1. Learn from an experienced instructor. Leading kaizen events remains a skill practiced by few, and the truly experienced and skilled instructors number only in the hundreds worldwide. It's a pleasure to be part of a well-planned, well-facilitated rapid improvement event. In addition to lean principles and practical examples of how to do problem solving, kaizen event instructors can offer valuable lessons about leadership during a kaizen week.

2. Kaizen events are always different. To say no two kaizen events are the same is cliché. The team members and team dynamics, the target area and the problems in the area, the laughs and the awkward moments are unique to each kaizen event.

3. Receive attention within a limited group size. Every person on a kaizen team is there for a reason: to think and lend a hand in problem solving. The typical kaizen event team size of 5 - 8 people per theme or area makes it possible for everyone to contribute and feel productively engaged.

4. Gain help in implementing your ideas. Many people come to a kaizen event with no idea of what to expect. Some come to a kaizen event with firm ideas on the problem and the solution. Others are somewhere in between. This is all part of the plan. Those new to the area may have a lot to learn before they can offer suggestions, or they may ask an innocent question which leads to a breakthrough. People who understand the problem thoroughly may finally get the attention and help in trying their ideas.

5. Put lean concepts into real life application. The kaizen event is designed as a focused rapid improvement activity to enable the testing and application of a lean concept or lean system within one week. There is a preparation period as a run up to the kaizen event, but to see a lean theory work in real life application from concept to launch within 5 days is a glorious thing. It's like an Amish barn raising in some ways, with power tools and less food.

6. Bond with co-workers. The kaizen event is a great team building activity. The shared purpose, goofy team names, challenges overcome through cooperation and persistence all help create a new sense of connection with team members and co-workers.

7. Tell the kids (or spouse) what you did at work today. How often are we able to go home and talk to our family or friends about some truly remarkable things we did at work? Even if doing remarkable things is daily work, such as fighting fires or saving lives, kaizen events offer something different. Whatever work you do, observing the process to identify waste and redesign it, with all of the daily ups and downs this adds new material to liven up the dining table discussion.

8. Rest well on Friday night. The kaizen event can be a long week or long days. The time flies and the rest earned at the end of the week is well deserved. May you not have to enjoy it this rest in the seat of an economy class flight.

A common but misguided question between lean professionals is "How many kaizen events..?" have you led, participated in, or sponsored. As with any craft there is a mastery that comes with practice and repetition. However the question that needs to be asked is "Why do you love kaizen events?" This question presupposes that one does not hate kaizen events, which some do. This is not a defense of kaizen events, which are neither good nor bad. It is what we make them. Feeding the wolf of hate doesn't help us lead kaizen events more effectively.

Early in my career as a lean consultant the client gave my project team "free rein" to direct a business transformation, with three disclaimers: don't fire any customers, don't discontinue any products, and don't move any walls. The more years I spend in consulting the more I want to break these rules. Too often "lean" does not start by rationalizing customers or products. Lean operations is still the main thrust of most lean transformations, although enlightened leaders increasingly see the need to expand lean to all areas of an enterprise.

Of the three, the third requirement of "don't move any walls" would seem to be the easiest one within which to find compromise. Make a good case for moving walls and like any other investment or improvement idea, it should happen, right? How much emotional investment can a leader have in a wall? How many stakeholders need to be managed to take down a wall? How many questions need to be asked (Is it load bearing? What are the building codes? Who wants to go see what's on the other side?) Yet for some reason moving walls, especially where walls are most prevalent (the office) can be a tough sell.

Reasons for this include the fear of a new way of working, ruining a perfectly pleasant office environment to which everyone has grown accustomed, and the concern that problems will be exposed to an organization unprepared to tackle them. But this is standard change management stuff that should be addressed during a lean transformation anyway. But there is another and more basic reason that the wall and the 20 lb sledgehammer seldom meet during lean transformations: the lack of a clear business case.

When physical walls are the barrier between current condition and target condition within a lean manufacturing transformation the case is fairly clear. The walls lose. On the other hand when we are talking about removing walls within offices, whether for the transactional and support functions of a manufacturing business or a service industry operation, the case is often less clear. We need to find at least a few ways that the open office or "obeya" concept increases profit in a direct way.

