Understanding Lean Teamwork

Business901 Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems

The Lean Concept of Respect for People

Copyright Business901

Understanding Lean Teamwork Guest was David Veech

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Related Podcast:


http://business901.com/blog1/the-lean-concept-of-respect-for-people/





David Veech is the founding member of the Institute for Lean Systems and serves as its Executive Director. He also serves as Senior Advisor and Director of Finance for the Compression Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to guiding learning organizations

to dramatically reduce consumption of resources while maintaining or

improving the quality of life of its people and its community. He is a faculty leader for Penn State University’s Smeal College of Business Executive Programs, and is a guest lecturer in The Ohio State University Fisher School of Business Masters program in Business Operational Excellence. Finally, to focus on the fun part, David’s the

owner of the Bluegrass Revolution, a professional Ultimate team in the American Ultimate Disc League.

His coaching focuses on people in organizations and how lean, leadership, and learning systems contribute to overall employee satisfaction and well-being. He delivers keynotes and seminars on topics related to leadership, problem solving, suggestion systems, employee involvement, team building, and creating satisfying workplaces. He is the author of “The C4 Process: Four Vital Steps to Better Work”

(2011, Business Innovation Press, an imprint of Integrated Media Corp.) and “FirstLine: A team leader’s guide to lean thinking” (2005, PKI).





Transcription of Podcast

Joe Dager: Welcome everyone. This is Joe Dager, the host of the Business901 podcast. With me today is David Veech. David thinks that work should be fun, exciting, challenging, and interesting, and knows that it is leaders who can make or break this workplace.

His coaching through his organization, Institute for Lean Systems, focuses on people in organizations and how lean, leadership, and learning systems can contribute to overall employee satisfaction and well-being.

David, I would like to welcome you and could you fill in some background about yourself and how you became, I don't want to say an HR person, but how about a people person?

David Veech: I spent 20 years in the army, so coming out of college and going into the

army as an officer. I was in infantry for the first half of that and then they sent me off to grad school. I got a degree in Industrial Management, and my second specialty was in acquisition. So I did a lot of work with defense contractors, and they started talking about Lean things back then, and I started to want to learn more about that.

I had read the "Machines Change the World" back in grad school, and I found it interesting. But it wasn't until I got an opportunity at my last job in the army.

I was assigned to the Defense Acquisition University, and I was teaching people in the production and quality manufacturing career field how to deal with these new changes that they'll probably be seeing in these defense contractors and how they should be promoting these same kinds of changes.





But at that time, I only really understood lean as a cost saving, cost cutting, kind of measure. As I started learning more about it, and as I started pulling the curriculum for it together for the Defense Acquisition University, I met the guys down from the University of Kentucky.

When Toyota built a plant outside of George Field, Kentucky, part of the package was that they would support graduate education and had a pretty good partnership with the university.

So they were firsthand observers of this second generation of the Toyota production system that they were deploying in Kentucky. So working with them, we pulled together this curriculum that I started teaching pretty regularly, developed a few simulations, and then when I retired from the army in 2001, the University of Kentucky hired me.

I worked there in the College of Engineering in the Center for Robotics Manufacturing Systems developing and teaching Lean courses and spending a boat load of time at Toyota to learn more.

About five years into that, we, my colleagues and I there, we started to observe things like while we were getting good feedback from the workshops, we were teaching and everything. A lot of the people really didn't have the confidence to take more aggressive

action, to improve the workplaces, so we wanted to do more of this hands-on consulting.

We ran into some issues in the University about being a business like that inside the University. So we ended up having to separate from the University, and we set up Institute for Lean Systems in 2006 as a result, and it's been a fun ride ever since.





We've got some great results from a lot of great organizations and had a lot of fun. I guess the mortgage is getting paid so it's not too bad. I started with the industrial management focus, but I would always watch these defense contractors whom I was working with, and I'd watch them do a kind of event.

I would see how they would have a group of experts kind of descend on the shop area where they were going to focus, and they would spend the week just turning this place on its head and then they'd leave.

Then I would come in a week or so afterwards and talk to some of the folks, and they would end up undoing most of the stuff that the experts had done, so I figured they had to be something else going on.

