Learning to Lead

While I am sick to death of reading and hearing about the Toyota Way every single time I turn around, I feel there are a few things to be said to cement my key learnings.

Now I"m a scientist, but I have a hard time applying the scientific method to manufacturing work, as Spear does in Leading the Way, which is perhaps why I am not a management scientist. Let's see, I hypothesize that the nut will be sufficiently tight after 3 turns. I take approximately 300 random samples of nuts turned three times and determine that 20% of the nuts aren't sufficiently tight. I reject the hypothesis and conclude: Three turns are not enough! With this knowledge in hand I know I have to stop being a scientist and start being an advocate for one of two changes: have the nut turners turn the nut more times (and hypothesize how many times, so I can test it again) or change the process.

It is a bit of a leap for me that continuous improvement is actually a variant of the scientific method. But that doesn't mean that I think continuous improvement isn't an absolutely wonderful concept. It just means that I believe testing work as it is being done is a great way to ensure that work meets a standard, and bad work doesn't make it to the next customer. Exploring the gap between what is expected and what occurs doesn't require an experiment. Continuous learning and improvement is more than understanding the gap.

I think by now we all understand that there is something special at Toyota that allows their tools and processes to flourish. Spears calls out their Principles. Others use terms like culture. Most describe the angst Americans hear when they are told that this "way" flourishes, in part, through the immediate outing of problems, rather than their swift sweep under the rug.

I am in the midst of training a new hire in my office. I have never had the opportunity to do this before. Meeting on Monday to discuss plans and expectations, and then meeting again on Friday to compare actual outcomes with plans is a very appealing idea. However, charging my new employee to make a specific number of changes sounds very much like asking for a research paper of particular length to be delivered, quality and content be damned. Also, picking the right metric for documenting the effects of the changes is a daily challenge already. 

I also like the challenge of figuring out how to improve our visual management of the work so it is easy to see what is going well, what is going wrong, and what needs to be done.

The new hire, Dallis, had an initial objective of reducing "overburden" on the worker. Spears emphasizes the effect of this language. Focusing on overburden emphasizes the impact of the work design on the person. By contrast, focusing on "waste" suggests that the person is the problem.

Despite my skepticism about the application of the scientific method, and experimentation, I want to document here the presentation format as described in Spears' article.

In all the presentations, the group leaders explained the problems they were addressing, the processes they used to develop countermeasures, and the effect these countermeasures had on performance. All work and improvements are structured as experiments.

Fundamental Principles Underlying the system:

1) There's no substitute for direct observation
2) Porposed changes should always be structured as experiments
3) Workers and managers should experiment as frequently as possible
4) Managers should coach, not fix