Category Archives: Management

Become a Good Manager: Starting with an Empty Glass

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Only an empty Glass can be filled with something new. If your glass already full there is no place to learn new things. Thus you need to be able to free yourself from the pre-conceptions and ideas that clutter your mind. Only then you will be able to learn something new. If you want to be a good manager or learn any new problem solving or process improvement methodologies you need to be able to completely submit yourself to that philosophy. With preconceived notions it is impossible to fully understand a new idea.

The Noise

You are exposed to too much of information through TV, Internet and other means. We have a constant pressure to retain so much information in our daily life. Email passwords, grocery lists, remembering to pay your bills are just few things that keep our find full. As our lives get busier, we are under constant fear of forgetting something. With all this going on our mind, there is no time to think, reflect, analyze. We only react to things as they happen. A life like this is unsatisfying. If you want to be a better manager first you need to learn how to manage your own life.

How do we clear our mind?

There are many ways to do it. I generally classify them as methods involving Mind, Body actions and a combination of both. Let us explore some the methods.

Writing: I am not talking about writing as creative expression. You want to write to free up our mental space so that our deeper thoughts come to the surface. This helps us understand ourselves. To use writing for clearing your mind, all you need is a pen and paper. We start writing whatever that comes to our mind, to do list, things that bother us, things that make us happy, places to visit, etc. You write till you are run out of ideas to write. Don’t worry about grammar, form, style of writing. You should be writing freely what comes to your mind. Make it a daily practice to write 2 to 3 pages. Which is approximately 600-900 words, don’t worry about counting them. Some days you will write more and other days you will write less. Only rule is to use only pen and paper. This ensures that you are not reformatting, deleting or adding things in between. We don’t want these distractions in our process.

Meditation: Though some may think it is a difficult process it is a much easier process than what you can imagine. If you have never practiced meditation before you may want to try some guided meditation from here and here. There are many other resources online which help you on this topic. The purpose of this process is to slow down the mind and remove all the noise that clutters your thoughts. The result is a focused mind.

Walk/Run: Running or just walking also helps to clear your mind. Gets your thoughts aligned. It may be the fresh air or physical activity that freshens up the mind. It is one the feel good activity that I like to do whenever I get the time.

Slow down: This is one thing that we the people in modern world think is a luxury of the past. We don’t want to miss this or that, without realizing that we miss most of it. We try to do lot more than what we need, always running out of time at work and at home. Slowing down and focusing on what you are doing at present helps you focus and makes you more effective. This way you don’t miss out on details or jump to conclusions. This is very important skill for problem solving.

Take a break:  Everyone deserves a break. Every once a while you need to break away from the routine. It may be vacation or just a coffee break. When your mind reaches its saturation point there is no point straining yourself beyond that point. It is best to take a break and let the subconscious mind do the work and may be you will have a Eureka Moment.

Do Something Fun: Do anything that allows you relax your mind, maybe something creative like drawing, painting or playing music or physical activity like dancing or going to gym. Anything that you enjoy will work to help you refresh your mind.

 

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Practicing Behavior Patterns are More Important than Tools

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Many companies fail to reach the success similar to that of Toyota as they randomly apply tools and techniques of lean. The right way as proposed in “Toyota Kata” is practicing the behavior patterns in our daily routine. This thought is in alignment with the previous post about how the business should manage itself. Practicing behavior patterns forces us to focus on the means people use to run the business.

Why learning and practicing behavior  pattern is more important than learning the tools?

It is all about cultivating right habits. When you expect to change culture by teaching and applying tools and techniques it is only superficial.It does not guarantee the change in the thinking model of the people involved. Thus a cultural shift is unlikely.

On the other hand when you learn and practice behavior patterns it cultivates habits. Thus changing people at a different level than just learning new tools. There is a shift in thinking and perception. This is a likely condition under which an organisation may undergo a cultural shift.

Now the big question is : What are these right behavior patterns that patterns that we need to learn and practice on daily basis to continuously improve, adapt and prosper?

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Future of Lean Thinking: The Making of Lean Manager

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“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”  – Confucius

The Lean Manager is the lynchpin.  Without the right person and the right philosophy, the process from transformation to continuous improvement culture is purely a waste of time and efforts. From the leader of the organization to the leader on the gemba, these are the people who determine the course of the people and the company towards the lean thinking culture.

Over the years the lean practitioners around the world have gathered knowledge on use of various tools. Wisdom has led us to believe that a systems approach rather than just focusing on tools is essential for a long term results. We cannot succeed by imitating others; a cultural change is a must! So what is next? The next shift in thinking would be to understand the change at personal level. That is to understand the mind of lean manager and how one transforms into a person of scientific thinking.