1. Reduced space. At a minimum organizations who remove walls recover one meter of space on either side from the center of the wall. Multiply this times the linear meters of the wall to determine the savings. Realistically the removal of walls consolidates a lot of small bits of dead space within offices, makes storage or meeting rooms redundant, and generally turns up free space. While space may be a so-called soft savings for many lean manufacturing implementations, many times office space is leased, can be sub-leased more easily than manufacturing space, or can be sold to reduce fixed and variable costs and increase profit.

2. Fewer meetings. When walls come down, the need for meetings is reduced. More time can be spent in small but timely bursts of communication. More progress is made on issues within an obeya than within the traditional meeting room due to the information displayed there and the fact that it is a working area for a cross-functional team; they want the meeting over and you out of their space so they can get back to work. Multiply the man-minutes of meetings reduced times the cost and this is another concrete way that removing walls increases profit.

3. Reduced gold plating. We over-design product, processes and even our physical work space, adding costs that customers will not pay for. This happens either because customer requirements are poorly defined, poorly communicated across functional barriers, or because decision are made behind walls. The obeya puts the best information on the wall for all to see. It puts the people from different functions in the room for regular face to face communication, problem solving and discussions about the need for gold plating. This improves profit.

4. Clearing the e-mail jungle. Finding a way to recover lost productivity due to the cost of managing via e-mail will make some clever innovator very wealthy. Until then we can all look up and call to our colleague in our obeya or even walk a few paces to have a clarifying conversation. If this requires immediate documentation and communication to others, perhaps Reply to All is justified. Otherwise we can save it for the daily team reviews in the obeya, save everyone some time, and save some money in the process.

5. Making resource bottlenecks visible. There is nothing like an open room to show who is busy, who is not and to enable cooperation in getting the day's work done. When people cooperate and move to relieve bottlenecks, this reduces cost by avoiding extra hiring, overtime, penalties due to project delays and so forth.

The obeya is far more than simply a big open room. It must be deliberately designed as a communication center for the status of daily work as well as the progress of projects involving cross-functional teams, customers and suppliers. This is especially important today as more teams work virtually and across language and culture barriers. Enabling people to ask questions about the way of working, such as "Can we really do this profitably?" "Why do we allow customers to make these disruptive changes?" "Do we have a standard for this?" "Which task is top priority?" and "Does anyone need any help with anything?"

Key lean concepts to build into your obeya design include making problems visible, leader standard work to check the visuals and project status, total engagement in problem solving, asking why 5 times, letting the customer (internal and external) pull, a focus on keeping the work flowing, and going to see for yourself as much as possible.

When designing and improving a lean work flow there is a magic number: one. We aim for one piece flow, lot sizes of one or some form of "one request at a time" processing, as opposed to batch-and-queue processing and multi-tasking. Likewise there is a magic number in the design of lean work spaces as it relates to walls: four. That is the ideal number of walls to have within an organization's effective working space. Nap rooms, kitchens, libraries, fitness centers, these are all productivity enhancers that merit their own four walls within a workplace.

I never liked the expression that "people are your greatest asset". People should never be looked upon as an asset. An asset is defined as property owned and controlled by the firm. People cannot be controlled, only influenced, and are certainly not owned. Therefore, people should be looked upon as members. Members are stakeholders in an organization. This recognition is one step towards respect for people, versus looking at them as objects.

The notion that Toyota puts people on the asset column of the balance sheet is a piece of the Toyota mythos that has entered the consciousness of lean thinkers. I don't know the exact source of this idea. Likely it was an interpretation of a comment or a fragment of a speech made by one of Toyota's Japanese leaders in reference to how they value their people. It would be interesting to see the original quote. The term "zaisan" is often translated as asset, even though it means also "wealth" or "riches" that belong to a person, family or company. Scott may argue that people are not riches that "belong" to a company, but we could say people belong as a member belongs to a team.

In English we use the term "asset" rather loosely to mean strengths, skills or capabilities that confer some advantage and not always in the strict financial asset definition that Scott describes above. However, he raises a good point that speaking of people in terms of assets can risk dehumanizing people. This raises a few questions:

1) Does your organization view or describe people as their greatest asset or contributing factor to generating value?

2) If your organization does not view people as their greatest asset, would there be more or less harm in your company if the leadership began believing in and referring to people as their greatest asset?