They didn't talk to their people very much. And of course, everybody in lean knows now that you got to get your people engaged. We've been talking about people for a long time, but that kind of sparked me to start learning about how people learn.

One of the workshops that I took at University of Kentucky way back then that I sub sequentially started teaching, really focused on problem solving as the main learning vehicle for people in the workplace. And I thought those were the coolest things I had ever heard.

So I got into a PhD program, first in educational psychology, and then in general psychology because I had to switch schools, but I started really digging into what makes people tick, so I did a lot of studying about motivation, a lot of studying about leadership.





Of course, I've been a leadership student for forty years, so it's just a fascinating field and there's never any definitive answer that applies to everybody. So you still have to be able to shut your mouth and open your ears and listen to somebody else, or you're just not going to be effective.

Joe: From an article, I've read of yours recently, one of your comments rang true with me. It was just right in the first paragraph is it that people have to believe have to believe in themselves, or it's really hard to contribute to the team. Would it be fair to say you have to start to build confident incompetence at the individual level before team concepts work?

David: I think the team will come together more quickly if the individuals prepared. The individual, the self-efficacy, this confidence that people bring to the table, it's really environmentally sensitive. So if I've created a work environment where I don't care what

you think. I want you to come to work; I want you to shut up; I want you to do what I tell you to do, and I want you to do it right.

When I want you to go home and get the hell out of here. If I've created that type of environment, people are going to seek some other outlet for these needs that we have to feel like we matter.

That to me is one of the critical things, and that's a very individual thing, but it is highly

influenced by the people with whom you have relationships.

If you have good relationships with your coworkers, then that is a great environment to start. It's really easy for leaders to screw that up.





Joe: I hear that a lot about giving everyone more responsibility over their work but does everyone really want that? Are there people that just want to come in, work eight hours, and go home?

David: Well, in my experience, there are, in my studies, there aren't. I think everybody has a need to feel like they are contributing to more than just what they're doing, even a person who's relatively introverted and pretty self-driven, and they like to come in and do one little thing. I think when they can see that they can have an influence over a little more, and that it is not going to cost them in terms of their personal space or their personal feelings, I think everybody will respond positively to have more of this feeling of responsibility, more of this feeling of satisfaction, this confidence that comes from self-efficacy.

I think everybody will respond positively to that. Some people take a little longer; some people may never come around, but I do think it is within all of us to seek more things that are going to make us happier.

Joe: Do you think that comes from a lot of that team concept that if you have small-enough team, it is easier to gauge and easier to relate to other the people and have the confidence to express yourself?

David: I do, but I want to caution that in a lot of organizations, you do not just throw people together and expect the team to work. If you are put on a team with people who are annoying or really horrible, then it is going to be a horrible experience. So we have got to really be careful about building these times. It has got to be a deliberate action, and it





takes an investment in the organization to pull those team members together and actually have them start behaving like a team.

Really the main thing that most teams miss when we kind of throw them together is that they do not have that clear reason for being a team. So we do not want to pull a team together just to say, "Oh look, we have teams all over the place."

The teams have to be focused on the work that has to be done. So I want a team that has to work together to accomplish the work, and then maybe it can be a bit more effective team.

But we have got to invest in spending time with them and having them spend time together, get to know each other, seeing what each other can do, and we have got to lay out this pattern of setting a standard, training them up to a standard, and challenging them to go beyond that standard.

And having that team support structure- that really they care about each other, they want to work together; they want to see each other succeed- that is the most sustainable type of lean organization I have ever seen.

Joe: So you are saying that when you are building the team, you really do have to identify maybe even the roles within the team a little and get the right role players just like you need to build a basketball team up, let us say, or a football team, you have got to have the right role players. You have got to have a rebounder and you've got to have a shooter, a passing guard or whatever.





David: Well, and that is what the teams are going to find out. They are going to find out who is good at what. Even some lean organizations, even some key Toyota suppliers, even Toyota itself in Japan, they tend to have somebody kind of focused on one role. Where, to get the true benefits that I am talking about in this self-efficacy efficacy article, we really

need them to do multiple things. We really need them to rotate. Now, at Kentucky, they rotate very effectively, but when we went to Japan to see them working at Toyota City, they did not rotate. Some of the key Toyota suppliers, they did not rotate.

