Patrick Adams  

Welcome to the Lean solutions podcast where we discuss business solutions to help listeners develop and implement action plans for true Lean process improvement. I am your host, Patrick Adams. So many companies have struggled to successfully apply and sustain lean initiatives. And for some of you that maybe are new to lean manufacturing or process improvement, I’ll give just a very brief overview throughout my presentation. So you’ll you’ll, you’ll catch up with those that have heard the term Lean manufacturing or understand what it is. But it’s unfortunate that many companies out there today have not been able to realize the amazing benefits that this methodology offers. And today, I really want to discuss why that is, in order to do that, we really do have to understand lean manufacturing in the past, in the present. And then we have to ask ourselves, if Lean is going to be relevant in the future, right. And so that’s really what we’re going to be covering today. So really, we want to start with the past, right? So I’m going to give just a very brief history of lean manufacturing in order to kick us off today. So manufacturing, from a historical standpoint, started with craft production, right? Where everybody was involved in creating these individual pieces that were developed or created, crafted by experts, right. That was how manufacturing of products started back before the 1900s. When Henry Ford came along, he said, you know, this just isn’t working, I need to figure out how to get some large volumes of automobiles out there to the public, because you know, this is something that’s going to change and revolutionize the world. So Henry Ford put together the assembly line, which allowed for him to manufacture in large numbers. And this, again, was revolutionary for the world. And when the some Japanese companies such as Toyota heard about the amazing things that were happening in Detroit, with the Ford Motor Company, they said we have to come see this, we got to see what’s going on. So they came over and spent some time on the production line with Henry Ford, and really took away some pretty amazing learnings that they were going to bring back and apply to their motor company in Japan. But the funny thing is, is that wasn’t their main takeaway. The funny thing is, and in theirs, I probably am going to really screw up the details of this. But this is what I imagine happened. These Japanese executives, Toyota executives, walked into a Piggly Wiggly, a grocery store. And maybe it was, I don’t know, eight, nine o’clock at night, they were feeling a little hungry. They wanted to grab some snacks. And they walked into this Piggly Wiggly, and I’m just imagining them huddling around the cooler and one of them pulls a gallon of milk off the rack. And what happens? The next gallon of milk slides into place. And they’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is crazy. Right? So they see this and they’re like, now this is a serious takeaway. This was their aha moment in coming to visit the Western world. And so when they went back to Japan, they took what they learned at Piggly Wiggly and what they learned from Henry Ford, Henry Ford. And they put that together along with many other amazing concepts, techniques and tools solutions to problems they were having. And they developed what we now know as the Toyota Production System or lean manufacturing. And since then, you know 2000, the year 2000 And forward manufacturing companies, non manufacturing operations did not design engineering, marketing, healthcare, all these different industries and companies have started to learn and apply what we now know as lean manufacturing. So the creation of TPM, or the Toyota Production System led to many other organizations adopting and realizing the benefits of this amazing business system that was aimed at reducing waste and adding as much value as they could to the customer. And as I mentioned, you know, many people call it lean manufacturing. When Toyota first put it together, it wasn’t called Lean. Lean wasn’t introduced until a number of years later, the term Lean wasn’t but it has been called Lean Manufacturing. And then yet others coined TPS as the just in time system. So some of you may have heard that term just in time, and why just in time, why would they use the term just in time, it ended up being one of the pillars in the Toyota Production System. And the just in time concept means that each process produces only what is needed for the next process in continuous flow. Okay, and really, that brings us to today. So that was the past and I want to talk about today because today, we’re all hearing us A variety of issues, right? There’s a lot of factors that are happening in supply chain, a lot of supply chain challenges have increased dramatically for production facilities for manufacturers across the world, that right, not just in the US, but across the world and materials shortages have been problematic for many companies, you know, and a lot of people see Western companies who followed in Toyota’s footsteps, struggling, right, because of the supply chain issues. However, I would argue that many of these companies did not have a true understanding of the Toyota Production