Lean Leadership BASICS

Develop and Empower Lean Leaders to Sustain Continuous Improvement

Michael Meyers, Charles Protzman, Dan Protzman, Davide Barbon, William Keen, Cliff Owens

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781351651271
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Workplace Culture
• Index: Business

This book explains how to sustain lean, or, continuous improvement practices. It introduces the BASICS® lean leadership development path, combining the "human aspect" with published BASICS® lean tools. It lays out the methodology to empower, lead, and drive ongoing improvements in your business. The book includes engaging stories and case studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of shop floor management tactics, including visual management tools, gemba walks, standard work, time analysis, kanban, 5S, and more.

Chapter 1

The Leadership Development Path

DOI: 10.4324/9781315155227-1

Our Leadership Development Path (see Figure 1.1) represents the human aspect, or the “people part,” of our published BASICS^® Lean Implementation Model. The Leadership Development Path encompasses both the execution and operational excellence of an overall business management and delivery system. The philosophy is deeply rooted in the belief that by developing others from head to heart, we, in turn, develop ourselves. It is only by developing ourselves that we will continuously improve our processes and constantly enable the business to maximize its competitiveness.

Figure 1.1 BASICS^® Lean Leadership Development Path.

Source: BIG training materials.

Our primary job should be to continuously develop our people using the BASICS^® process-focused tools while treating profitability as the long-term measure of how we are performing. We start with learning the new thinking, tools, and interpersonal skills that we then deploy under the guidance of a coach. We follow up with practice, practice, and more practice, building it into “muscle memory” in order to sustain. This muscle memory is the intuitive and implicit guidance and control,¹ which starts with the individual and then needs to transcend to the organization.

The Leadership Development Path approach requires a major change in leadership behaviors and must be driven from the top. Even though the Leadership Development Path is a human-resource-based initiative, it is not necessary to be led by Human Resources (HR). In our years of experience, we’ve encountered many companies in which the HR Department seems to run independently from the rest of the business; in fact, sometimes we’ve seen the two actually working against each other. This misaligned “traditional HR Department structure” must evolve to play a more supportive role guided by the Executive Leadership Team to help develop this new system.

The thought process is, “We grow the business by growing our people,” which is embedded in the tools we discuss throughout the book. The path starts with the mantra “Customer First,” as well as Leadership’s role in creating the new organizational structure, which fosters trust, team-work, and self-reliance. This does not mean the traditional hierarchy is eliminated, as there is still a requirement for the “chain of command.”

We use our BASICS^® Lean Implementation Model toolset to develop the foundation to convert from batch production to one-piece flow wherever possible. The continuous leadership development “people piece” aligns with our BASICS^® model (see Figure 1.2). Following are the four components of our Leadership Development Path, along with the corresponding step in our BASICS^® model:

• Baseline—Teaching our team members’ self-reliance that is built on Learning to See Gaps and Waste.
• Analyze/Suggest—Teaching our team members accountability to improve business practices—which is based on Learning to Solve.
• Implement/Check—Developing our team members’ skills and putting the systems in place, which is based on Learning to Share.
• Sustain—This is built on continuous leadership development whereby we are Learning to Teach others, which helps develop ourselves. You don’t really learn it until you have to teach it.

Figure 1.2 BASICS^® Principles and Goals.

Source: BIG training materials.

This results in a highly efficient system whereby leaders develop leaders who deliver quality parts and services just in time to our customers at the lowest cost possible. The system is supported by the informal interconnections in the organizational structure and combined with leader standard work and what we call “scalable processes,” which are not person-dependent but, instead, are customer—and process-focused, flexible, and adaptable. They are constantly improving and growing with the business over time.

Following the Leadership Development Path becomes part of the scaffolding and an enabling constraint for business growth that helps us run and sustain the business. Our BASICS^® model requires the implementation of visual workplace management and organization including 5S, visual controls, visual displays, and mistake proofing (poka yoke) necessary to achieve top performance. It requires a new mental model with new leadership behaviors and tools as follows:²

1. Leader Standard Work: The structured daily routine that combines layered audits³ with visualization. It includes the standard work necessary to achieve increased productivity and is designed to elevate the performance of leaders who now must enforce accountability and discipline through training, coaching, and mentoring.
2. Modeling Behaviors: The leader must role model the desired behaviors and lead by example in response to the needs of the situation.
3. Actively Addressing Issues: The leaders must respond and escalate as needed whatever countermeasures necessary to highlight and correct problems with a goal to fix them so they never come back.
4. Developing Others: It must become part of the day-to-day execution of their leadership tasks and leader standard work.

