Outgoing Industry Week Editor-in-Chief, Patricia Panchak has been writing about manufacturing excellence and lean manufacturing for 10 years. In Building A Passion For Manufacturing Excellence, her last column as Editor-in-Chief, Patricia says,

"Increasingly I'm convinced that it's the passion for manufacturing excellence… that separates the excellent from the merely very successful."

She goes on to explain that the love for what you are doing is responsible for the on-going never-ending drive to make business better. She describes how that occurs,

"(I)n successful manufacturing companies passion is palpable: when an executive talks about capturing new markets and increasing market share; when an engineer describes a new technology and the benefits it will deliver to her customer; when empowered, fully-engaged machine operators extol the results of a recent kaizen event and cite the time and money they've saved the plant, the company and the customer."

Passion is generated

I first read about this subject over 20 years ago in A Passion for Excellence: The Leadership Difference, by Tom Peters and Nancy Austin. The book was hot for awhile mostly due to the blockbuster success of In Search of Excellence. But passion soon faded from any conversation about business. I think it's back. Just last week I was interviewing someone who said she wanted to reconnect to her passion when she takes a new position.

Patricia wonders in her essay about the elusive source of passion, then goes on to explain that she found her passion in conversations with manufacturing leaders. I suggest that ones passion is not to be found…from my experience passion is generated. Get excited about what you are doing. Show that excitement to others. Moods are contagious. The people on your team will start expressing their own passion. And as Tom Peters claims a passion for excellence is the leadership difference.

Each summer (in the northern hemisphere) the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC) gets together to share what they have been learning and researching. This 14th annual event will be held in Santiago, Chile, July 25 - 27. I'll be attending and blogging throughout the event.

I'm quite impressed reading the abstracts of the papers. The group is taking a big step forward in their efforts to change how projects are delivered. Have a look for yourself at the IGLC-14 Abstracts.

This year the group is having its first keynote speaker. Chilean Senator Fernando Flores will be addressing the group on Wednesday morning. While I don't know what he is speaking about, I can tell you his work on the language action perspective has shaped a good deal of the work on the underlying theory of project management. Greg Howell and I are presenting a paper titled, What Should Project Management Be Based On? We prepared the paper in response to two prominent IGLC members' conclusions that project management should either be based on theories of economics or theories of production. As you might guess, we don't think project management should be based on either! (Check back here to get the paper.) Dr. Fernando Flores' work significantly influenced our perspective.

In addition, I will be chairing (is that really a verb?) the session "Prefabrication, Assembly and Open Building". I look forward to it. I haven't done this before. It is sort of a moderator's role. What I like most is I get to ask the first and last questions! I'll let you know how it goes.

You've probably heard that Lean Thinking has made its way to the hospital environment. There's a documentary on it, Good News: How Hospitals Heal Themselves. I haven't seen it. It has aired on PBS stations as early as April this year. It just appeared on July 18th in Syracuse on WCNY. It will appear next on July 31st in Los Angeles on KVCR and on August 3rd in Memphis on WKNO. No other schedule dates are on the calendar. If you want to see it give your local PBS station a call.

The documentary reports on SSM Health System operating across the midwest and a Pittsburgh initiative involving 40 hospitals. They looked to the Toyota Production System for inspiration and guidance to improve the deadly situation in hospitals today. The people at Management Wisdom are promoting the program. Here's what they say,

"No outside funds were required (to make improvements). Not incidentally, these hospitals' leaders and staffs have done what the American automobile makers were not able to sustain as they tried such systems methods in the l980s. The automakers abandoned these ideas for short-term profits, and currently are suffering huge, possibly fatal, losses while Japanese car manufacturers prosper."

I made calls to WGBH Boston and NHPTV Durham, NH to request they show the documentary. How about doing your part. Let's get this aired in major markets.

For the last ten years Jim Womack, co-author of three best-selling books on lean ¹, has been advising people to start their lean initiatives by going after waste (muda). Only after a concerted effort at that has he said to pursue reductions in variation (mura) and overburdening (muri). I never quite understood why he was so adamant. I just learned that he's changed his mind. In his latest email LEI newsletter Jim gives the following advice:

"Take a careful look at your mura and your muri as you start to tackle your muda. Ask why there should be any more variation in your activities than called for by customer behavior. Then ask how the remaining, real variation in customer demand can be smoothed internally to stabilize your operations. Finally ask how overburdens on your equipment and people — from whatever cause — can be steadily eliminated."