System. So many of these Western companies that adopted TPM, or lean manufacturing, you know, they’re struggling. And again, you know, some would say, Well, it’s because of the just in time methodology or the desk just in time concepts. But again, I would argue that it’s not that that really, these companies never had a true understanding of the Toyota Production System, they adopted what I would coin or call the a culture of continuous appearance, rather than a culture of continuous improvement. So it’s not true. So let me explain a lot of these Western companies that adopted this methodology, they missed Toyota’s constant Production Leveling to match demand. Okay, so that’s the first thing, they miss the fact that Toyota is constantly leveling their production to match this changing demand. They also let many Western companies also tried to just completely cut their inventory, because they heard well, inventory is waste, you know, so we need to just completely cut our inventory. And again, that wasn’t what Toyota was trying to, to do. They wanted the right size, their inventory. Now, they do believe that excess inventory is waste, but the right amount of inventory is not waste. So they said eliminate excess inventory, not all inventory. They also missed the fact that Toyota focuses on cross functional teams, cross functional teams, and empowered employees. And then this is a big one, obviously. But but you know, and this starts with leadership, right? leadership’s ability to develop and train their employees to cross train their employees to develop a culture where employees feel empowered, not a fear based culture, not a culture where employees are worried or scared to try and experiment, but really empowered. They also missed that Toyota, there, stop and fix the problems as they come mentality, right. So don’t just allow problems to continue. Don’t just cover those problems with inventory or more people, no stop, fix the problems as they come, determine why the problems came, drive to the root cause, and then move forward from there. They also had no real understanding of the culture at Toyota, the Japanese culture is very different than the Western culture. And so when these Western companies would adopt it, elite TPS, they thought, well, let’s just take exactly what Toyota did. And let’s just apply it in our company with our culture, then that did not work if they had to understand the culture that Toyota had behind the Toyota Production System. And finally, they didn’t understand the truth behind Toyota’s continued learning it being a learning organization, and the fact that they truly believe that all supply chain that that not all supply chains are made equal, right, so they don’t apply the same techniques and the same tools to every supply chain, because they’re not all equal. Okay. So with that, now that we’ve kind of level set on where we’re currently at, and kind of my take or my feelings on just in time, the Toyota Production System, I want to take a moment and explain just a quick story about myself, a little story about myself, Now bear with me here. But this is a true story. I actually mentioned it as a story in my book. But way back years ago, as a young, inexperienced Production Supervisor, there was a time that I wanted to prove myself to upper management. Okay, so I, I saw others that were getting promoted into these high paying jobs and moving up into the, the, you know, the executive offices, and, you know, just climbing the ladder, and I thought, If only I could make a really good impression on upper management, then, you know, maybe someday I too, could be sitting in one of those corner offices, right, and be successful at the company. But I had to ask myself, like, okay, so how will I do this? I needed to learn what was important to the management team and to the executives, right. So that’s exactly what I did. I just watched and I listened to the executive leaders. When it comes to lean manufacturing. I learned what they liked to see and what they didn’t like to see. For example, some of the executive leaders would come out on the production floor and I would see them. I’d see their eyes light up, and I would hear the comments, when they would go into areas that were very clean, and well lit, they had fresh paint, right. And they really liked to see these visual boards with lots of charts and improvement activities. However, the charts always needed to have lots of green KPIs key performance indicators, right? Never read, they could never have read. But Green was okay. Okay, so knowing this, I went to my supervisor, my manager, and I got approval to get some money to be able to paint some machines and add some lighting. To my area, I purchased a whiteboard, and I posted some charts from the front office, added one chart to track the team’s output, and made sure that the goal was easy enough to make sure we were always in the green, right, that was important. And then finally, I added a section to the task list to show how busy that team was with improvement projects in the area. Right, so add these nice little projects. And I remember I even printed out some motivational posters that I found on the web with words that I knew the front office executives