What is Your Running?

I run.  I like to run.  Running is my time to reflect, to think about the day and to all around focus myself.  It's the time of the day when it's just me, my thoughts, my focus and my drive to push a little more.  Tonight while I was running I had a realization that I'm getting faster and my endurance is improving (in actuality, I track all my runs with NikePlus).  One thing I should mention is that I'm not running as part of a training program to eventually run a marathon, 10km run or even a 5km run...  I'm just running to get better.  I don't tell you this to boast, because there are a lot of people out there who run faster than I do and have better endurance.  I'm writing this because my big thought when running tonight was a hope that everyone else is pushing themselves too.  Are you?

We all have running.  However for you, your running may be your profession, being a great parent, some other sport, a hobby, playing video games or any other activity.  But for me, it's running.  Here's the thing...  No matter what your running is, you need to be pushing yourself to improve.  Don't just settle with the results you're getting today, get better.  Be progress!

Even 1% improvement each time you do your thing will eventually get you to 100% improvement.

When I'm running or focusing on any other facet of my life where improvement is a focus, which by the way is everywhere, here are my personal reminders and mental "shots" that keep me focused.

When you feel like quitting, think about why you started.

We don't grow when things are easy, we grow when we face challenges.

Success is Choice and Discipline.  Discipline is doing what needs to be done even though you don't want to.

If not now, when?

Now go out there and be the progress you want to be.

Mike

6 Principles for Personal Greatness

I came across a list in the office today.  The list was sitting on the printer and after walking around the entire office no one laid claim to it so I could not find out where it came from.  Google wasn't even able to help me find a source to give credit.  The list consists of 10 principles related to business and personal success, but the 6 principles focused on personal greatness or mastery really stood out to me.  I hope you can find some inspiration as I did.

1. There are 5 stages in life:
- In your 20's, you enter a season of Learning
- In your 30's, you enter a season of Editing
- In your 40's, you enter a season of Mastering
- In your 50's, you enter a season of Harvesting
- In your 60's, you enter a season of Guiding

You can shorten the process; but you can't skip a step.

2. You are entitled to NOTHING.  You gotta work your tail off for great results and get used to playing outside your comfort zone.

3. If you are happy, notify your face.

4. Procrastination can be avoided by setting a self-imposed deadline or by recognizing the reality of an actual deadline.  Write the deadline down.

5. Don't let your principles change; but frequently change your processes.

6. Thoroughbreds like hanging out with thoroughbreds, they don't like hanging out with donkeys.

If you know where these came from, please give them a shout-out in the comments below.

Leadership

Leadership, good leadership, even great leadership, is an essential ingredient for a lean journey.  But like any skill, leadership needs to be practised on a regular basis in order to get good at it.  If you are a leader already, this doesn't mean continuing to go to work in your leadership role, doing the same and getting the same results.  It means you need to find out if you're being an effective leader through team feedback.  Effective or not is a question that can't be answered accurately on your own, it needs to come from your team.  Just remember that when you get the answer, like it or not, you have a choice; stay where you're at or be progress?

It is my belief that leaders don't wake up one day or are born a great leader.  Leadership is developed over time and can be sped up with the right choices, drive, experiences (successes and failures), passion and discipline.

By no means am I an expert in the field of leadership but I definitely believe that I've picked up a few gems as I grow along my career.  These learnings come from reading over 60 books (and counting) on leadership, personal development, change and lean.  Below are the things I believe that when practised with discipline, the path towards great leadership becomes clear.

Fail - I've had a few big fails in my life, personally and professionally.  When the failure happened I was faced with a choice, a choice to either be defeated or learn from my mistakes.  My choice has always been to use the failure as a stepping stone for improvement.  If you're going to lead, you're going to have to take risks and make decisions that may lead to failure.  If risks and decisions ever set you back - and at some point they will - all you need to do is reflect, refocus and start again.  Even the great ones fail, watch Michael Jordan on Failure if you don't believe me.  I once heard someone say, "don't think of failure as a setback or negative, instead think of it as just a result."  This has really helped me.

