Leading in turbulent times requires a deliberate shift from command-and-control towards a collaborative style of leadership. This may be easier for some than others. It requires a shift in mindset! The idea of collaborative leadership requires individuals at all levels take initiative and act in ways that supports the achievement of the vision, purpose and objectives of the enterprise. The freedom to take risk, to fail, to engage in constructive conflict, to participate in decision making and to experiment, learn and innovate. This is collaborative leadership.

Take the time to watch this informative video!

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Super Bowl Sunday is fast approaching, and America is ready for the big game! Burgers and brats for the grill and beer is being iced down all in preparation for the big event. Over 100 million Americans will tune in for the game, and you can bet, a great many of those will tune in from the comfort of a La-Z-Boy.

Since 1927, La-Z-Boy has been making recliners and furniture for people to ‘relax and enjoy’ the game in, on a global scale. They are dedicated and focused on lean principles to ensure their process meets and exceeds all quality expectations of their loyal fans.

Check out this quick video for a glimpse of La-Z-Boy.

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Roselinde Torres is a senior partner and managing director at the consulting firm, BCG. She works in the firm’s people and organization practice area. Watch her discuss what it really takes to be a great leader.

The post [VIDEO] What Does It Take to Be a Great Leader? appeared first on 6sigma.

For lean to be truly effective, it needs effective lean leadership to champion lean principles, offer guidance, and ensure that lean is being used to optimize the entire organizational system for value delivery. It requires a shift in mindset from that of a supervisor, to that of a teacher or coach. The most effective practitioners of lean leadership gently, by example, lead by ensuring that lean principles are being applied with the right goal in mind.

This is often easier said than done for some leaders. You know who they are. Micromanagers with hair-trigger tempers that run roughshod over employees in the name of productivity and results. They forget that the basic tenets of lean methodology are all about the employee or front line worker. Strength in lean depends on employees being empowered to act and be supported by lean leadership. The concepts of heavy-handed micromanagement and lean methodologies are just not compatible.

The role of lean leadership is that of a coach. Coaches align their teams around a common goal. They arm their teams with the tools for success, and encourage them to make smart decisions that will allow for sustainable, competitive growth. They give their employees more control over their work and over decisions about how work should be done, because they realize that the workforce is smarter than they are about the systems the team works on. Many enlightened organizations also find that, when empowered, the workforce can respond to situations more quickly. Empowering workers also means giving them the knowledge they need to take on the responsibility for decision-making.

Tips for Effective Lean Leadership

• Attend the Gemba – Be seen everyday and be involved. You cannot lead from your office. Spend time with employees everyday.
• Live the 5 Why’s – Understanding comes from asking why, not marking orders. Get down to the root cause and educate.
• Communication is the Key – Meet every day. It takes 10 minutes to ensure everyone is on the same page.
• Think in Value Stream – See your organization from the eyes of the customer. Focus the team on meeting takt time and when that has been met, redeploy the labor somewhere else.
• Notice and Prioritize – Pay attention and visualize the operation. What you overlook or fail to identify, is what you accept. Employees respond to what you see as important.

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Poverty in Africa is about the lack of basic human needs faced by certain people in African society. African nations typically fall toward the bottom of any list measuring small size economic activity, such as income per capita or GDP per capita, despite a wealth of natural resources.

In 2009, 22 of 24 nations identified as having ‘Low Human Development’ on the United Nations’ (UN) Human Development Index were in Sub-Saharan Africa. We know that 34 of the 50 nations on the UN list of least developed countries are in Africa. In many nations, GDP per capita is less than $5200 per year, with the vast majority of the population living on much less. In addition, Africa’s share of income has been consistently dropping over the past century by any measure. In 1820, the average European worker earned about three times what the average African did. Now, the average European earns twenty times what the average African does. Although GDP per capita incomes in Africa have also been steadily growing, measures are still far better in other parts of the world.

This video features Steve Bell at the Lean System Society Reactor Conference. Steve addresses the effectiveness of Lean thinking as supported by Lean4NGO.org.  The goal of Lean4NGO.org is to leverage the principles, systems and tools of Lean thinking to improve efficiency and effectiveness outcomes for those they serve.