would really like, like five s, right, and, and leadership. And, you know, different words like that. So it and then during some of my personal five s and for those that don’t know, five s five s is a, we’ll talk a little bit more about that later. But it’s a way to organize and make your area more efficient and clean. And it’s a foundational principle to lean. But during some of my personal five s activities, of which the team really wasn’t very involved, right, I was out there kind of after work hours trying to make sure that my area was cleaned up, I started to remove some of the tools that the team, which I found out later, the team actually needed for to do their jobs. But I kind of thought they were cluttering the area. So I figured I would remove those. So I mean, all of this sounds pretty terrible, right? Intentionally, it is terrible. It is true. This was what I was doing prior to knowing what I know now about Lean. But because I was so busy at this time, trying to make sure that I looked good. I stopped spending time on the production floor, I stopped listening to my team. And over time, my team started missing shipments. Of course they did, right turnover was on the rise, my department was literally falling apart. My employees saw through these fake intentions, right, that they knew that I didn’t really respect them. And it was clear to them that I was here for myself and not for the team. So there’s an old saying, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig, right? And in this case, guess who the pig was? This guy right here, right? I was the pig, not my area, not my team. But this is really the definition of what I call continuous appearance. Okay, continuous appearance. Now, a lot has changed over the years. So I want to be clear that a lot has changed. I failed in my role as a production supervisor. you know that year that that part of my life. However, when I look back, I really see this as success. Because of what I learned from that experience. I was remote, I was promoting, I was creating a culture of continuous appearance, right? Rather than what we all know today as continuous improvement, right or true lean. I was creating fake lean. So let me explain why this is so why I’m so passionate about this earlier in my career, I worked for two companies. And if you were to walk into either of these companies, they would look very similar. At the surface. They both had visual management, right, similar KPIs safety, cost quality delivery, both had similar org structures. And you know, similar approaches, they would say two business solutions. One of the companies, though, had a true culture of continuous improvement, while the other one had what I call this culture of continuous appearance, right? So underneath all of the floor tape, the pretty scorecards, the lean posters, right? Was a very toxic culture, where people hated to work. The turnover was through the roof. There was no real sustainment of any lean initiatives. And I’m sure some of you are shaking your heads because you know exactly what I’m talking about. In fact, you probably, maybe are even working in a company that has a culture of continuous appearance. Or maybe you have in the past, right? It’s It is unfortunate, you know, but just like this young, inexperienced supervisor at this this company that I mentioned earlier, which wasn’t one of the two companies was actually another company many organizations do not understand lean well enough to apply it correctly. Today in today’s world. Many leaders have purchased the books Right, the Toyota way, Lean thinking, the machine that changed the world. They have all the books, they’ve read them. But they’re only reading the covers, right? They’ve read the covers, they haven’t gotten into the real meat of the books, right? They really don’t understand what true Lean is. It’s not just in time, that caused the shortages that we’re experiencing right now in the supply chain. It’s the appearance trap. Unfortunately, today, there’s so many companies that are struggling to sustain gains and adopt a true culture of continuous improvement, because they’re trapped in this appearance of lean, you know, so how do they succeed? Right? When companies are trapped in this Lean appearance? How do they succeed, you know, with so many companies failing, like I said earlier, right, so many companies failing with sustainment? How are they going to survive into the future, you know, with Lean initiatives? So let me ask you this, what is the definition of insanity? I’ll answer for you, I’m sure you know, but it’s doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result, right, doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. So I want you to imagine the output. And if we want the output, let’s say his culture is a continuous improvement culture, if that’s what we want, then what do we need to change in order to change the culture we need to change the inputs, we if we want a different output, we have to change the inputs. So we get something different. In the end, if we don’t change it, change the inputs. And it’s insanity. Right. So in order to make lean work, we really need a different leadership system. When I talk about the inputs, the leadership system is one of