This post is part of my column for Industry Week called Lessons from the Road and is now available.

“Just because we don’t have training dollars to invest does not mean that we can’t develop our people. People development requires momentum; if we aren’t moving forward, we’re falling behind. There is no excuse big enough to not continue to move forward.

So what can you do without a budget for training? Here are three specific strategies worth trying.

1. Start a book club.
2. Use language deliberately.
3. Coach, with focus.”

You can read the entire post here.

 

I have a new post published on The Lean Edge. See the full article on that site.

What is the hardest field to apply lean? It doesn’t seem to matter what field you’re in, they all think theirs is the hardest. And they can back it up with evidence. One of the most frequent questions I get is “who else in my industry is doing lean?”, because no one wants to be first, and no one wants to be last.

There is a wide range of answers to this question in the series so far, and all of them valid. I’m not sure which is the hardest, but every field of work and every functional application brings its own unique challenges. The key is, how do we respond to the unique challenges we face. This, to me, speaks to response-ability. I misspell this word on purpose for emphasis, because we can choose how we respond to situations. We might be faced with some giant hurdles to overcome, but how we respond to those hurdles is what makes all the difference in the world.

Government is the hardest because they aren’t always sure who the customer is, have many layers of rules and regulations limiting their choices, and much of their waste is unfortunately mandated by law.

Retail is the hardest because they have high turnover, constant price pressure multiplied by promotions and the internet, and very complex supply chains.

Food is the hardest because they have an unpredictable supply line that could be hurt by draught or floods, and they face substantial government oversight and involvement.

Everyone has uber-challenges; but these are often the same for everyone in the field. It’s how we respond, and there are several choices.

1. The Victim – woe is me. These things happen to me, there is nothing I can do about it, and those are the factors that dominate my organization’s performance.
2. The Blind Eye – I’ll ignore it. It won’t go away, but I’ll at least make some progress focusing on what I can control.
3. The Out-flank – I won’t change the condition, but I’ll find a way around it so it doesn’t hurt my performance so much.
4. The Direct Assault - I’ll break the barrier, and change the game by turning it into a competitive advantage.

Only option #1 is the truly destructive path. Choosing the others might depend on where you sit or how much the barrier matters to you at any particular time. But some phenomenal wins have been created by those who have chosen path #4. Simmons, the mattress company, was stuck using the same supplier for box springs that everyone else did. For this reason among others, they invented their own system, the pocketed-coil, which not only gave them control of their supply but also ended up with a better product. 37signals, the company that has developed tools such as Basecamp and Campfire, did these as an internal project to improve their own project management challenges, and the solutions were so good the business has shifted to this new set of products.

Answering the question “who has it hardest?” doesn’t move things along nearly as far as answering “why do we have it hard?” and more importantly, “what are we doing about it?“

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I have a new post published on The Lean Edge. See the full article on that site.

The question asked was “what counts as ‘lean success’?”

Albert Einstein once said:

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

I see most people making mistakes when trying to evaluate success. They try to measure lean success as if it is a program. What’s the easiest way to measure a program? Activity! Yet we should not confuse activity with productivity. Lean programs are measured by means such as the number of people trained or the number of improvement events held, yet these activities do not a lean journey make. They are only inputs. And even as only inputs, quality still matters far more than quantity.

Lean itself is never the goal. Lean is only the vehicle. It’s the means to an end. And the end is the business performance, over the long-term. But using business results to evaluate the lean efforts is a little like using the regular results of the baseball team to evaluate spring training…it’s a little late to do anything about it. Mark Graban did many years ago a study of the lack of connection between the Shingo Prize and stock performance.

An effective lean effort should be delivering future business results. How can we predict the future? The best way is that we have to develop a clear understanding between the drivers of business success. It may even be different for each business, and no matter what, there are far too many variables to try to evaluate all of them. It might be…

How rapidly do we learn as an organization?

Do we have strong problem solving skills?

Do we have alignment and moving in the same direction?

I’m not against measuring the lean journey. Jean Cunningham and Mike Rother both have some strong recommendations on what to be measuring. But it will never give you the whole picture. You will have to evaluate what is not so easy to see. This requires engagement and direct observation. You need to evaluate culture and thinking.

One of the best means is coaching. This has a dual purpose. Not only does it help you create a better future for the organization, but it is also the best way to observe people in their thinking, to understand whether the desired culture is taking root.