3) Is it possible to view and refer to people as assets and still respect them as individuals without dehumanizing them or thinking of them as controllable resources?

And a bonus question, if the answer to 1 was "no" then what exactly does your organization believe is your greatest asset?

I have just moved from a role where the takt was 55 seconds into a new role where the customer requirement is one part every day. Does anyone have experience running to this kind of timescale?

This is a fairly common challenge. For example the Boeing 737 line ran at a rate of between 19 and 22 units per month when I visited a few years ago. That is basically a one day takt. They had tried a moving line but found the line stops to be too disruptive and went to a pulse line. I am sure it evolved many times since that point towards a truly lean operation. Machine tool manufacturers, semiconductor equipment manufacturers, vehicle maintenance operations and various other business that have 22 units of customer demand per month run at this timescale.

When we say "one part every day" timescale, we first need to clarify whether that means a 24 hour takt, a two-shift 16 hour takt, an 8 hour takt for a one-shift operation or something else. For the sake of simplicity let's take a one-shift, 8-hour operation with 1 unit of customer demand per shift and set the "one day" takt at 8 hours.

If the total work content of the unit is less than 8 hours then the design of the lean operation is a fairly straightforward "start the day, finish the day" flow of work. If the time to complete one unit is more than 8 hours, the flow line or workstation be they paced or non-moving lines, simply need to be visibly divided into the first 8 hour (takt) section of work, the second 8 hours of work and so forth until completion. However many such sections there are, that is the lead time for that process. These work pieces represent something called standard in-process stock. Define the repeatable work sequence within these takt sections and we have standardized work for a one day takt operation.

My experience with lean for products that have a demand of one unit per day has mostly been with large pieces of capital equipment containing hundreds of parts and sub assemblies. Most of the technical aspects of lean work involved laying out the workstation properly, designing the parts presentation and material logistics to the line, using the yamazumi to balance the work on the main line as well as the off-line sub assemblies, and problem solving rapidly. The essential human aspects of lean operation design are no different regardless of takt length.

If the product is a small, simple item that can be built in a few hours it is best just to have one person finish it at a work station, or incorporate the demand for this one unit into a mixed model line. But there are other types of situations, products and demand profiles within a one-day takt operation no doubt.

Who would like to share their experiences with lean operations in a "one per day" demand setting?

What is the future of lean? Here are a few of my past favorites answers to this question:

Toyota circa 1985. This was my standard around the year 2005. In 1985 the TPS was fairly robust, rapidly maturing and supplier development efforts were afoot. Toyota was being stretched but responding vigorously to the rise in the Japanese yen, expansion of sales into the US market and a changeover from Taiichi Ohno's generation of leaders to the next. The early golden years? Perhaps. It's interesting that analogous challenges are facing Toyota again today in 2010.

Quality. Some six sigma black belt types jump on this answer in delight, "I knew it! Lean is not about quality!" but in fact my point is that lean started with a quality focus brought first to Japanese companies by Dr. Deming, then was built on a solid foundation of TQC at Toyota, embedded as a continuous improvement culture through QC Circles, with the often neglected jidoka pillar being half of what makes lean work: quality built into every process. What the Japanese call the "QC methodology" we now so lovingly call A3 thinking. The future is the past. Back to basics. But I think LEI has already made this point sufficiently well, no need to linger on this one.

Lean hiring is answer given to a few audiences that seemed to not get the message about the respect for people half of lean. One has to be careful in attaching anything "lean" when it comes to the employment process because there is the unfortunate stigma of job elimination associated with lean. Lean hiring is what Jeffrey Liker and David Meier begin to talk about in Toyota Talent. Lean hiring has little to do with streamlining the recruiting and induction process, though this should of course be done. Lean hiring has to do with having the right kind of lean culture to begin with, having leaders at the highest levels who have risen up through this culture (as opposed to being flown into the board room from other companies), the firm commitment to growing the right kind of people to fit the culture and long-term vision of the company, and the recognition that this requires careful selection and hiring of people. While the know-how for this is in the present, for most companies achieving lean hiring is decades out.

What's lean today? If we can't even agree on this...

