Kindness to problems

A couple of years ago, at the Lean Academy's Summit, Takashi Tanaka told me to be "kind to problems."

To this day, I'm not sure what exactly he had in mind, but it's been bugging me every since. How, indeed, do we treat problems?

Back when I was studying engineering (okay, still during the Cold War) my math teacher wanted us to find "pure" answers, reasonings that - elegantly - led all the way to "first" principles. He ranted against the new fashion of exploring math through number crunching simulations. Problems were interesting only inasmuch as they could be mathematized.

As a young man, I did systems dynamics simulations with, at the time iThink. It was exciting and interesting, but there never was any way to calibrate the simulation with real data (the data, wasn't good enough and the simulation…) No worries, I was told, the simulation in itself is a great heuristic that makes people think about complex dynamic problems. Making them think is valuable in itself. Never mind that the wonderful archetype of Tragedy of The Commons has never been found once in a natural situation. It remains insightful. Hmmm.

Now, Big Data offers the promise of being able to start representing who every individual behaves in a given situation. It's still very reductionist, but at the end of the day, it accepts that every event matters. It's too early to tell yet what kind of reasoning will emerge, but I'm convince that whatever it is it sure will be different.

I was trained to be unkind to problems - I was trained to force problems into existing frameworks and then jump to solutions. And, in doing so, I was trained to ignore people's unique experience and aggregate every story into one. No one describes this as beautifully as author Chimanda Adichie:
http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

Being kind to problems, I now believe, is looking at as many instance of a typical problem as I can, as opposed to "solving" the problem mentally and searching for likely illustrations in real life. Being kind to problems mean being kind to people carrying the problem because their experience enriches the mosaic-like description of the problem. And, no matter how hard it is in practice, it, in the end, means being kinder to people with problems because how they experience things matters, regardless of how strange or distasteful their take on the situation feels.

I need to ask Takashi whether that's what he had in mind - but one thing for certain, being kind to problems means undoing a lifetime of conditioning of treating problems generically and seeking "ultra-solutions" before truly understanding what the problem really is, from the perspective of the various stakeholders.

Let's Make Radical Diversity the Norm

My friend Tom Everill is the CEO of Northwest Center, which employs differently-abled people across several lines of business such as light manufacturing, packaging, janitorial services and data entry, as well as placing individuals within other firms.

In November he wrote a wonderful Seattle Business Magazine article The New Competitive Edge in which he shows how we can harness the power of human diversity to drive productivity, quality, innovation and customer satisfaction. This is not just a puff piece about "let's respect all people", it shows how we can give back but also gain concrete business benefits from hiring people who may not be just like us.

Leading organizations who tout their diversity programs seek to promote people of different genders and religious backgrounds to leadership positions, not only white males of a certain generation. It's expected not only that these people are chosen for their exceptional abilities, and that their different perspectives will bring benefits to the organization.

How many leaders today would view the different abilities of a partially paralyzed person, an autistic person or a person with Down's syndrome as true business assets? Tom does. Read the article to find out why.

What we need is to make a sort of radical diversity, the type of inclusion and caring for one another that brings out the best of our humanity, the norm.

A radical change of perspective

Everything we've been taught is about how to succeed in a known, predictable world. Competitiveness, we're told, is about making the right investment choices and then controlling the implementation to secure the return on investment. The most rational actor, with the most rigorous execution practice wins. Our leaders pride themselves in their powers of rational thinking and the discipline with which they get their decisions implemented.

Unfortunately, the world we live in is anything but predictable (has it even been?). It's hard to know what is coming next week, let alone in 10, 5 or even 3 years. The decide-and-execute model now has to work on the very short term and drives every one crazy by the senselessness of so-called "rational decisions" and the brutality of its execution practices. A senior manager doesn't like how his production unit works? Why not scratch it all and invest in a new one elsewhere - let's play poker, let's go all in, and let's burn millions and waste years of experience and expertise - for what?

As Joseph Stiglitz points out, today's competitiveness comes from 1) the speed of the learning curve and 2) the spillover from this learning curve. http://live.worldbank.org/conversation-joseph-stiglitz-president-obama-council-jobs-and-competitiveness This is what we've been exploring in the lean movement: lean is about learning to learn.

