We have a tendency to rely on lag measure. The problem with lag measures is that they are just that lagging. They give you little information to determine whether you are on the way or off track in achieving your goal. You need leading measures. More importantly, you need leading measures that you or your team has control over.

We typically start breaking down our problem into intervals:

Does this tell us enough? Would we need a daily reminder to achieve these outcomes?

Does this do anything for us except make the lag measures more current. How are we going to achieve this? What happens when we don’t lose the weight?

We have only addressed the When and What with leading measures (the Why was addressed when this was tied to an existing Strategic Initiative of the organization). We must also address the How and that is where Leading Measures come into play. Leading measures are not easy to create. Many times they are only known by the people doing the work. Another way to think about this is that leading measures are at the level of individual or the team’s process, the activity that they do.

What would be a leading activity for weight loss? Calories burned and consumed are the first two that I think of. But how do we control that? Stopping short of a book on weight loss what we can see from this exercise is that we need a more compelling scorecard for us to measure ourselves against. Even when we take it down to the next level such as in a given day we need to burn 1800 calories and consume 1200 calories (believing this will give us a needed weight loss of 0.5 pounds a day) does not give us enough information to achieve our goal.

We can divide up a Kanban board with 2 swim lanes: Calories Consumed and burned. These are labeled with a description of our activities and the food we intend to eat for the day. If the Consume cards and Burn Cards are labeled with calories, you pull as needed till we total our day’s consumption or burn.

These are the types of lead process indicators that are needed; visual, easy to understand and leading. We can recognize problems almost immediately. What happens if we do this for several days and no weight loss occurs? We may have to consume less or burn more (I know this is an over simplification). But the message is that we are working in the Now versus waiting to see results at the end of the day or week.

Why go through this elaborate explanation? Most organizations do not leave the team or individual take the responsibility for the How. This exercise demonstrates the importance of having control of the How at the process level. Having this control at the process level, creates ownership and the ability to make the needed adjustments in the NOW zone. It is Leadership responsibility to provide strategic direction and the Why. It is the process owner’s responsibility to move that strategic direction with the How. It is also the process owner’s responsibility to report the outcomes at the desired intervals to leadership and work with leadership if the outcomes are not being achieved. This way if more resources are needed like that “exercise machine” or a coach, it can be approved and allocated. Leadership should not dictate the How but has the right and responsibility to “veto” your How if it does not agree with the overall goals of the company.

Related Information:
Developing a Learning A3
Turning your Conference Learning into Action
The Starting Point for Lean Sales and Marketing
4 Disciplines of Execution – Lean Simplified

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Our discussion center on his development of a Learning A3. From his blog post Learning A3:

A3s are used for solving problems, developing proposals and everything else.  Why not for laying out a plan to show what people are expected to learn during a project or coaching session.  Layout a standard or plan so expectations and progress becomes visible.

Download Podcast: Click and choose options: Download Here  or go to the Business901 iTunes Store.

Below are several formats for your use. I recommend viewing one before or during the listening of the podcast.

Learning A3 Example PDF

Learning A3 Blank Template PDF

Learning A3 Blank Excel Template

About Matt: Matt has a Bachelor of Science degree from Purdue University in Industrial Engineering. Among his other accomplishments are Lean Principles and Kaizen Certification from Lean Learning Center, Lean Coach/Mentor, Proficient in Lean tools and concepts, Shainin Red X Certified Journey and Master Candidate, and a ProModel Simulation Software expert.  He is proud to have played a large and significant role in starting the Smith County Lean Consortium in Tyler, TX.

Related Information:
Turning your Conference Learning into Action
A Short Course in Design Thinking
4 Disciplines of Execution – Lean Simplified
Why A3, Why Now in Lean Thinking?

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A question that permeated throughout the conference was how do I take what I learned and implement it in my organization. Most of us know that if you do not start immediately a great deal of information will be lost and eventually little if any will be implemented. My efforts this week will be to assist to make this great learning experience turn into actionable items. If we can do this, you certainly will be assured of coming back next year and I might even get another speaking opportunity.