Why should we be interested in the making of a lean manager? The answer lies outside the normal realm of management and business. Business goals and management tools are just merely tools and will not be effective if the people using them not fully understand the art and science of problem solving. Yes it is partly art because, how a manager selects the right tool to solve the problem depends mostly on his experience and intuition. The chaos in the everyday operation of any business will easily make an average manager stray away from the real purpose. Daily firefighting, running after vanity metrics, useless reporting are enough distractions to convert a manager into a mindless zombie. Then a feeling of unfulfillment, depression sets in. One does not think before we act, “There is no time to do it right, but always time to do it all over again”. A manager whose fundamental thinking is not conditioned and mental character is not strong will easily succumb to these pressures. How do we train ourselves to be strong mentally and with the values and conduct that act as our anchor to survive the storm of our daily work life? Personal development using the methods and philosophies such as zen may have a lot to teach us.

There is a need for an unconventional guide for a manager who wants to be a “Lean manager”. This may not be a guide for everyone; and may only be suitable for people who think of Lean as a religion and who are not afraid of changing themselves in the quest for understanding how to change others for good. We should also consider dealing with things outside the office world on how to create a right lifestyle to be a perfect lean thinker.

The failure of many companies to apply lean has shown us that just imitating the methods is not a good path to take. Learning from experience is an accepted by many but it is hard to create environment where failures are accepted as part learning process. Most of the time this important process is side stepped as everything needs to be done yesterday; there is no time for failure. Thus a foresight about the potential problems is necessary. This means learning by reflection and practicing failures ahead of time. We need to learn about how to prepare our mind to reflect and how to practice lean in our daily life. This will help us build a strong foundation of principles and values that any lean manager should embrace.

There are certain traits, intrinsic characteristics, or cultural background that will either help or prevent the transformation of a manager to a Lean Manager. So now the question is:

Are Lean Managers born? Or Are they made?

 

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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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Stand-Up Workstation : After 2 Weeks

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There has been some progress with stand-up workstation experiment.  I have added few components that I manage on the wall next to the station. Above the worstation is the Mission and Key Performance Indicators for the Operations department. On the left side are three section  for Product Request, Issues, and Projects.  Each section has incoming items (lower level) which are waiting review and Active items (upper level). Right above each section is the Standard Operating procedure (under development). This helps in visually managing the activities I need to do(any paper waiting in the lower level is activity due).On the right side is the area allocated to track Metrics like Quality, Order Delivery, Cost, Productivity and Safety.

I am already feeling lot more productive at the end of the day than before. Standing up usually gets things done lot faster, maybe because you are more alert than in sitting position. At this point there are lot more things to be done, like how to visually manage leader standard work.  Other things I want to add is visual tool to deploy/ manage strategies.

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Stand-Up Workstation

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Finally I made my very own stand up workstation. We put it together using the top part of an old desk which had a slide-in keyboard, rest is made of scrap metal found in the plant.I am hoping this is just the beginning that will help in changing the way I manage my standard work. I  will add other components to rearrange my dashboards and other items to operate  from one place standing in front of the  workstation. The first day was little painful standing for more than 8 hours, but I am guessing this will pass and I will get used to it. Since I have the the desktop setup on this workstation it has limited mobility, but it is good enough for my purpose.  I also have my desk and chair right next to it.The next phase is to move them away. Will post the progress and my experiences with this new setup.

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Gemba Walk: Mangement by Walking Around (MBWA)

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What is a Gemba Walk?

Gemba walk , in simple words is a form of “Management by Walking Around” (MBWA).  This is a very powerful tool as it is based on the fundamental principles of lean known as the ” 3G’s of lean ” as listed below. Gemba walk provides a first-hand unpolluted information about your Processes, Products and People.

3 G’s of Lean

Gemba – “The actual place”. This a place of actual work where the value is created

Gembutsu – “The thing”. Products or things which we are interested to improve.

Genjitsu – “The facts”. The real facts that are happening at the place of interest

I like to call Gemba walk as Management by walking around because it allows you to do just that. A 15 minutes Gemba walk has proved to be more effective in resolving flow interrupters for delivery than having hour long status meetings far away in the comfort of the office with unreliable data. When you are out there on the Gemba looking at the actual process, products and people responsible for them, there is no doubt about anything ,  no one can fabricate false information, you can interact with the process owner to resolve problems more quickly. This also helps all the Line Managers to align their priorities to solve problems for more efficient flow of the products through the value stream.

Few things to keep in mind to make this a successful tool:

- Have a clear theme and agenda for the walk

- prepare a list of questions to ask

- Setup a display board for each workstation which help process owner to answer question you will be asking

-  Have the top-most management do Gemba walk along with you at least during the initial phase, that way everyone know that we are serious about improvement

- Be disciplined never miss the gemba walk

- Make sure resources are made available to resolve issues discovered during the walk

- make sure the account abilities are clear and everyone responsible completes their task

Gemba walk  will be a good management tool as long as you use it properly. It can be used to serve various purposes. I will share more about my experiences in later posts. Till then if you have any questions or you need to know  anything  in particular about its implementation and application…. just leave a comment below.