those inputs, it’s a very huge part of the inputs, right? So we need to have a different leadership system, a different management system. If you don’t, then it’s going to fall apart, your lean initiatives are not going to be sustained. So if you manage in the same way, with the same meetings, the same metrics, right, you’re going to get the same behaviors, the same beliefs, the same results, right? It’s complete insanity. So unless we change the way that we manage, then we’re going to fail at lean. And if you want to succeed at lean, then you need to manage differently. So ask yourself in your organization, maybe you’re a leader in your organization? Or maybe you’re maybe thinking of other leaders in your organization, how are they behaving? Where are they spending their time? Does that support the end result, the culture that you’re looking to create, because if you make changes here, you’ll see changes in the output. All of us have a culture, we all have some culture that we work in, right? Cultures, there’s a culture everywhere, you know, but the culture has been created over time based on leaders, habits, behaviors, leaders and their people’s behaviors and habits. But let’s not allow our cultures to just be by happenstance, let’s be intentional, to control the inputs, be intentional to manage the inputs, so that we can control what the output will be a true culture of continuous improvement. If we as leaders can master this, then we’re ready to develop a true culture of continuous improvement and that culture can survive in the future. So when applied and adopted correctly, lean is I really defined lean as a worldwide attempt to develop a learning culture and implement this, what I consider this total strategy aimed at solving problems. Some of you may have heard the name Dr. Edward Deming. So Edward Deming took focused quality management systems to Toyota. And then Toyota took this, as we talked about already, they took this relentless approach and eliminating waste, right. And then others built off of that, as we talked about, from manufacturing, you know, operations, healthcare, business, transactional, construction, healthcare, all these different industries, you know, so many different industries, and lean can now really be applied in any kind of process when it’s truly understood. It can be applied in any process, but the world is changing. Right? The world is changing very quickly. Very quickly. Technology is changing, right? So I mean, think about it. I don’t know about you, and I’m not sure where you guys were at but I just remember being a kid and I remember taking, taking the phone off the wall and like stringing this big long cord through the hallways and then down the stairs to my bedroom. And and then you know, calling my girlfriend on the phone and then shortly after, like someone upstairs would pick up another phone and then they start dialing and I’d be like, Mom, get off the phone like I’m talking on the phone right? Probably some of you remember that not too long ago? Like, look at us now? Right? I mean, the first computer was 50 feet long and weighed five tons. And now, I mean, we’re carrying a computer around in our back pocket, right? We can access just about anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time in the world, right? I mean, it’s crazy. It’s amazing. But with all that change that’s happening, people ask me, is lien still relevant? And will lien still be relevant in the future? Or is lean outdated? Right? Is it? Is it that learning is outdated? Well, my answer to that is, it’s not a simple answer. But I’ll do my best to walk through this. So as the future continues to change, we have to keep our focus on the principles, okay, the principles, the beginning, the foundational principles to what true continuous improvement is all about. And you know, when some of you maybe are connected with me on LinkedIn or on social media, I’m also on Tik Tok, just letting you know, but some of you are connected, and you see me share a lot of pictures of visual boards, right, or other manual tools. And I have a lot of people that say to me, you know, why are you wasting time manually filling out those sheets on boards? But why don’t you go digital? Like, there’s so many good digital platforms out there good software applications that can do exactly what you’re trying to do manually? Okay, well, the simple answer is yes. Okay. Yes, that can happen. We can definitely go digital with the visual boards that we’re putting out there. But the real question isn’t, can you do it? Right? Because yes, you can? Absolutely. But the real question is, When can you do it? You know, right, or should you do it? Should you do it? When should you do it? That’s the real question. So my personal view is that we should endeavor to understand the tools and the principles, the techniques first, right, we have to understand that first and possibly in parallel with some digital implementation, right? I mean, I don’t expect you to do something that’s complete waste, if it can be replaced with automation, or some kind of digital application. But we have to remember that like any other tool, the tool in in and of itself is not necessarily what delivers the gains, right? It has to be