Creating an Effective Management System

Integrating Policy Deployment, TWI, and Kata

Patrick Graupp, Skip Steward, Brad Parsons

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429949067
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Culture sur le lieu de travail

"The decades of experience-based wisdom that Graupp, Steward and Parsons share will set you on a new path to a more joyful organization and the tangible results it will produce."

Rich Sheridan, CEO, Menlo Innovations; author of Joy, Inc. and Chief Joy Officer

"A fine book by skilled practitioners that integrates Kata and TWI, with Strategy Deployment in pursuit of an integrated management system. Well done, Skip, Brad and Patrick."

Pascal Dennis, president, Lean Pathways Inc.; author of Lean Production Simplified, Andy & Me, Andy & Me and the Hospital, Getting the Right Things Done, and The Remedy

"In this practical and engaging book, Patrick Graupp, Skip Steward, and Brad Parsons give a concise and extremely clear explanation of what systems thinking looks like in a healthcare setting. And they do so in a way that translates easily to any type of organization. Highly recommended!"

Alan Robinson, co-author of Ideas Are Free and The Idea-Driven Organization

Despite the vast library of knowledge on Lean tools and models, the majority of Lean implementations fail to sustain themselves over time for lack of a functioning management system. In turn, when organizations try to apply a prescribed, one-size-fits-all, management system they inevitably find that what works for others may not work quite as well in their unique situation. Putting the right pieces in the right places is the prime challenge for every organization and no two successful management systems will, or should, be the same.

This book provides and examines core principles that must be in place for an organization to find what an effective management system should constitute for them. It outlines key elements and how they work together as a necessary system to achieve overall success.

Based on their extensive experience with organizational development and hands-on leadership in policy deployment, TWI and Kata, the authors describe their own journey in helping organizations discover and develop systems that function like well-designed and smooth-running machines while capturing the humanistic aspects of the foundational skills that emphasize the inherent synergy of the system. Readers will learn to help their own organizations "connect the dots" between the various pieces of Lean methodology and effectively create their own management systems that ultimately fulfil customers' needs and expectations.

1

Defining Organizational Purpose

Chapter 1

How Systems Function Smoothly

Let’s start our discussion of management systems by asking the question, “What elements should we put into play in the system?” If a system, by definition, is “a set of connecting things or parts forming a complex whole,” then putting the correct pieces in the correct places should be a unique challenge, and no two successful management systems would, or should, have the same combination of components. Finding just the right “recipe” for success is what every enterprise seeks. How we think about this puzzle is critical – do we assume there is one correct answer and undertake a fruitless search for that panacea, or do we recognize that we don’t know the answer, because no one ever does, and that we must learn as we go along?

One of the earliest criticisms Toyota managers from Japan had when they saw the American deployment of the vaunted Toyota Production System (TPS), what is more generally called Lean, was that Americans focused solely on “tools” while ignoring the most important part of TPS, the people and their culture. Art Smalley, an expert on TPS who worked and learned at Toyota in Japan, tells the story of an early group of American disciples who, after studying a kamishibai style production control system using color coded cards at a Japanese Toyota plant, went to great lengths to replicate the same system in their home plant in the United States. When they returned to Japan the following year for a follow-up tour, they were surprised to see that the system they had struggled so diligently to implement at home was no longer in use at the Japanese plant. “We’ve moved on to something else,” the Toyota workers explained. What the frustrated Americans failed to understand was that the tools, in and of themselves, were not the important thing. They were not the “secret” to how to successfully run a plant. What they missed was the culture of continuous refinement of the process, a culture that is a moving target, always evolving.

Over the last five years, Skip and Brad have been instrumental in applying Lean style thinking and practice to a hospital system in the mid-South; when another large and famous hospital’s Lean experts were touring one of their facilities, Skip was asked, “Where is your Value Stream Map?” Skip replied that they did not have a Value Stream Map, to which one of the experts, incredulously, countered, “How can you have a Lean system without a Value Stream Map?” Skip told him that in his facilities, where they didn’t really use the word “Lean,” that they were experimenting with different pieces in their management system that made sense and worked well together. The Value Stream Map was not one of them in that department at that time.

Every organization is unique, and there is no “success formula.” We can experiment our way forward finding components that work effectively within the context of our own history, culture, style, and circumstances: Amazon only hires people who are highly skilled in their specialties, while Toyota looks mainly for people who have a work attitude that matches the culture and then teaches them the skills they will need to do their jobs. The two companies have different management systems, and both are successful at how they manage. What is more, that formula is always changing. What worked last year, the kamishibai card system of random audits and checks, for example, will not always be the best tool as our management system evolves and discovers or develops new means of accomplishing the same goals.

However, while the structural patterns of successful organizations may differ and change over time, there exist common guidelines on how management systems function smoothly and effectively. In our Gear Train Model, which we looked at in the Introduction, we saw how certain principles of gear trains (e.g., proper lubrication) always apply, no matter what the machine is designed to do on whatever scale. In human systems as well, certain principles guide the success of the overall system and must be followed.