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Learning to see the change

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As a person who is leading a lean transformation project it is very likely you will sometimes be frustrated thinking nothing is working and people are not changing. Change is a process so subtle sometimes you need skill beyond normal to detect progress. Inability of detecting it and worse being frustrated is but only harmful for the progress of the change process.

The speed of change is dependent on many things like how much people are educated about lean tools, involvement of management, and above all the crisis is the biggest catalyst for change. A good leader will not panic in crisis but will effectively use it to develop and motivate his team to accelerate the change process.

It may not be always possible to accelerate the change process. This is when you need patience and some skills to keep everyone on track. It is very important to know how the change occurs. I did try to explain my understanding in this article “Understanding change” . I don’t want get too much into the psychology of the change , it will be beyond the scope of this post and also because I am not an authority on that subject. Here is an example. We were trying to take control on our shop floor process which were in total chaos. Nobody new cycle time for any operation. There was no standard work, no production plan and many more problems.  It took over a year to completely turn the ship around and it is still changing and improving. We knew what should be the end product but to get there it was not straight forward and many times people did loose faith ,but still had keep it going. At first making people just do things and keeping them aligned daily through gemba walks then slowly doing led to believing. It is a interesting process to see how people start taking responsibility after doing something which they initially did not believe in.

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How do we Learn?- The process and tools of Learning

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Actually a post “Learning to Learn” by Evan Durant inspired me to write this. This topic has always intrigued me and have read my share blogs posts, books to satisfy my curiosity. I would like to share my experiences and experiments on this process and learn what others have done. I will briefly explain my philosophy and tools to slay this dragon!

The Philosophy of Learning:

Learning is not possible unless there is creative tension. Imagine a place where everyone agrees, they will never learn new things and grow. For this to be possible you need the right people and right environment. Right people are the one who questions the status quo and are not afraid constructive criticism. This is a tough team to have they will always keep you on your toes. The environment or conditions that will lead to learning  are explained more in detail in my post “The 8 Fold Path”. This is just my opinion but I believe most learning system will be composed of one or more similar building blocks.
The Tools:

Task Standard work & Leader Standard Work: We need to be able capture knowledge at process level and then link it to peoples tasks. The combination of task and leader standard work helps to achieve this. We had started to use this tools out of necessity for standardizing our tasks but learned it can be a effective learning tool when a new person joins a team or even for cross training. Task Standard work ensures all the tasks required to sustain a process are understood and captured thus providing reference point for future improvements. Leader Standard work ensures these tasks are performed by responsible individuals.In case of new person or cross training leader standard work helps the individual to do things religiously on daily basis till becomes a habit that helps him/her to do the job. The right habits helps develop right culture. Thus these tools if used properly can used to help people learn the culture of the organization. They are also good catch-ball mechanisms between the trainer and trainee.

More reading: “Leader Standard Work” , “Task Standard Work”

Gemba Walk: This is yet another catch-ball mechanism and very effective to get whole people on the team to align their thoughts and understanding. We cannot transfer what is there in our mind to somebody else’s  in an instant. We have to reinforce the idea again and again and how it implies in different scenarios till the other person understands its application and corrects any misunderstanding under the observation of the trainer. Every time the learner makes mistake the trainer is there to correct his path and realign their understanding. Several iterations of this during the gemba walks helps  everyone to learn  and align their ideas.

A3 Problem Solving: This is by far the most effective tool in teaching problem solving. It forces the learner to go through the PDCA cycle helping him to learn the systematic problem solving using scientific method. Second, the  catch-ball mechanism by which I mean every time the learner proposes a solution the trainer can send it back asking for  necessary fixes, and this cycle can go on till the best solution is reached.

Internal Training : We used to have weekly 30 min training for all the managers where anyone propose a training topic and present it. Mostly it would be one point lessons and sometimes games to show how one piece flow is better than batch. It was a fun way to learn and also a good opportunity for new managers to learn the skills of teaching in a safe environment.

Whatever you decide is your philosophy of learning or your tools, always remember to standardize the learning process so that any ineffective processes or steps can be improved or eliminated. We cannot learn the learning process without knowing what it is.

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Aligning Business – Processes – People

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This is a scene at most of the businesses where the Business goals very rarely affect the day to day processes that run the organisation or any changes in the process realign the goals to new scenario.  People are usually left on their own to figure their way out of this situation. Here Business planing is considered as an annual activity and once done is set in stone or worse just completely forgotten during the rest of the year only to review again at the end of the year. You know you are one of them if you look back at last year and blame each other or somebody or something  for not reaching your targets.

For a business to achieve its goals and be successful it needs to agile and continuously in sync with changing environments within and outside the organisation.

To achieve this agility we need to have a system which aligns our People to Processes, which in turn are aligned to our Business goals on Day to Day basis. It works both ways as everything works in sync like gears where change in one gears rotation or speed will proportionally change the others.

Visually this looks very simple but practically implementing this is a challenging but I believe is not impossible. Especially if you already have tools to standardize processes (Task Standard Work) and People ( Leader Standard Work ).

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