View the video here:

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Lean Standard Work has become a major component of most Lean systems. This is fundamentally a lean-principled way for managers at all levels to execute their work. There is a natural push back from leaders about having their own standard work, but they should have at least 5-25% of their time spent on recurring and scheduled tasks, These tasks include staff meetings, Go and See activity, coaching/mentoring sessions, strategic planning, weekly email communications to team, scorecard metric collection and review, and more.

The centerpiece or focus of Lean Standard Work systems is the use of checklists. Checklists are a way for leaders to keep up with the work that is important, and remember what they need to complete. This includes meetings, key people to check in with, and monitoring of metrics or standards to ensure the systems are performing properly. When you start reviewing leadership calendars, you immediately notice the lack of white space.

Meetings and tasks are set aside in the calendar and that time is protected, but the problem is overbooking. Looking closely at these calendars, leadership can, typically, be double or triple booked for events on the calendar. This leaves a leader to make a hasty decision at the last minute on which meeting is most important, at the moment. The lack of white space on the calendar leaves leaders with no time to think, plan or problem-solve.  We are taught to never schedule our production lines, or our workers above 80% capacity, but somehow a leader with 125% capacity on their calendar is acceptable or considered a “badge of honor”? Some of the most critical tasks a leader can do are never planned for!  Without creating white space for these unplanned situations, a leader will become overwhelmed. This is part of the reason over 80% of new CEOs fail within the first 18 months!

Creating White Space

Leaders must have time to solve problems! That is what they are hired for. Organizations heavily depend on the ability of their leaders to think, problem-solve and plan. Otherwise, we tend to lead from the hip and make decisions that are not quality focused. This causes leaders to fall into a “firefighting” mode when they are trying to lead the organization to success. By creating white space, leaders start to make better decisions and actually can move the organization forward. Here are three tips leaders can use to make some white space in their daily schedule:

1. Prioritize & Focus: Prioritize where you need to focus your time to best create success for your organization.
2. Stay in Control: Make sure you stay in control of your calendar. Be clear with subordinates and assistants about priorities and that blocked time cannot be crossed. Block time to think, plan and problem-solve.
3. Delegate: Develop subordinates and empower them to make decisions on things that aren’t in your list of top priorities. As they grown and develop their skills and understand your priorities, they will become your most valuable assets. This is the heart of Lean, respect for people. If you are not growing the skills of your people, you will limit your ability to improve, and you will become the bottleneck in the process, as they will seek you out for all approvals.

Lean Standard Work Practice

Preserving white space can be a daunting challenge for some. Some leaders have been raised in an environment of reactionary leadership and have been known to triple-book a schedule. It seems to be what is expected and it is what they understand. The fact is, creating white space in your schedule will empower the leaders of an organization and make them much more effective. It can no longer be a “badge of honor” for leaders to have overbooked schedules, and their white space time is relegated to after midnight. Just like any other Lean practice, it is about habit of practice and discipline around standard work (see Toyota’s Manage for Daily Improvement training materials). Understand and focus your time on what is most important. Make time everyday to think, plan and problem-solve.

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Ready to Transition?

Veterans, are you ready to transition? That one single question strikes fear in the heart of more veterans than any other. Once the decision to transition from military service into the civilian work force has been made, there is a relief. The veterans now are able to switch focus and are generally excited about new opportunities. Then, one day, they get a numb feeling in the pit of their stomachs. The questions start flowing int heir mind about a thousand miles an hour! What am I going to do for a living? How am I going to compete? Do my skills translate into the civilian work force easily? This is about the time things start getting real for a veteran in transition. You’re cutting the cords from the military service and embarking on a new environment that is very much alien in every way. At this point, the first thing a veteran needs to do is take a deep breath and relax. Everything is going to be just fine, but you need to understand, you are now in  control of your future. It is time to do what you do best … take charge and be prepared!