Lean everywhere is probably the safest answer to "What's next for lean?" We know have lean dentistry, lean healthcare, lean government, lean accounting, lean banking, lean manufacturing, lean logistics, lean distribution, lean startups, lean supplier development, lean six sigma (ironically not slimmer than six sigma itself, but this is another topic), lean bakeries, lean railroads, lean software design, lean IT, lean product development, lean sales, lean consumption, lean marketing, lean purchasing, lean airlines, lean librarians, lean lawyers and the list goes on. Antarctica and Greenland may be the only major land masses left on earth where there are no active and ongoing lean implementations.

The death of lean. As management fads in the West, suggestion systems are dead. QC circles are dead. TQM is dead. The wrongly named Just in Time movement is dead. Six sigma lives on but in faded glory. Lean's days, as are all days, numbered. The flip (but not flippant) side of this is that QC circles, TQC(M) and all other half-efforts and past management fads are not dead but merely parts of lean that companies have not yet recognized as integral. The term "lean" deserves to die once it has had its day and has spawned a better, more holistic and timely management model (fad).

Lean ethics. The irony is that lean ethics would not be "lean" and trim version of corporate ethics at all but rather a set of practices and principles far more robust and constraining of current business. In fact lean not wrapped up in a thick layer of ethics is like a nerve cell without its myelin sheath; the message soon gets lost. This is one that I believe in, not a flippant answer at all.

I may be wrong and "What's next for lean?" may indeed be a very important question. I can't deny that in the mind of the person asking, it must be important enough to ask. I do appreciate the curiosity to ask this and must respect that individual. If I do find a real answer to this question I won't hesitate to share it.

What's Lean America about?

Lean America is all about helping government organizations throughout America learn and implement lean thinking; by empowering their workers to continuously improve, eliminate waste, and to add value for all Americans.

It's clear Paul will continue his fight to bring Lean to the U.S. government:

Lean America helps other public organizations learn the secret to unlock the creative genius of their employees and improve the way governments operate.

How will Lean America do this?

In order to implement lean, you must build a culture of continuous improvement. Lean America's model is to place a lean teacher in every government organization. That teacher will work with a group of 10-30 people in a single department for 30 consecutive days. The lean teacher will conduct meetings that will last between 15-30 minutes every morning with the entire department.

What's the goal of this?

The goal is to turn every team member into a world class problem solver who seeks and destroys waste everyday.

The strategy of LeanAmerica.org is to start a snowball effect:

after one year, the original team will send its own lean teachers to other department and the snowball is going; creating world class lean thinkers and problem solvers throughout our government.

Paul continues to support his AM radio talk show The American Innovator, promoting lean and innovation in business and government. Call in on Saturday and ask him how you can help LeanAmerica.org bring lean to public sector organization near you.

What are the productivity advantages, specifically in terms of operator efficiency, with respect to a moving, paced conveyor line and a non-moving, non-paced line?

We're looking at three scenarios:

1) Non paced, non-moving line: workstations (stalls) balanced per takt time, however they are non-paced

2) Paced non-moving line: workstations (stalls) balanced per takt time, with "something" pacing their work (i.e. clocks, audible tones, etc.)

3) Moving assembly line: assembly stations on moving conveyor line balanced per takt time and conveyor moves at a pace equal to (or slightly faster than) takt time

As long as the work content on the lines are balanced equally well to takt time the productivity differences between paced, moving lines and stationary lines may not be so different. The logistics of materials traveling to and from the line, the ability of the organization to rapidly detect and address problems, and the cost of operating and maintaining a conveyor steadily are the more important longer-term success factors than operator efficiency.

The question is basically, "Should the line move or not?" and the answer is that it should. The so-called "takt image" or sense of the pace of work is much clearer for people when the line is moving. Physical flow is the most visible and undeniable evidence of progress. When the product has not made it to the appointed pitch mark at the appointed time, we know we have a problem. This is visual management at its simplest and most direct form, and one of the main pros of a moving line.

Some may argue, "I already know we have a problem" due to flags, lamps, or LCD screens even without a moving line. However the fact that a moving line has stopped CAUSES a problem since it affects all processes upstream and downstream. We could look at this as either a pro or a con, depending on whether we are prepared to respond and fix the problem quickly. Disconnected workstations may stop and not cause problems upstream or downstream. A linked flow line forces management to put in an escalation system and a response team to address problems quickly. Non-moving lines bury problems easily and don't force the issue of an escalation system.