the discipline, the practical application, the understanding the culture that’s behind the tools that really delivers the benefit, and ultimately embeds this desired thinking and behavior into the organization. So a digital solution, you know, that helps streamline flow and visibility of critical information can help us maybe ask the right questions, take appropriate action, you know, that this can really only optimize our newer existing lean initiatives, right, but it shouldn’t be first, it should optimize it should add to it should build on understanding the principles, the tools, the techniques first. But I will, I will tell you, though, that even with the right leadership system in place, and even with clear understanding of the principles, a quickly changing landscape, which we know we all work in, we all live in, it is a quickly changing landscape, it can cause serious chaos to any organization. Right? Even with the best leadership, even with the best principals, it can cause some serious chaos, especially if we’re not willing to be flexible. With the tools with the technology, with the understanding, we have to understand it and be flexible and be ready to adapt and adjust quickly, today, which is different than in the past, in the past, we could set a goal to implement four different changes this next year to our organization, right? In the past, we could do that and say, by 1212 months from now, I want to have these four things implemented, then COVID hits. Well, guess what? Those four things are not hunger applicable; those four things are being thrown out the window. But there’s a lot of organizations that said, no, no, no, we were gonna stick to this. We’re gonna, we got these four things we got to do. We’re gonna keep doing it, right? And all this pressure is put on the organization and the people to continue to get these four things done. It’s like, are you serious? We’re not even working in the office anymore. Like us, you know, my whole family is sick, like I can’t, but yet, I’m still being pressured to get these things done right and not adjusting or being flexible to things that are outside of our control. I mean, that’s the reality of the future and things will continue to change like that. So we need to be focused on Not just on getting work done. But more importantly, I’m getting the right work done. Right. And when things are changing so fast, we have to be quick to determine what is the right work because it could change, we have to be ready to change as well. So Agile methodology, some of you may have heard this term, but it found it started in software development. And instead of these long development cycles, where the customer finds out internal or external customer finds out at the end, what their product or finished product or the finished project looks like, there’s these short development sprints that happen in Agile where the customer is seeing things as it’s being developed or as it’s being built, enabled to give feedback, right, so that the the team can actually adjust quickly based on feedback that they’re getting. So what does this mean? And how can we utilize agile alongside our Lean initiatives? Well, there’s something very different if you look at a manufacturing company that applies Agile principles. For one team’s factories, processes, they’re broken down into these modular components, which can be adjusted, reorganized as needs changed, right, quick disconnect, everything’s on casters. So easy to change very quickly, there’s usually a solid network of suppliers that helps ensure competitive costs are available and adjustments you know, through are able to be made very quickly right and to allow these companies to be competitive in the market. So lean manufacturing or lean methodology can be employed alongside agile in order to keep excess inventory down right sized inventory, the right amount of inventory, that it can help prevent waste can be added, be an added focus on rapidly meeting customer needs, right. And this is why a methodology based on iterative, agile steps is the best option. Every single step involves only reasonably small costs. And then after every step, you can align the project to the business goal, right or even adjust if you need to write something like COVID happens or the supply chain shortages. And as a team, you have to be willing to stop, ask yourselves what you’ve learned from this and what’s happening and make adjustments accordingly. Right, you don’t just push forward and hope that you’re going to get through this, you have to be willing to make these adjustments along the way. And this is why the approach is called Agile, right? It allows for things to change. So in closing today, lean is timeless, lean is timeless, the principles are timeless, with the correct application, right? Those correct inputs, the inputs, were right, which includes leadership, leadership behaviors and actions, the output will be a true culture of continuous improvement. And if you couple this with Agile mentality, rapid response, mobile workstations Quick Change equipment. The result is a team and a business that cannot be stopped now. And in the future. Any questions? Stacy in the chat? Or does anybody unmute or have any questions for me?