We talked to some very expert people who were fantastic at their job, but that is the only job they get to do. Variety is one of the key pieces of a satisfying job. Despite the wonderful work environment that you might want to create, if your job sucks, your job sucks.

So, if there are jobs that suck and then jobs that do not suck quite so bad, I want you to do a variety of different things during the day. I think that will have a positive impact on a person's feelings of their worth, their contribution and I think it will build better skills.

It is also safer because they work different muscle groups, and we have less of a chance of repetitive motion injuries and ergonomic problems. So it is really important to me that we drive this key rotation feature. So, that means the physical structure of the workplace, the engineering behind it, it has got to be in place too for the people stuff to really come out.

Joe: You lead me to believe in the article that standard work can be fun and lead to enthusiasm, but standard work has to be pretty strong in this concept that we talked about. When we do these job changes and roles, it has to be understood what needs to be done.





David: Absolutely, standardized work is the single most important tool we have in the toolbox. If we screw it up, we are going to have problems, if we get it right, all kinds of other things fall into place. It is hard to get right. It takes a lot of time to get right. Once you get it right, once you enforce it -, - and you have got to enforce it with an iron

fist- you cannot be friendly and "Oh, well that is OK; you can you do it your own way." No, it has got to be done the way the standardized work says, so that requires enforcement with an iron fist.

You see, there is a balancing act that we have got to kind of take as a leader because it is our responsibility to make sure that they are building skills, and the only way their skills are going to improve is if we make sure they do it the same way every time.

Now, in a mature organization that is used to standardized work, standardized work is

ought to be changing every day, right? So, how do we balance that as well, how do you have a process that allows people to change the standardized work every day and still build skills?

And that is one of the great mysteries that a lot of organizations struggle with. They think as they start rolling out the standardized work, they are supposed to be changing it that frequently from the start. That is not the case.

You might take 6-8 weeks to define the standardized work. During that 6-8 weeks, it is going to change all the time as people explore new ways to do things. You get a couple of key people who are working to try to make sure you know what the standard ought to be.





When a small group of folks gets it right, set that standard and then do not change that standard until everybody who is going to be doing that work can go into that workplace and do the job to standard without problems. When everybody has reached that level of skills, then they are all more capable of coming up with creative ways to make it better.

Instead of squashing creativity, which a lot of people accuse standardized work of doing, and it sure sounds like we are squashing creativity because, "You have got to do it this way!" it is actually laying a foundation for creativity to explode.

When that creativity explodes, if the organization doesn't have a defined, clear, standardized process for making changes to that standardized work, they just screwed themselves.

One of the first things you've got to do is figure out how you are going to change to standardized work before you start rolling it out in a broad basis. What I think the key thing in changing standardized work is you have to have a thought process that is based on, well; I call it the C4 process for concern, cause, and countermeasure and confirm. Toyota calls it PDCA. Everything they do is driven by PDCA, as you know.

Joe: Do you think individuals or teams need a coach? Do they need that outside observer looking in on them?

David: Yeah, I do. It's not just that outside observer looking in on them; it's a real support structure. It's somebody that you can go to when things aren't going so well so you can get a little help. What we have to guard against is having people who, in that role,





having people perceive them as the problem solvers. When I've got a problem, I'm going to go to my team leader, and she's going to solve it for me. That's not the case.

When I got a problem, I'll let me team leader know. The team leader comes to help, but the team leader comes and coaches me through solving the problem so that my skills come up.

There's, again, another balancing act because many of the problems we have at work, you've got to solve them pretty quickly to keep things going. How do we balance the need to get the problem solved really quickly versus the skills development? I've got some ideas about that as well.

Joe: Do you use any simulation in your training? Do you think that is a good way to learn?

David: I love simulations. You can do more with an effective simulation in a shorter period of time than pretty much anything else. The only problem is if you don't take the time after the simulation to really translate what happened in the simulation to what happens in real life and then take that step in real life to make a change, then it's, "Well; we played a neat game, and then we went back to work." The learning, the after-action review of a simulation, has to be really well done. You really have to tease out the key lessons that people can actually apply.

I've got this LEGO simulation that I do that I just had a blast with. It's really complicated. I've got four different groups. They each have to build a different section of an airplane. Then one of the teams is the system integrator, and they've got to receive all of these incoming materials and put the aircraft together and deliver it on time.