Veterans Taking Charge

Now, we’ll say this, it isn’t going to be an easy process. Don’t fool yourself. But, you need to clearly understand that you have faced bigger and more significant challenges and have come out extremely successful. Veterans bring to the table so many qualities that employers are looking for, you have got half the battle won! As a service member, you understand the concepts of being on time, dressing appropriately, paying attention to detail and being committed to a goal. What you have developed in the military, new job seekers in the civilian sector are just developing and learning. You are well ahead of the pack. The next challenge you will face is translating your military service and skills into their civilian equivalent. During your transition, there are resources available to you to do just that. You will be able to easily translate the elements of your skills and training into meaningful civilian equivalent. Don’t disregard any training or experiences you have. Everything counts!

Take Advantage of Your Skills

One of the best situations right now for veterans is Lean Six Sigma. The practice of Lean Six Sigma in the Department of Defense is at the forefront. If you have the opportunity to be trained and work in Lean Six Sigma in the military, take advantage of the opportunity! The practice of Lean Six Sigma is based on excellence and continuous quality improvement. For a veteran, you practice those qualities on a daily basis. In the civilian workforce, Lean Six Sigma professionals are in ever increasing demand. If you are not already trained prior to your transition, enroll in a qualified and quality training program through a reputable provider to attain the necessary skills. When you couple your valuable military experience and personal discipline with the Lean Six Sigma, you will find yourself in a valuable position for an exciting civilian career. Veterans are the perfect candidates for the Lean Six Sigma practice, and transitioning veterans should seriously consider the opportunity for a career.

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Living the Fantasy

Voice of the Customer programs are crucial to the success of your business. The problem is so many think they know exactly what their customers think and feel. You have been in business for 30 years and do things the same way, that’s what your customers want. Are you sure about that? For many businesses, they are either disconnected from their customers or they live with rose colored glasses when it comes to the voice of the customer. Those same businesses are very quick to deal with a vocal, disgruntled customer. Immediately, they are showered with attention, promises and apologies, then a discount to make up for the upset. The customer walks out and everyone breathes a sigh of relief and pats each other on the back, thinking they have saved another customer. Truth be told, what you think just happened is probably not what the customer thinks just happened. This begs the question: do you really know what your customer thinks about you?

What They Really Think of You

Using a solid Voice of the Customer program, you are going to get to the core of what your customers really think of you. For some, it might just be a bit unsettling. Here are some facts you should keep in mind as you begin your journey down the road of truth:

• 78% of customers have walked out on a transaction because of a poor service.
• On average, loyal customers are worth more then 10 times as much as their first purchase.
• It takes up to 12 positive experiences to make up for one negative experience.
• 91% of frustrated customers will not continue to do business with you.
• 40% of customers expressed that if they could improve one thing, they would improve the human element of the service.

These facts are both enlightening and staggering to some. They should disturb organizations enough to happily engage in a viable Voice of the Customer program that is effective. The days of reactive customer service experiences are over. Your customers expect you to be proactive and anticipate their needs and exceed them!

Listening to the Voice of the Customer

The Voice of the Customer is a process used to capture customer expectations and opinions, then provide world class services and products. The key to a successful Voice of the Customer program is to be extremely proactive, not reactive. This will allow your business to grow with your customer base, anticipating their expectations. These expectations are both stated and unstated. A vibrant program will instill a sense of loyalty and satisfaction towards your brand, in a consistent manner.

Resources

Consider downloading our eBook titled Voice of the Customer and Critical to Quality. Shmula Pro membership provides access to 34 other eBooks and reference guides

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1. 46% of all new hires fail in the first 18 months. 80% of those failures are related directly to a poor culture.
2. It costs between 100% and 300% of a new hires annual salary to replace them when they quit.
3. 80% of this disengaged or unhappy are feeling that way because of their direct manager.

We hope that gave you a few things to reflect on while you take in the true impact on your organization of those numbers. The disturbing part is that this information is not new. It has been trending for years, and organizations continue to hide from the real issues or paste over them by throwing around money and promotions to appease the staff. Unfortunately, the failure of those efforts are starting to hit home with organizations and leaders. The overall point is that people don’t quit their jobs, they quit their managers. It’s time to embrace the facts and find a new approach.