The problem most people face when coming back from a conference is that they soon get inundated with all their regular work again. It’s not that we don’t want to introduce what we learned but there is so much to do and so little time. As part of my presentation, I discussed the aspect of Standard Work. Standard Work can be simply stated as an outline on the way you do things. It is very similar to determining a budget. A budget does not save you money it just allows you to see where the money is going. It allows you to make choices. Standard Work does the same thing. It allows you to make choices. So, the first step is to accept that we will continue to do our Standard Work but have the ability to make choices to implement something new and to allocate time and a budget if necessary to the initiative.

My preferred method of learning is utilizing an A3. If you missed Claude Perrone, the Agile Sensei talk on A3s, I have included a link to a blog post that discusses A3s, Why A3, Why Now in Lean Thinking? Utilizing an A3 will give a structured format for putting your thoughts together and outlining a course of action. Download an outline of a Problem Solving A3.

The work on the A3 should have started before you went to the conference with an outline of the purpose for going and the expectations from both a personal and an organizational perspective. If you did not do that, you can do it in retrospective.

Next determine what you learned from the conference. If you went as a group, I would encourage the entire group to be present for this step. Outline all the different thoughts and how they may apply to you organization.

Can any of these thoughts be completed simply by the stroke of a pen, something that does not require a change in culture? They may be items that are can be taken care of by a simple budget allocation, a new piece of equipment, etc. Separate these thoughts and evaluate them in your next strategic meeting or in the conference overview meeting.

Let’s get back to that cultural part, the difficult part. You have all heard the saying that “Cultural eats Strategy for Lunch.” The first thing you must realize is that you may have come back from the conference with great ideas and breakthrough thoughts. However, there is an existing culture that is going to eat all of them in one big gulp. You may even be the person that swallows the whole thing as you get tied up in all your Standard Work once again. So don’t try to change the org structure or how management thinks. Create a few wins first.

Do you have one takeaway from the conference that you are passionate about? Can you take that passion and demonstrated to the rest of the team? This should be a team exercise, try it out and see what others think.

It is best to take one initiative; one thought (not necessarily the easiest) and focus on this. Ideally, the initiative should be tied to the current strategic direction of the organization. It is your responsibility to clearly define the Why to Leadership. If you cannot, you may want to rethink and choose another initiative. The important thing is to get agreement on one single item. After doing this, set your goal with a measurement and a time. State the current state and the goal (future state) by a certain time.

In addition, you should have the power to spearhead or at a minimum be a significant participant of the implementation. Stay away from discussing the How. The how should be the responsibility of the implementers or the team. Leadership has the power to veto the how. If you are familiar with the Lean term, Catchball, this a good time to play.

I am going to focus my blog on the subject of “Turning your Conference Learning into Action” for the balance of the week. This is an outline of this week’s discussion.

Related Information:
Does Lean create Innovative Companies?
Lean Software & Systems Presentation – Business901
4 Disciplines of Execution – Lean Simplified

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Daniel Jones is a management thought leader and advisor on applying lean, process thinking to every type of business across the world. He is the founding Chairman of the Lean Enterprise Academy www.leanuk.org in the UK, dedicated to pushing forward the frontiers of lean thinking and helping others with its implementation.

Related Information:
Defining the Roles of Lean IT
When Standard Work and Customer Focus come together
The Difficulty of Mastery = The Difficulty of Lean
A Collaborative approach to Value Stream Mapping

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After talking to Dan, I reviewed the 5 basic principles of Lean:

1. Identify Value
2. Map Value Stream
3. Create Flow
4. Establish Pull
5. Seek Perfection

I certainly found an interesting relation to how I apply them from an organizational standpoint and how I could use them to improve my day. Dan gave a few tips and encouraged me to find the root cause of several of my most nagging problems. I can’t say the choices were easy but I was certainly able to address them and make decisions accordingly. Now, if I can only sustain it!!!

I reviewed the book in this blog post: How do you handle inputs into your life? and there is a written excerpt from the podcast, Can you Lean yourself?.

Related Information:
Jim Benson’s Personal Kanban
Successful Lean teams are iTeams
Kaizen is Always Individual
4 Disciplines of Execution – Lean Simplified

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Daniel Jones is the co-author, with James P. Womack, of the influential, best-selling management books:
The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production
Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated
Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together
Seeing the Whole Value Stream.

Dan will not disappoint you in this podcast. Though he is firmly rooted in the principles of Lean, you may be surprised by his forward-thinking and interpretation.  An excerpt can be read in this blog post, The Challenge of Lean with Dan Jones.