Continuous leadership development cannot be supported or sustained by using traditional management systems and behaviors, which are typically results-driven rather than process-focused and through which people become “assets” that are always considered replaceable.

Endlessly chasing results-oriented key performance indicators can drive some of the craziest behaviors and unpredictable results, which we can attest to seeing firsthand around the globe. Solely driving results from the leadership level robs any inherent motivation for the manager to improve the process. Instead, this feeds a reactive, “shoot from the hip” culture we all refer to as “firefighting.” For most companies, the human aspect of the Leadership Development Path has not evolved; therefore, it requires the senior leadership to take the necessary steps to revamp or transform their culture to implement this type of behavioral change.

Customer First

Everything starts with the external customer (see Figure 1.3). The customer should be like the sun, the center of our universe,⁴ because without the sun, we cannot survive. We must keep the customer at the forefront of everything we do, even when they seemingly are not involved. It is important to design the new system to get both positive and negative feedback from the customer often and quickly. This is called the voice of the customer. Peter Drucker said, “Leaders should be asking five essential questions: What is our mission? Who is our customer? What does the customer value? What are our results? What is our plan?”⁵

Figure 1.3 Customer First.

Source: BIG training materials—Shutterstock.

We must design and build products and offerings the customers want to buy and sometimes don’t even know they need. We call these “unarticulated needs.”⁶ The challenge is, “How do we get the customers what they want, exactly when they want it (even if it was yesterday), and make it at the desired quality level for the lowest cost possible?”

Objective of the Enterprise⁷

“Why does any company exist? What is the reason for being in any business enterprise? Many people would probably answer these questions by saying that the purpose of a company is to make a profit. In fact, if I were to ask you to write down right now the principal reason why your companies are in business, I suppose that most of the answers would be something of this sort. But such a statement is not a complete idea, nor is it a satisfactory answer because it does not clearly state the objective of the company, the principal goal that the company management is to strive for. A company’s objective should be stated in a way which will not permit any uncertainty as to its real fundamental purpose.

For example, there are two ways of looking at that statement about profit. One is to make the product for a cost that is less than the price at which it is to be sold.

Selling Price − Cost = Profit

The other is to sell the product for a price higher than it costs to make.

Cost + Profit = Selling Price

These two views are almost the same—but not quite. The first implies a cost-conscious attitude on the part of the company. The second seems to say whatever the product costs, it will be sold at a higher price.

There is another fault that I would find in such a statement. It is entirely selfish and one—sided. It ignores entirely the sociological aspects that should be a part of a company’s thinking. The business enterprise must be founded upon a sense of responsibility to the public and to its employees. Service to its customers, the wellbeing of its employees, good citizenship in the communities in which it operates—these are cardinal principles fundamental to any business. They provide the platform upon which a profitable company is built.

The founder of the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, when he was starting his company, wrote down his idea of the objective—the purpose—of the enterprise. He put it this way. “We shall build good ships here; at a profit if we can—at a loss if we must—but, always good ships.” This is the guiding principle of this company and its fundamental policy. And it is a good one too because in a very few words it tells the whole reason for the existence of the enterprise. And yet inherent in these few words there is a wealth of meaning. The determination to put quality ahead of profit. A promise to stay in business in spite of adversity. A determination to find the best production methods.

Every business enterprise should have as its very basic policy a simple clear statement, something of this nature, which will set forth its reason for being. In fact, it is imperative that it should have such a fundamental pronouncement because there are some very definite and important uses to which it can be put.

We can only make or increase our profit by focusing on what the customer wants and then reducing our costs.“Reducing cost” does not mean “cutting costs” (e.g., laying people off) Instead, reducing costs means reducing the wastes in our processes because, as my sensei used to say, “Waste threatens all our jobs.”⁸ If we do not make a profit, or make enough profit, we will have nothing left to invest in the business … and it will not survive. The way we ensure our job security is by getting everyone in the company engaged every day.⁹

Customer First Quality

The following is from the 1948 CCS Industrial Management Training Manual:¹⁰

Andrew Carnegie wa...