Learning can't be forced. To learn, people have to be engaged. They certainly can be pushed into the pool to start swimming, but sooner or later they need to have fun with it, or they'll simply let themselves sink to the bottom as so many are doing now. The trouble with learning is that every one loves figuring out something else to what they already know, but hates having to tackle a completely new topic: learning is not understanding, learning is doing. So we need to be tough, but we need to be patient and kind as well. Tough kindness. Kind toughness. Tight and loose. Fixed and flexible. Yin and yang. The only proof of learning are results, but learning needs space for try and see without blame at the first failure.

To create learning, we need a radical shift in perspective in our management systems. We should no longer discuss sites, functions or areas, but people. We should no longer look at execution of action plans, but at learning activities and the speed of acquisition of new know-how (I know how to do this, which I didn't use to know). More fundamentally, we should no longer see our organizations as perfect mechanisms, set in stone by the IT reporting and workflow system, but as the sum of contributions that people make to the business, and what each, individually brings to the party. We need to change our minds, radically, in order to change our practice.

It's a sad day, it's a proud day.

Mandela's passing is a blow to the soul - the world has changed again, and will not be the same now that his light has gone from us. I won't lie, I write this shocked by the news with tears in my eyes.

My friends now how deeply in love I am with South Africa, it's beautiful land, its kindest people, and how in awe I've always been of their determination to face their impossible problems and not accept the destiny thrown on them. Madiba has been the shining example of that.

Recently again, in a moment of discouragement, I reminded myself that Mandela was 72 years old when he walked out jail. So, I picked myself up from the floor and asked myself what can we do further to follow his example and build a kinder, wiser world. And, always, with one step forwards, friends join to help - I am constantly awed and grateful for that.

Thanks to Dan, we started thinking big thoughts: what does lean mean beyond the enterprise? Are we doing everything we can with what we've learned? Here's a first step:

http://www.fastcompany.com/3022890/work-smart/creating-a-kinder-wiser-more-efficient-work-environment-isnt-as-impossible-as-it-

And I know that more friends will join us. We will make new friends.

It's a sad day. It's a proud day.

Minimum Wage vs. Minimum VIABLE Wage

Yesterday President Obama gave a speech encouraging the raising the minimum wage. People have a difficult time living on minimum wage in the USA. However this is the wrong, or suboptimised, discussion. The minimum wage is simply the least amount of money that an employer may pay a worker according to law. The actual minimum wage is whatever a worker is willing to accept, taking into account the possibility of off-the-books benefits, under-the-table cash (i.e. tax free payments), illegal employment status of the worker or simply desperation on the part of the employee. There is very little that is edifying about the discussion of a minimum wage, what we need is discussion of a minimum VIABLE wage.

What is a minimum viable wage? It is the lowest wage that is in the best interest of all stakeholders including employee, customer, employee, and the environment. Anyone who has tried to manage a business that involves more than a couple of steps in the service-delivery chain using the lowest cost labor has realized that you get what you pay for, or less. Low quality, high turnover, late deliveries, lack of continuous improvement erode the bottom-line far more than the savings from labor cost. This is not viable.

People who are not paid a viable wage do not come to work with a sense of security, much less a sense of motivation or commitment to their employer and larger team. Customers served by minimum legal wage employees receive service that is proportional to the level of engagement, motivation and professionalism that $8-$15/hour will buy.

In minimum wage environments, the company culture tends to become fraught with mistrust, fear, disrespect for low-status individuals, lack of human development, inability to use minds to find innovative solutions, and other contributors to stagnation and decline.

What we need is a national conversation on a minimum viable wage. It requires collaboration. It requires long-term thinking. It requires understanding of total cost. It requires real leaders. Mr. Obama, 24 months should be plenty of time if you find can gather the right team of rivals to shepherd this discussion.

The cost of not involving people

To build on the previous post, one company I know went through the trouble of quantifying the cost of non-involvement at the time the company was sold. We're talking a billion dollar company that tripled its value in four years. Over the period, they had a strong people involvement in waste reduction program and they found overall that manufacturing cost as a percentage of sales reduced by 7% whilst materials, R&D and overhead remained constant - 7% that corresponds to the 7% increase in EBITDA (in percentage of sales) over the period. EBITDA overall increased by 60% over the period.

