posted 09-25-2000 03:56               

The starting point is perhaps that ‘Lean’ from a technical point of view is not that complex, although different schools of thought emphasise different elements. What are difficult are the organisational development issues that efforts to become Lean raise.

The first issue I would like to raise is what for want of a better name I will call the ‘empowerment trap’. The scenario I come across as a trainer in lean techniques, is that management say "we’ve given the shopfloor teams all the training, but they are not doing anything" and the shopfloor teams say "they’ve given us all this training, but we are not sure what they want us to do". The issue is one of trying to move from command and control to self-directed teams just by saying it. As a moderator of this conversation between shopfloor and management I try to help the managers understand that teams still need direction and support from them while they learn to be empowered, and I try to help the teams define what they are being expected to do under their own authority.

My Japanese Sensei looks at it in an interesting way. He says that Management’s role is to define What needs to be achieved and Why (defining the Aspiration?), while shopfloor teams should be empowered to work out, with help, How to achieve this. Our role is to provide this help, once management has communicated the What and Why. In his view, too often Management is communicating the How, not the What and Why. I find this a very helpful distinction to make, and use it to build What/How matrices to show how these things all fit together.

Is the empowerment trap common in your experience? How do you approach resolving it?

Best regards

Malcolm Jones
Productivity Europe

posted 11-26-2000 19:03               

I have just finished a very intense week-long experience during which my role was to provide process consultation and to facilitate a group of 30 employees of a very large health care organization in New Mexico. Their task was to completely rethink and redesign the way they contract with physicians and other providers. As a result, I am intrigued by your topic.

My most recent experience plays out the following scenario: Something is broken in an organization. Senior management recognizes this fact due to declining revenues, increased expenses, etc. However, senior management is not close enough to the day-to-day activities to have a clue as to why this is so. The reaction is to "empower" a group of the brightest and best employees to "fix it." Now, these employees have known for years that there has been a problem, yet only now are they given a week to come up with a solution. (Keep in mind, most solutions require a very large output of resources, money, and thought in the short term, in order to realize gains in the long term.)

My experience is that this kind of solution can only work if the senior management team members truly act as sponsors, stating the problem, making their presence known, and setting forth any parameters, monetary limits, etc. at the outset, and then constantly checking in with the employees who have been charged with this task. Short of this kind of commitment, the intervention will fail.

Anyway, those are my thoughts for now. VERY interesting topic. I look forward to hearing about the experiences of others who visit this forum site.

posted 12-14-2000 16:27               

This is in reply to your previous comments about the difficulty of creating a “lean” organization based on the principles of the Fifth Discipline.

Most business organizations are hierarchical; pyramid structures where the power resides at the apex while the production takes place at the base. A hierarchical structure is a form of regulation that can help more complex organizations remain stable. Often, in dysfunctional organizations, the regulation of control and communication is disjoint. For instance: a squad of well-equipped, trained soldiers can be a powerful force and empowered with the authorization to seek out and destroy the enemy. But without important information such as where and when to attack and whether or not their actions are efficacious, they are ineffective and potentially dangerous to their own comrades. While the squad has control over its own actions, it lacks complete communication circuits – feedback. As the battle proceeds this information should be continually updated and the squad’s actions continually revised.

Generals are always prepared to fight the last war. CEOs are always prepared to do what has made them successful; what has worked in the past. The structure that a successful business organization takes, initially, is fit for the environment in which it finds itself (otherwise it would not survive to be successful). As environmental conditions change, the organization must adapt to remain viable. This adaptation can occur from the top-down or bottom-up of the organizational hierarchy. Either way, to be successful and lasting, continual feedback between all levels within the organization and the external environment must be maintained (Senge’s learning organization). This can be done formally through reports, surveys, meetings, etc. or informally.

This feedback must be more than just abstract data to affect meaningful change. Negative feedback must trigger negative consequences for the business unit, just as positive feedback must tangibly reward it. Students are inundated with information about their performance. Quizzes, tests, standardized evaluations, and teacher comments are a futile effort to affect change unless predictable consequences are attached to these grades and give meaning to this data. If you fail, you must attend summer school. If you get straight “A’s” you’ll get a new car. These consequences give meaning to performance data – this is what motivates a student to adapt and perform.