It really exercises all of these lean principles of flow in the shop floor, workplace organization, and standardized work. It also gets into the supply chain because they all have to provide parts to each other as well.

I have a blast with it. It takes a good-sized group to do it, so it's not always perfectly suitable. Right now I'm using it in Ohio State's Master of Business Operational Excellence Program. I'm using it at Penn State, I teach a class at Penn State a couple of times a year that's based around that simulation, plus our own workshops as well.

Joe: One of the things that you talked about in the article is that you need time, the "learn by doing" approach, it takes time. It seems to be the thing that everyone is short of. We blame leaders, that they're too focused on the short term. But they're judged on the short term. What's the answer? What's the balance? Can we have short-term results in

training or smaller iterations in training?

David: This is one of the harder things. When an organization is properly aligned, and really committed to making this happen, it's not a problem. Because everyone understands that the leader's role is to support and develop the lead. They spend time in that support and development role.

The challenge comes in an organization that doesn't have it like that, but you've got a

couple of very enthusiastic folks somewhere buried within the organization, that really want to be able to take the time to do this right. But because the organization isn't aligned, because they haven't set this as a priority, they will continue to pressure for results.





We've got to get results, don't get me wrong. We've got to be competitive. We've got to be able to competent with other foreign organizations and countries on a price basis. We've got to be competitive, so we've got to get those results. That doesn't mean we can't stay competitive if we don't pass these skills along.

If we just hold a few key people who are known to for being able to get results, if we hold them responsible for keeping the organization afloat, what happens when they leave? If we haven't developed our organization to be competitive and responsive, then that's a crime. We've got to have organizations be able to deliberately able to set the time.

A lot of organizations have lots of meanings, right? The biggest complaint I get from conventional organizations, is the meetings are a big waste of time. If we can change the focus, and change the method of those meetings just a little bit, we can use those as key

vehicles for developing skills and sharing information. But it's really important that we learn how to have meetings where we don't waste people's time.

If we've got our standardized work where we understand how long things take, and we apply that same thinking to every process in the organization, all the way to the chief executive, then time becomes a weapon that you can use to build the organization more effectively and make it more competitive.

It doesn't just become a ticking clock that can make people panic. Time is an important weapon. But everything has to be tied back to, what does it really take? How much time do I need to take to get this fixed?





I've got to tell you those organizations which have taken that step back and taken a deep breath and said; "I know we've got to get the results. “But if we don't get the results right, we're going to end up doing this again, and doing this again, and wasting time. So let's stop now, do the detailed analysis we need to do right up front. Then apply what we've

learned, and then get back on. Organizations that have done that are setting the world's standard today.

Joe: I've always used the terminology that standard work is what puts groceries on the table today. If you optimize your standard work, if you get that, you do have the time to make productive changes and do training. That's where you tend to do the PDCA and the improvements, and everything. Do you feel that is a correct assumption?

David: Absolutely, like I said we have got to focus on what has to be done, how long it is

going to take to get that stuff done, how many people it is going to take to get that stuff done. And then yeah that actually does put us in a structure that allows us to think a little bit more clearly about what we are doing.

We do need the discipline of a problem-solving process. Within LEAN community because Toyota has publicized the "PDCA" process because they learned it from Deming so long ago it is important that we do this.

But I want to tell you a little story about how PDCA relates directly to this time thing we are talking about. Do you know when Deming first talked about statistical quality and PDCA to the Japanese? That was 1951.





Now I am looking at your picture here I know you have been around for a little while. In the '60s when you have a product that said, "Made in Japan" on it; what did you think?

Joe: It was cheap!

David: Cheap and typically crap. It didn't really work, it was junk. In the 70's, starting to get a little better and we are starting to see a lot more Japanese cars on the road. But in the '70s it was still, well, you know kind of cheap still. But still not as good as our stuff, right?

Then in the '80s, Japanese car companies are eating the lunch of the big three; when you can't even find, except in rare instances, USA brands of television and electronics. The Japanese are here to stay because the stuff is great and never breaks.

OK, so from the '50s when they kept Deming in Japan for 10 years consulting on quality in the 50's, the realization of those lessons wasn't seen in the market place for 25 - 30 years.