Although lines, whether stationary or conveyor-paced, should be designed around people and how the work flows, we need to start by asking how the work needs to flow and only then select the appropriate technology for conveyance. There are various factors to consider such as safety, flexibility, size, energy use, cost, maintenance, down time, connectivity with other equipment etc. One of the cons of a moving line is that they can be a hassle to set up and manage. These considerations require that we broaden the discussion beyond issue of moving versus stationary and review the entire management system around the value stream (entire process). In the words of the architect Eliel Saarinen:

Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.

When this is not done there is a risk that the design of one section of the business is sub-optimized and hides waste, or worse, large investments turn wasteful processes into monuments that you are forced to live with for years. After all, the main purpose of a conveyor is... conveyance, which is one of the seven types of waste. The trap of automating waste is one of the major cons of conveyors especially when this adds cost rather than reduces cost. Intelligent, simple automation or methods of conveyance that improve the process are always welcome.

As with many things lean, there is the ideal and there are the practical steps in that direction. This discussion becomes more than theoretical when it is time to decide on capital investment. It's important to understand the so-called "true north" so that all improvements are made in that direction and not against it. As long as tatk-flow-pull and jidoka (stop and fix, escalation system etc) are in place, it is not so important whether the line moves continuously, moves by pulse (remains stopped and advances every takt), or move the people / jigs / materials while keeping the work pieces in-line but stationary - sometimes used for massive products like mining trucks.

If we say that option 3 above is near ideal, but compromise and go with options 1 or 2, it should be based on understanding and agreement of why 3 is the ideal. As opportunities present themselves for future investment, the direction should be towards true north - moving flow, balanced to takt, immediate exposure of problems, stable and reliable 4M elements, and human systems to support this such as andon response escalation, team leaders / group leaders with smaller span of control, visual controls, cross training, and persistent continuous improvement.

1. Impermanence
2. Dissatisfaction
3. Non-self

Becoming deeply aware of these "Three Dharma Seals" (三法印) is said to bring about wisdom and an end to the cycle of rebirth and suffering.

I read an article by an ex-Toyota manager who was responsible for starting up the Tahara factory in Toyota, Japan. He wrote that "at the foundational philosophy of the true Toyota Productions System" there are 4 items:

1. Respect for people
2. Impermanence (諸行無常)
3. Mutual existence and prosperity
4. Genchi genbutsu

Items 1, 3 and 4 should be familiar to readers but what is meant by #2? This particular Buddhist expression means that "All worldly things are transitory." The author explained that companies are living organisms that weaken if not exercised and that die if they do not change. To accept impermanence is to embrace change. He wrote, "The purpose of today is also to prepare for tomorrow."

Where do we see evidence of this philosophy of impermanence within the Toyota Production System?

Kaizen. Many small changes are applied repeatedly to a process. There is never a perfect condition or a solution, only steps toward it. Dissatisfaction with the current condition is essential.

Success. Celebrate briefly and then do hansei (reflection) on what was done right, what was just luck and what could be done better next time. A bit of non-self (humility) and an awareness of impermanence are essential to gaining perspective on success.

Standards. All standards are temporary. Every kaizen should result in an updated standard. Documents such as standardized work sheets should be updated often.

Development of people. The best knowledge, skills and experience possessed by our people at this moment is transitory. It is not enough to get us through tomorrow. Like an organism, the learning organization must keep renewing itself or die.

The Toyota Production System. People who attempt to codify Lean or the Toyota Production System fail to grasp the impermanent nature of it. While the foundational philosophical principles of TPS may not change.. they yet may.

Heraclitus, ancient Greek and patron philosopher of this blog, is credited with saying panta rei or "Everything flows and changes". Ironically, impermanence is a very old idea that has changed little over many millennia. Perhaps it is difficult for us to think of impermanence when we are selfish or satisfied. Fortunately these conditions too are temporary.

American football coaching legend Vince Lombardi said:

Build for your team a sense of oneness, of dependence on another and of strength derived from unity.

United we stand. Divided we fall. Or so we are told. If we're all too united the only reason we don't fall may be because we are squeezed together like passengers on a Shanghai subway in rush hour who have now way to move but go with the flow (or ruthlessly elbow towards the door as it were). So why not unite after dividing into smaller groups? The thinking and behavior of large groups of people is not always humanity's best. Small groups of dedicated individuals can accomplish wonders (including leading mobs of people astray). Why is it that small teams seem to be more effective than large ones? This is not a scientific observation, just one based on personal experience. There must be some success secrets to small teams.

