you just want to test the idea without investing into any furniture, just stack few books or set a box on top of your existing desk . This setup will enable you to decide if this is will work for you. Standing up may be difficult for you initially, so don’t be afraid to sit every once in a while till you get used to it. It may take a week for you to get comfortable. The limited space on the desk makes it clutter free. you tend to keep only the items you need on the desk

2. I liked the set-up , now I want the real thing!

Now that you have tested your setup and you are comfortable standing you may consider building or buying a stand-up desk. Building your own desk is not possible for everyone so I have included some ready to use Stand up desks below. Click on the picture check them out and find the one that is suitable to your need.

Option 1 Option 2 Option 3

3.Accessories that you may need to build mobile stand-up station

This is for the ones who like to be out there on the gemba. If you want to take your desk anywhere on the shop floor all you need is the a stand-up desk with casters and a laptop with wi-fi(optional) connection. You may also consider buying a Power strip (shown below) if you will be out there for extended period of time.

I use a a desk-top computer with UPS which provide about 20 minutes of power when moving around. Since it did not come with a inbuilt Wi-Fi capability I have to use a USB Wifi Network Adapter. You may not need this if you don’t need to log into a network to access your files. It is better to avoid any distraction of surfing the web when you are on the shop-floor.
I hope this will get you started with your own Stand up Desk. Please feel free to share your experiences or pictures of your standup desks. I will keep posting my progress with this experiment on my blog and will try to incorporate suggestions provided by all of you.

 

 

You may be also  interested in:

1. Standup Workstation

2. Standup Workstation: After 2 Weeks

3. Stand Workstation: What is on the Wall?

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Learn From Other’s Mistakes But Don’t Forget to Make Your Own!

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We we try something new often people find out how others have done it in the past to avoid doing the same mistakes . Like in lean transformation we try to copy the path taken by the successful companies and apply tools and methods exactly the same way thinking we can save ourselves the pitfalls of the change process. We want to learn how people failed doing something and then avoid doing it ourselves thinking we are saving ourselves from the trouble. This may help us for short time but is not necessarily the best way.
Each organization, each process and people are different. We cannot expect the same results by applying what others have done. There is a need to experiment, allow failure and learn from it. People learn a whole lot from failure than from a success. Failure forces people to think, by thinking we learn by learning we improve.
By all means get out there and learn from others but don’t stop experimenting yourself. Learning from your own mistakes will make you and your team confident and successful at implementing Lean Transformation and will make you experts specifically for your processes. This knowledge cannot be build within the organization by just learning about what others are doing.

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Mission Statement: Part 2- Decoding the Mission!

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I got some good feedback on my post about Mission Statement from the Lean Community (Link to Discussion). After considering the inputs and some thinking I have slightly changed the statement to the following:

“Right the first time on time by optimizing all resources in safe environment via engaging people towards the goals of our Organization”

Writing a good mission statement is just the tip of the ice-berg. Best Mission Statement could be useless if we don’t have a mechanism to convert it in to a language that is easily understood by everyone in the organization. To achieve the Mission we should be able to know what the objectives that enable to reach our goal are. Consider the manufacturing operation, how does the above Mission Statement relate to key objectives of a manufacturing operation:

Key Performance Objectives
1. Quality: Right the first time
2. Delivery: On time
3. Productivity: Optimizing all Resources
4. Cost: Optimizing resources
5. Safety: In Safe environment
6. People: engaging people
7. Alignment: towards the goals of our Organization

Breaking the Mission into “key performance objectives” help you to understand how to affect various processes. The next step would be to figure out how to measure this performance and ensure we are on right track.

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Mission Statement: What is the mission of Manufacturing Operations?

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For sometime I have been trying to develop comprehensive mission statement which could be used for any manufacturing operations.

It all started with the most basic requirement  of any operation:

” Right the first on time”

This did not encompass other important aspects of business; People, Safety and business goals. So the statement was  modified the statement:

” Right the first time on time by engaging people towards business goals in safe environment”

What according to you is the mission of manufacturing operation?