Whatever you want, give it away - Ian Percy says it best in his commandment number nine, and if you haven't listened to his Eleven Commandments for an Enthusiastic Team then I highly recommend you do.  If you want trust, then trust others.  If you want respect, then respect others.  If you want power then give away power...  It's that simple.  It's all about leading by example and being the person you want others to be.  If you want a great team, be a great leader.

Set clear expectations - People want to do meaningful work, and leaders need to create this environment for their team.  Performance standards and desired results need to be clarified for all levels and roles.  Why?  If people don't know what they're working towards then how do they know if they're doing well or not?  On a side note, if you want to create something for your team to really believe in, beyond expectations, then I would look into the Golden Circle...  WHY are we doing this, HOW are we going to do it and WHAT needs to be done?

Never, ever, ever blame - Blame is the worst thing a leader can do.  Nothing will destroy trust, reputation and integrity faster than blaming others.  When mistakes happen you have to look to the process not the individual for the fault.  People don't want or intend to make mistakes, they want to do a good job and as a leader you need to believe this.  Think of it this way...  You have definitely made a mistake at some point in your life, right?  Did you mean to?

Leadership development - Leadership skills don't improve through osmosis, leadership is developed through regular practice and discipline just like any other skill.  Soak up knowledge by reading books, going to seminars, watching Youtube.com videos, reading articles, take a course or whatever else is up your alley and learning style.  Just do something.

Eliminate "wait and see" - Great leaders drive change, and if they don't know how to do something they either find someone who can or figure it out themselves.  Change doesn't come from waiting to see what someone else is going to do, it comes from having a vision and making it happen.  Quite often the leader is the one everyone else is waiting for to do something.  If you're a leader at any level, it's up to you, your success is up to you.  What are you waiting for?

Choice and discipline - This is a philosophy I came up with a couple years ago but only started to be open about it recently.  It is a two-word summary of all the things I've read, watched and learned that will get anyone to success in any field/sport/profession they want.  If you want to be a great leader then you first need to make the choice to do all the things above (and more), then you need to have the discipline to stick with your choices no matter what gets in your way.  If you can do these two things, success is yours.

Why don't all leaders do these things?  The simple answer is that not all leaders strive to be great, they're happy with where they're at and that's fine.  Not all basketball players get to Michael Jordan's level, not all hockey players get to Wayne Gretzky's level and not all leaders will get to the top of their game, and there's nothing wrong with that.  You just need to ask yourself, as I ask myself regularly...  Where do I want to go and how am I going to get there?  Then just make the choices and have the discipline.

Be Continuous Improvement

If You Want More, Do Less!

I have a framed quote sitting on my desk that reads, "Why do you keep trying to push for more, when all you have to do is remove what's in the way." - Usui Sensei

This quote has a lot of meaning and provides some great questions to reflect on as a leader.  Questions like...  How do you lead?  Have you earned your team's respect and do you reciprocate respect?  Do you engage your team in problem solving?  Can you see what's in your team's way?  Are you even looking for things in their way?  Do you listen empathically?

All these questions are good and leaders should be thinking about them regularly, but the question I want to focus on today is the question about seeing what's in the way.  All processes, whether on the macro or micro level, contain steps that prevent processes from flowing.  Said differently, you should have processes that don't stop from start to finish as soon as the pull is triggered.  The forms of waste are the things that prevent the ideal state of flow.  Wasteful steps don't add any value to your customer; they take up time, resources, money, space and the list goes on.  Moreover, the waste is preventing you from higher profit, shorter lead times, better quality and reduced costs.

You need to be able to SEE the waste!

Some people say the number of wastes has grown since the original seven were identified but I'm going to focus on the original seven wastes, which were originally identified by Taiichi Ohno, the late Toyota executive who also pioneered other Lean concepts such as JIT and TPS.  Each of these categories of waste should be treated with equal importance, none are more important than another.  Although, Over Production is considered the ultimate waste as it generates all other forms of waste.

