Lean is Simple – Change is Complex

(Reposted by permission of the author from LinkedIn)

Part 1: Coaching for Individual Behavior Change

Lean is simple. That might be a controversial statement because there is an entire industry centered around helping organizations navigate the intricacies of lean. If you were to walk into a mature lean organization & ask them if lean is simple, you would get a variety of answers along two themes:

1. Lean requires discipline, diligence and a relentless pursuit of improvement but in and of itself, it is not complicated
2. Lean is common sense

These are the perspectives of an organization that, in their mind, are “there” or mature lean organizations. They have achieved a sustainable state of lean that has a low risk of dissolving back to “the way things used to be”. This is because they have implemented the systems of lean and pay special attention to adherence to their values and principles through mutual accountability to prescribed behaviors. The state they are in has an organic feel to it. Like a professional golfer who will tell you when you get to that point in your career, the fairways seem wider, the greens bigger and the holes wider. Do they still pursue improvement? Absolutely. They must to remain competitive. Mature lean organizations have the same mindset.

Now, walk into an organization that is on the road to lean maturity and ask if lean is simple. They will tell you about struggles. Struggles with standard work adherence. Struggles with commitments. Plans not being executed on-time with poor outcomes. They will tell you about interpersonal conflict. Team members that “resisted” and eventually “gave in” or left altogether. They will tell you about the same problems happening over and over again. They will tell you about “re-doing” 5S. They will tell you about their green belt program and show you the racks where the green belt “projects” still reside, de-implemented.

The story you will be hearing is that lean is hard. They have made some success and think they are moving in the right direction, but overall, lean is hard. The consultants they hired told them it wouldn’t be easy. The consultants they hired initially sold them on the idea that lean is hard and therefore they must hire experts. Some organizations that ascribe to this idea that lean is hard go so far as to have an elite corps of salaried lean experts, there to move the organization forward through mighty analytical skills, a comprehensive grasp of the tools and methods, certified project management disciplines, and special access to all the functional aspects of the organization (and budget). Often, the result of this is that the rest of the organization either waits for them to initiate lean activities in their area or calls upon them to solve their problems for them.

The thought is, change is hard, so we need experts to change us. There’s an entire discipline around this called change management. It’s a competency most lean experts put on their resume. A bullet point in the long list of “my” accomplishments and capabilities. Change involves moving from the status quo to a higher form of work that is compatible with the organizational aims. Change involves an unyielding commitment to ideals even though they will never be fully satisfied. Change can be driven in a multitude of ways but they all center around the notion that we all are on board and are willing to have patience while we are learning. Change itself is about capturing the learning and never forgetting its implication while constantly pushing to find an even better way. Choose whatever model you want but understand you cannot escape the building process. There will be naysayers standing around saying it won’t work. The test is never-ending because every person involved believes that until it satisfies them; they have the right to protest. They will come to realize that their right is important but progress affects them and everyone else. They should be required to protect other’s security by giving the change a try and then work to make it successful. The alternative to this engaging process is no change and for a business that is a failure to adapt and ensured eventual failure.

There’s an end state that I have seen in most organizations that go down this “expert” path. The experts have moved away from the front lines of implementing lean tools, designing management processes for them, and solving the problems uncovered by those tools. Eventually, they turn into a “lean project” organization. The strategic plan cascades into the annual plan, where it is determined that there is a needle that needs to be moved and here is how it is going to be done. That how is broken down into a series of projects or worse, one big project with associated capital costs and endless meetings. Who gets to play in that project? Senior managers, subject matter experts, cross-functional resources, and the lean people. Who doesn’t get to play? Everyone else.

This all happens because the organization bought into the idea that change is hard therefore only the most talented in the organization are capable of doing it. “The XYZ FY20 big project initiative has determined that this is what is happening to your department and here is how you will work differently. Training begins next Monday at 10 am. Don’t forget to sign in so we can log your training hours.”