The Lead with Respect model is a radically different approach that engages staff and shows them the way forward! The concept is made up of these elements: Go and See, Challenge, Listen, Teach, Support, Teamwork and Learn. We can learn these elements my keeping the following points in mind:

• Share – Honestly share the challenges facing the organization. Show what questions need to be answered.
• Listen – Listen hard and intently to the problems your staff faces. They are going to tell you what the challenges are, whether you like it or not. Be open.
• Teach – Be willing and open to teaching new skills that open up opportunity.
• Support Learning – Keep them engaged in “trying” and support their fear of the new and unknown.
• Teamwork – Keep the focus on the overall success and quickly break down departmental silos.
• Learn from Improvement Efforts – Instill and demonstrate the value of quality improvement efforts.

Practicing these Lead with Respect principles will create a more open and energetic work environment. Organizations with happy employees outperform their competition by 22%. Thats a significant advantage.

The mainstream approach to management is so deeply engrained that leaders tend to find it the most comfortable position to take. Get out of your comfort zone today. Understand that the true mission of a leader is to completely satisfy the customer, and to do that all your available resources must be onboard and working in complete harmony with each other. Finding that ideal sense of purpose is not impossible, but it all starts with you, the leader. You must embrace Lead with Respect.

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Self-development

This is one one in a series of 4 articles about Toyota’s Stages of Leader Development

Being a leader means that you’ll be responsible for driving the company forward or at least some part of it and helping those below you grow. However, a critical component of leadership (that often gets ignored by those comfortable in their positions) is the need to develop your own skills.

This is a critical component of Toyota’s kaizen as well, and it should be one of your top priorities when pushing the organization towards constant improvement. Just remember that this improvement starts with you.

Streamlining your own work

One of the best ways to ensure that you’re always on the right track to self-development is to avoid cluttering your workflow with unnecessary details. Ideally, you should have a completely standardized working environment, where you always know exactly where everything is. That way, you can occupy your mind with only what’s truly important, attaining new skills and distributing them down the chain.

Another way to look at this is that you should always strive to apply lean principles in your own work. Look for waste and remove it. Is there some process that you keep repeating on a daily basis, but can be automated or where waste can be removed? Are you wasting any time on daily communication that can be summarized in weekly or even monthly e-mails? It might only take a minute or less each day, but those little struggles can stack up incredibly fast and leave you cluttered with senseless details, never able to look up to the big picture.

Learn from others

If you’re not at the highest position in the organization, there is someone above you who can teach, coach and mentor you. It’s important for you to show an active interest in those coaching sessions, and take as much as you can from them. Ideally, you’ll want to establish a mentor-like relationship with one specific person.

Even if you’re the top leader of the organization, you can still find someone to guide you through the mess ahead of you, and to coach you how you can do something truly good with your current potential.

Don’t forget that those useful tips don’t necessarily have to come from someone above you either. Sometimes, an employee sitting below you in the hierarchy can give you some surprising insights. Don’t disregard them, and make sure that you always take as much useful information from the world around you as you can.

Challenge yourself

Last but not least, it’s important to remember that you’ll never be able to truly grow without challenging yourself constantly. If you never get out of your comfort zone, you won’t learn anything significantly different from what you already know, and you’ll stagnate. And with you, the organization will suffer as well.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should take unnecessary risks, or put yourself in a position where you can’t complete a task because you “bit off more than you can chew.” But by adding onto your work in appropriate increments (like training at the gym),  you should see some noticeable results in your ability to grow and learn.

Another way to challenge yourself is to ask others to rate your performance, and actually take their feedback into consideration. Many leaders let these comments slide past their ears unless they’re positive. Often the negative remarks from people who report to you can open your eyes to something critical about your way of working that you might have missed before. Never underestimate what you can learn from those below you, as we pointed out above, and always show them that you respect their input and value it.

Conclusion

As long as you’re willing to sweat and struggle along with everyone else in your organization, you’re going to see obvious results in your self-development. And as each individual makes improvements, the whole organization is going to grow and move in a positive direction.

Don’t ever fall into the trap of thinking that you’re in a position where you can’t improve anything else about your way of working. That’s a surefire way to limit your career. When you’re in a place where an entire organization depends on your thoughts and decisions, it’s a completely irresponsible attitude to have.

