This month A
Lean Journey Blog turns 15 and as I look back on how I got started and who
influenced my journey I wanted to revisit a previous series I started in 2012
called the Meet-up.
One of the
things I am so found of in the Lean community is the general wiliness to share
with each other. I have learned some
much from my very experienced colleagues since I have been an active
contributor. Every month I roundup the
best Lean related posts and articles I found particularly valuable from these
fellow bloggers and contributors. Each one has their own story and opinions to
share.
The goal of
Meet-up is provide you an opportunity to meet some influential voices in the
Lean community. I will ask these authors
a series of questions to learn about them, their lessons, and get their
perspective on trends in industry.
In today’s
edition we are going to Meet-up with Mark Graban. Mark has the longest running Lean
blog that I know and sets a high standard to follow. I’ve been fortunate to
meet Mark many times and collaborate on a few projects over the years that been
fun and of course great learning opportunities for me. Mark put together a video of his
response:
Here are his
answers:
1. Who are you, what
organization are you with, and what are your current lean-oriented
activities?
I’m Mark Graban, and I
am fortunate to do a wide variety of things. I work independently through my
own company, Constancy, Inc. — as a consultant (often partnering or
sub-contracting with others), professional speaker, author, publisher, and
podcaster.
I’ve written or
co-authored two Shingo-Award-winning books: Lean Hospitals
and Healthcare
Kaizen. I’ve also edited and
published the anthology Practicing Lean.
And I’ve also written and published Measures
of Success and my latest, The Mistakes
That Make Us.
I’ve hosted and produced
podcasts, including “My
Favorite Mistake” and “Lean Blog Interviews.” The latter started in 2006 as an offshoot of my blog, LeanBlog.org.
My career started in
manufacturing, and that was my focus for the first ten years. However, I had
the opportunity to start applying Lean in hospitals and healthcare settings
back in 2005. That’s still my primary focus, but I enjoy helping people in
other industries.
I am also currently a
Senior Advisor to KaiNexus, a software company whose mission is to spread
continuous improvement through its enterprise platform.
2. How, when, and why
did you get introduced to lean and what fueled and fuels the passion?
During my undergraduate
Industrial Engineering studies at Northwestern University, I received an
academic introduction to the Toyota Production System. What they taught was
technically correct, but the topics were limited to technical topics related to
inventory management and production planning—focused on flow and pull.
After growing up near
Detroit, I was skeptical about joining the automotive industry. But, I had the
opportunity to take an I.E. job at my hometown General Motors Livonia Engine Plant. What was the appeal? The plant claimed to work
under a version of the “Deming Philosophy,” but as I’ve written about,
it seemed that the philosophy died at the plant about the same time Dr. Deming
passed away in 1993. I joined in 1995. It very well could have been 1975 in
terms of attitudes and management style, but at least we had computers on our
desks.
The first year there was
incredibly frustrating. The only thing keeping me going was an internal “Lean
Team,” if you will, who had all been hired from Toyota suppliers or Nissan. The
problem was our plant managers were still old-guard “command-and-control” GM
people. They yelled, screamed, and blamed the workers for everything. It was an
incredibly stressful place to work — and it felt like we were playing for a
last-place team with no hope.
I was able and willing
to learn from the Lean Team, even if the plant manager wanted nothing to do
with them. The Lean Team people mentored me. And there was no shortage of waste
or problems to see—and to talk through how their old employers would have done
things and what could be possible there.
Thankfully, after a
year, a new plant manager was brought in to save us. He was one of the original
“NUMMI Commandos” — a GM leader who was sent to learn from Toyota through the
opening and the first few years of operating the joint venture plant in
California. He was such a breath of fresh air. He literally told an all-hands
meeting that the era of blaming the workers was over and that we’d succeed
together, with the same workers being managed in a new and different way.
Over that first year, I
saw the impact of the Lean management style. It wasn’t just a matter of now
being unleashed to implement Lean tools and methods. It was the leadership
mindsets that made such a difference. The new plant manager spent so much more time
out on the shopfloor—listening, building relationships, and building the
employee’s confidence in him.
Within a few years, the
plant almost duplicated aspects of the NUMMI turnaround story. They went from
being quite literally the worst in GM plant performance (in productivity and
quality measures) to being in the top quartile.
This inspired me to try
to help bring this sort of turnaround to others. Sadly, the conditions of that
painful first year still exist in some locations today — including in
healthcare.
3. In your opinion what
is the most powerful aspect of lean?
The most powerful aspect
of Lean is that it’s an integrated system. As Toyota explains, even today, the
Toyota Production System is not just tools and technical methods. It’s also a
philosophy and a set of managerial practices. It’s an organizational culture
that puts a huge focus on developing people. Since the term “Lean production”
was meant to be a genericized term for TPS, successful Lean journeys are led by
leaders who realize it’s an integrated system.
One of the most powerful
components is when Lean leaders tap into the intrinsic motivation of employees
to improve. These leaders aim to engage everybody, enabling them to implement
improvements that matter to them. These leaders also help steer improvements,
especially larger projects, toward the “true north” goals of Safety, Quality,
Delivery, and Cost.
4. In your opinion what
is the most misunderstood or unrecognized aspect of lean?
One misunderstood aspect
is the idea that implementing a few Lean tools here and there will make a
transformational difference. A similar trap is thinking that a series of
week-long Kaizen Events will automatically create a culture of ongoing daily
continuous improvement. If the events are only engaging a handful of the
employees, that’s nowhere near the Kaizen ideal of everybody improving
everywhere, everyday. A related pitfall to that is thinking that certifying a
large number of people as some sort of “belt” will lead to significant culture
change. Leaders must lead the Lean transformation, participating in it and not
just sponsoring or supporting it.
I think the most
unrecognized aspect of Lean is its foundational role of “psychological safety.”
Psychological safety is the feeling or perception that a person can speak up
candidly without fear of being punished or marginalized in some way. This
includes speaking up about mistakes, problems, and improvement ideas.
When Toyota describes
its system and culture, I think many of the writers take it for granted that
you can speak up (or pull an “andon cord”) without fear of punishment. Toyota
team members should expect a helpful and constructive response when they speak
up. When organizations try copying tools and methods from successful Lean
organizations, such as Kaizen boards or andon-type systems, if that
organization has a low level of psychological safety, Lean won’t ever take
hold.
Many organizations
invest greatly in problem-solving training. But if employees don’t feel safe to
point out or admit problems, what is going to be solved? Nothing, or not much.
A final misunderstanding
related to employee participation in Lean is that it can be forced or
incentivized. Getting compliance, such as “I did my four improvements this
year,” isn’t the path to world-class performance. Instead of lecturing people
about their duty to speak up, demonstrate that it’s actually safe and effective
to do so.
5. In your opinion what
is the biggest opportunity for lean in today’s world? How can that be
accomplished?
I still think the
greatest opportunity is in healthcare. It’s been over 25 years since the first
“Lean healthcare” experiments took place in the U.S. The problems in healthcare
are real and significant. Estimates suggest one in four hospitalized patients
suffer from a medical error and between 100,000 and 400,000 Americans are killed by
medical errors each year—and we rely on
estimates because real numbers are not tracked and shared by the healthcare
industry. And this is a global problem, with other countries seeing similar
per-capita levels of harm and death.
There are huge
opportunities to use Lean methodologies to improve safety and quality, reduce
waiting times, and improve the quality of care. Where this has been done,
engaging employees and medical staff helps achieve those goals, while also
improving employee satisfaction and reducing turnover.
There have been pockets of great progress in some health systems. But some of those systems have taken steps back from Lean when new leaders were
installed from the outside. Too many
still see Lean as tools to train frontline staff on—instead of seeing Lean as a
management system and a culture of PDSA-based continuous improvement.
I think healthcare is
repeating the waves of adoption, decline, and re-adoption that we’ve seen in
manufacturing—first using some tools, then a broader set of tools, then
followed by attempts to adopt a management system at wall levels. It’s
frustrating when healthcare doesn’t learn from manufacturing on this and other
fronts. So, we’ll keep working at it.Through their answers to these questions hopefully you will get a sense of the thinking behind those who are shaping the Lean landscape. I continue to keep learning and thankfully with the willingness of these practitioners to share I am positive you will, too.