In this scenario, many people get left behind and the chosen few get to play ball. The Big Project Initiative people end up patting themselves on the back. “We have engaged the workforce. We have provided structure. We have provided training. We are transforming that department and preparing them for the future. Here is how much money we expect to save the company.” What is their expectation of the people in that department? They attend. They “provide input”. They agree. Then they do what they agreed to. Have the people been truly engaged? No. They’ve been directed. Have the people been developed? No. They’ve been expected to change. Is there anything wrong with direction and an expectation of change? No. Does simply directing someone or expecting something make it happen? No.

People development is the most important aspect of any transformation effort. If you were to go back to that successful lean company and really dig into where their success came from or when they really started to see things click, they will tell you that it was when there was a critical mass of people truly bought in, engaged and actively working to change their behaviors to fit what the future required and actively holding each other accountable to those behavioral standards. Following direction and executing the Big Project Initiative’s plan are not the behaviors we are after. Achieving a critical mass of those behaviors that made the mature lean organization is what they will tell you, was hard.

In this article, I’m not going to explain what those behaviors are; that will be for a future piece. What I will explore is how you get to the desired behaviors in the organization.

The first concept is organizational behaviors. These are the collective behaviors of everyone in the organization’s individual behaviors. In the analogy of the golfer, think of their entire being and body as the organization. They have a stroke that is predictable and consistent for any situation on the course. If their ball is in the rough and 30 yards from the pin, they have a stroke for that. If their ball is on the fairway and the pin is 160 yards out around a slight bend, they have a stroke for that. Individual behavior is akin to the individual muscles of the golfer. Team behaviors are akin to the muscle groups of the golfer, for instance, their core. The organizational behavior is akin to the combination of movement and coordination of the entire body.

If a new golfer is to improve their game, they start by learning the basic motions of the entire body. But before you define what those motions should be, you must first determine what are the best motions. Organizations are no different. You must first determine through long-range thinking and observations of successful organizations, what the most important and most fundamental organizational behaviors must be in order to remain competitive. How does the entire organization, as a whole, respond to adversity? Changing market conditions? A new competitor that has disrupted the market in some way? A cash-flow crunch? A quality crisis? A supplier that is struggling? A natural disaster that disrupts the supply chain or decimates the short-term demand? Determining that for the organization as a whole is the subject of another article.

What I want to focus on now is how you go about changing individual behaviors to align with what the organization requires to remain competitive. First things first: you don’t change anyone else. We all intuitively know this; no matter how strong our desires are that someone changes and I’m going to get them to change, even if it kills me! A few points to get this started:

• Change comes from within
• People are usually rational
• Change doesn’t happen all at once
• The same change management processes for systems and processes applies to personal change
• Survival anxiety must be greater than learning anxiety
• Learning anxiety must be reduced rather than enhanced

What follows are some techniques that our organization uses in our consultative approach to help bring out, support and sustain behavioral change in individuals. There is a distinct process behind and a series of principals that govern how it operates. It is also framed into our approach to organizational behavior change. Also framing into that is our approach to lean systems implementation. The sum of all 3 is what most would call lean transformation. That house people like to depict on their lean strategy presentations. Now, with confidence, I can tell you that in today’s world most organizations can “implement lean” and feel confident they have done a good job of bringing others along with them. That is mostly true to varying degrees. After the dust has settled on the 5S program, the standard work implementation, the problem-solving system, and even the hoshin kanri, most organizations are still struggling with change. The root cause: individual behaviors.

Individual behaviors are hard to change. Status quo is the strongest force in the universe. Ok, that is hyperbole, but you get the point. There is a ton of information out there regarding how long it takes to truly change a behavior: 10 weeks, 10,000 hours, 6 months, etc. The point is, it takes a while. It takes a while because status quo, your natural state, the state you have learned over the course of a lifetime, is not going to be uprooted easily and is anchored deeply in who you are.