In the end, remember that the artifacts of the journey, the activities, are not the same thing as the journey itself. The real journey, the one that leads to lasting success, is below the surface.

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I have a new post published on The Lean Edge. See the full article on that site.

The question asked was “what is the lean approach to capital?” In some ways, this is the wrong question. The reason is that the lean organization and the lean thinker is not looking to put capital to work. Capital is just a solution to a problem. Capital is not just another budget line item that must be consumed and deployed.

It starts with the ideal state. When a team has a vision of the ideal state for a process, it seeks any solution that gets it closer to that solution. When a team lacks such a vision, it reaches and grasps. Spending capital is one of those straws that’s easy to grasp. Anyone can write a check, but it feels like progress when you’re doing it.

On the way to the ideal state, there are many paths and many solutions. The lean thinker always pursues creativity over capital. Capital is one resource that the more you use it, the less you have. Creativity is one resource that the more you use it, the more you have. The lean thinker will explore every option with creativity before leveraging capital.

Once capital must be spent, there is a lean way to put it to work. First, you must test the solutions before committing the capital. All the promise of new technology, equipment, or software isn’t worth a thing; only it’s proven capabilities can provide us value. The lean thinker will find any means possible to validate the effectiveness of the solution before committing the capital.

Second, when the opportunity arises, the capital will be deployed in cycles. If we can spend a little, learn a little, spend a little more, and learn a little more. When done in this way, the last dollars of capital spent are sure to be more efficient dollars than the first one.

Yes, capital isn’t to be avoided, but it shouldn’t be sought as a solution. It’s a solution of last resort. Use intellectual capital before financial capital. Use the mind before the wallet.

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I have a new post published on Blogging Innovation. See the full article on that site.

by Jamie Flinchbaugh

Innovation is obviously a major attribute in the competitiveness of a company (or a government, or a school, or an individual). There are many ways to achieve innovation, and no one aspect will be enough. There is no question that sometimes one very smart person can generate incredible innovations. However, this isn’t very replicable or sustainable.

Being innovative is not a behavior. It’s not something on your to-do list between picking up dry cleaning and writing performance reviews. You can’t declare Monday to be Innovation Day and expect that result. Innovation is the by-product of plans, processes, people, behaviors, and skills.

Many of you may know me as the co-founder of the Lean Learning Center. What does that have to do with innovation? How can the skills taught in lean organizations enable innovation? When done well, lean leads to innovation at all levels of the organization. It may not lead to world-changing innovations like the Post-It note or the iPod, but it certainly will produce innovations that improve products, delight customers, and strengthen performance. Lean is not about waste elimination, despite many common definitions that say so.

We often assume that most innovations come from teams that are dedicated to it. Perhaps specific, focused innovations do come from such teams, but not the bulk of innovations that make a difference in sustainably competitive organizations. You never know where the next innovation might come from. The more broadly distributed innovative activities are, the more likely you will see big wins. The more balls you put into play, the more likely you will see home runs. Many innovation books tell you to put all your innovation into one team. This makes innovation easier to manage, under the belief that managing that team is, in turn, managing innovation. But, to increase your chances for success, put innovation into every person.

Three fundamental lean behaviors drive innovation: customer focus, problem solving and learning.

Innovation begins with filling the needs of people, either current or future customers. When lean companies focus on providing value, they get curious about the met and unmet needs of customers. This focus drives these organizations to make their customers’ problems their own and to see value where others don’t.

Problem solving is a core capability, because it drives us to engage problems that others might ignore. It drives us to dig deeper. This deeper exploration leads to new insights into problems. Problem solving starts with good, focused problem statements. When we take the problem statement for granted, we might miss a wide range of opportunities.

Learning is about experimentation. It is the constant connection between cause and effect. Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I have merely found a thousand ways that won’t work.” Each experiment was an investment in his knowledge. Learning leads to innovation and invention. But learning is a process and a skill, and there is a large difference between experimentation and “trying stuff.”

When we put these three behaviors together – customer focus, problem solving and learning through experimentation – innovation is the outcome.

It is important to build these behaviors, and the risks that come along with innovation, into the organization. This requires encouragement and recognition. If people are afraid to experiment because they get punished if their experiment fails, experimentation and the learning that goes with it will stop. Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, said, “Failures are not something to be avoided. You want to have them happen as quickly as you can, so you can make progress quickly.”