Speaker  

Yeah, so this is an opportunity for you to throw something in chat if you would, like throw in the chat or ask Patrick directly. Patrick, I really, let me just kick it off with the question. I really like the thinking of continuous improvement with more of an agile mindset. You know, what I heard you say is take processes, break them down into manageable chunks, so that you can work on improvements there and or adjust as demand has adjusted. So obviously, with demand lately, it’s been all over the board supply chain, has Conn’s supply to be all over the board. So I love breaking down a process into some more manageable chunks to work on independently. Can you give us just a couple more examples? I loved how you talked about equipment on casters to bring in and out. Can you just talk through a couple more examples of where you’ve seen that be effective?

Patrick Adams  

Yeah, you know, and obviously, I’m staying very heavy in manufacturing right now. Because I believe that the majority of the group is working in the manufacturing industry. Is that correct? Stacey? Yeah. Okay. So one of the things that I probably see the most even today and it blows my mind today is maintenance teams that are putting equipment in without thinking about being agile. I see it every single day. They’re hard wiring in and hard plumbing in equipment. When it’s a small piece of equipment that can easily be put on casters and with quick disconnects. There’s ways to turn off air, there’s ways to know this quick disconnect electric. You can’t you can’t imagine in today’s ever changing world that a year from now six months from now, eight months from now, you’re not going to want to take this piece of equipment and turn it 180 degrees or move it 10 feet to the right or to the left to make room for another piece of equipment or whatever it might be, companies have to understand that every time I see them moving equipment, I have to stop them and say, Have you considered the fact that this might change six months from now, and then you have these high costs of bringing in an outside company, because you don’t have enough employees and your maintenance team to do it internally. Now you’re paying for an external company to come in and move a piece of equipment three months from now, when you could just make it a quick disconnect with some lockable casters and give the employees the ability to make adjustments tomorrow, if they want to move the machine, you know, 180 degrees, move it over two feet to make room for, you know, a pallet of material or something like that. I just think that that’s probably one of the biggest things that I see. I just really think it’s one of my pet peeves. Now, you know, obviously, for some companies that have very large equipment, that it’s not possible to do that with, I completely understand that. But are you still thinking about it? What about the auxiliary equipment that comes in? What about the materials? You know, do you set pallets on the ground? Or do you have some type of mobile pallet cart that operators can move around very easily? And that again, you can move those around very easily? You know, are you painting the floor? Or are you using stick downs that can be pulled up? You know, I mean, just thinking about what if we change this three months from now let’s keep our costs down and make it mobile today. Hopefully that answers absolutely.

Speaker  

Great examples. Brian asks, we see a lot in the news about COVID being the end to Justin time and supply chain. Yeah, we have no choice but stockpiling inventory, they say Would you agree with those assessments?

Patrick Adams  

Say the last part again, we have no choice but to, to what,

Speaker  

but stop piling inventory. That’s what they say about your story. What would you say to that?

Patrick Adams  

I don’t think we should be piling up inventory. Anyways, I think that we should have the right amount of inventory. I think that organizations need to take a step back and look at their entire supply chain. Look at the entire value stream not just within your four walls, but the entire value chain and understand where improvements can be made. That I do not think that Justin time is the end of Justin time, I think that organizations did not understand the principles of Justin time well enough, especially in the Western world. And that’s what’s causing a lot of the issues, if they were doing some of the things that I mentioned earlier. And they really understood true continuous improvement. That was what Toyota was really trying to do, if they understood some of those things, then just in time would not be the cause, right in quotation marks of the supply chain issues. So I think you have to look at all of those things that were talked about earlier, the leveling of demand, the stop and fix mentality, the Empowered teams, the fact that every supply chain is not equal. Right? There they have to look at each supply chain individually, and make improvements and right size their inventory. To respond. That’s true just in time. Again, I don’t know if that answers that, Brian. But you can, by all means, actually send me a message on LinkedIn, I have a really great video that I can send you that explains a lot about just in time, and that’s for anybody if you’re interested. There’s a really great video out there around that exact concept.