So we are talking about a generational change in behavior that leads to tangible measurable quality improvements that customers can see.

So this whole idea of getting things done quickly, if we can get over that and recognize that nothing really happens quickly that lasts, then I think we will be in the right mindset

for documenting our standardized work; for designing our jobs, for designing the work people have to do and standardizing that so that people can learn it more effectively. So this stuff takes time.





Joe: What is the best way to introduce change at the team individual level? Is there a blue print? Is there a thing you can leave listeners with? If I've got to start, here is where I start?

David: To me it always starts with the work that has to be done. Figure out what exactly the work has got to do. We have got to do some detail analyze of the job and break down the job. Training and industry stuff has all that stuff written down the standardize worksheets have all that stuff broken out if we just follow the set of rules that we have already given ourselves, it is really not that bad.

It has got to start with the work, Joe. We have got to look at what we have got to do, and we don't want to build waste within the work.

Where we can organize a team of about four to five people, let's put the work together, organize that team and do a little of a pilot. So pick a spot, do a pilot, learn how to do this for your organization.

Figure out how to make it work, take six months, take a year with that one pilot area and then start spreading it around.

If you try to do it at too many places at once you run out of resources pretty quick you overwhelm people, and your organization tends to push back and say we are not going to do this.





So take a pilot, learn from that pilot and try whatever you want in that pilot. So you have got to get the right people that you got to select the people who are early adopters for that pilot and play around with it until you can learn and then start spreading it around.

Now in a lot of cases because we work in systems and every organization is a complex system we can't just make one thing perfect and expect it to show up on the bottom line.

So that can be our learning area, but we are going to have to start improvements in other places pretty quickly. But remember if we don't learn how to do it? We are going to pay some pretty severe lessons later down the road.

Joe: David, what is on the horizon for you?

David: We've got a few things cooking up. Thanks to the Lean Frontiers guys who

released this white paper. They are going to have me come speak at their HR Summit, November 8th and 9th. We have also got a boat exhibition, "The International Boat Exhibition" in Louisville, Kentucky; October the 1st through 3rd. I get to do a half-day problem solving workshop on the first day, and then I am teaching one of the workshops in there, and I am going to deliver a key note address at the Marine Dealers Conference and Exhibition.

The thing I am most excited about is the stuff that we do we have got a Lean system workshop coming up. We've got a series of three workshops that are very hands on, very practically focused that is going to start at the end of August; we are going to do a week in August.





Give people some homework bring them back in September, some more homework projects and finish up with a week in October.

And then December 3rd through 6th, we are going to do an executive program that is a two day lean overview based on a simulation focusing on system-level stuff, and then two days of bench marking and some more class organizations nearby.

So we have got some fun stuff coming up this fall, I am looking forward to it.

Joe: Where would someone find this information at?

David: You can go to our website at www.theleanway.com. There are a lot of details about that. You can send me an email [email protected]. LEAN Frontiers is going to be promoting a lot of this stuff as well.

Joe: If you could leave the listeners with one message, what would that be?

David: Well, a lot of people talk about respect for people, and you know that is one of the two over-arching drivers of the Toyota way. Respect for people and continuous improvement. We seem to pick up and get the continuous improvement piece, and we say that we respect our people.

We don't really understand that whole concept, and I would urge people to think about what it really means to show respect for someone else.





When you choose because it is definitely a decision when you choose to show respect for your workforce then that is going to open up tremendous amounts of creative resources that will change the way you think about your work.

That will lead to a happy road down the way. It will make your work meaningful; it will make your work significant, and it will make your work special.

Just by having a better relationship with the people with whom you work.

Joe: I think that is a great message to leave everyone with. I would like to thank you very much. This podcast will be available on the business901 blog site and the business901 iTunes store so thanks again, David.

David: Thanks, Joe.





Joseph T. Dager

Business901

Phone: 260-918-0438

Skype: Biz901

Fax: 260-818-2022

Email: [email protected]

Website: http://www.business901.com

Twitter: @business901

Joe Dager is president of Business901, a firm specializing in bringing the continuous

improvement process to the sales and marketing arena. He takes his process thinking of over thirty years in marketing within a wide variety of industries and applies it through Lean Marketing and Lean Service Design.

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Understanding Lean Teamwork