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!

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.

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.

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.

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