At Lean Project Consulting, we've given that advice for years. First, make sure the project has the appropriate resources for the challenges expected. Next, attack variability of promised task completion using the Last Planner System® ². When you do those two things the project will be stable. Then it is time to attack waste using Project kaizen.

Jim finished his essay with a little warning and encouragement:

"This will be hard work and will require courage because it will often require you to rethink longstanding sales, management, and accounting practices that create the mura and muri. However, if you can eliminate mura and muri at the outset to create a stable environment for your sales, operations, and supply management teams, you will discover that muda can be removed much faster. And once removed it will stay removed."

I can agree with Jim on the hard work, particularly on projects. Overburdening is just the way it is. Way too often projects start without the full complement of staff. The right people might be stuck finishing up a late project. Or, the project started late for whatever reasons requiring people to be assembled in a making do fashion. Starting projects well makes all the difference to finishing projects well.

Let's all thank Jim Womack. Lean projects require an all our attack on muri, mura, and muda — in that order.

1. The Machine that Changed the World, Lean Thinking, and Lean Solutions [ ⇑ back ]
2. Registered trademark of the Lean Construction Institute, www.leanconstruction.org. [ ⇑ back ]

I just received the latest e-blast from PM Boulevard. They offer short essays on project management practices. The article Communicating Effectively for a Successful Project, by Paula Pierce, Robbins-Gioia, LLC is a good example of their work. It is concise and easy to read and reference. Of course, the title caught my attention. But I was disappointed. Paula's commentary falls short of the expectation set by her article title. Her focus is on the style of communication ignoring the function of communication.

The basic function of communication on projects is the coordination of action. The basic conversation we have on projects is about who is committing to do what by when. Paula says, "Keep (communication) simple." She adds, "Use metaphors and analogy." She goes on to say, "Repeat key messages." All this can help, but only if the basic conversations occur.

The most basic of project conversations is the commitment conversation. It is the conversation where project performers commit to completing something specific. Read the rest of this entry ¶

There is a community of lean construction leaders in Northern California who get together each month at a dinner meeting to help each other with their lean construction initiatives. People from DPR, Turner Construction, Sutter Health, Herrero Construction, and Southland Industries are regular attendees. The group often invites speakers. This coming session will feature Chauncey Bell. He'll be talking with them about breakdowns.

In our work with clients we've come to rely on breakdowns to forward our clients' interests. We also show teams how they can create project circumstances so breakdowns don't result in missing the project promise.

I've written extensively on breakdowns starting with Designing Breakdown-Tolerant Environments [1]. Before I go further, here is a working definition of a breakdown:

An interruption while in the midst of fulfilling ones commitment that puts the completion of the commitment in jeopardy.

I won't repeat what you can read in the series. But I do want to tell you about one change in my perspective in the last three years. If you want a breakthrough in performance, then look to create a breakdown. When I wrote about breakdown-tolerance environments I was speaking about robustness to inevitable uncertainties that can interrupt. But I never intended to avoid all breakdowns. A well-placed breakdown might be just what is needed to get people to shift their common sense.

Unfortunately, I won't be present for Chauncey's talk. However, three people from Lean Project Consulting will be there. I'll get a report from them and post next week. Until then, I'll leave you with this thought from Chauncey,

"You can leave success to good intentions and chance, or you can design the way you make your changes. The choice is yours."

My company does a lot of training to introduce lean project delivery approaches to client teams. We use a coaching approach rather than a front-of-the-room teaching approach. David Maister's, author of numerous books, latest article caught my attention, Why (Most) Training Is Useless. He makes the case that the way people attempt training is useless. He encourages people to think about training the way we think about athletic training. A trainer works with you as you workout. Attention is given to performing something new and performing better.

David is provocative.

"Becoming good at dealing with people (inside or outside the organization) is not accomplished by taking a college course in psychology, sociology, anthropology, or any other '-ology' where people sit around and intellectualize about "human resources" or "market segmentation" but never have to actually deal with a real, live human being."

And, he is quite practical. David offers these questions to guide thinking on training:

• What behaviors by top management need to change to convince people that the new behaviors are really required, not just encouraged? If the behavior is going to be optional, then so should the training be.
• What measurements need to change?
• What has to happen before the training sessions occur in order to bring about the change?
• What has to be in place the very day they finish?

David goes on,

"The best training is usually done by the firm’s own practitioners…Outsiders should be used only to help develop programs and "train-the-trainers.""

David has strong opinions. There's value in that. If you are considering any serious training, then at least consider his opinions.

And if you like David Maister's view, then you might also like David's manifesto published at ChangeThis Strategy and the Fat Smoker.