The seven forms of waste are:

1. Transportation - Using people to move material, information and supplies.  Ideally, any and all transportation should be automated whenever possible.  People should be used for value added work, and moving stuff/materials around is not value added work.

2. Inventory - No inventory is ideal, but sometimes buffer inventory is needed due to lead times or minimum order quantities from suppliers.  Whenever inventory is needed there should be a kanban system in place to help visually manage the inventory based on pull from the customer.  Don't produce/buy extra inventory "just in case" or because you have room to fill it with.

3. Motion - This waste is all about ergonomics.  Everything needed for a task should be within arms reach and in front of you; moreover, there shouldn't be any excess bending, turning or reaching for tools, supplies or parts.

4. Waiting - This one is pretty self explanatory.  Waiting for ANYTHING is a waste; people, material, supplies, signature on a document or information.

5. Over Production - Producing more than what is needed.  Have you ever made too many copies of a document?  Why?  Do you double-enter information anywhere in you business/supply chain?  If you answered yes, then you're over producing.

6. Over Processing - This is using inappropriate tools/resources to achieve a quality product or service.  Two great examples would be cracking a walnut using a sledgehammer and in an assembly process using a manual ratchet instead of a quick connect. If quick connects aren't viable then using an air-ratchet is less waste.  In an office environment, holding a formal meeting when a phone call would have sufficed is also waste.

7. Defects - These are any mistakes, rework or errors both internally and externally.  If a product is produced that does not meet the customer's expectations then a defect has been produced.  When a process produces a defect the process should stop immediately, fix the problem that created the defect and only when the problem (and the root of the problem) is corrected should the process continue.  Missing information on forms and forgetting to pass along information are also defects.

Bonus...  The 8th waste is unused skills/talents of people.  If you have someone on your team who has a particular skill set or talent that you're not using then that is waste.  This usually occurs in a micromanagement environment, where people aren't able to shine.

Tim Woods, just remember Tim Woods and you will remember the seven forms of waste.  What do I mean by Tim Woods?  Look at the first letters of each of the wastes.

Each of these wastes are built into your existing processes and they are there because you didn't know to look for them.  Now you do.  Another common reason for waste in a process is because that's the way you've always done it and never stopped to ask why?  Here's a question to answer with your team, "why do we do (insert process here) this way?

When you find waste, stop!  Don't continue to produce waste or wasteful steps.  Measure it, get to the root of the waste, eliminate the root cause then measure savings after the waste is gone.  How much time, cost and/or space have you saved?

Now what?  Get out from behind your desk, talk to your people, go to where the work is being done, look for the waste, map the process, ask why and where the pains are and you will inevitably start to find waste.  When you take away waste you take away pain, confusion, frustration and gain value.

"You really can accomplish more for the workers by asking them to do less." - Usui Sensei

Be Continuous Improvement

Sustaining Your Lean Journey With WHY

As Lean grows in popularity it seems to me that the tools are getting most of the spotlight while the core values and principles of Lean are being either missed or ignored.  At the same time, Lean professionals are struggling with a lack of sustainment.  How do I know this?  I’ve been there myself and frequently hear about other lean professionals having the same challenges I did.  I’ve been on my lean journey for 3 years now and I’ve struggled with kaizen that doesn’t sustain, forgotten training and an underdeveloped problem solving culture.  These challenges have driven me to spend a lot of time reflecting on why I’m not getting the results I want from lean.

The more I reflect on my own lean journey, the more I listen to peers in my lean network, the more I learn from lean leaders like Dr. Jeffrey Liker, Mike Hoseus and John Shook, the more I think about the WHAT, HOW and WHY a.k.a. the Golden Circle of lean.  WHAT are the many tools in the lean arsenal, HOW refers to a problem solving culture and  WHY is the reason for embarking on the lean journey in the first place.

