Leading with Lean

An Experience-Based Guide to Leading a Lean Transformation

Philip Holt

• Publisher: Management Impact Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9789462761582
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Philip Holt is Head of Operational Excellence, Accounting Operations at Philips, and tells us exactly what Lean Leadership is, how we can learn to apply it and how you can convince the workplace never to settle for anything less than excellence.

We also learn how to redefine our leadership style and how to identify and eliminate wasteful activities within the company. This way you can recognize, realize and retain the ideal situation. In Leading with Lean, Philip Holt shows us the best ways to arrange a high-performance organization and gives us simple tools and insights for each leader to aspire to greatness, for themselves and for their teams.

1. Introduction

The metaphor of the lone violinist

In 2007 the Washington Post undertook an experiment,1 where they asked one of the world’s most famous violinists, Joshua Bell, to play at a Washington metro station, the L’Enfant Plaza Station. Just three days earlier he had played to a sell-out audience at Boston’s Symphony Hall and even mid-range tickets for his performance had sold for at least $100 per ticket.

On this particular day Joshua played some of his most celebrated pieces, over a period of 45 minutes, as more than 1,000 commuters passed him by, yet only seven people stopped to listen for even a minute (the maximum was three minutes) and only 27 gave money. Everyone else was simply too busy to stop. Outside of the context of his usual performing environment, he was not recognised and his talent unappreciated. He earned just $37.

When we look at what happened in this situation, it is easy to dismiss this as due to the busy lives and tight schedules of the many commuters who passed by Joshua that day. However, if his performance had been publicised in some way, and general knowledge had got around that he was playing there that morning, I’m certain that a crowd would have formed and that people would have taken the time to listen to his performance.

In fact, what I believe happened is that no-one recognised the quality of the artist available to enhance their morning commute and to provide them with a boost to their daily wellbeing. Had they known who the performer was, and the world-class status that he carries, I’m positive that many of them would have stopped, accepting the short-term impact on their schedule to benefit from the cultural enrichment on offer, along with the ‘bragging rights’ around the water cooler later that day. However, with the exception of the few who stopped for a fleeting moment, the vast majority were unwilling to take the risk of stopping and interfering with their schedules, even if this might have provided them with a very tangible benefit.

When we look at the experiment from that perspective, we could easily be critical of the people who failed to stop, suggesting that, if only they would look around in the world occasionally, they could have enhanced their lives by taking advantage of an opportunity to experience the music of an expert violinist. However, in the article there were two quotes that can provide us with an alternative perspective:

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If a great musician plays great music but no one hears...

was he really any good?

– Gene Weingarten, the author of the article

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At the beginning I was just concentrating on playing the music.

I wasn’t really watching what was happening around me...

– Joshua Bell

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Linking this article to the purpose of this book, it has, for me, become a metaphor for being a Leader of Lean Transformation, in that it can sometimes feel like you are this lone violinist, an expert (as far as anyone can claim to be) in the field of Lean Thinking, perhaps able to provide the organisation with a new way of working, providing the opportunity to become world-class but with everyone too busy to listen.

However, just as with Joshua Bell and the Washington Post’s experiment, if you have not established the context and a compelling reason for the ‘audience’ to listen to you, then your organisation will continue with their daily business regardless and you will remain unheard. If you simply concentrate on playing your tunes: running Kaizen events, Lean projects, training courses, etc., without observing what is happening around you, it is likely that you’ll be oblivious to the lack of real change that is occurring, until it’s unfortunately too late.

The original lone violinist

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Taiichi Ohno

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On 29 February 1912, a child was born who would become one of the world’s least well known revolutionaries. That child was Taiichi Ohno and, had he revolutionised medicine, communication technology or the arts, he would most likely have been far better known than he is today.

However, Ohno-san revolutionised first the Toyota Motor Corporation and then, as a result of the success they achieved through the system he developed, the whole automotive industry and subsequently industry as a whole. As a result, he has a very respectable esoteric recognition but it is much more modest than I believe that it ought to be.

Nevertheless, for those of us for whom excellence through Lean Thinking is admired, Ohno-san embodied the traits that the Lean Leader must have in order to be successful:

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– Respect for people

– Integrity

– Discipline

– Purpose

– Stamina

– Humility

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There are many stories about Taiichi Ohno and he is generally credited with the creation of ‘Ohno Circles’ and of establishing ‘5 x Why’ within the culture of Toyota. However, one of my favourites is about his influence on the development of SMED (single minute exchange of dies).2

Impossibility leads to new ideas

In the 1960s, Toyota’s changeover times for their 1,000-tonne press machines was between two and four hours and whenever a changeover took place the entire line had to stop, which led to lower production. At the time, Volkswagen was performing their changeovers in less than two hours, so Toyota set the goal of doing the same and, with the help of Shigeo Shingo, they were able to reduce changeover time from four hours to one hour.

Despite this incredible improvement in changeover time, Taiichi Ohno said the following:

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Now reduce the changeover time to less than 10 minutes!

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Shigeo Shingo and the team thought that challenge was impossible but, since they were all sufficiently intimidated by the determination of Taiichi Ohno, they went about trying to meet the challenge.

A concept that came out of this challenge was to attempt to transition all internal changeover time into external changeover time, leading to several innovations in the preparation and execution of changeover and, after some trials, experimentation and testing, the team was able to reduce the changeover time to seven minutes, then from seven minutes to three minutes.

According to Wakamatsu, this challenge and the team’s response led to two critical aspects of the Toyota production system:

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1. Single-minute exchange of die (SMED)

2. One-piece flow

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Ohno-san was determined that breakthrough thinking was required in order that Toyota could not only match their competitors’ changeover times but could smash through them and take a competitive advantage. To do this he had to play the lone violinist in his belief and commitment to this cause but, unlike in the Washington Post experiment, he could not play the tune on his own and instead had to engage with the Team and utilise their knowledge, skills and expertise to achieve the goal. They understood the purpose, respected his authority to challenge the status quo and, together, delivered a world-class performance. The lone violinist started to form an orchestra.

Being heard

It should now be clear that whilst the Lean Transformation Leader should be a lone violinist in terms of their unconventional view and challenge to the st...