Read about the other stages of leader development at Toyota >>>

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Toyota’s 4 Stages of Leader Development

Toyota have made many contributions to the lean scene, and one can learn a lot from the way the company works. One of the more interesting ideas worth exploring is the company’s general approach to developing their leaders, and the important points they emphasize on in this process. The process is broken down into five stages, and it’s important to have a good understanding of all of them.

These 4 stages are explained in more detail in Jeffrey Liker’s book, The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership

• Self-development seek to improve self and skills

While it sounds self-explanatory, there are lots of finer nuances to the way one should approach their own personal development and growth. Identifying the correct opportunities for that is an important skill in itself, but a good leader must also be able to create the necessary space for this learning process.

This means that a good leader must not only improve their leadership skills, but their core learning abilities as well. This is not a very easy concept to master for some, which is why Toyota put so much emphasis on it in their leadership training.

• Developing others

Another important function of a good leader is to teach their employees and give them the necessary tools to rise up in the hierarchy. However, leaders must also be able to track the performance of their workers in an objective and accurate manner.

This is not meant to judge others, but rather to provide the leader with an adequate overview of how the company is currently moving forward, and what areas need to be addressed for improvement. If a particular department is showing signs of decreased productivity, this is often a problem of the leader themselves, not so much with the performance of the individual workers.

• Support daily Kaizen

Kaizen, the underlying philosophy behind Toyota’s leadership style, has close ties to the idea of continuous improvement. This means that it must be practiced regularly, ideally on a daily basis, otherwise there isn’t much point in applying it to the work of the company. The leader must coach their workers with a bottom-up approach, and must always retain their focus on the company’s improvement.

• Creating vision and aligning goals

However, focusing only on a bottom-up style of development can lead to problems quite fast, which is why it’s just as important to integrate a solid top-down development plan as well. The company must have a proper long-term vision, and its goals must be aligned with the current actions of all departments.

Additionally, the two development approaches have to be perfectly aligned. Often, top-down and bottom-up development can lead to some serious clashes if they’re not implemented properly, and the company has to prevent that in its roots.

Conclusion

It’s no secret that Toyota are one of the most progressive companies on the planet, and surprisingly, the key to their success is no secret either. They are quite open about the ideas that make their business work successfully, and the rest of the world has a lot to learn from the concepts implemented in their production facilities.

Mastering the five stages of leader development can be of huge benefit to any company, regardless of the field they’re involved in, and it’s an important part of the growth of any person in a leadership position.

If you liked to hear more about Toyota’s Leader Development, check out a related article from Jeffrey Liker >>>

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The Power of Filtering Feedback in Integrating Lean into an Organization

One of the most powerful assets a leader has at their disposal when running the organization is the feedback of their employees. Anyone dedicated enough to the working process should regularly have something to say about the situation, and this input is a critical resource that has to be used effectively.

However, a common problem that can arise is the improper analysis of the opinions coming in from those employees. In other words, not everything workers have to say about the current state of the organization will be valid, as they don’t always have the full picture relevant to the comments they’re making. The leader can take the opportunity to explain the full picture, which highlights a possible communication gap in their messaging to their employees.

On the other hand, sometimes a leader will also inevitably get duplicate feedback, as a certain idea might develop in different parts of the company independently. All in all, knowing how to filter all of this information, and how to tell the useful parts from the ones that can be discarded, is a skill that every good leader must possess.

Don’t jump into long discussions about everything that comes up

Silence is a common trait of good leaders. While communication with employees is obviously important, and a leader who’s perpetually quiet about their intentions can be a little off-putting, it’s not a very wise idea to discuss everything that gets brought up by employees in deep detail. This is a sure-fire recipe for wasting a lot of time, and you’ll also end up getting lost in a sea of opinions and ideas.

This doesn’t mean that you should ignore those attempts from your employees to communicate with you. The important thing is that you should take their feedback in, but only acknowledge it when there is something substantial worth discussing.

Leaders should also talk about non-business topics with employees, not just what’s going well or poorly. Showing interest in what the employee does outside of work will create an environment where they will be willing to talk openly and honestly in the future.

