Funny Escalations

I recently discovered this funny online webcomic 1.00 FTE.  This particular one reminds me of the waste of overburdening people.  An unreasonable request is made to a team and escalation is conducted to force it to action.

What is a better way to meet with senior management about this? 

• Bring the senior leader to watch and talk with the team (gemba) to find out why they can not do the task.  There may be waste causing them to not be able to complete the task.  They may not have the resources or skills.  There may be other barriers for them.
• Deeply understand the task that is being requested.  The task may not fit into the organization’s strategy or help your customer.  The task might not be worth doing right now (or ever).  It may just be someone’s pet project.  The team may have bigger priorities.

Keep on improving!

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Great Recent Lean Blog Posts

I have been pretty busy lately and haven’t had much time to write.  I hope you enjoy these blog posts because I think they are pretty great!

• Failure Isn’t Really Failure  by Jeff Hajek: How to learn when things don’t go as expected
• Lean Healthcare Featured in Sunday NY Times Business Page & I Got Quoted by Mark Graban: Great analysis and link to NY Tiimes article about the Lean journey at Seattle Children’s Hospital and other hospitals.
• Lean Healthcare – My wife burned herself and that is considered a pre-existing condition by Jon Wetzel: A first-hand patient account of what navigating healthcare insurance is like.
• The CEO Drives the Brand and the Culture by Pete Abilla: A great example of how a CEO drives culture through behaviours
• Multi-Tasking vs Waiting by Mark Rosenthal: This is about the choice to tolerate work disruptions or do something about them.
• Starting Lean Not From the Top by Lee Fried: There is somewhat of a debate about where to begin your Lean journey.  Start from the top or the middle?
• The Illusion of Knowledge by John Hunter: Certainty is risky.  Click the link to read more about it!
• The 12 Herculean Labors of Lean Leaders By Jon Miller: I love how Jon takes takes the challenges that Lean leaders face to an epic level.
• Are your Kaizen events sustainable step function improvement, or merely recovery? by Gary Bergmiller: This reminds me of Demming’s quote about how putting out fires is not improvement but just returning things back to the current state.
• “Do” Only Gets You Half the Way There, or…“No Pie for You!” by Mark Hamel: This is a post I still talk about with my colleagues almost a month later.  Outstanding perspective for Kaizen event pies.
• Lead From The Front and The Back by Simon Sinek: This article really points out how to practice the Respect For People principle.
• 5 (Other) Reasons To Go To The Gemba by D. Mark Jackson: I always enjoy having more reasons to inspire people to go see the problem with their own eyes.
• Transparency – Crucial to Engagment by Matt Wrye: Contains a great metaphor for how to be transparent.

Keep on improving!

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