Manage the Little Things to Get Big Results

Organizational improvements very rarely take the form of massive, sweeping change.  Competent managers seem to have their fingers on all of the smallest details, and effective leaders are often described as “doing all of the little things” that make people feel appreciated, challenged, and engaged.

Because continuous improvement (CI) systems like the Toyota Production System (TPS) are a set of integrated systems, the management implications also are a set of intertwined values and approaches.

Within the management aspect of any CI system are three critical parts:

1. People Development System
2. Continuous Improvement and Innovation System
3. Performance Management and Leadership System

People Development System

“Before we build cars, we build people” is an often quoted saying from Toyota. It has learned that to be an effective, efficient, and competitive company, people come first.

That’s why training is measured in terms of effectiveness, not the time it takes. It simply takes as long as it takes. So, what can we learn from that organization to make our own better?

First, that development of people starts with increasing their skills and abilities (fundamental skills, standardized work), including technical, project management, and presentation/communication skills.  The process of training is done incrementally (using techniques first used during World War II through the Training Within Industry Commission), which requires not only demonstrating, but testing performance before team members are considered fully qualified to do their jobs.

People should also fit into a team with defined roles and responsibilities, including span of supervision and organizational structure. They should understand who is responsible for what and where to go for help. By knowing and understanding these aspects of the organization, people know how and when they add value.

Second, a leader’s job is to help develop “kaizen eyes,” the ability to observe opportunities, challenges, and problems. This is learned and practiced at the gemba (where the value-added operations take place) by literally going and seeing where the value is added.

Continuous Improvement and Innovation System

Improvement and innovation go hand in hand.  After all, what is innovation other than improvement on what currently exists?  Management must support the daily application of an improvement culture.

Innovation or improvement starts from a deep understanding of what is value-added versus non-value-added.  In other words, what does the customer pay for?  When do we change the fit, form, function, or delivery of our products or services?  When we learn to see non-value-added activity, we can then learn to take action based on what we see to solve problems.

The process of improvement is taught to people utilizing a concept called Toyota Kata (based on the book of the same name by Mike Rother).  Kata is the repetition and practice of specific routines that force the learner into a new pattern of thinking, by changing behaviours and activities.

The ability to coach and teach the process of improvement (using scientific method, or Plan-Do-Check-Act) is a cornerstone of managers.

However, before improvements can be made, managers need to understand the current condition, including how to measure it quantitatively.  By evaluating the current condition against the target condition for each of their metrics (using a balanced scorecard), the management team distributes ownership across the entire organization.  Instead of a select, small group looking for problems, everyone can recognize them and take action to solve them.

Performance Management and Leadership System

To make problems apparent, a company’s metrics need to be prominently displayed, along with a very clear definition of normal and abnormal (like simply using the colours red and green).  This turns traditional, report-based decision-making into visual management of the operations, which is much easier to understand and enables quicker action.  Information is no longer “hidden” in systems, but there for everyone to see.

Leaders must also follow their own standardized work, including the time, place, and process of status reviews in the operations. Ideally, senior leaders should review the status of the whole organization on a daily basis.

The performance management system is the flip side of the leadership system. Leaders coach and develop people by asking questions that the metrics bring to the surface:

• Why is the production output red for this cell?
• Why did we run out of material?
• Why did we miss a shipment to our customer?

How leadership reacts to problems when they surface is just as important as detecting them.  Shop floor management tools like andon can reduce the lead time to problem awareness, which in turn reduces the overall problem-solving lead time. These systems help ensure that problems just don’t hang around, but are brought to leadership’s attention until they are solved for good.

As with other aspects of an integrated organizational system, management plays a crucial, interconnected role.

Matt Elson is founder of True North Thinking, 705-796-4853, www.truenorththinking.ca.