Progress Paradox: When Can We Say We Are Lean? (Part 1)

Welcome to Behind the Curtain podcast. An exploration of continuous improvement from John Dyer, Muhammad Saleh, presented by industry week. Welcome everyone to the next episode of Behind the Curtain Adventures and Continuous Improvement. I'm one of your co-host John Dyer. And with me is Dr. Muhammad Saleh. Hello, Muhammad. Hello, John. How is it? How's your day going? Good. Good. And we're in the middle of a series of really tough questions as it relates to team-based continuous improvement like lean. And today's question is one that, you know, you see floating around the internet quite a bit. You know, how far does a company need to go before they can say they are a lean company or a lean organization? You know, there's tools that people put in place. There's methodologies that people put in place. People talk about culture. But how far does an organization need to go before they can, you know, say, hey, we're lean? Now, let me give you just a quick example. One company I had the honor of touring had done a really terrific job on 5S. I mean, their plant, their organization looked amazing. There was a place for everything, everything in its place. They did audits. They had, you know, super well organized areas. And I asked them, you know, I said, okay, wow, you've done a really great job of 5S. How has this helped the organization improve? How have the systems improved? How have the employees been more enlightened and engaged in, you know, how has it built up a sense of pride of workmanship? And it was like, oh, yeah, we haven't done any of that. You know, it was like, we've done 5S. That was it. There was no more. And it was like, well, okay, you have checked that box. That's great. But how have you turned that into something tangible, some kind of, you know, results? How has it improved things? And they didn't have a good answer for that. But they wanted to call themselves a lean company because they had done 5S. And it was just like, yeah, no, this is missing the mark quite a bit. So what are your thoughts when it comes to that particular question? When can a company call themselves a lean organization? What a loaded question. So this is probably one of the most common questions I get. And it's usually a very concerning question for me. And I think to be able to answer that question, we wouldn't be doing it justice to cram it all into one episode. And let me just explain what I mean by that, John. The first problem with that question is a mindset. And I could unpack the mindset right now and talk about it with you. But just to kind of highlight, it's kind of three buckets of mindset violations here that are happening simultaneously. And the first one is those that there's a destination thinking mindset, first a journey thinking mindset that is going on here. And we could talk about that. The second one, which is a mindset also, and there's a lot of tension here when it comes to that is, there's a psychological need for closure, specifically with leadership. They want to have closure behind things. And so that question just highlights that need for closure. It's a psychological need. And so in that fueling part of that question, and we could talk about that as well. And then the third piece, which I for me, it's a little bit dangerous is the mindset itself that we are lean now. There's danger that comes with that because the second an organization quietly declares that they've arrived is the moment they started decay. And and so I would say psychologically, there are those three tensions that are at play here from a mindset standpoint. I feel like that alone is worthy of a conversation for this episode. But I do want to talk about the two other pieces that as you were saying, it was just kind of going through my head. And I was like, okay, but there are many organizations. And I've personally have violated this myself. So I could speak to it firsthand, almost every organization I've worked with and worked for have done this, where we start creating what we call a maturity model. And that maturity model is a huge trap for organizations. And if you're a listener out there that has a maturity model, we could dive deeper into that because one level five means you stopped learning. Like usually that's an organization. You know, I've and we've touched on it at a very symptom level when we were talking about certifications and belts. And then the third piece, I think, which is also worthy of its own episode is what real men looks like 10 years from now. And you know, it's like when I was in doing my undergrad and not undergrad, my when I was in high school. And my vision was, hey, I'm going to get a bachelor's in mechanical engineering and I'm going to start designing robots. And that was kind of a passion of mine. And, you know, I finished my bachelor's degree. And once I finished my bachelor's degree, I realized I actually needed a master's. And because I thought once I get a bachelor's degree, I'm going to live large. I'm going to live my life. It's everything is done checked off. I've accomplished everything and then I realized I actually need to master something in order to progress. And then at that point in my career, I was a little bit, I would say arrogant. And then there was a point in my career that then when I started getting my doctorates and finished it, I actually realized I don't know anything. And so I went from thinking I know everything to realizing I know nothing. And I realized the more you learn, the less you know, because it just unpacks this world that's invisible to you. And I think lean is a great example of that where you might think you know where lean is is and what lean is and where it's going to be. And once you've get to that destination, it unpacks an entire world you didn't see. And then when you get to that destination, it unpacks a world that you didn't see. And I think that's where they have its own episode as well. So if you're okay with it, let's break it up into three, those three episodes and kind of go back to the mindset conversation. All right. Sounds