Speaker  

Awesome. Kelly asks, what is the best way to move a team that is still using old school lean manufacturing, to move towards lean operations or Lean Enterprise?

Patrick Adams  

Yeah, that’s a good one. So I’m imagining possibly, there’s some appearance, you know, again, culture of continuous appeared stuff happening, maybe? I would say that the simple answer is culture. You know, and I don’t say I don’t mean like non Japanese or not Japanese versus American culture, but real, really corporate culture, you know, how is the company led from the top, what most leaders fail to realize is that Lean is a management philosophy. It’s not about the tools. It’s not about how many of these Toyota Lean tools can I apply in my, in my organization, it’s a management philosophy. And if if leaders are not willing to accept that and change the way they lead, and they’re going to continue to struggle, corporate leaders either don’t understand the value, or they don’t have the patience to control and implement it. Right? Slow, steady, continuous improvement does not lead to immediate recognition. It doesn’t lead to promotions. Right. And it’s hard to accept that. And honestly, in today’s world, most leaders are not in a leadership position for more than three to five years. In fact, I think five is probably even pushing it. They’re moving around. So they’re not thinking about 20 years. How do I build a system that’s going to be the right system for this company for 20 years and I’m speaking nonsense. All leaders are this way. So don’t take offense to this. But many, many leaders in a continuous appearance culture, are just thinking about the three years of the five years that they’re going to be there. What can I do to change this place as quickly as I can show the most benefit to the bottom line, and, you know, get promoted, or get moved into another position, right? immediate return. Successful implementation requires something that is very rare in both people and organizations. And it’s constancy of purpose systems that are pointed and directed towards constancy of purpose. Any leader that comes into a true lean organization should come into a system that they support and maintain, they don’t bring in their own system, they come into a system that is that’s constant that the organization agrees to, and lives by.

Speaker  

So Patrick, you talk about needing to be flexible and metrics often needing to be changed? What trigger should a group pay attention to to know that it needs different?

Patrick Adams  

Yeah, good question. I would say there’s some really good indicators that I in and again, if by no means am, I am I selling my book here. But there’s my buy book has 12 questions. And those questions in the book are really good indicators that you should ask yourself to determine whether you’re living in a culture of continuous appearance versus continuous improvement. You know, one of them is contentment, you know, are you content? Are your leaders content? Are they good with the status quo? Are they just kind of, you know, are things just good the way they are? Or? Are you looking for opportunities to improve? Do you have this constant dissatisfaction with the status quo, you’re always looking to get better? Where are your leaders spending their time? Right? Are they spending the majority of their time in, in conference rooms in their offices? Or do they spend the majority of their time at the place where the value add work is being done? How are they behaving? When they’re out there? Is it a fear based culture? Do they are people scared to try new things? Are they scared to experiment? Right? Or are leaders empowering them and and, and being servants to them, right? A true Lean culture is one that’s led by leaders with a servant heart, that the company has to have a long term vision that everybody’s work is aligned to. And then leaders are helping their team members that are closest to the value add work, to remove roadblocks and help them to do their job better. Right. They’re a learning organization that’s dedicated to scientific thinking or PDCA. But they work together, leaders and team members, they work together to solve problems every single day. And like I talked about earlier, they’re agile, they need to be ready to pivot as needed, you know, in this quickly changing world. So again, that those are just a couple of the points are the questions that are laid out. But I think that there’s also a free assessment download on our website that has all of those questions. And that would be a great resource to use to really determine you know, if you are in a culture of continuous appearance.

Speaker  

Awesome. Thank you, Patrick, for sharing your wisdom with us today and taking time out of your schedule. We really appreciate it.

Patrick Adams  

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the lean solutions podcast. If you haven’t done so already, please be sure to subscribe. This way you’ll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined. Please give us a review. Thank you so much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai