I reflected on a conversation I’d had several weeks earlier with a client, call him Bob, who was struggling with his Lean journey.
Bob remarked, “I can’t see how we’ll ever make a significant improvement. Doing anything around here is like moving mountains.”
“How would you go about moving that mountain?” I asked.
“I’d blast,” Bob smiled.
I think that is the answer to Alan Robinson’s question: When presented with an obstacle, managers are trained to “blast.” We are paid to get things done; the bigger the obstacle, the more explosives.
The challenge with Lean transformation is that given a choice between dynamite and a large group of people with shovels, most managers will choose the former to get the result. The results we target are tangible and necessary for the organization’s health: QCD, dramatic Quality, Cost and Delivery improvement are the promise of Lean. Why not cordon off the area to be improved, and ask the troops with the shovels to step to a safe area while we send in our special forces to blast away? The troops can return afterward to clean-up. Sound familiar?
“Why would you blast?” I asked Bob.
He responded, “Because our management says it needs to be done by Friday. They’re looking for a report out then with hard numbers for results.”
“And would one of those results be level of employee participation?” I asked.
“Not really.” Bob replied.
The problem with this approach is that if we treat the workplace like a war zone, employees will run for cover when they see change approaching. “Keep a low profile, and they leave you alone,” one employee confided in me. When that occurs we have failed to achieve the most important, if intangible, result: employee creativity. The 75% of innovation that Alan Robinson is describing actually requires many people with shovels.
How many folks in your organization are shoveling? Let me hear from you.
O.L.D.
BTW- Alan Robinson will be at our October 5-6 NortheastShingo Conference.
