Archive for the 'lean' Category

Hi. I’m Alan Mossman, a consultant based in the UK. Hal has invited me to contribute occasional posts to RPM in the areas of design, safety and collaboration.

One of my profs at Uni, Stafford Beer, asserted "A system is what a system does". So why would anyone create a system that in Hal’s words “turns strangers into enemies”.
Will Lichtig addressed this issue in an article for the Fall 07 American Institute of Architects Practice Management Digest. In Projects as Patients, Will suggests a scoring system for project health — should we call it the Lichtig Score? Four of the categories - Collaborative Planning, Reliable Promising, Unaccounted-for Constraints, Safety - have clear criteria.

The questions for the equally important fifth category, Mood, are not so straight-forward to answer:

• To what extent is the team positive?
• To what extent is honesty and trust evident?
• To what extent is the team learning and improving?
• Is morale improving, steady or declining?
• To what extent are team members being open and honest with each other?
• Are there barriers between trades and professions and if so How high are the silo walls?
• How long or short are tempers?
• To what extent are team members collaborating?

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"Project Quality Management must address the management of the project and the product of the project"

(p.180, PMBoK, 3rd edition)

In an earlier blog entry, I presented the Nine Wastes of Mismanaged Projects, according to Lean Project Management gurus (Howell, Macomber, Koskela, Bodek). I said then that I saw a 10th waste adversely affecting project success: Not Managing Perceptions. Today, I will briefly explain why I believe that not managing perceptions is a major project waste, and why it has to be taken care of for our projects to be successful.

The sentence from the PMBoK quoted above is one of the most important messages on successful project management. It means that project quality, a strong indicator of project success, does not only depend on the physical characteristics of project deliverables, it also depends on HOW they were delivered. It means that a project is not only a destination, it is also a journey. It means that in matters of quality, BOTH the journey and the destination are important.

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Our inclination is to ease into new situations. We take baby steps thinking that it is the safe way to engage in something new. Two of my sons just went sky diving. There's no reasonable way to ease out of the plane…particularly when you are jumping tandem. There's no reasonable way to ease into cold water. How do I know? I've tried it. I suspect many of you have tried it too!

"…incremental change promotes a parochial outlook and attitude"

Lean practices are as shocking as cold water. There's no sense easing into lean. It only extends the pain. We know that lean thinking is superior to conventional wisdom. What most people don't know is how to engage in the new lean practices. Jump in! Read the rest of this entry ¶

As 2007 came to a close, lean design and construction got some well-deserved press. The manufacturing community shares their successes and learning about lean through Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) and their "Target Magazine". Most lean manufacturers operate in buildings that were neither designed or built lean. That can change. Karen Wilhelm, writing for Target, spent quite some time investigating the lean construction movement. She shares what she learned in a cover story, Collaboration Makes Construction Lean.

"The culture of heroes works against the smooth flow of work."

I won't spoil the article for you by summarizing it. Not only does Karen write well, she shares a vision of what we can be doing in the built environment. I will offer one teaser… Read the rest of this entry ¶

This is not a book review. That will come later. I'm only sharing the news that there is a new Shigeo Shingo book: kaizen and the Art of Creative Thinking. Norman Bodek gave me the chance to review an early version of the book. I'm quite impressed. I've wondered for quite some time if there is a systematic behind Toyota's success other than PDCA. We now all know the answer. Shingo developed an approach that helps everyone to be more creative. And that approach is readily learned.

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It's that time of year again. I'm attending the Lean Construction Congress in San Francisco. This is the 9th annual event. As usual, the focus is on companies who have adopted lean approaches for delivering AEC projects. The morning presentations have been great. Company presenters are doing a fine job speaking about the benefits they are getting and how the lean approaches and principles cause that to happen.

Becoming lean and being evermore lean is fundamentally about learning, not about lean.

It's a little early in the two days to be saying this, but what the heck… Herrero Contractors, not yet three years into their lean transformation, is the most advanced lean contractor in the US.¹ Herrero understands that becoming lean and being evermore lean is fundamentally about learning, not about lean. They seem to be learning everywhere and everyday.

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1. Full disclosure, they used to be our client. A year ago they hired away one of our staff members to be their Director of Learning…not Director of Lean. [ ⇑ back ]

What must we do to open our organizations to change? Whether it's pursuing lean or any other transformational change it's only when we break with history that we have a chance for change. One necessary way we do that by changing the stories we tell.

Few business leaders appreciate the power of stories to connect with their audiences.

Business Week just reported on leadership…the kind of leadership that alters forever who we are and where we are going…The Seven Secrets of Inspiring Leaders, by Carmine Gallo. He says it's not a single act, rather it is a set of actions taken over and over that has the chance of effecting permanent change.

These seven actions can make your change effort successful:

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Nearly 20 years ago Robert Reich made a big claim: Americans can't change who they are until they change the story of who they've been. His book, Tales of a New America detailed classical American stories: the rot at the top; the mob at the gate; the rise of the individual…

It's only in changing the story that we can be someone different.

I've come to believe it's our stories that anchor us — that keep us from achieving what we say we want. Norman calls it resistance. But that presupposes intentionality. In other words, resistance is cognitive. That doesn't make sense to me.