So, we need to keep at it for a while to change? Our real issue is to sustain the change and there’s more to it than “doing” it for a while. Every opportunity for you to demonstrate a behavior is an opportunity to succeed or fail. This is true whether you recognized the opportunity or not. What keeps people from conducting themselves with beneficial behaviors? Is it laziness? Is it a lack of information and they didn’t know it was an opportunity? If it were one of those two things, then there is a prescribed course of action. Laziness doesn’t have a place in any organization. Lack of information is easily resolved with an appeal to rationality and logic, simple “here’s why this is important.”

Usually the failure to demonstrate the right behavior comes down to motivation. Motivation is about overcoming ambivalence in our life. Ambivalence is having contradictory ideas or thoughts about something. That contradiction plays out in “I know I should be doing this” vs changing status quo. Humans are generally wired to function better in an environment where the right way is clear. A state of ambivalence creates anxiety. Anxious individuals will cope by staying safe in that status quo zone. That failure to behave any differently when presented with the opportunity comes across as procrastination, or worse, the behavior is categorized as “resistance”. Think about it. You’re asking someone to behave differently than they have for their entire career. Their way of behaving has kept them safe and employed, and now you want them to change. Most have fears of change:

• Fear of loss of power or position
• Fear of incompetence
• Fear of punishment for being incompetent
• Fear of loss of personal identity
• Fear of loss of current group membership

As a leader, the challenge is to grasp the fears and turn them into positive behavior while never giving in to the situation and enhancing the fears that are always present.

Resistance is an interesting subject. Every project I have been involved in, the customer’s leadership points out pockets of resistance or individuals that “won’t get on the bus”. I don’t like to call it resistance. To me, it’s the strong gravitational pull of status quo. Now, there are exceptions. There are people who can rationally understand that the ideal state of the organization is better than the old state, but they have selfish and irrational reasons for not changing. Just like laziness, those people have no place in the organization. Careful though; don’t be quick to blame someone for having selfish reasons to “resist”. Help them to understand their behavior in real terms and give them the opportunity to be accountable by creating their own positive solution

The vast majority of individuals that are struggling with behavior change do so because they are unsure about the change. How do you make them “sure” about the change? Well, it doesn’t happen with a stick or a carrot. It happens through a deliberate process of behavioral intervention. This process is aimed at evoking an internal desire to change. This goes back to the fact that most humans are rational. The change is based on a rational vision of the future. Logic can be traced between the vision of the future and the behaviors needed to make it happen. The key point is that you will not get someone to change until they have an internal motivation to do so and are willing to be accountable.

How do you go about achieving that internal motivation? 1 on 1 coaching. I will start by saying, like everything else in lean, it follows PDCA. More on that as we go through the process. Before you begin this process, it is important to grasp a few key principles:

1. We’re in it together. You work hand in hand with the person you are coaching and avoid the “expert” role like the plague. You are not there to direct or preach. That shuts people down fast.
2. Respect. Accept and believe in the autonomy, potential, strength and perspective of the individual you are coaching. Any sort of leadership role, no matter how small, is based in the future. If your vision of someone is based on the current, then it will fail. Avoid blame in favor of problem-solving
3. Mutual Accountability. It is not only up to the person you are coaching to keep their best interests in mind, but it is also up to you. You must desire for them to achieve their goals and succeed. You must demonstrate this desire.
4. Evocation. The best ideas come from the person you are coaching. Even if you had that idea or you knew it all along. Back to principle #1. You are not to be the expert. The thought that the best ideas come from them goes back to the lack of motivation cause of failure to change. Holding the value of that behavioral change personally removes ambivalence.

