This month I want to share with you a key insight I got while attending the Lean Global Solutions Summit in Detroit. It’s one of those rare “Ah-ha” moments that makes you stop and completely reframe what you’re doing.
The timing of this event was perfect as it had been entirely too long since I went to a lean conference. This one offered both the opportunity to hear the latest Lean thinking and to catch up with my two colleagues Scott Post and Chad Bareither. It also had some super stars from the Lean world attending — Mike Rother (who wrote the book Learning to See and several more in the Toyota Kata series) and Dr. Jeffrey Liker (who also wrote several books on Lean including The Toyota Way series).
Getting to meet one of my long-time hero’s: Mike Rother.
I spent the whole of the first day volunteering as a Team Host and helping one of the four teams (Lean Alaska) competing in the “Lean World Championship” competition. It meant I missed all the workshops and breakout sessions, but it was fun to be part of my team’s experience. We didn’t win, but they learned a LOT during the process and as far as I am concerned, they were all winners.
On the second day I attended three workshops and two breakout sessions, but the highlight of the day was the final panel discussion with Patrick Adams, Tom Root, Stephan Thieringer, Mike Rother and Dr. Jeffrey Liker. It was about 90 minutes of Q&A, where all panelists gave their thoughts and some amazing nuggets of wisdom.
My thoughts
I am going to share with you three impactful things I heard during that panel discussion:
“The hardest thing to do as a leader is to shut up”. A really good reminder that the leader’s number one job is to LISTEN, and that this is HARD. We are wired and rewarded for taking charge and creating followers.
“It takes exceptional energy by the leader to maintain Lean, otherwise the forces will go back to status quo”. Organizations that implement Lean and sustain it, do so DESPITE all the forces working against it. You have got to really WANT this.
“All Lean tools are designed to trigger human problem-solving”. This was the game-changer for me. When Mike Rother said this my mind took off. I suddenly realized that this is HOW we achieve the results we do with our clients — with all of the ways of thinking, structures and tools we use — not just Lean.
What I realized was that at Eli Sharp Consulting we have been Making Work Flow for quite a few years, but we do this by unleashing the power of human problem-solving at every level. This reframing will really sharpen up the messaging on HOW we work with our clients (and what we want to achieve in partnership with them) from now on.
I wish I had written down who said what for the other two quotes, but I was too busy soaking in what was being said and scribbling things down! So, apologies for not citing those speakers.
How to
If you are a leader trying to transform your organization, here’s what I took away from this summit:
- Practice shutting up. Your team has the answers — create the space for them to share their thinking. Listen more than you speak.
- Commit to the long game. Transformation requires exceptional energy to maintain against the forces pulling back to status quo. Be prepared for this reality.
- Focus on triggering problem-solving. Any tool or structure you implement should be designed to unleash your people’s problem-solving capability — not create dependency on consultants or leadership.
Call to action!
What barriers are blocking problem-solving in your organization? Are your tools and processes triggering human problem-solving at every level, or creating bottlenecks that slow everything down?
Let’s unleash the capability that’s already there!
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