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Norman Bodek is concerned that companies are not taking up a lean way of working. This is in the face of overwhelming evidence that a lean approach is one of the best ways of working. What gets in the way? Norman attributes it to middle managers who resist change. He says the resistance is manifest in saying, "No," to employees' proposals of improvement. I don't buy it.

Norman is right when he says the people get in the way of change. It is not organizations that resist change. Only individuals can choose to not change. But why? Why in the face of overwhelming evidence that lean is a better approach would someone not embrace the change? Fear is the first answer. People see that something is at risk if they embrace something different. That makes sense, however when firms get into real trouble — the threat of bankruptcy — managers find a way to get behind a change to a lean approach. In the face of big stakes people come through.

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People can't seem to leave Ohno's Seven Wastes alone. Norman Bodek, godfather of lean, made the latest addition. He calls it "Saying No." Norman chose to share this in an article for Industry Week in The Ninth Waste — Saying, "No". Norman is in his best story-telling form.

Mystery solved: the godfather of lean gave us the eighth waste.

Norman claims that managers are generally resistant to change. That it is in their resisting change that they say, "No," to suggestions for improvement from employees. It may only take a few "No's" to shut down employees from making proposals for improvement. Read the article.

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Peter Drucker said, "What gets measured gets done." Accounting is the principal way we measure business success. But in spite of the advances adopting lean practices, accounting has remained the same. That is except for the enlightened few. For the last five years those enlightened few have been getting together at the Lean Accounting Summit to explore how they can bring lean-friendly accounting practices to their firms.

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Construction projects get a bad rep…a very bad rep. And the Boston Globe piles on with today's article The Industry that Time Forgot: Just Another Day at the Office for the Most Wasteful, Least Productive Industry in America

It's tough for me to comment on this article. I live in Boston. We've suffered major delays, overruns, inconveniences, and people lost their lives. It doesn't have to be this way. Companies have learned from the best operators in the world and have avoided these problems. In Massachusetts we have burdensome laws and practices. It's tough to do business with the state government. In my town no major project has finished on time or on budget. However, it can change. It must change. The industry knows what to do to change.

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Thanks go out to Joe Ely for spreading the word on the Quick-n-Easy-kaizen community. A few people have been sharing their QnEKs. The experience so far has been good. And we're working like crazy to make the experience better. Thanks Kim! There's no guide to using the site. My aim is that it will be quick-n-easy. We'll see.

Please stop by to see what we're doing. Share your latest small improvement; leave a comment on QnEKs others have share; and leave us a comment on your experience. And by all means, visit again in a few days. I've got big plans for the month of August. You won't want to miss out!

The QnEK Horse Has Left the Barn

Quick and Easy kaizen is said to be the direct inheritor of kaizen teian — a program of continuous improvement at the initiative of the workforce. kaizen teian functions as a suggestion system. The usual approach is to have workers propose their improvements to their direct supervisor. The Japan Human Relations Association (JHRA) took it one step further. In the spirit of respecting the well-trained worker JHRA created an approach where workers report the improvements they adopted without getting approval. They call this Quick and Easy kaizen. Bunji Tozawa and Norman Bodek introduced this approach in their book The Idea Generator: Quick and Easy kaizen (QnEK).

I've been introducing QnEK to clients. It hasn't been an easy introduction. The thought that people would just change what they want to change scares some managers. I understand that. In many companies there is skepticism that workers will make a change for the better. In the situation where people are thrown into jobs — to sink or swim — they might not make changes that are better. Also, in situations where there is no standard work, everyday change might destabilize an already unstable situation.

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There is such an urge to get our projects right. Not approximately right. Right, as "Do it right the first time." Projects are not like that, especially design projects. Norman Bodek has been speaking about two principal ways we learn: copying the successful actions of others and making mistakes. If making mistakes is part of learning, then we better be making many of them to produce successful projects. BW SmallBiz agrees: Fail Fast, Fail Cheap, June/July 2007, by Doug Hall.

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Another great day of work. We got through the Daily Scrum in 13 minutes (without standing). I asked for a weekly retrospective to examine what we are learning and what needs our attention. In short, team members assessed they were learning and accomplishing far more than they expected. Let's see if we can keep this going. There's a lot for us to accomplish in the coming vacation week.

Is Toyota paranoid? They are according to BW. Staying Paranoid at Toyota, BW July 2, 2007 claims Toyota has become paranoid. They point to the following quote by Katsuaki Watanabe, Toyota President:

"The scariest symptom of 'big-company disease' is that complacency will breed."

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We had our first Daily Scrum. It took 16 minutes. I minute too long. Our ScrumMaster asked each of us the 3 Scrum questions:

1. What have you done since yesterday's meeting?
2. What are you going to get done today?
3. What impediments (obstacles) do you need to be removed?

What do I know? I'm just a beginner. A happy beginner!

We got through the questions in under 10 minutes. We then asked follow-up questions to some of the team members' responses. One issue was left to be addressed by tomorrow's Scrum. Once the meeting was closed I called for a Spike¹ to address the issue with three people on the team. In 5 more minutes we resolved an assignment that in other settings might have taken a number of phone calls, emails, and interruptions. Spike over!

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1. The word spike refers to a focussed high level of engagement to get just one thing done. Everything else is on hold for that time. [ ⇑ back ]