Download Podcast: Click and choose options: Download Here  or go to the Business901 iTunes Store.

Related Information:
Has Lean Thinking fallen short on the Demand Side?
Thinking Back from the Customer –Lean Summit 2011
4 Disciplines of Execution – Lean Simplified
Defining the Roles of Lean IT

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The authors provided compelling examples ranging from a variety of companies.  Fujitsu, a leading service company for technology, has transformed the way call centers solve problems— learning how to eliminate the underlying cause of current problems rather than fixing them again and again. Tesco’s lean provision systems have enabled the company to emerge as the leanest, highest-quality, and best-managed retailer in Europe.  An extremely successful car dealership has adopted lean principles to streamline its business, making for dramatically reduced wait time, fewer return trips, and greater satisfaction for customers— and a far more lucrative enterprise.

Are all Lean organizations implementing these practices on the consumption side? Has Lean crossed that bridge from supply to the demand side? Alan Mitchell, co founder of Mydex and Crtl-Shift presents “Responding to the Empowered Consumer” at the Lean Enterprise Academy’s annual conference “Lean Summit 2011 – Solving Business Problems” I think he has a few answers why Lean Thinking on the demand/consumption side has fallen short.

The entire presentation is interesting. You can choose to start at the 20:00 mark to review only the part on Lean Solutions.

Related Information:
Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together
Does Lean Marketing deliver what the customer wants?
Do you understand where demand comes from?
In your Organization, who is responsible for Demand?

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Daniel Jones is a management thought leader and advisor on applying lean, process thinking to every type of business across the world. He is the founding Chairman of the Lean Enterprise Academy www.leanuk.org in the UK, dedicated to pushing forward the frontiers of lean thinking and helping others with its implementation. Dan is my guest on the Business901 podcast next week and this is an excerpt from the podcast., The Challenge of Lean with Dan Jones.

If you take this approach and view your product or service as an enabler of customer value a different world opens up for you. Companies like Tesco, Amazon, Apple and others not mentioned like John Deere, P & G, Crayola and Mar’s M & M’s have re-invented themselves by understanding value in use.

I love the mention of a Standardized Learning Cycle! Hmm! As I enjoy saying, there is not anything more important than the ability to learn from your customers at a faster rate than your competition!

Related Information:
The Starting Point for Lean Sales and Marketing
Looking for a Game Changer, Start Underperforming!
3 Tips on achieving Fast, Effective, Sustainable change
Does Lean Marketing deliver what the customer wants?

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Joe:  Lean is leaving the four walls of the factory. As Lean moves into knowledge fields, I personally think waste reduction thinking is a burden on it. Everybody starts to look at that first rather than the collaborative learning aspect of it. I think Lean’s strength and growth is collaborative learning. That’s one of the secrets of lean. Is there a way to present that to people, better than what has happened in the past?

Dan:  “There are some obstacles in that kind of environment that make it hard for people that want to grasp this. The first obstacle is that we are knowledge workers, we don’t want to have people standardize what we do. We are creative folks. We got away from that factory environment where we just do the same thing over and over. So the idea of standardization is an anathema. However if you look at any work, particularly design work or transaction processing work, a lot of it actually is fairly similar and routine. Also that’s where the problems are. If you can standardize those routine tasks actually what you end up doing is freeing up time for the creative tasks. So once people see that, they switch their views and think, well the standardization not of everything but of the routine and getting the hassles out of the routine that really makes my life better.

That’s one obstacle. You can’t tell people that standardization leads to creativity but actually it does. That’s what people discover. And in the end, you ask them after they’ve done a bit of this, and improve their lives, where they’d like to go back and they always tell you, no you’re kidding. Now it is so much better. So that’s one way in. The other way in, in that kind of work too is that people are typically working on too many projects at once and so there is lots and lots of changeovers going on.

They are typically working ahead of the customer or the user specifying what they actually want. So there is a tremendous amount of confusion as to what the actual task, the actual problem that you are trying to solve is. That just generates a tremendous amount of unnecessary work that people are happy to do but actually isn’t creating any value for the customer and it’s not always easy to see which work is really work and which work is actually going to lead to something tangible for the customer.