good. So let's talk about that first one. The destination versus journey mindset and you know, and it's a fascinating conversation to have because people want. I'll call them certification moments to say we've implemented lean. They want we've rolled out daily management check. We've completed our transformation, which is an overused word. But what lean is, but lean is not an implementation. It's a living system of behaviors. And so there is no such thing as like I check the box because I've implemented daily management. I check the box because now I have strategy deployment. I check the box because what you were saying, I have five S at the highest level. And so lean is not something you achieve. And it's it's something you practice or you would lose it. And so it's an exercise machine. And if you want to be fit, this is the gym. It's called lean. And so but once you stop exercising, you start, you start feeling the tension behind that. And you start losing your muscle and you start you losing your thinking and the behaviors that come with that. So that's my thoughts on the destination versus journey mindset. What's your thoughts on that? Yeah, you know, again, think of an example where a company that produces a product has that mindset of, hey, we've developed this really great product. And that's it. You know, it's as good as it's ever going to be. And we're not going to try to innovate anymore. We're not going to try to improve it anymore. And eventually, guess what happens is the competition catches up. Produces something better. And then that company goes out of business. So I agree with you that that you, it isn't a destination. It is a change of culture. It's a change of a way of. of life. One of my favorite examples to use is the four levels of competency. We've discussed this before, but it fits with this discussion. But the four levels, unconsciously incompetent, we don't know what we don't know and we don't know how bad we really are. And there's no chance for improvement because we don't want to acknowledge that we have problems. Level two is consciously incompetent. That's where you now know that you're bad. And that's a good thing because now you're willing to acknowledge it and then do something about it and make improvements starting to happen. Level three is consciously competent, which says that you're now been doing it for a while and the data is showing that you're making great strides. This was that green mentality where all the metrics are now turning green and you're like, wow, we're there. We've done it. This is this is the level where people might start saying, ah, you know, we're now a lean company, which then leads to level four, which is unconsciously competent, which is saying, hey, you know, we're so good at this stuff. We don't need to think about it anymore. We don't need to have the training anymore. We've reached our destination and we're as good as wherever we're going to be. Well, again, the problem with that is level four is very similar to level one. And I've seen companies do that where they think they have reached their destination. You know, they've gotten all the awards. They've gotten all the, you know, acknowledgements. And so they take their eye off the ball. They stop doing the things that got them where they were doing great. And then it's amazing how fast they start to slide. You know, a company that might have won an award for being the best lean plant in one year, a year or two later, they're awful. And again, it's because they felt like they have achieved that accomplishment. They've achieved that objective. And they start slaying back. You know, and we see this all the time, like companies that won the Malcolm Baldrige Award back in the day when that was popular. All of a sudden, a year or two later, we're just awful. You know, you look at the book Good to Great. How many companies in that book that were listed as great companies that were far better than their competition are now out of business or now, you know, greatly reduced. So I agree with you. I agree that there should never be a destination for lean. It should be something that is just part of the culture becomes part of the culture. 100% that that journey mindset is hard to do. And it kind of walks us into the next mindset violation here and that question. But before I go there, I just want to remind us in the prior journey versus mindset, I made this comment. And this is important because this next mindset issue challenges that living system of behavior is because there's a psychological need for leaders to close, have closure on things. And I think this is a deeper issue than just lean because it's human nature. It's not just even leadership that we, you know, as humans, we need closure. And so leaders want milestones, they want completions, they want recognition. You know, these, these are all things that they crave psychologically. Okay, and that's human nature. I can't fault them for that because I myself, even talking about my example from bachelor's to doctorates, I wanted those acknowledgments throughout throughout the way. And this is a signal that I have control over the situation. Okay, that's just human nature. It creates comfort too. And it's, it justifies my investment that I've done to it. And so I can't fault anyone for having those feelings. And it's because it's just human nature. But the problem is lean disrupts all that because there is no done. There's only current state or current condition in the your next target condition. And so traditional management that rewards completion, you have lean now that rewards continuation. It's the opposite of that. And so there is a tension that just is organically and naturally is going to happen. You know, but it comes back to that psychological mindset of closure. And if my psychological mindset was to lose weight by going to the gym, I'm going to have closure when I hit my weight. I lost 20 pounds or 30 pounds. Okay, I'm rewarded now for that. Like, you know, but if I'm going to the gym to to be fit, I'm just going to always keep going. The whole the mindset is just completely different. I'm not looking at weight. It's not even I might lose some weight. That's great. I might become healthier. I might breathe better. I might become more mobile in what I do. But being fit is going to start opening my eyes to what I eat. And being fit is going to open my eyes of how I behave and even down to what I hold within me. If it's if I if I could just let go of certain past trauma and just start looking and I start thinking in this whole different way, but it started by me going to the gym and the intention behind it, the mindset was to be fit, not to lose weight. And so I think that the psychological need for closure is something that as leaders go on this journey or on this journey and pose that kind of question, it's a real good question because it's surfacing this human nature that's within them. So, you know, it's a great example because you've, you know, read about so many people who put that, you know, goal for a weight. And once they achieve that goal, they lose sight of what they're doing. And before you know it, they're back to their original weight, you know, it doesn't take long and they call that the yo-yo diet, right? It's constantly, you know, hey, losing 10 pounds, gaining 10 pounds, losing 10 pounds, gaining 10 pounds versus, like you said, changing your fundamental mindset. And this is why, and we've discussed this, if you, if you, if you listen to all of our podcasts, you'll know, this is a running theme. And I think this is a great time to really hammer this home that the real focus needs to be on changing the fundamentals of the organization, right? If you're, if you really want to change the culture, change the mindset, change, you know, really develop the problem solving skills, develop the teamwork, you need to change the fundamental foundation of the organization, like, you know, what do we use for promotional criteria in the organization? And how do we need to change that in order to promote this ongoing long-term thinking of team-based continuous improvement? What do we need to do to change our hiring practices to make sure that we're hiring competent, capable leaders who have that collaboration, I call it "stall for empowerment" leader in my book, to make sure we're hiring the right people to help continue to promote this kind of mindset into the future. What do we need to do for rewards and recognitions? And again, it's great to have celebration points. We've talked about that before. It's great to acknowledge when a team has solved a difficult problem. You should definitely celebrate that, to promote that pride of workmanship. But then say, okay, great, how do we then take that to the next level? You know, how do we take what you've done to improve that process and improve it even further or expand it to other areas? So again, critically important for an organization to look at the fundamental structure of the foundation to say, what can we permanently change about the way that we hire, reward, recognize, promote the various values that we hold dear in order to make this team-based, continuous improvement thing called lean a part of our fabric that never is going to change. You know, you pointed to something and I 100% agree with what you said, and which kind of takes us to that third mindset of the danger of saying we are lean now. And you know, and that that that that quietly starts becoming your decay because once you declare that, curiosity drops. The enders start to freeze. Leaders start disengaging from gimbai, saw over and over and over again. Systems become rituals without even thinking why you're doing it. And I truly feel the moment you say you're lean, you've likely stopped being lean. And so the dangers that come with, and I'm not speaking against them, I'm just saying it's a danger of, you know, saying I've achieved the Malcolm Baldrige Award, or I achieved the Shingle Award, or I achieved this award or that award. It sometimes, if you're doing it because it allows you to compare where you need to redirect yourself on your journey, that's great. But if you're using it to say, I've checked the box that I've achieved this, and now I could declare that I'm that. The second you said, I'm that is the second you start going backwards. And there is a counterbalance to all of this. I know we sound like we're saying all these three mindset issues, but there is a counterbalance. We, yes, there are nuances. We're not anti-recognition here. And there are nuances where, yes, we should have celebration points. And we just need to redefine when we say, what are those celebration points so that we don't fall into these kinds of mindset traps. And we'll talk more about them in the next few episodes, but we don't ever celebrate. We became lean, or completing a rollout, or installing a tool like 5S, as you mentioned, but we do celebrate things like behavioral shifts in the organization. We celebrate things like problem solving maturity. We could live more than five pounds now. I could live 30 pounds of problem solving now. Okay, I'm more fit. Leaders are developing others, like you said, is part of the promotional criteria. Teams surfacing problems faster. Let's celebrate. That's a celebration point. They used to take us weeks to surface a problem, and now we could surface it the same day, and we could resolve it the same day. Systems exposing the truth and not hiding it. These are all things that I would say, we're not anti-recognition here, but I do think it's a critical aspect to say that a destination in celebration points are two different things. Almost going back to Dr. Demings' KPI conversation. And so we don't celebrate arrivals. We celebrate progress in capabilities. And so lean maturity for me is not a level. It's attention. That makes sense. Yeah, now it's almost like saying that lean is foundational. It basically supports everything that we're doing from now on into the future. It's just part of who we are. All right, well that's great. Good part of our discussion. We'll continue this in the next episode of difficult questions. Thanks for joining us. Goodbye, everyone. Thanks, everyone. [BLANK_AUDIO]