Set aside some time for improvement discussions

In any well-developed company, there will be some structure to the way employees give their feedback. The most common approach to this is to set aside some specific time for going through everyone’s opinions and issues, and ensuring that this time is enough for all employees to give at least a little feedback.

How frequent those meetings will be depends on the structure and size of your organization. Some companies can get away with doing them once a week or even month. In some cases, you’ll need to take on a more active approach, occasionally even with regular daily meetings when there are particularly serious issues that are to be discussed.

Skip-level meetings are becoming more popular, where a leader meets with the employees of one of their reports, essentially bypassing that manager. This lets the manager find out if they employee feedback is making it’s way up to them, or being blocked or filtered.

Regardless of the exact frequency or format you’ve chosen, the important thing is that you actually stick to your plan. Having to postpone or cancel meetings for whatever reasons can quickly kill the motivation of your employees to participate, and they might become less and less active in sharing their feedback.

Involve everyone in the feedback rating process

An interesting approach to the problem that can work especially well in larger organizations, is to have some system in place where employees can rate each other’s feedback, and promote ideas that they agree with. If employees like an idea, they can upvote it to increase the chance that it is implemented, or if they are opposed to the idea, they can down-vote it, so it has a less likely chance of being implemented.

This is often implemented through something like a messaging board, and it can have multiple positive effects on the communication within the organization. For example, duplicate opinions are no longer a problem in fact, they’re something you want to see, because the more people indicate that they agree with something, the more you should be paying attention to this issue as a leader.

It also helps to make everyone feel like their voice is heard and matters, which is ultimately what every good organization should be striving for. Even if someone’s opinion falls through and doesn’t get the traction they thought it would, at least that’s because a larger portion of the organization disagreed with the opinion, and not being blocked or ignored by a specific person.

Conclusion

Learning how to tell the good ideas from the bad ones is a critical skill for any organization leader, regardless of the scale of the company or other similar factors. The sooner you become an expert at sifting through the volumes of opinions you’re guaranteed to receive on a regular basis, the faster you’ll be able to see actual results in the productivity of the organization.

It will also help the company immensely in the long run by allowing it to invest time and efforts into ideas that all employees want to see realized. This has a compounding effect it boosts the productivity of the company, while also raising employee morale, which ultimately has the same effect.

What is the employee feedback system at your company? Tell us about it below in the comments…

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What Are the Differences between a Leader and a Lean Leader?

While many company leaders nowadays are aware that lean practices are great for continuous improvement and stable growth, far from everyone in such a position is clear on the exact meaning of what it takes to be a “lean” leader.

It’s not just about throwing a set of new rules and guidelines on the employees and calling it a day there’s a very specific set of skills that any good lean leader must possess in order to succeed, and push their organization forward.

Critical listening is key

Leaders are always subjected to a lot of feedback from their employees across various levels of the organization. It’s inevitable for someone in this position to get flooded with opinions and suggestions from multiple directions, and filtering that feedback becomes a critical skill.

Listening to everyone is simply impossible that’s one of the fastest ways to create a lot of waste in the leader’s work. As long as you take the time to ensure that the feedback you’re getting is actually relevant to the current situation, this will save a lot of effort for everyone.

Of course, employees also like to see that their feedback actually matters, which means that you’ll still want to pay attention to what they have to say, and get back to them about their request, even if it’s not feasible or unable to be implemented. The critical thing to take away here is that you simply shouldn’t automatically treat every piece of advice coming in as critical and requiring immediate attention.

If the feedback is coming from a couple layers below the leader, this identifies a potential problem. The employee may not feel comfortable going to their immediate leader, or has tried many times, but the issue hasn’t been resolved.  A lean leader will work to help mentor and coach their lower level manager, in order to be able to solicit and request feedback from their employees in the future.

It’s best if you have some systematic way for your employees to submit feedback for the company’s leadership. That way, everyone will feel encouraged to contribute to the evaluation process, and employees won’t feel pressured when they actually have something that they want to share. This also prevents feedback from getting lost or overlooked, and it increases visibility beyond the leader who initially got the feedback or idea.