The thing about the construction industry for instance, in the construction industry the business model is such that the contractors actually make money on the changes. They don’t actually want the customer to really specify in detail exactly what the building is going to look like, because they are bidding low to get the business anyhow, and they want the customer to make changes so that they can then charge a hell of a lot for the changes, and that’s where they make their money.

There is a similar aspect in IT systems as well. Partly we are trying to always sell prototypes that are not fully developed and get the customer to pay for the development part but also because the customer is not knowledgeable at what the capabilities might be, and because it takes too long to develop these systems and type of things needs change, this all adds a tremendous amount of confusion. So in IT development I would say you don’t start until the very last moment when the customer has done all the specifying they want, until they are really clear what they want.

Then don’t work on anything else until you finish it. So you have all the information you need, work on it, completely, uninterruptedly, until it’s finished. That will end up with less work per project and much better customer satisfaction. So you just got to start looking at the workflow and the type of work and the influences on that work in a slightly different way.”

Listen to next week’s Business901 podcast as we explore the future of Lean!

Daniel Jones is the author, with James P Womack, of the influential, best-selling management books:
The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production
Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated
Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together
Seeing the Whole Value Stream.

Related Information:
Defining the Roles of Lean IT
When Standard Work and Customer Focus come together
The Difficulty of Mastery = The Difficulty of Lean
A Collaborative approach to Value Stream Mapping

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Steve Bell, the founder of Lean IT Strategies LLC. Steve is a Lean Enterprise Institute faculty member, Shingo Research Prize winning author, and Lean IT pioneer. A recent blog post, When Standard Work and Customer Focus come together contains an excerpt from the podcast.

For more than twenty five years, Steve Bell has delivered a balance of Lean, business process improvement, and management consulting services. Steve published Lean Enterprise Systems: Using IT for Continuous Improvement helping to introduce the emerging discipline of Lean IT. Steve and his partner Mike Orzen later published Lean IT: Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Transformation.

Steve is on of the keynotes at the upcoming, North American Lean IT Summit, bringing together a community of lean and agile practitioners and thought leaders from around the globe.

Related Information:
Kanban Evolution with Anderson
Kanban, could we call this podcast anything else?
Lean Kanban lessons from a Software Developer
Lean Software & Systems Conference

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The 4 disciplines have been slightly updated in the book and can be summarized:

1. (Plan) Focus on the Wildly Important (WIG): Execution starts with focus. Focus on the one or two goals that will make all the difference, instead of giving mediocre effort to dozens of goals.
2. (Do) Act on the Lead Measures: Apply a disproportionate amount of energy to the activities that drive these lead measures. In this way, your team is creating the present while focused on the WIG.
3. (Check) Keep a Compelling Scoreboard: If you know the score all the time, people will be engaged.
4. (Act) Create a Cadence of Accountability:  A frequent recurring cycle of accounting for past performance and planning to move the score forward. Great teams operate with a high level of accountability.

One of my takeaways from the book was this statement: “Accountability means making the personal commitments to the entire team to move the scores forward and then following through in a discipline way.’ Closely resembling a past blog post, Kaizen is Always Individual.

Never understood why there had never been a book published and was excited to see the material finally in print. This is a video introducing the 4 Disciplines of Execution by Franklin Covey. It illustrates the frustration that most leaders experience when trying to execute on their strategy.

I have followed this program since its inception and attended workshops more than once. This has been a foundational tool for me and any client associated with me. Since 2004, I have routinely listened to the audio of  ‘The 4 Disciplines of Execution for reinforcement. I think the book will greatly assist organizations in developing and executing their strategic objectives. If you can’t tell by now, I highly recommend the new book, The 4 Disciplines of Execution.

Related Information:
Evolution of Standard Work in my Sales and Marketing
Execute after the Kaizen Event
Kanban made easy with Coveys 4Disciplines

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In the podcast, we started out focusing on Lean IT but it evolved into a much broader discussion. Steve has a knack of taking the complicated and making it simple. A rare quality that I typically find only in the most knowledgeable practitioners. This podcast is suited for anyone thinking about continuous improvement.

Download Podcast: Click and choose options: Download Here  or go to the Business901 iTunes Store.

For more than twenty five years, Steve Bell has delivered a balance of Lean, business process improvement, and management consulting services. Steve published Lean Enterprise Systems: Using IT for Continuous Improvement helping to introduce the emerging discipline of Lean IT. Steve and his partner Mike Orzen later published Lean IT: Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Transformation.