Focusing on these three pieces of the lean puzzle will ensure a valuable and long-lasting lean journey.  However, there’s a catch…  The order of what, how and why can’t be changed, but the piece you can choose is which end you start from.  Your choice of starting point, with what or why, will be a big (if not the biggest) factor in determining how far you travel along your lean journey.   Do you choose the "what" starting point for the quick hits and fast results that eventually fade?  Or do you want long lasting and continuously improving results that come from starting with why?

The Golden Circle

Companies that start with WHAT…  Companies that start with what are not hard to spot, they generally put most of their lean focus on use of the lean tools.  These lean tools I’m talking about are things like 5S, value stream mapping and Ishikawa diagrams.  For example, someone (usually an owner/leader) in a company hears about the wins achieved from another company who used 5S, and then tells his or her team to go learn 5S and apply it at their company.  The problem with the “what” approach is that without knowing the “why” and “how” to use them the tools will never work effectively, and if they do work it will be short-lived.  You don’t just use the lean tools as standalone projects, you use them to help solve a problem and if you don’t know how to solve a problem then you shouldn’t be using the tools.  Moreover, you can’t solve a problem unless you know why you’re looking for the problem in the first place.  As a side note, “because my boss told me to” is not a good answer to why…  Sadly, use of the lean tools is what more and more companies believe what lean is.  You may achieve some initial wins/savings but will lack sustainment.  By starting with what lean becomes the flavour of the month and eventually looses its momentum.  Typically, the root cause of starting with “what” often turns out to be a misunderstanding of the true principles of lean and/or a bottom line focus of leadership where employees are told to “go do lean” in the hopes to cut costs.  Starting with what will not produce a sustainable a lean journey.

Companies that start with WHY…  These are the companies that “get” lean and ultimately how to achieve great things with it, not only for their customers but also for their employees, suppliers and all other stakeholders.  Starting with why aligns the lean journey to the already established values/vision/purpose of your company.  Alignment is crucial when answering why, because lean has values/vision/principles just like your company and if they don’t align then lean may not be the right thing for you.  Companies that start their lean journey with why start with purpose; they see the value in positive employee engagement, increasing customer value and creating a culture that embraces change (if they don’t already have one), and then allow these things to happen organically.  When employees know why their company is on a lean journey and have been included from the beginning they connect and feel part of it, not thrown to the wolves. The biggest benefit of starting with why will allow the lean champions within your business to bubble to the surface.  These lean champions are the change agents, facilitators and leaders without titles who will drive your lean journey forward.  Just to be clear, to save money is not why you should embark on a lean journey.  Don't get me wrong though, cutting costs is a positive side effect of lean but if your only focus is the bottom line then you won't have the patience needed to let your culture evolve and a solid foundation for lean to grow and sustain.

Don’t forget HOW…   Whether you start with what or why, and I strongly recommend you start with why, knowing how you’re going to succeed is extremely important to the lean journey.  When defining how to go lean your first priority should be to build a problem solving culture within your organization; do this through people development, regular training and creating a lean mindset.  Remember that training is not a one-time event and it needs to be constantly reinforced.  Moreover, if someone isn’t “getting it”, then look to the trainer and their process not the trainee.  I have a belief that people come to work to do a good job and that no one really wants to make a mistake.  By having this belief I am able to always look to the process for the source of the problem, not the individual.  A focus on process rather than people allows a no-blame environment to take root, which is integral to how the lean journey will succeed.  As hard as it can be in the beginning, don’t blame people for mistakes, rather allow people to make mistakes and then learn from it.  Many regard failing as the source for success and in my opinion it is the only way to grow.  The key to a no-blame environment is having the entire leadership and management team (supervisors too) on board with no-blame.  If the leaders aren’t on board then you need to go back to WHY.

The best part of why, how and what (that’s the order we should be approaching a lean journey) is that it’s not too late to change.  If you’ve started your journey with WHAT, then stop, reflect and start thinking about your why.  While doing this don’t hide, keep the entire company in-the-loop, communicate openly and involve everyone in the rebirth of your lean journey.