The interesting part of the analysis is looking at the situation plant by plant. In the 6 plants least involved with improvement efforts, as measured by operator involvement and speed of improvement, the percentage of manufacturing costs over sales varied from 5% increase to 12% decrease. In the second group 6 plants group of high involvement efforts, manufacturing cost to sales reduced by -9% to -30%.

Rigorous estimates such as these are rare, but the company explicitly considered that improvements in people engagement and customer satisfaction directly led to a $ 600 million increase in company value. Hard results obtained from "soft stuff." Why so many senior managers simply shrug off cash potentials of this magnitude remains a vexing (and enduring) puzzle.

La démotivation des équipes : tout le monde y perd

Aujourd’hui, quand on parle avec des personnes qui travaillent en entreprise, ce qui se dégage fréquemment des échanges c’est le sentiment de démotivation qui les gagne et leur difficulté à avoir encore envie de contribuer aux projets de l’entreprise.

Vendredi dernier, je recevais un mail d’une personne qui témoignait de cette situation. Cette personne travaille depuis quelques années dans une équipe de plusieurs dizaines de personnes sur un projet considéré, à un moment, comme important pour l’entreprise. Jusque là, malgré des conditions de travail parfois difficiles, toute l’équipe s’était fortement investie avec une véritable envie de porter loin ce projet, ils y croyaient. Et des résultats commençaient à apparaître selon eux. Mais il y a quelques semaines, la direction a décidé d’arrêter ce projet.

Au-delà de la décision prise sur l’arrêt du projet (des projets s’arrêtent tous les jours), qu’est-il en train de se passer concrètement pour cette équipe en terme managérial. Rien ou pas grand-chose. Rien n’est en effet prévu pour que le travail réalisé dans le cadre du projet soit intégré par l’organisation. Rien non plus pour que les nouvelles compétences acquises par l’équipe puissent être reconnues et prises en compte pour la suite. Rien non plus d’ailleurs pour les aider à trouver un nouveau poste. Next…

Ce peu d’attention et de reconnaissance portées par l’organisation aux personnes et au travail qu’elles ont réalisé pendant la durée du projet n’a pas été sans conséquences sur les membres de l’équipe. Aujourd’hui, ils sont démotivés, défiants vis-à-vis de leur management et en en posture de retrait par rapport au travail. C’est ce que me décrivait mon correspondant dans le mail reçu la semaine dernière.

A l’arrivée, le système aura donc produit des pertes à tous les niveaux : pour les personnes, une perte de motivation et un désengagement vis-à-vis de l’entreprise ; au niveau de l’organisation, une perte des connaissances acquises par l’équipe-projet, une perte liée à la vie du projet (recrutement, formation, réalisation, mise en place dans les entités sur le terrain mais sans suite), et une difficulté à mobiliser les membres de cette équipe sur de nouveaux projets.   

Cet exemple est en définitive l’illustration de ce que décrivent les enquêtes récentes sur « la qualité de vie au travail » : confrontés à des projets qui s’accumulent, se superposent puis sont remplacés par d’autres, les salariés se sentent de plus en plus en difficulté. Ils se mettent alors à résister aux transformations imposées par les dirigeants – comme le pointe Michael dans son post du 30 novembre.

A l’inverse de l’exemple ci-dessus, j’ai aussi eu la chance d’assister à de petits « miracles » en termes de motivation d’équipe et de performance associée. Je me souviens d’opérateurs en établissement auxquels il avait été demandé d’optimiser l’organisation de circuits de livraison. Personne au Siège de l’entreprise ne pensait qu’ils y arriveraient : ces opérateurs étaient trop indépendants pour se mettre d’accord collectivement, trop attachés à leurs pratiques personnelles, pas assez compétents par rapport à l’expert normalement mandaté sur ce travail. Seule l’équipe managériale locale y croyait fermement. Les conditions de soutien et de confiance aux opérateurs étaient, de fait, déjà en place au sein de l’équipe et le défi juste à la hauteur.  

Quelques semaines plus tard, avec des étoiles dans les yeux, les opérateurs nous ont présentés leurs propositions. Le résultat de leurs travaux était meilleur que ce qui avait été envisagé de manière optimale par l’expert.