An Appreciative look at the Seven Signs of Value

In addition to my Tuesday Podcast this week with Paul Myerson, author of Lean Supply Chain and Logistics Management, I will host a Thursday podcast with David Shaked of Almond-Insight. David is a leading proponent of Strength-Based Lean Six Sigma. This is an excerpt of the podcast where we discussed this article, The Seven Signs of Value.

Joe: David, could you expand on the Seven Signs of Value and what you were trying to accomplish with it?

David: This is one of the things that I learned from AI. AI really emphasizes that what you ask, you get more of. If you start asking questions about wastes and trying to look for wastes in your system, you will find more waste and you will possibly even create new waste. I’ve used the seven wastes, or eight wastes, or there are so many versions of the tool, seven wastes so many different situations in the past. Once I embarked on the journey of AI I actually realized, wait a minute, am I actually setting myself up for failure? Am I creating more waste by asking about the waste and trying to look for it?

That led me to this train of thought which led to why don’t we actually look for where is the value? In all of the Kaizen events and everything that I have done in Lean, we very rarely looked at the value. Even when we identify where value is created we actually never even inquired how come we do it or what enables all that.

I started thinking about where is value created and how would I know that I’m creating value and that’s what led me to these seven signs of value. Which in a way it’s the flipside of the seven wastes but because you started asking about them, you’re generating more value. In a way, the opposite of defects which is one of the wastes, would be perfect outcomes.

Where in my process am I actually creating perfect outcomes? If you’re talking about excessive movement, where in my process are things placed in a way that don’t require that movement, that they are so close to each other that you don’t need to move things around.

All of these seven wastes can be translated. I actually wrote an article about it, which is available to anyone who wants it, which specifies these seven signs of value. How to look for value and how to find it? The conversations you’re having as you discovered more and more value, it’s a great conversation, it’s motivating, its engaging, and it gives people more idea on where else can they create value. Which is really what we’re after when we’re talking about Lean?

Joe: That’s so well said. We don’t go after what value we’re creating so often. We’re always looking for the non?value instead of promoting the value and that is the strength?based approach isn’t it?…..

David is holding a workshop in Toronto the week of June 18th.