1. Goals. A large group can have one large goal in common. But the larger the teams become, the more likely the members of these teams are to have individually differing goals. Most people within a society would agree that a healthy financial sector is necessary to have a strong economy, but not agree on much beyond that in terms what's a fair salary for bankers, when banks should fail and when they should be rescued, or the degree of preventative regulation is needed. But we have no trouble with any of this when making loans within friends and family.

2. Roles. Within a team there are only a finite number of roles. In a lage team everyone can certainly contribute something, but try assigning important, unique roles to team members and you will run out fairly quickly. Leader, time keeper, focus keeper, fun keeper, note taker, runner, doubter; team members who come away without a specific role (a responsibility) disengage fairly quickly, eroding team effectiveness. Smaller teams make it easier for everyone to be engaged and valued as an individual.

3. Rules. Some say that the fewer rules that exist, the better. There is a perception that rules equal bureaucracy. This is particularly true of creative people, or people who feel that paperwork or procedures slow them down. These people may miss the irony as they heroically and efficiently stomp out the fires caused by the lack or rules. A smaller team may be able to function well with a small handful of rules, finding a balance between constraint and freedom, while a larger group may require reams of rules to curb fringe bad behaviors, the owners of which could be better handled through the self-regulation within a small team, or failing that by simply being ostracized.

4. Sport. Teams of larger than a dozen may simply be no fun. If team sports are any indication of how humans prefer to compete, achieve, entertain and be entertained, the small team makes for better sport. The range for the top 10 sports is between five and fifteen players per team. Whether it be one of the reasons above, the difficulty of finding enough athletes within a community to form 20-man teams, the camaraderie of the small squad or the dangers of being crushed by a 30-person celebratory pile-on after a soccer goal, we have instinctively kept sport teams small. Those who enjoy the snake boat races of Kerala may beg to differ...

5. Visibility. I once heard a story that supposedly happened at a massive organization whose name starts with a B and makes things that fly (there's more than one!). The story was about a middle manager who never did anything but walk around with a folder in hand from meeting to meeting looking busy. He kept this up for years before being found out, taking a salary without doing any real work. I wouldn't doubt that this happens more than we would all like to admit in very large organizations (don't get me started about the government!). The sheer visibility of performance or non-performance within a small team makes it possible for a coach to address and correct it much more quickly.

6. Leaders. Perhaps contrary to the common concern by management that an organization lacks depth of front line leadership, the opposite is true. What if our organizations were in fact filled with 3 - 5 times the number of natural leaders as we believed? How happy and effective do you think these underutilized leaders would be when placed within large teams led by an overstretched leader? These dormant leaders would certainly not be making the best use of their strengths and skills. My experience in leading business transformations suggests that our organizations are filled with leaders waiting to be activated. We believe we don't have leaders (or don't invest in finding and developing them) so the team sizes necessarily increase, creating a self-perpetuating death spiral of teams that are too large managed by leaders who are overstretched and under-supported. Small teams are more effective because they create more teams, allowing more of the natural leaders among us to stand up and lead.

7. The number seven. Perhaps smaller teams are more effective because people can't remember more than 7 things at a time. Do groups much larger than 7 begin to tax our ability to remember who people are, what they are doing on the team and why they matter?

What is your experience with team size and its affect on successful teamwork?

Valid or Reliable by Jamie Flinchbaugh

Jamie forces us to think about how we design effective measurements. This starts an investigation of the implications for culture, managing the tradeoffs and decision making in the board room across several articles. Does it matter and do we measure it properly? These are important questions.

3 Observations of Healthcare vs. Construction by Mike Lombard

Lombi gives us his fresh view on the differences between construction businesses and healthcare organizations, two months after moving to a healthcare lean leader position. Culture is all about people and how they look at the world. I'm looking forward to more observations from Lombi on the culture in healthcare as he continues to explore and support process improvement.

Trusting the Front Line Improvement Team by Erika Fox

Erika gives us an update on the lean journey at Group Health. She tells us why front line improvement is like fishing in a bucket and why it might be better to leave the fish in the bucket if you're not prepared to clean it and cook it up before it starts to smell.