Put yourself in their shoes

Another factor that separates a true lean leader from the rest is how well they can understand what their employees have to deal with on a daily basis. To achieve this, sometimes you’ll want to put yourself in an employee’s shoes for a while and see things through their eyes. While this sounds simple enough, it’s a skill that many leaders simply fail to grasp on a meaningful level.

Some employers have taken this concept to extreme lengths in the past, such as actually taking on the responsibilities of low-level employees for a while until they feel like they have a good grip on the situation. While this can sometimes produce good results, it can also create a lot of waste and shouldn’t be attempted by default.

In fact, these extreme situation is the norm for Toyota. They require their leaders to have worked on the factory and worked their way up the company, in order to properly learn how to manage their employees. All Toyota Presidents have spent their entire career at Toyota when they were named President.

Embrace your mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes. Leaders are no exception, and the difference between a bad leader and a good one is how they respond to those situations. A true lean leader will be able to take something useful from this kind of incident, and learn how to improve their work in the future. On the other hand, bad leaders will not only try to sweep the problem under the rug, but they may also try shifting the blame on others.

It should go without saying that this leads to the creation of a hostile working environment, and it’s really in nobody’s favor. As long as you are able to demonstrate that you welcome criticisms for your mistakes, and that you will improve the situation in the future, this is all your employees will need to see.

Things should work the same way when the roles are reversed. When an employee makes a mistake, they shouldn’t be punished or fired for it. Everyone should be given a platform to embrace their failures and show that they’ve learned something from them. Lean leaders assume people come to work to do a good job, but the process failed, and the process should be improved.

Conclusion

There is a huge gap between a lean leader and a traditional leader. A company with a strong lean leader in front will be able to make huge leaps of progress in their area of responsibility, with relatively little effort. This creates a situation where everyone will keep striving for continuous improvement when they see that their efforts aren’t wasted.

And in the end, a good lean leader should be able to transfer their skill set onto their employees effectively, allowing them all to follow in his/her footsteps a few years down the road.

The true measure of a lean leader is the long-term accomplishments of the employees they managed.

Have you worked for a leader that didn’t follow these lean leader principles? Add your comments below…

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Job Safety Training

The lack of safe working conditions is often one of the biggest hurdles companies have to overcome in improving their efficiency. And yet, it’s rare that one can see an organization putting the necessary attention into this until it’s too late. Taking up a preemptive approach, and dealing with job safety before it’s even become a problem, is one of the best ways to make sure your organization is run efficiently.

Focusing on safety also sends a strong message to your workers that you respect what they do. This will aid in future improvements, as they will realize that the improvement efforts are not just about saving money.

What Job Safety Training entails

While it’s often obvious what a company needs to do in order to comply with things like OSHA regulations, there are some subtler nuances to developing a rigid structure for training everyone and getting new employees up to speed.

Like everything else based on lean methodologies, Job Safety (JS) Training revolves around a constantly changing model. The organization must continuously evaluate the current state of their safety training, both with regards to past trends, as well as what employees are saying, and adapt that model accordingly.

Listening to feedback is critical here, as it concerns the safety of employees, and not just the productivity of the organization. Sometimes, it might seem like this feedback doesn’t make much sense in the context of the current situation. It’s common that low-level workers have a much better overview of some particular types of issues and hazards that can arise.

Tackling problems at the root

Once a potential issue has been discovered, it’s important to figure out where it comes from in the first place. Just because the organization manages to avoid a potential workplace injury once doesn’t mean that the problem should be swept under the rug.

It’s important to figure out what the root cause is as soon as possible, and deal with the problem from there. Otherwise, there’s no guarantee that the same problem isn’t going to come back later on.

Problems should be treated as showstoppers. In other words, as soon as something has been identified as an issue, it should block the execution of the general workflow until it’s been resolved. Sometimes this severely breaks the flow, and puts a halt on the company’s work for an extended period, but it’s much better than having an accident occur during a working day.

Training should apply to all ranks

Just because low-level workers might be the ones most prone to injury (due to the nature of their work), this doesn’t mean that higher-ups should be exempt from JS. It can actually be beneficial to get everyone on board in an equal capacity, as supervisors may be able to figure out where a problem is coming from better by utilizing their high-level overview of the company structure.