Based on Principles

Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Principled Centered Leadership, told us, “There are three constants in life … change, choice and principles.” As human beings, we have the freedom to choose how we react and adapt to the change that is constantly taking place around us, but the key to our success will be based on whether our choices are guided by principles. Covey explained that principles are like lighthouses, we don’t break them, we break ourselves against them. On the other hand, when we use them well, they help us to steer safely around the rocky coastlines of life. And, like the Law of Gravity, they are always true. When we attempt to defy the Law of Gravity, it does not end well.

The following principle is, we feel, relatable and instructive for all: Mutual relationships only survive when there is mutual benefit. Let’s look at what makes this a “law of (human) nature.” How many of us have a relationship, be it personal or professional, in which we feel we are giving everything and getting nothing, or not nearly enough, in return? How long will that relationship continue? Even if the relationship is necessary (“I need this job!”), there will always be negative repercussions, usually in the form of attitude and behavior, from the person who feels wronged. In a family, in a business, in a community, or in a friendship, whenever we depend on mutual relationships to fulfill our life expectations, we must consider the needs of others in addition to our own. When we go against this principle, we go down a path of disappointment and failure. That’s what makes it a guiding principle of life.

We must follow specific principles when making the selection of elements for a management system. If your principle, your guiding “truth,” is “People are lazy and must be forced to work” (aka: Theory X), then your management system will reflect some sort of authoritarian command-and-control structure with its associated tools and programs. If your principle is “People are responsible and want to do a good job” (aka: Theory Y), then your management system should, if you really want to live this principle, reflect a more engaging and participative style of leadership. Your management system, and what pieces you put into play in your management system, will embody the principles by which your organization lives.

Successful companies strive to live by principles that guide the daily actions taken within their management systems. For example, Amazon defines their Leadership Principles¹ as:

■ Customer Obsession

■ Ownership

■ Invent and Simplify

■ Are Right, A Lot

■ Learn and Be Curious

■ Hire and Develop the Best

■ Insist on the Highest Standards

■ Think Big

■ Bias for Action

■ Frugality

■ Earn Trust

■ Dive Deep

■ Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit

■ Deliver Results

¹ Company website: www.amazon.jobs/en/principles.

These principles “are integral to virtually everything that we do at Amazon,” according to an Amazon manager, and “they have served as a constant that everyone can use to calibrate and measure against.” This has been especially critical, he explained, as the company has grown with rapid speed over the past five to six years. Once the organization grows beyond the “line of sight” of leaders at the executive and director level, even at the senior manager level, it depends on these core principles to keep everything moving in the right direction. What is more, Amazon uses its Leadership Principles as a basis for assessing new-hire candidates as well as a key component of its performance assessment and rigorous promotion process.

This book will focus on how principles are applied in the management system to ensure that it is working in alignment with the laws of nature, like the Law of Gravity. In other words, the book will look at how we design and operate a management system, starting with putting the right pieces in place, so that it follows the principles we follow. If we had long and in-depth experience working at Amazon, we could write a book on how to create a strong management system following the Amazon principles shown above. But our book must be based on what we believe in and follow. So, first, we must state our beliefs, best reflected by the 10 Shingo Guiding Principles²:

■ Respect Every Individual

■ Lead with Humility

■ Seek Perfection

■ Embrace Scientific Thinking

■ Focus on Process

■ Assure Quality at the Source

■ Flow & Pull Value

■ Think Systemically

■ Create Constancy of Purpose

■ Create Value for the Customer

² Gerhard Plenert, Discovery Excellence: An Overview of the Shingo Model and Its Guiding Principles (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2018).

The Shingo Institute, famous for its Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence, which began in 1988, was named after Dr. Shigeo Shingo, who worked extensively as a consultant with Taiichi Ono and documented the processes and philosophy of the Toyota Management System. More recently, since 2008, the institute began focusing its attention on assessing organizational culture as a whole, not just tools and programs, “including all the interactions between the various functions of the organization.”³ They were searching for the answer to the big question, “How does one sustain excellence?” In the process of coming up with this expanded model, from which they arrived at the 10 principles, they fell upon three insights that directly tie principle-based behavior to the management system⁴:

Insight #1: Ideal Results Require Ideal Behavior

Insight #2: Purpose and Systems Drive Behavior

Insight #3: Principles Inform Ideal Behavior

Putting these insights together, we can see how, as leaders of our organization, we must create systems that drive the ideal, principle-based behavior that generates the ideal results we need to realize our purpose. One of our authors, Skip, is a Shingo Examiner. He and his fellow examiners, when they are called upon to do site assessments, look to see whether the target company’s management systems are in alignment with these 10 principles and whether their management systems are representative of the principles or working against them. When they are aligned with the principles, it is mor...