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Learning : A Way to Retain Talent

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How often you have spent time and effort to hire talented people for your organization and lost them after you have invested significant amount of time training them. The fact is , however hard to believe, they leave because we lack the training….. the right kind of training. Most industrial training is about how to do the mundane tasks of a particular job. This does not improve the talent of the person nor does it create a spark of interest in a person who is inclined to be knowledge driven. For this type individuals who are creative problems solvers and strive to develop and improve themselves by taking up new challenges, learning something new is a big motivation and a stimulant for happiness. Continuous learning helps people to feel the sense of achievement which may be even harder to achieve by increase in salary.

A good organization hires the right people, a great organization trains and develops their people continually building stronger long term relationship with their employees. Training and learning is not only the means to retain the right talent but also attracts similar minded people to join the organization.

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Socratic Method

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so-called wise men thought themselves wise and yet were not, he himself knew he was not wise at all which, paradoxically, made him the wiser one since he was the only person aware of his own ignorance…. -about Socrates on Wikipedia

Paradoxes of Socrates have always intrigued me. Though I have not not read his work through  words of Plato I have come to appreciate the socratic method that we often use to find the root cause.

I always wondered how and why people behave and do the things they do….. one might think the answer is very complicated  and you need to very intelligent person to find it or there is no answer at all. But now it feels like the answer is so simple that we totally ignore it. The only reason we cannot explain everything is that we don’t know all the facts. Once the facts are placed in front of us the answer will be clear to us.If we use the  Socratic approach , start by being completely ignorant about the topic of concern, eliminate the influence of assumptions and opinions which may divert us from truth.

One must always ask the most basic question ….. ” why? ” till we are convinced that we have finally found the true answer which is often buried in the details.

Application of this philosophy are plenty, the “5 Why ” often used in Lean Methodology is an good example. It is the foundation of most detective work too. But the most important is  you can use it in your day-to-day life and understand why things are happening the way they are…. helping you to be aware rather than just exist!

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Distrust – The unknown waste!

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Having distrustful , vendors, customers and most important people within our organisation is one of the biggest waste that we don’t account for.

How is distrust wasteful? Imagine a person on your team whom you don’t trust to keep certain business secrets. Now you will always have to work extra to make sure that this person does not divulge secrets to your competitors.This unnecessary waste of time and effort would have been easily be used for more profitable purposes if there was no distrust.

Ideally an organisation  with minimal or no distrust will move faster on any change project. Thus I feel Integrity and trustworthiness are one of the important traits to look for in any team member.

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The Long Tail of Problem Solving

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As you may have noticed there are few unique types of problems which have very large impact (Financially or in some intangible way). As we get to the process level on the shop-floor we come across hundreds, if not thousands of low impact problems. If we plot all these problems we see something which look like a Long Tail distribution.Longtail

Though the solution of the individual problem in the “Fat Tail” may have a small impact, but together they contribute to the largest portion of the gain if solved.

How do we solve so many problems simultaneously without overloading our resources. This makes us realize the importance of empowering each and every person to solve their problem. What ever tools you use, like A3 , 5 Why, Ishikawa Diagram,  etc. to train should be aimed to decentralize the problem solution. When we have each and every person in the organisation trained in this manner it creates a synergistic effect allowing to solve several problems large and small simultaneously.

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The 8Fold Path

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Recently I was reading a book by Eknath Easwaran which mentioned about 8 fold path for right living and guide to spiritual enlightenment. More I read about it I felt as if that is how we learn and master the principles of Lean Manufacturing. Here are the steps of 8 fold path as described by Eknath Easwaran:

  1. Meditation: you become what you meditate on
  2. Japam: Silent repetition of word(s) to prevent idle mind from doing wrong things.
  3. Slowing Down: To get a big picture
  4. One-pointedness: giving complete attention to whatever you are doing
  5. Sense Restraint: ability to discern discriminatively.
  6. Putting others first: Person with little or no self will are more secure and can help others
  7. Reading Scriptures: through carefully selected Scriptures we can be inspired by the awareness of all ages
  8. Satsang: association with people who are or have already been on the same path
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