On that note, it’s also important to provide adequate training materials to all members of the organization. Sometimes it will also be appropriate to develop unique training sessions for those higher up in the chain of command, if their working conditions differ too much from those below them.

Once again, communication is key, and all feedback must be taken into consideration, no matter which level of the organization it originates from. If a worker is concerned with the way their superiors are being trained about safety, this should be taken into account.

Punishing or rewarding?

Deviations from the safety norms should be treated very seriously. How exactly the organization is going to address those problems depends on its own approach, and there are generally two ways to go about this.

The company can either punish those who stray away, or reward those who comply. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, but it’s generally better to take the more positive approach. Of course, depending on the circumstances, that might not be ideal. For example, when safety is absolutely critical, then the actions taken must be correspondingly severe.

Conclusion

One of the biggest mistakes an organization can make is to put off dealing with JS until it’s too late. The consequences can be severe. Considering how much trouble can be saved with just a little preventative action, it makes full sense to pay a great deal of attention to how employees are being taught to handle their safety.

And as with anything related to lean methodologies, the company’s safety training must be continuously improved, according to the data obtained in the process.

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Job Instruction Training

One of the most effective methods for getting new employees up to speed is the job instruction (JI) training method. It’s a systematic approach that deals with all important aspects of introducing a new member to the organization, and it can allow a company’s supervisors to figure out where the weak spots in their training are very easily.

Job Instruction is designed to develop basic stability and consistency of your processes (also known as standard work). This program teaches the method to instruct a worker how to perform a job correctly, safely and conscientiously.

With enough iterations of this model, the organization can develop a set of instructions that prepares their workers quickly and efficiently, and focuses on the exact aspects of the job that will be of interest.

The essential steps

The method is essentially broken down into four steps:

1. Preparation
2. Demonstration
3. Hands-on
4. Follow Up

Preparation

It’s very important that the supervisor not only outlines the nature of the job, and how to perform it correctly, but also clarifies the general purpose and motivation of the company itself. Employees must know what the organization as a whole is striving for, in order to succeed at their individual tasks.

Demonstration

The instructor gives a presentation of how to actually perform the specific job at hand, and lists all the intricacies that can come up in the line of work. While all parts of the JI method rely on gathering feedback from the new employee, this one in particular makes it very important to listen to what they have to say, and take notes for the future training courses.

Hands-on

The trainee must then be allowed to try performing the task themselves. In this phase, they will do just that, with proper supervision. How your company is going to implement this part is highly individual, but a common approach is to give the employee a more silent treatment during their attempt to perform the task.

In other words, the supervisor should minimize their interaction with the trainee at this point, in order to allow them to think for themselves, and try to reach a solution to each problem as a regular worker. Of course, this doesn’t mean that evaluation should be suspended during this stage quite on the contrary, it’s just as important to observe the situation and take notes about the progress of the worker.

Follow Up

In the last step, the employee and supervisor come together to discuss how the process went, and if there are any weak points observed by either side. This is the stage where the most valuable feedback can typically be gathered, and employers must make sure to present themselves with open arms and willing to help.

Modifying the method for an organization’s specific needs

Sometimes it turns out that the four steps don’t work perfectly well for a specific organization’s needs. It’s perfectly fine to make adjustment to the process as necessary, but the important thing is that those adjustments are evaluated just like every other regular step of the process.

Sometimes a company will determine that a specific step of the training process can be shortened or expanded, to make it more suitable for them. As long as this change produces good results, there’s definitely nothing wrong with attempting it.

Constant evolution

Just like other methods in the lean family, JI relies heavily on constant evolution and tweaking of its core structure, in order to be truly efficient. It’s not a one size fits all solution, and every organization must keep analyzing how it works for them, and developing it in the direction that suits them.

The good news is, JI is a very popular concept right now, and there is an abundance of information about it online.

TWI Institute

It’s very easy for an organization to get started with implementing JI, and to further push it towards a version that’s ideal for their own needs.

A point that should never be ignored in this evolution is the opinion of employees themselves. Those receiving the training should be given the opportunity to voice their concerns at all steps of the process, and the company should know what to do with this feedback correspondingly.

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