Cenek Report Litmus Test for Commitment by Mark Rosenthal

Mark makes the connection between Robert Cenek's leadership commitment checklist, the importance of intellectual curiosity in a leader and what it really takes to change culture.

How to Design Poor Service - Expect 100% Utilization of People or Resources by Mark Graban

Mark gives us a primer on how to show customers you hate them by making sure you optimize one performance metric at the expense of others. It's a fine object lesson in reverse. It sounds like American Airlines could benefit from a bit from some valid metrics...

The Power of Ideas by Bill Waddell

Bill tells us how much fun it can be to travel 600 km to deliver important teachings to a completely uncaring audience. How is it that such a lonely road can be so well-traveled, Bill? He manages to snatch victory from defeat's proverbial jaws by reminding us of the power of a learning culture.

10 Tips for Re-energizing Your Day, Every Day by Matthew May

This article is full of everyday wisdom on keeping our energy level high. These practices and habits are so easy to pick up yet so easy to drop during our busiest days. Thanks Matt for bringing these back to the front of our minds. Have you taken a few deep breaths today?

This challenge was posed to me at a recent speaking event during the panel discussion. The question was, "How do we motivate the the grass roots to get involved in Lean?" This led to a lively discussion with answers offered from around the room. Clearly it is a hot topic here in China as in many places around the world. It is safe to say that nobody has yet cracked the code completely, and the answers I offered were not the sort quickly copied on Monday morning.

Daniel Pink writes and speaks about autonomy, mastery and purpose being chiefly responsible for motivation, particularly among professional workers. Borrowing from Maslow's hierarchy of needs we can say that people whose basic needs are fulfilled don't simply want more of those basic needs (safety, income) but instead want self-fulfillment. The argument that intrinsic motivation trumps extrinsic motivation is not at all a new one. But if we are talking about "grass roots" and the workplace as an ecosystem we need to consider various environmental factors that result in increased intrinsic motivation.

Building on the nature metaphor, we can say that grass roots motivation requires the right environmental factors, namely soil, sun and clouds.

Soil. Roots grow downwards because they are geotropic, moving in response to gravity. The soil is the medium which allows grass to stay in place and take root, offering the chance for the blades to grow upwards. The immediate physical and organizational environment in which people work is probably the most important factory in the successful motivation and engagement of people. If the workplace is unsafe, lacking fair and followed rules, or missing a functioning team structure this is like planting garden grass seeds in the shifting sands: they will not grow. It is a system issue. Safety is at the base of the hierarchy of needs pyramid. If raising problems or suggestions for improving them results in blame or punishment, motivation will suffer. If the workplace itself is not stable and safe people will be too worried to think creatively.

The team structure is similar to having fertile soil that promotes growth but also that a gardener is present to actively weed and care for the grass. A lean high performance team requires a span of control small enough for the team leader to function as a checker, trainer and coach, enabling the growth of each individual.

Clouds. The hydrotropic nature of plants causes them to move and grow towards or away from water. The clouds bring rain and also block the sun. Too much cloud presence is a bad thing, but the absence of clouds is also fatal for grasses. In this sense the clouds are much like middle managers. Their role is to provide cover from the hot sun at times and nurturing rain at other times. They should be nearly always visible. Managers should make sure the system is working well and that people are working effectively within it, just as clouds play a role in the flow of water from earth to sea to heaven and back. Middle management is often overlooked during the change management or implementation stages of a business transformation, and the important role of middle management in spurring grass roots motivation should not be underestimated.

Sun. Plants are phototropic, the shoots and leaves following the sunlight in their direction of growth. The sun is our source of free energy. Nearly all life as we know it depends on the sun. The leadership by example, strategic direction and encouragement of senior management can bring about some of the most powerful intrinsic motivation. It is certainly more powerful and effective long-term than leaders who blow like the icy north wind, chasing the clouds away and turning even the rain to snow.

When the sun is a distant rumor for much of the year as it is in Seattle, people either find ways to cope through other distractions and lesser stimulants, or they move away. The same can be said for organizations within which the senior leaders do not regularly shine their life-giving light upon the people.