A lean journey is continuous, it takes time to build a foundation and it can't be rushed.  What’s most important to understand is that you’ll never get to lean, it’s a process not a destination.  It could take years to build the foundation for a culture to accept, adopt and thrive with lean.  Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was lean, in any company.  Have patience.  Toyota has been at it for decades and they're still learning.  Start with why and only when you can answer that as a company you can start to work on how.  Once you know why and how the what almost takes care of itself.

Inspiration for this article and the idea of what, how and why (also known as the Golden Circle) comes from a TED talk I watched and book I read.  The TED talk was titled “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”, the book is titled “Start With Why” and they’re both by Simon Sinek.  When you think a little outside of the box the Golden Circle can be applied to almost anything personally and professionally; I’ve even applied it to my hiring practice where why is talent, how is knowledge and what are skills.  When you start with WHY you start with purpose, meaning and something for others to believe in.  If you haven’t discovered any of Simon’s work I definitely recommend you do. 

Be Continuous Improvement

Scope – Keeping the Team Focused

Have you ever been in a meeting or worked on a project when all of a sudden it’s apparent that you’re completely off track and not discussing the reason you gathered in the first place?  What's worse is when the meeting comes to an end you feel like you haven’t accomplished anything.  Even worse yet, the project is taking way too much time and resources due to this lack of scope.

If you’ve experienced these challenges then you've had an opportunity to be better focused on scope, which is defined as the extent of the subject matter that something is relevant.  Said differently, scope is the information pertaining to topic/meeting/project at hand and nothing outside of it.  Anything outside of that requires a new project or meeting.  Think of a telescope, when looking through one all you can see it's what's in the lens, which is how your meeting/project needs to be run.

It’s so easy to get distracted when working on a project that has outside influences or issues, as most do.  Teamwork itself can create many reasons for losing focus on the scope; these reasons could be differences in opinion, certain team members who have common interests/hobbies/history (who chat about these things in the meeting) or sometimes there are people on the team who are louder than others and dominate conversations.  Even things like cell phones, tablets or other devices can lead to distraction from the scope.

Staying on scope for the entire meeting or project will ensure you get to the results you wanted in a timely manner.  Here are a few ideas on how to stay focused on the scope.

Have a plan.  Why are you here?  What are you trying to achieve?  You shouldn’t be doing anything else until you can answer to these two questions.  Moreover, if you’re in a team then everyone needs to agree on the answers then keep it in front of everyone.  To take the planning even further you, and everyone on the team, should also agree on what everyone’s roles and responsibilities are, how and when you’re meeting, and any metrics or goals for the meeting/project.  Covey said it best, begin with the end in mind.

Agree on beginning and ending points.  If it’s a project you’re working on then agreeing on the start and end points of the process is essential.  Said differently from a lean point of view, you have to know the value stream.  Everything is part of a value stream and therefore value stream mapping is a great tool to help you with visually displaying all the steps in a process.  Find an empty wall and grab a bunch of sticky notes.  All the discussion after the process has been mapped should relate to something between and/or including the first and last step of the process.

Strong facilitation is a must.  One of the best bets to staying on scope is to have a strong facilitator; someone who is knowledgeable of the process, sticks to the plan, unbiased, respected by all team members and can keep the team focused on the scope at hand.  The facilitator needs to keep everyone on scope, balance the conversation between all team members, engage and ensure the quiet people have a voice while loud people give everyone a chance to be heard.  If you’re not a facilitator or have not been in that role before then don’t let that stop you from starting, everyone has to start somewhere so start now and keep practicing.  Sometimes, everyone is just waiting for someone to herd the cats but no one steps up.  Take the bull by the horns if no one else does, just remember what makes a good facilitator.

Simple questions to refocus.  When you realize that you’re on a tangent from the topic at hand and are deviating down a new path, try saying, “does this discussion get us closer to our end in mind?” or “how does this relate to our scope?” or simply, “what is our scope?”  In answering these questions the group will usually re-focus themselves back to the proper scope.  My favourite question for getting people focused is, "how much is this meeting costing us?"  When you add up all the salary/time of the people in the room it's usually not a small number.

