• Understand the reason to bring in the methodology and assess organization’s readiness (Starting Lean Six Sigma)
• Select the right projects and leaders and provide training and coaching (The First Six Sigma Project)
• Pay attention to organization’s management process and leadership behaviors (Revisiting the DMAIC Stage-gate Process)
• Ensure that process management is built as a foundation for improvement (Continuous Improvement Is More Than Projects)
• Avoid over-reliance on weeks-long classroom training to achieve results (Lean Six Sigma Training for Continuous Improvement)

In the last recommendation, I didn’t include an alternative approach because it required more elaboration.

The traditional Lean Six Sigma (LSS) deployment uses classroom training to teach concepts and tools to employees, who become Green Belts (GB) or Black Belt (BB) candidates.  The inexperienced GBs and/or BBs leading improvement projects often struggle to recall what they learned in the class and relate it to the real-world problems.  

What I think works better is project-based learning, in which the employees learn by participating in a job-related project led by an experienced CI professional.   The on-the-job hands-on learning is supplemented by expert coaching and self-paced learning. 

Assuming the organization is new to CI, I propose that it starts with a pilot project led by a CI veteran, who can guide the organization in a learning journey.  The journey will not only teach the team CI methodologies but also help the organization leaders discover many existing gaps, risks, issues, and opportunities, which leads to a better long-term strategy.  This CI leader has multiple roles — the coach to the organization leaders, the leader of the project, and the trainer of CI methodologies to the employees.

The proposed approach achieves multiple goals.

• Enable the organization to achieve optimal outcomes
• Build internal capabilities, including processes and skills
• Help develop a CI strategy and culture for the long term

The approach can include the following.

1. The senior CI sponsor (a top executive) recruits or retains a truly experienced CI leader (either an employee or consultant), with an explicit role of leading the pilot project, assessing organization, and helping develop its deployment strategy
2. The CI leader works with the sponsor to charter a suitable project, including clear expectations of their respective roles
3. The CI leader works with the sponsor and other managers to select project team members
4. The sponsor clearly communicates the role, responsibilities, and decision power of the CI leader to the entire organization
5. The sponsor personally demonstrates his/her commitment and holds the organization accountable
6. The CI leader leads the project and project team, giving just-in-time training as appropriate (Lean, Six Sigma, project management, change management, statistical methods, etc.)
7. The CI leader engages the team in using the CI concepts and tools in the project and demonstrates their value and limitations
8. Project members are given ample materials and opportunities to expand the learning on their own and have open access to coaching by the CI leader
9. The CI leader assesses the organization (e.g. organizational readiness, maturity, culture) and team members (e.g. skills, behavior, performance) throughout the entire project lifecycle
10. The CI leader provides analyses (e.g. SWOT) and recommendations to the sponsor, such as deployment strategy, high value projects, and high potential employees (i.e. future leaders)

This approach will avoid many common pitfalls in LSS training and deployment and take advantage of many opportunities provided by modern technology, such as online and on-demand learning.

The two limiting factors I see are a capable CI leader and a committed sponsor.

What other alternatives would you recommend?

In my teaching, consulting, and general discussion with students and practitioners, I have noticed that many people are eager to learn the mechanics of different tools, e.g. how to choose a specific type of process control chart or how to determine the right parameters for cumulative sum (CUSUM), so they can get the job done.  But few ask the question: “what makes the tool effective in the real world?”

In the case of a control chart, a crucial condition that makes the control chart effective is process standardization. 

Continuous Improvement (CI) professionals know that standardized work is a fundamental principle of the Toyota Production System (TPS) or Lean.  Standardization minimizes process variation, which enables greater sensitivity in detecting special cause variation by the control chart.

Many people don’t realize that even if a control chart shows no special cause variation, it does not mean that the process is in statistical control.  In many cases, such as processes that lack standardization, there are simply too many uncontrolled variables present and they become part of the process.  But these variables are not inherent to the process and inflate the common cause variation.

The accompanying figure shows a hypothetical example.  The top chart shows a stable process, except that points 51 to 55 have a positive deviation of 20.  The individuals chart (or I-chart) detects the change.  The bottom chart is the same process with the same positive deviation for points 51 to 55, but some random deviations (or noise) are added. The control limits are more spread out, and the special cause variation is not detected.

Additional noise reduces the ability of a control chart to detect change.

In my observation of real processes, many contain both special cause variation and the additional noise illustrated above.  So naturally, the CI professionals tend to focus on reducing the special cause to bring the process back in control. However, with the persisting noise the process never reaches its true state of control.

The additional noise can come from many sources.  A major source is lack of standardization. 

In a regular production environment, operating procedures have room for interpretation and thus can lead to process variation.  In my experience in R&D and manufacturing, many people honestly believe that they follow the same procedure each time.  But upon careful investigation, deviations are common.

Those familiar with gage repeatability & reproducibility (R&R) studies appreciate the potential for human errors or deviations. Using a well-established measurement procedure, the same operator can still have varying results measuring the same items (i.e. repeatability error).  Different operators likely introduce additional variability (i.e. reproducibility error).  In a less standardized process, there are many more opportunities for deviation.

The effectiveness of standardization to reduce noise is limited by our understanding of the design space and critical process variables.  Because many processes are not well studied and designed using Quality by Design (QbD) principles, some residual noise will likely remain after standardization.

In summary, if you want to improve change detection, make sure that you identify the sources of the extra noise in the process and operationally control them.

Over 15 years ago, I received my LSS Black Belt (BB) training sponsored by my employer.  It was three weeks of classroom training delivered over three months by external consultants.  It kick-started my Continuous Improvement (CI) journey.  Since then, I have delivered LSS training as an internal trainer or external consultant to many large global organizations.  I also helped organizations in their LSS deployment, led many CI projects, and coached Green Belt (GB) and BB leaders in their projects.

Despite my own positive experience with LSS training, what I have learned over the years is that in most situations the traditional weeks long LSS training is ineffective in driving CI. 

If measured by the number of people trained or certified or the number of methods and tools covered, such training programs are very effective and easily justified for the investment.  

But if we start to measure the improvement of business outcomes, the desired problem-solving skills and behavior of the trained employees, and the positive impact on the CI culture and mindset of the organization, the training is very often ineffective.  Some troubling signs are

• It took 12 months or more to complete the first GB project.
• The GB could not recall some basic topics only a few weeks after the training.
• BB candidates have to create flash cards to prepare for their certification exams.
• GBs or BBs are no longer engaged in CI after obtaining their certifications.
• Certified BBs fail to exhibit or apply knowledge of some fundamental concepts, such as process stability, in their daily work.
• The trained employees do not perform or behave differently from those untrained in the CI methodology

I can see two main factors contributing to this poor outcome.

First, the training program only teaches the general methods and tools and does not improve skills.

Previously, I discussed training and coaching considerations in LSS deployment in The First Six Sigma Project and recommended customized training in Making Employee Training Effective.

Most LSS training programs developed by universities, professional organizations, and commercial vendors are designed for efficiency and profitability. The generic programs do not connect the content to the client organization’s problems and operational reality.  Few external trainers have the subject matter or industry knowledge to tailor the training to each client’s need.  Even if they are able to customize, few clients are willing to pay the substantial premium.

Corporate internal programs are not much better in terms of sufficiently relevant materials that relate to each employee’s job.  Employees do not start learning real problem-solving skills until they encounter problems in their projects, by which time they already forgot most of what was taught in the training. 

Second, the organization overly relies on training to improve business performance.

Two common fallacies can lead to this “improvement training trap.”

1. Employees have to be trained in the methods and tools or they won’t be able to learn themselves.
2. Once the employees are formally trained, they will solve all the problems on their own.

Can classroom training help accelerate learning? Absolutely.  Is it necessary or sufficient to develop the skills, mindset, and behavior for CI?  No.

These programs train methods and tools, whereas what the organizations really need is leadership development and behavior modification.  

Management has to understand that employees’ knowledge in CI methodologies is only a small but essential driver in business improvement.  When employees are not engaged in effective CI activities, it is not necessarily due to lack of knowledge – something else is likely limiting.  The root cause is rarely lack of training, and the solution is not more or even better training.  

It is management’s job to critically analyze all aspects of the organization, e.g. processes, structure, policies, resources, people, and culture, to identify the barriers to CI.  When they do, they will likely find out that LSS training is not the solution to their problem.

The questions about “what is Lean” and “what is Six Sigma” inevitably come up when you train and coach people in CI methodologies.  Without delving into the principles, my answer goes something like this:

• Lean is about delivering value to the customer, fast and with minimum waste.
• Six Sigma is about understanding and reducing variation.

None of them is satisfactory.  But practically these messages are effective in stressing the necessary concepts they need to develop, i.e. value and variation — a prerequisite for CI.  These answers are certainly insufficient and not meant to be.  It’s hard to understand the true meaning of life or happiness when we are 5 years old.  Likewise, it takes a lifetime of experience to understand the true meaning and principles of CI and apply them well.

While the concept of value versus waste is intuitive, most people don’t interpret their daily observations in terms of variation.  Because of the (over-)emphasis of statistical tools in Six Sigma by many consultants, many organizations prefer Lean to Six Sigma (see my earlier blog “How is your Lean developing” for potential pitfalls in replying on simple Lean tools).  The lack of appreciation of the concept of variation will eventually constrain the organization’s ability to improve.

There are many applications of the concept of variation in understanding and improving a process.  Most applications don’t require sophisticated knowledge in statistics or probability theory.  One example is management of supply and demand.

Let’s say that you plan your resources and capacity to meet a target demand level.  The demand can be from internal or external customers, and can be for products, services, materials, or projects. For simplicity, let’s assume that it’s a fixed capacity without any variation, e.g. no unplanned downtime or sick leaves.  

If you plan enough resources for the total or average demand but the demand varies greatly (upper left of the figure), you will meet the demand exactly only occasionally. Most of the time, you will either not have enough capacity (creating backlogs or bottlenecks) and miss some opportunities or have too much capacity and lose the unused resources forever.

If it is too costly to miss the opportunities, some organizations are forced to raise the capacity (upper right of the figure). Many optimize the resources to strike a balance between lost capacity and missed opportunities.  What I have observed is that organizations go back and forth between maximizing opportunities and reducing waste.  One improvement project is sponsored (by one function) to reduce the risk of the missed opportunities with a solution that shows a high return-on-investment in the added resources.  As a result, the excess capacity is common, leading to another project (probably by another function) to reduce waste and maximize resource utilization.  The next demand surge will lead to another round of improvement projects.

Many people don’t realize that the real long-term improvement has to address the issue of demand variation.  For example, if we understand the sources of demand variation and therefore develop solutions to limit it, both missed opportunities and lost capacity will be reduced (bottom half of the figure).  A much lower capacity is needed to satisfy the same overall but less variable demand.

Capacity variation has similar effects. 

What is more interesting is that most processes are made of a series of interdependent supply-demand stages, each of which propagates or accumulates the effect of variation.  We can use this understanding of variation to explain many phenomena in our lives, e.g. process bottlenecks, traffic jams, project delays, supply overage, excess inventory, etc.  The Theory of Constraints popularized by Eliyahu Goldratt in his book The Goal is also based on the same ideas of process interdependence and variation.

No matter what CI methodologies you use, I hope you agree that understanding and reducing variation is always a key to improvement. 

Following the DMAIC steps, the project team can think rigorously and approach the problem systematically.  Books and training materials include applicable tools for each phase and checklists for tollgate reviews. Organizations often have DMAIC templates that define mandatory and optional deliverables for each phase.  All of these are supposed to help the GBs and BBs to determine the right questions to ask and the right tools to apply along the DMAIC process.

In reality, the templates are not as helpful.  I observe many project leaders either confused with what to do in each DMAIC phase or doing the wrong things.  For example,

• Project teams include a tool or analysis simply because it’s a “required” phase deliverable, even if it doesn’t improve the process or our knowledge. 
• The project leaders are more concerned with presenting visually impressive slides to the management than understanding the process. They re-create a SIPOC or Fishbone diagram on a slide from the flipchart or white board when a snapshot is perfectly legible.
• Project teams go to a great length to document the current state electronically (e.g. in Visio) as a single process (which is futile), rather than spending the time “Go Gemba” to understand the variation.
• The project continues even after the evidence and analysis show that the project baseline or business case is no longer valid.  Instead of using the tollgate to stop or re-scope the project, the team shows various tools and analyses to justify the value of going forward.  They are afraid that terminating the project will reflect negatively on them.
• The project team is sent back to complete a deliverable at the tollgate because it is not satisfactory to the management even when the deliverable is not critical to the next step in the project.  As a result, teams always overprepare for the tollgates in fear of imperfect deliverables.
• Instead of seeing an inadequate measurement system as an opportunity re-scope the project to address it, the team is asked to demonstrate an adequate measurement system before closing the Measure phase.  They are stuck in Measure to perform Improve activities.

Why are these happening?

I discussed in my earlier blogs about some related challenges in “Starting Lean Six Sigma” and “The First Six Sigma Project.”  By understanding how Lean Six Sigma fits in the organization’s objectives, strategy, and capabilities, the leaders can choose the right deployment approach for the organization.  By selecting the right candidates and projects and by providing the right training/coaching to both sponsors and GBs/BBs, the leaders can avoid many common mistakes when the organization is in the low continuous improvement (CI) maturity state.

While the experience of the project leaders is a factor, I attribute the main cause of many Lean Six Sigma deployment issues to the organization, not the individual GBs or BBs.

Beyond the initial stage of the deployment, the organization’s chance to achieve and sustain a CI culture and high return on investment depends on its leaders.  Many Lean Six Sigma challenges simply reflect the existing organizational and leadership issues. Using the DMAIC methodology as a “plug & play” solution by the leaders only exacerbates the underlying problems.

DMAIC templates and tollgate reviews can help guide newly trained GBs and BBs as they practice scientific problem solving.  But when they become prescriptive requirements and project performance criteria dictated by management, it discourages dialogue and organizational learning, which are basic elements in a CI culture.  Judging project progress against a fixed set of DMAIC phase deliverables without understanding the applicability and true contribution in each case only causes confusion and fear.  It reinforces the “fear of failure” mindset in many organizations. 

The DMAIC stages are not linear, but iterative within the project, e.g. if a solution in Improve is insufficient to solve the problem, the team can go back to Analyze.  A DMAIC project should not be run like a “waterfall” project, but an Agile project with rapid learning cycles. With reasonable justification, the team should be allowed to decide to pass the tollgate and continue to the next phase.  Empowering the teams is risky and comes at a cost, but they should be given the opportunities to learn from their mistakes (if it’s not too costly).  Competent coaching will minimize the risk.

Compounded by the fear, poor training, and lack of experience, project efforts are often driven by management expectations at tollgate reviews.  A polished presentation with a complete set of phase deliverables beautifully illustrated with tables and graphs shows team’s accomplishments and satisfies untrained reviewers.  But it often fails at facilitating critical analysis and deep understanding required to address root causes – it sends the wrong message to the organization that the new CI methodology is all about presentation not substance.

If any of the examples sounds familiar or if you are concerned with building a CI culture and capability, one area for improvement might be in your DMAIC stage-gate process. 

When I talk to people in CI, many often tell me that they prefer Lean to Six Sigma or have shifted more efforts from Six Sigma to Lean in their organizations.  There are many reasons for the preference.  One of them is that Lean is more relevant or applicable in their organizations — the emphasis on statistical methods in Six Sigma is burdensome given the lack of suitable data and skills.  

While Lean and Six Sigma are inseparable in practice, I also think that Lean is a better introductory CI methodology than Six Sigma.  The Lean concepts (such as value, value stream, flow, pull, and pursuit of perfection described in Lean Thinking) are much easier to understand by people in organizations new to CI.  By introducing simple Lean concepts and tools, such as 5S, Kanban, and 7 types of waste, we can quickly engage the organization and start creating a CI culture.

One caution of relying on simple Lean tools is that organizations may not grow beyond the infancy.  A symptom, for example, could be the “seven-waste scavenger hunts” as described by Mike Rother and John Shook in their book Learning to See (a must-read, by the way, for Lean practitioners).  This happens when the organization fails to invest in understanding the true customer value and mapping out the end-to-end value stream, therefore, missing the majority of the waste hidden in the processes.

One can use or develop a comprehensive Lean or CI maturity model to assess their organization’s progress.  I simply ask one question:  How is management using Lean?

In essence, how Lean is used by management determines whether the organization can achieve high Lean maturity. More specifically, do they conduct organized, systematic analysis and improvement of the value stream?

In Learning to See, Rother and Shook differentiate value-stream improvement from waste elimination activities as “flow Kaizen” versus “process Kaizen.”  While all employees can eliminate waste in their areas, value-stream improvement is the responsibility of the senior management, who can see across functions, set the vision, and lead the change. 

This management ownership concept is not new but rarely practiced.  Peter Drucker wrote in his 1964 book Managing for Results that a business needs a cost analysis that “Looks at the entire business as one cost stream” and “Defines ‘cost’ as what the customer pays rather than as what the legal or tax unit of accounting incurs.” Cost quantifies value and waste.  Once quantified, value and waste can be analyzed and managed.

It is important to note here that “cost is a term of economics” as Drucker pointed out – “The cost system that needs to be analyzed is therefore the entire economic activity which produces economic value.” Few companies look at the value stream spanning the entire business, let alone beyond its legal boundaries.

The frontline employees do not have the knowledge of the entire business.  Management must have it. 

Through Lean activities, such as Value Stream Mapping that crosses functions and organizational boundaries, management improves its understanding of the true cost (again, from a customer’s perspective).  It is with this understanding by the senior management that we identify substantial opportunities for improvement and value creation. Many CI initiatives lose momentum because they simply do not produce meaningful results at the business level, i.e. making it more competitive and more profitable.  

Lean has the power to transform a business, but this only happens after Lean is owned and practiced by the senior management.  Until then, Lean is like a sprouting seed without the sun – it will never reach its potential.

Many people are familiar with the seven types of waste originally identified by Taiichi Ohno.

• Defects or rework
• Waiting
• Overproduction
• Overprocessing
• Inventories
• Motion
• Transport

These types of waste are common not only in physical production but also in services and transactional environments.  With some experience, one cannot stop but see waste everywhere they work.  For example, mistakes happen and require rework (defects).  Documents go through multiple reviewers before approval (overprocessing).  Searching a number of locations before the information is found (motion). 

In my observation, this simple concept and basic awareness of waste is a very effective first step toward building a Lean organization.  Who wants to waste their time doing things not valued?

As an organization becomes more mature in Lean thinking, it will discover more types of waste that are less visible and potentially more detrimental.   For example, James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones, in their book Lean Thinking, included “the design of goods and services which do not meet user’s needs” as an additional type of waste. 

Personally, I think the worst type of waste is underutilized human potential.  Many would agree.  It is also the most difficult type to reduce.  I see it manifest in three common forms.

1. Employees spend a large proportion of their time on non-value added activities.  These include attending unproductive meetings, writing lengthy reports that few people read, or preparing elaborate presentations for management when a summary suffices.  
2. Employees are not able to use their knowledge and skills they are hired for.  To quote a senior executive, “The company hires the best people and then ties their hands when they come to work.”  Often motivated employees eager to solve a problem only are told “that’s not your job.”
3. Employees are not growing to be more productive or effective.  They are stuck doing the same job using the same skills for years.  Many are not aware of the growth opportunities until late in their careers.  Some technical training, coaching, or exposure to leadership concepts, continuous improvement methodologies, or computer skills goes a long way to improve their performance.     

As more people move from traditionally manual work to knowledge work, the demand for new knowledge and skills only accelerates.  If we do not effectively address the waste of underutilized human potential, the loss will be immeasurable for both individuals and organizations.

Just to understand the problem is an enormous challenge.  But I believe there are steps that employees and managers can take to make a significant difference.

For example, for employees

• Take ownership of our career and professional development; no one else has the responsibility.
• Continue to develop ourselves professionally, in technical, business, and leadership skills. This can be achieved through education (e.g. taking classes) and experience (e.g. taking on a challenging project).
• Seek mentorship and feedback from others within our own organization and outside.

For managers,

• Encourage our employees to do the above and support them with our words and actions.
• Be aware of the impact of our actions and decisions on our employees.  Are we the root cause of their non-value added activities?
• Have a growth mindset in our employees.  Continue to provide them challenging opportunities.  Support, mentor, and coach them along the way. 

What is the worst type of waste you see?  How do you reduce it?

We operate in a highly unpredictable environment.  The increasing interest and practice of Lean and Agile methodologies is a clear acknowledgement of the unknowns and unknowables.  Unable to predict the future with high confidence, we have to learn and adapt as we go. 

How can individuals and organizations be more effective in dealing with this new reality?

In project management, multi-generational project planning is used to transform a large project into a series of smaller ones, each achieving a significant milestone relatively quickly.  In addition, the lessons learned and knowledge acquired in each stage refine the goal and reduce the uncertainty in the subsequent planning and execution. 

This is an example of analytical thinking — a critical competency of the project manager — which includes

1. Breaking down a large, complex problem into smaller, manageable components
2. Prioritizing the components based on a set of criteria, such as risk, effort, impact, and interdependency
3. Sequencing the efforts in such a way that minimizes risk and cost while maximizing the desired outcome

In today’s work, analytical thinking is not just a required competency of project managers but any knowledge worker who has to solve technical or business problems.  I use it as an essential criterion for evaluation of job candidates and development of employees.

Fortunately, everyone can improve their analytical thinking at work through continued learning and practice of some well-established conceptual frameworks and scientific methods, for example

1. Product development using Design of Experiments (DOE) 

Frequently, there are numerous variables that we need to understand in order to design a product or process or improve its performance.  When a one-factor-at-a-time or a full factorial design is not most effective, a screening design can be used first to identify the critical few among many potential factors.  Then less resources are required to study the few more thoroughly, e.g. characterizing their interactions and the Response Surface, to achieve optimal outcomes.  When designed strategically, each study augments the previous ones, avoiding unnecessary repeats.

2. Quality improvement by understanding variation

Reducing defects and improving customer satisfaction is a main goal of quality.  Unfortunately, in many organizations, quality issues persist despite repeated improvement efforts.  While subject matter expertise is important, sustained improvement requires understanding of process stability (i.e. lack of special cause variation) and capability (i.e. probability of the process producing a result that meets customer requirements).  That is why process improvement methodologies, such as Six Sigma, rely on the principle of Statistical Process Control (SPC) to identify and separate special cause variation from common cause variation.  Only after eliminating special cause variation, can we truly characterize and improve the process.  Then, if necessary, we can improve process capability by reducing common cause variation and/or re-centering the process to the desired target.

3. Lead time reduction using Lean concepts

The ability to consistently design and deliver a product or service faster than competition is critical to business success.   The lead time (e.g. request-to-delivery time) of many business processes remains long and variable. These processes often involve numerous and convoluted steps across multiple functions.  It is impractical and unnecessary to analyze and improve all steps. Seeing from a customer’s perspective, Lean thinking brings us clarity by separating value-added from non-value added activities (i.e. waste) that impede the continuous flow of value to the customer.   By reducing or abolishing waste, such as waiting, overproduction, and inventory, we can simplify and speed up the processes without investing in new capacity.

These are but a few examples in which proven scientific and management methods help break down complex problems into manageable components that lead to effective solutions. 

Buzzwords like “work smart,” “be agile,” and “fail fast” may create the initial awareness or inspiration.  But they rarely lead to operational effectiveness or material change.  Building an organization that is Lean, Agile, responsive, or adaptive is transformative and requires systematic identification and development of required competencies, such as analytical thinking.

Adapting to a changing world is a challenge that demands analytical thinking as well.   I am optimistic that individuals and organizations will continue to develop new competencies by embracing sound problem-solving methodologies.

There seems to be much confusion between strategies and goals.  Many strategies only state the desired outcomes without either 1) a meaningful connection to the organization’s unique ability to execute or 2) tough choices made based on critical analysis of risk-reward tradeoffs.  I call them wishful thinking because they are disconnected with the organization’s reality. No wonder many strategies and change initiatives fail.  A November 2017 Harvard Business Review article “Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Actually Strategies” touches the same point. When strategies fail in execution, just ask the employees and middle managers why.  The failure rarely was a surprise to them.