If you want your business units to act semi-autonomously, treat them like children. Provide them with all the resources they need to be healthy and to grow. Give them responsibility, challenge them and let them reap the rewards of meeting these challenges successfully and face the consequences of making poor decisions. Act as a guide not a dictator – be a role model – cheer their success without envy. Teach them to plan for the future by preparing for all possible scenarios. Children reared in such away will be self-reliant and able to adapt to changing circumstances. Good parents have to accept that their children will not be perfect clones of themselves. They will be different, with new ideas and new ways of doing things.

This last prescription is perhaps the hardest one for parents and CEOs to recognize and accept. A viable organism or organization is always changing, adapting, trying new things. Intolerance for new ways of doing things doom most organisms and organizations to extinction. Humans suffer from the misconception that reality is a zero sum game. For me to win, he must loose. For me to be right, she must be wrong. This misconception encourages some of us to attempt to bend others to our will: “My way or the highway.”

Change this attitude and Fifth Discipline type reforms will take hold in an organization. Unfortunately, as long as senior management thinks that they “know best” and perceive autonomy of their “underlings” as a threat to their status, the organization will remain in a rigid command and control structure with little potential for adaptation and evolution. A Pharaoh builds a pyramid. A parent builds a new generation.

posted 12-20-2000 10:17               

Thanks for the thoughts. I am not sure I like the idea of treating employees as children - but maybe this is misrepresenting what you mean. It does lead to the dilemma about whether we are managing people or manipulating them - at the end of the day people always know they are being manipulated and react against it in many and subtle ways - but what is the key distinction - is management honest whereas manipulation is dishonest, so the same behaviour can be either managing or manipulating depending on the motivation of the manager. In which case are we dependant on people recognising our motivation and how good are we at doing that. The reward/recognition model sounds a bit pavlovian to me. Just some immediate/reactive thoughts.

Cheers

posted 09-25-2002 04:14               

The materials i have read so far (Lean Thinking, The Lean Toolbox, Value Stream Mapping etc.) and the materials are quite abstract and brief. The books or journal papers have commented by saying how much wastes they could cut but there was no
literature to teach one to use the value stream mapping tools to analyse the data to determine the wastes. And the materials are with reference to managers in the organization and ways for them to cut costs. Did i misunderstand what the books said??? Must one be involved in the
organization to detect the wastes and improve on those areas??? Or by just
collecting the necessary data for the tools, will i be able to detect ways
to cut costs?? Are there formulas associated with these tools?

Besides, my approach is to use a hotel's housekeeping department to test the value stream mapping tools but i need to make this approach more Academic. Like make it generalizable...wonder if anyone has any suggestions?

posted 09-25-2002 04:15               

The materials i have read so far (Lean Thinking, The Lean Toolbox, Value Stream Mapping etc.) and the materials are quite abstract and brief. The books or journal papers have commented by saying how much wastes they could cut but there was no
literature to teach one to use the value stream mapping tools to analyse the data to determine the wastes. And the materials are with reference to managers in the organization and ways for them to cut costs. Did i misunderstand what the books said??? Must one be involved in the
organization to detect the wastes and improve on those areas??? Or by just
collecting the necessary data for the tools, will i be able to detect ways
to cut costs?? Are there formulas associated with these tools?

posted 09-25-2002 15:35               

Tashl

An interesting posting .. Thank you.

As an UK consultant working in Process Improvement, my experience says that we have to understand demand from the customer. Measure that .. get frequency by type of the different sorts of demand (and you will discover that there is a lot of demand that is the result of earlier failure to deliver: we call it failure demand) .. and you will understand what the processes to meet/match that demand must be capable of.

Then look at the processes. Get deep into them, detailed process maps etc, and discover the value steps and the waste producing steps. As capability equals value work plus waste work, if you eliminate some or all of the waste work, you slowly bring capability to match demand.

And you will need behaviour over time charts to show how these are working (also called Shewhart Control Charts).