These steps are going to help you keep focused on the scope but remember that deviations from your scope will never completely go away.  The next time you’re in a meeting and the topic at hand starts to get off the rails put your hand up, call a time out or do whatever is needed to grab everyone’s attention.  Then, as a reminder, re-agree with everyone what the scope is, and don’t be discouraged if this happens multiple times.

Be Continuous Improvement

The Power of Removing Waste

Today I took the Ideon Team though a problem solving simulation using a lot of tennis balls.  The purpose of the simulation is to teach some basic problem solving skills but also to show that you can achieve great results by simply removing the waste present in a process.

Think about the waste involved in tossing a ball farther than you need to be; there's waiting, over processing and motion to name the obvious wastes.  Giving a team the freedom to understand the wastes and find ways to eliminate them is empowering, believe me.  Moreover, the game got a lot of people thinking how easily they got amazing results without working any harder and how they could apply it to their roles.

By the time the game was done and we had gone 4 rounds, the team had quadrupled their output in a matter of 45 minutes.  Imagine going to your team now and asking them to quadruple their output...  What would happen?  They would probably think you were crazy.

Give the simulation a try with your team, you don't have to be or know lean to see the benefits and results.  Over time I will write about the 8 forms of waste to give you better understanding of them, but you don't have to wait for me, Google "Lean 8 Wastes".  I've posted the simulation on my LinkedIn profile, check it out here.  

Be Continuous Improvement!

Mike

Name Writing Simulation

Here's a quick simulation you can do to help teach the value of patience in leadership when introducing a new process, which also helps to teach the importance of a standard operating procedure (SOP) and the ever-important no-blame environment.

You can do this simulation on your own or with a group; it will be effective in both scenarios.  All you need is a pen, a blank piece of paper (Letter size is ideal but doesn't really matter) and about 20 minutes to run through it properly.

Here’s how it works…

1. On a blank piece of paper divide the sheet into three columns. If doing this in a group, give everyone their own sheet and make sure everyone has a pen/pencil.

2. In the first column, give everyone 30 seconds to write their first and last name as many times as they can down the column. They can write their name however they want but they can't start until you say go.

 - How many did they get?

 - Ask the group what they thought.  Was it easy?  Why?

 - Most likely they will say it's easy because they've been writing their name for years and that it's a familiar process.  Good.

3. In the second column, again 30 seconds, get them to write their name as many times as the can. However, right before you say go, tell them they have to remove every second letter from their name, then say, "Go!"  Watch the confusion.

 - How many this time?  Almost always it's less, unless someone has a short name.

 - Ask the group...  Why did you get less, I took away half the steps to write your name? You should have got twice as many!?!  This is what a "blame environment" would do.

 - Reasons you'll get back: It's a new process/standard, the previous process I knew very well, the new one was harder, needed to think about it, etc...

 - As a leader, you can't expect people to get a new process right away; it takes time and training for people to understand new processes. Did I mention training, lots and lots of training.  And remember, people are trained when they're trained, don't put a time limit on training.  If people aren't getting a new process after they've been trained, it's not the people it's the training method that needs to be looked at.  Ask why and truly listen to the answers, it's a process issue.  This is what a "no-blame environment" would do.

4. In the last column, again 30 seconds, but this time (before you start) write your name with every second letter missing at the top of the column.  They now have an SOP and have had some training/practice in the previous round. 

 - Most of the time people get more than the first column in this round. 

 - This is when you explain the value of an SOP and training/practice.

 - Also a good time to discuss the no-blame environment...  In a blame environment, people would be scolded for not getting better results with the new process.  In a no-blame environment, people are asked what the reason is for their performance, if more training is needed, and what can be done (like a visual SOP) to improve results.

Have fun with this.

Be Continuous Improvement!