Having built safety nets along its employee dormitories after a series of jumping suicides at its Shenzhen production plant, Taiwanese electronics manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., which uses the trade name Foxconn, is now installing the same sort of nets at some of its inland factories, state media reported Tuesday.

It's hard to know where to begin... maybe this was Foxconn's idea of "problem containment". They did raise wages from $120 or so to more than double that amount so perhaps root causes of these suicides are being actively investigated, but I'm skeptical. If things are so bad that people would rather hurl themselves off of tall buildings than work in a Foxconn factory (or even just go find a factory job down the street) it seems like Foxconn should put the nets on the doors of their factories to catch people from going in.

The 42,000 employees in the Shenzhen plant assemble nearly 70% of the iPhones and iPads for Apple. There have been 10 factory workers who jumped to their deaths in the first 5 months of 2010 at the Shenzhen plant. Think about this the next time someone quips, "There's an app for that". Use your i-Pad or Phone to e-mail Steve Jobs and ask what he's doing about Foxconn.

GE is partnering with the Environmental Defense Fund to offer these energy treasure hunts free of charge.

Over the next several months, GE and EDF will conduct these treasure hunts with the cities of Orlando and Atlanta, The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, as well as the pharmaceutical giant Merck. Adopting the Japanese business practice of kaizen (process improvement), both organizations will contribute staff that scour its partners' operations, from shut-down mode to peak business hours, working with its partnering organizations to identify opportunities to reduce the consumption of energy and natural resources.

Free energy audits by GE and EDF: bad news for consultants, good news for the environment. A couple choice quotes:

Americans can reduce their energy consumption between 20 and 25% by adopting cost-effective energy efficiency methods alone.

Trillions of dollars in energy savings are up for grabs in the United States.

Those both seem like conservative numbers. Judging from the icy blast that hits me from every retail store I walk past here in Shanghai, I'm guessing that worldwide the savings may be in the quadrillions of dollars.

I admit that this doesn't make lean easier to practice. But maybe it makes it more worthwhile.

"What is a storefront and how can it help my lean manufacturing system be more flexible?"

I haven't found a reference to a "storefront" as such in any lean sources. Storefronts are the interface between the customer and the producer. That fact makes this a key concept in the customer-focused lean culture. There are at least three ways that storefronts can enhance lean manufacturing systems.

The first thing we think of when we hear storefront may be the supermarket system. Supermarkets are well-ordered stock keeping locations within a value stream that are designed to enable pull systems between upstream and downstream processes. The removal of the work in process or finished goods inventories within a supermarket gives the signal for replenishment to the upstream process. The supermarket by itself does not help a lean manufacturing systems be more flexible. Synchronization of the processes within the value stream based on a single downstream scheduling point (i.e. pacemaker) using logically defined buffers (supermarket) can make lean systems responsive to changes in demand.

The second example of a storefront concept applied to make lean manufacturing systems more flexible is the yatai system. The yatai is the Japanese word street vendor cart seen across Asia, not unlike the New York City street corner hot dog stands. It is a small, simple, mobile, temporary storefront that allows a chef-proprietor to serve 1-4 customers fresh food on demand. Many Japanese companies adopting lean manufacturing methods use the analogy of the yatai to help people understand and accept the logic of a small, flexible production cell. The yatai system is what we would recognize as a flexible manufacturing workstation that contains the parts, tools and jigs necessary to complete the entire process, such as assembly, inspection and packaging.

These yatai are so popular that you can buy one on the internet and start your own lean eatery. Food service license not included.

The third example of a storefront within a lean manufacturing system is what I recently heard called a fish market. Many of us know this by another name such as the defect display, sample board or scrap table. The fish market is a small table at or near the production area, typically by the team communication board. It is used to display the latest defects during the team leader meetings. It is used both to raise awareness among team members about the defects that were produced on the last shift, as well as to call engineers, managers and support staff to action on taking root cause countermeasures. Like fish, the defects should be "sold" or taken care of that day, because old fish begin to smell bad. Size the fish market appropriately small to force rapid response.

There is nothing like showing the actual defects in the actual workplace, rather than as data on a computer screen or on a table in a conference room. The genchi genbutsu principle requires leaders to go see on a routine basis. The supermarket, the yatai and the fish market all create simple, visual standards that make it easier for leaders to see and respond to problems quickly.