Some people believe that strategy and its implementation or execution are separate, i.e. after the strategy is defined, implementation can be developed accordingly.  I don’t.

The iterative nature of business strategy notwithstanding, the actual work of strategy implementation does follow the strategy formulation step. However, the strategy implementation framework should be part of a strategy when formulated.  

What I have observed as an employee and as a consultant is that strategies are often formulated behind closed doors in conference rooms and then announced to the organization.  The decision makers are so removed from the organization’s reality that employees scratch their heads wondering what the strategy means and where it came from.  No amount of corporate communication or change management could have saved it.

The problem is not necessarily the strategy formulation process, but the information used to create the strategy.  For example, the traditional SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis is a powerful tool.  But without an instinctive understanding tied to reality, it is only a paper exercise that makes pretty Powerpoint slides.

How can we improve strategies so they are more likely to succeed?  One thing I recommend is that leaders “Go Gemba” in a Lean term, or simply “go out and see for yourself.”

In a typical organization, frontline employees and middle managers know what is going on in the business better than anyone else. However, only a fraction of this knowledge reaches to the executive level, and sometimes inaccurately.

The danger of not being in touch with the reality is clear.  In his book Only the Paranoid Survive, Silicon Valley legend Andrew Grove shared his lessons learned from Intel’s 1994 Pentium crisis – a tiny flaw in the chip that cost them nearly half a billion dollars in less than six weeks.  He described the difficulty of senior leaders in getting the right information from the organization:

“They [middle managers] usually don’t have an easy time explaining it to senior management, so the senior management in a company is sometimes late to realize the world is changing on them – and the leader is often the last of all to know.”

He further advised:

“The lesson is, we all need to expose ourselves to the winds of change.  We need to expose ourselves to our customers, both ones who are staying with us as well as those that we may lose by sticking to the past. We need to expose ourselves to lower-level employees, who, when encouraged, will tell us a lot that we need to know. … As we throw ourselves into raw action, our senses and instincts will rapidly be honed again.”

Go Gemba if you don’t want to be the leader that is the last to know.  

While Lean implementation is often associated with manufacturing and other process-oriented environments, I have seen many benefits in introducing Lean to R&D.  Many benefits are direct, measurable, and visible.  For example,

• Increased capacity and productivity
• Reduced waste in materials and supplies
• Higher utilization of shared equipment and facility
• Less wasted time searching for what is needed
• More reliable, reproducible scientific results
• Less downtime and waiting
• Improved safety and compliance

Through the years of helping organizations improve R&D productivity as well as managing my own R&D groups, I developed more appreciation on the less tangible and less visible benefit of Lean.  That is, its impact on an organization’s culture and capability. 

What happens in an organization taking up a Lean initiative is that it brings everyone together to solve problems as a team, often for the first time.  In many organizations, we often see problems from our own vantage points and perceive the causes as something coming from the outside.  Participation in Lean helps break down the silos, surface the root causes, and connect the people.

The end-to-end value stream mapping or simply process mapping helps us see the big picture and relations with others.  It helps us understand what others do and why they do what they do.

The simple identification of 7 types of waste around us is enlightening as how much time and resources we are wasting every day without much awareness.  It’s energizing when we eliminate unnecessary activities and free up time to accomplish more important things.

Visual management and 5S (sort, simplify, shine, standardize, sustain) not only help organize the content and flow of the work but also establish a new norm of team communication and community.

Five-whys challenges our assumptions about the real cause of a problem.  It focuses the discussion on the system or process, not the people.  The results are collaborative problem-solving and more innovative and sustainable solutions.

The list goes on and on.

If you are looking for a mechanism to help develop your organization, consider the many hidden benefits of Lean.

• Develop ownership and accountability
• Make problems, risks, and opportunities visible
• Engage people in continuous improvement
• Simplify and improve communication
• Facilitate cross-functional teamwork and collaboration
• Increase individual and team’s problem-solving skills

Implementation of Lean is achievable even in non-traditional areas.  Thoughtful execution can lead to positive, long-lasting impact on the organization and its people, beyond the quick, measurable results.