It’s also important to encourage the behaviors that go with innovation, and not just the outcomes. If you only recognize big outcomes, then people will only make the effort when they feel they are likely to achieve a big outcome. If we encourage the right behaviors, we will see more of those behaviors, which in turn generates to the outcomes desired.

Innovation is possible in any organization. You don’t need a specialized department. You don’t need a corporate initiative. Innovation can begin anywhere, even with yourself.

I hope to explore these skills and their connection to innovation more deeply in future posts.

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I have a new post published on Assembly Magazine. See the full article on that site.

I have written “Leading Lean” for ASSEMBLY for over 5 years. This marks my 55th and final contribution. I still have plenty to say, but it’s time for me to move on from this particular role….

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I have a new post published on Blogging Innovation. See the full article on that site.

by Jamie Flinchbaugh

Creativity remains one of the most nebulous and elusive capabilities for organizational performance. Yet there is more knowledge and science available today than ever to help us through the challenge. Creativity comes from more than just issuing a challenge.

One of the most counterintuitive aspects of the creativity process is the adaptation and leveraging of constraints. Most of us don’t want constraints, and we certainly don’t like constraints. We don’t want to be told when to be finished, what size box it needs to fit into, or what font should be used. We like our freedom. Yet the evidence demonstrates that constraints enhance the creativity process.

On the Harvard Business Review blog, Uri Neren shares some of this data in The Number One Key to Innovation: Scarcity. In it he shares that after a review of 162 methodologies around innovation, one of the most common threads is scarcity. This is especially true in

When working with teams on improvements or projects requiring creativity, we find an important step is providing what we call monuments and commandments. Monuments are those aspects that cannot be moved. The team must work around them. While it is important to let teams know where the monuments are, it is also important that they know where they aren’t. This prevents them from adding false constraints, which can certainly limit the intended result.

Commandments are those aspects that must be part of the solution. There may still be a thousand details that need to be worked out, but some of them are predetermined. This is just another form of constraint.

The addition of monuments and commandments to a team will always initially feel like a burden to the team, but in my experience, they are necessary to prevent wasted effort and increase focus. Both of these factors lead to more creative and more effective solutions out of the team’s effort.

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I have a new post published on Blogging Innovation. See the full article on that site.

by Jamie Flinchbaugh

In my coaching, many of my conversations begin with a source of frustration by the individual. The source of frustration could be rooted in another person, or a team problem, or in their own abilities. But nonetheless, the frustration is there. This is a good thing. The philosophy that I’ve embraced is…

If you’re not frustrated, then you’re not working on the right problem.

Change is hard, particularly good change. It doesn’t come easy. It may require discipline, or sacrifice, or extra energy, or compromise. If the change was easy, then it likely would have happened already. Unfortunately, this is an unavoidable problem. That doesn’t mean, however, that we should let our frustrations consume us, or even distract us.

Instead, embrace that frustration, with honor. It is a sign you are working on the right problem. It is a sign of progress. It is a source of focus.

How do you use frustration to your advantage?

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I have a new post published on Assembly Magazine. See the full article on that site.

Every corporation wants to be innovative. But, being innovative is not a behavior. It’s not something on your to-do list between picking up dry cleaning and writing performance reviews. Innovation is the by-product of plans, processes, people and behaviors….

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I have a new post published on The Lean Edge. See the full article on that site.

How do you set objectives with lean?

I won’t start from the beginning, because there are already so many quality posts here in response to the question. I will try to add to it with a couple of the more subtle points that I hope help you in turning these thoughts into action:

1. Work on the really hard problems

I notice that many organizations have problems that they write down and those that they don’t. The problems that have known solutions are written down. Those that people have no clue how to solve are not written down. But we must. We will never make progress on these problems unless we make them visible and start to work on them.

2. Establish the what AND the how

Have you ever left a meeting where you all agreed, but when you spoke to people afterwards you wondered “were we in the same meeting?” That is likely because you had agreement on WHAT you were going to do, but not the how. Building the how is critical to turn your objectives into action. When the how isn’t clear, people start pulling in many different directions leading to disjointed efforts, or worse.

3. Planning is everything; the plan is nothing.

This quote by Dwight Eisenhower expresses an important element of planning and of setting objectives. It’s not the outcome of the process. It’s the discussion, analysis, investigation, exploration, and consensus that is build in the process of planning and setting objectives. Picking a target or objective is easy. Having a meaningful dialogue in the creation of that is where the value can be found.

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