Steve is on of the keynotes at the upcoming, North American Lean IT Summit, bringing together a community of lean and agile practitioners and thought leaders from around the globe.

Related Information:
Lean Marketing Creates Knowledge for the Customer
Lean Marketers concentrate on SOAR vs. SWOT
Will the Mvp crush the Lean Startup?
Lean Thinking: Prototype early and often

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Joe:  Does it help to be practicing Lean in other areas to start practicing lean IT?

Steve Bell:  “That’s an interesting question. I have a new book coming out here in just a few months. Dan Jones who was co-author with Jim Womack of Lean Thinking and a couple of other books really has helped define the practice of Lean. He’s the foreword author for this new book of mine. Dan and I spent quite a bit of time talking about Lean in the context not just of IT but in the context of other industries. What Dan had to say about this was fascinating. He said he’s seen, over the last 20 years or so, Lean has moved well beyond manufacturing. It’s moved into healthcare and financial services and transportation and retail and distribution. And every time Lean moves into a new area, a new domain, a new industry sector, it manifests slightly differently. The Lean you would see in a hospital looks different in many ways than the Lean you would see in a manufacturing floor or a retail environment.

But when you get right down to it the principles of Lean are the same. It’s about collaborative learning. It’s about speed. It’s about quality. It’s about waste reduction. Those basic principles are the same.

What he has concluded and what I have concluded is you need to create a framework for the people who are actually doing the work to come together, figure out what the work is to be done. Where’s the value? Where’s the waste? And iteratively, through experiments, find ways to do it better and better. Each time you learn. You go through a cycle of learning. You improve the process and at the same time you understand more about the subtleties about the process and that’s where the paradox of Lean emerges. As you’re standardizing something you’re also gaining insights into it which leads to creativity and innovation.

Many people react to standard work thinking that you’re just turning people into robots. What you’re actually doing is you’re helping people, removing the drudgery and the repetitiveness from the work, making the work flow more smoothly and quickly, which frees up peoples valuable time and energy to figure out ways to do the work better and to do new kinds of work.

I think that’s the real magic of Lean whether it’s in IT or any other industry. When you see a team really get it and start to think and act like a team with a focus on the customer and they own the product, they own the process, they own their relationship with the customer, then the role of management isn’t so much a directive role or a controlling role but the role of management is to help remove the obstacles in the teams way. That’s when you have high performance, self directing teams that really start to energize the company. When that happens that’s where the momentum comes from.’

Joe: “I think Steve nails it in his answer. His reference to when Standard Work and Customer Focus comes together for a team and allows management to work on enabling work for the team versus managing the team is incredibly insightful. This upcoming podcast is one that you do not want to miss.”

About Steve: For more than twenty five years, Steve Bell has delivered a balance of Lean, business process improvement, and management consulting services. Steve published Lean Enterprise Systems: Using IT for Continuous Improvement helping to introduce the emerging discipline of Lean IT. Steve and his partner Mike Orzen later published Lean IT: Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Transformation.

Related Information:
Traditional vs. Emerging Thoughts on Pricing
Does Lean Marketing deliver what the customer wants?
Do you understand where demand comes from?
Using Agile in Management

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In this Business901 podcast, Ari discusses his latest book A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Being a Better Leader. The book includes “Secrets #19-29″ of the Zingerman’s Experience, including essays on the Energy Crisis in the American Workplace, Servant Leadership, Stewardship, why everyone’s a leader, Zingerman’s Entrepreneurial Approach to management, and Ari’s approach to Anarcho-Capitalism.

Download Podcast: Click and choose options: Download Here  or go to the Business901 iTunes Store.

In the book series, Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading, part 1 offered up the “secrets” behind Building a Great Business, and now part 2,  takes a look at the leadership style that has helped make Zingerman’s such a special place to work and to eat.  While everything in the book draws on what Ari and others have learned and live at Zingerman’s over the three decades since the Deli first opened back in 1982, all of the material is totally applicable to organizations of all sizes and scopes—it is, as Ari says in the introduction, leading towards a new way to work.

Related Information:
How Zing Training Started! -
PDCA Cycle of Zingerman’s Deli
Continuous Improvement Sales and Marketing Toolset
In love with your products more than your customers?

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