Throughout this PDCA process of evoking behavior change, you must adhere to the principle that every interaction is an opportunity for intervention. Intervention is not slapping on the wrist, telling them something was bad or even going back to the basic information that demonstrates the rationality of the change. During the coaching interactions, you must utilize and sharpen these key skills:

1. Open Questioning – don’t ask yes/no questions. Don’t interrogate. You are trying to get them to talk about something with their own words from their own perspective. “You mentioned you just don’t know about this new program. What are your thoughts on it?”
2. Affirmations – acknowledge when there is a good motive behind their behaviors or statements. Lock those positive things in by recognizing them as such. No matter how small.
3. Reflection – Using a question, convey back what you heard them say. Back to skill 1, don’t ask yes/no questions. “So the organization tried something similar a few years back and you did a lot of work to support it. Unfortunately, leadership did not and things went back to the way they were. What sort of things do you think leadership could do to better support it and what kind of things do you think you would have done differently if you had known the future?”
4. Summation – Selectively summarize the affirmations and reflections in a manner that demonstrates that only the positive behavior change was important. They’ll remember the things that they think they could do better and begin to develop an internal desire to change them.

Now that we understand the 4 principles and 4 key skills of behavior intervention, let’s get down to the process. Remember that it follows PDCA, so the overall architecture should not be foreign.

Plan

As I go through the steps of coaching, understand that the first 3 are continuous. The first step in this coaching (behavioral intervention) process is to engage. In PDCA, this is grasping the situation. Before anyone will be a full and willing participant in the coaching process, you must first help them feel comfortable. Notice I said help. You can not make someone comfortable. That’s up to them. However, there are some things you can do. Get to know them. Gain an appreciation for their skills, background, strengths and perspective (re: respect). The purpose of all this is for them to know you understand where they are coming from, what their situation is and that you are here for mutual benefit. Let’s be honest; you’re not here to just help them out. The organization has a stake in this and by default, so do you. When the goals are mutual, then they will believe it when you demonstrate that you are hopeful or excited about a development. You also need to know what to disengage from. Don’t assess, don’t tell them what their problem is, don’t speak from authority and definitely don’t label them.

The second step is called focusing. Not only do you add structure to and set goals for their development on the whole, you also need to do it on a micro-level. Focusing is the ongoing process of seeking and maintaining direction. For each planned time you are coaching, set an agenda, have a goal and priorities and set clear direction at the end. Take note, set clear direction doesn’t mean you do it for them. They need to do it. Just like in PDCA, you are setting target conditions. Not just on the micro-level, but on level of their overall development.

The third step is evoking. You must pull the motivation for change out of them. To do this, you are going to steer conversations towards talk of change. When you hear a statement that is either about change or hinting at change, use your open questioning techniques to keep the dialogue moving in that direction. Encourage and reinforce that kind of talk. Move the change talk into “how to change” talk. What will your first step be? What kind of help will you need? Why do you want to do this? How will it benefit you? What you are really digging for is for them to recognize root causes for their lack of motivation to change and having them come up with ways they can address them.

The fourth step is taking their talk of change, reflections, and focusing efforts and creating a real plan from it. That plan becomes the basis for comparison for their progress. Each time you meet, you will focus the conversation on how they executed against it and what deviations there were. There are a multitude of ways to build a plan out there so I will not get into that. What I will get into, however, is that it really does need to be a plan. It needs to say what is going to be done, how they will do it, when they will do it, who they will need help from, and how we will know if it was successful. The plan also needs to set in stone agreements about when you will meet, how often, and for how long. Don’t break this. Demonstrate to them that they matter enough to you to make it a point to be consistent in meeting those commitments.

Risk also needs to be dealt with in the plan. During the coaching process, you will hear many reasons from them why they believe it won’t work. Again, focus the conversation on the positive but make sure you take note of their fears. These risks will become specific issues to mitigate in their plan. If they believe that a co-worker’s behaviors will be a hindrance to them achieving their plan, then there needs to be a countermeasure for it. Often, this countermeasure goes beyond something they do and becomes a support action for their supervisor.

Another aspect of the plan is that behaviors are learned through repetition. Academic understanding or even acknowledgment of their importance is not enough to make them happen. In order to stabilize behaviors for someone, they must become habitual. In order to make something habitual, it needs to be supported by a routine. Work with the individuals you are coaching to create supporting routines. This may go beyond their work life. They may have trouble being “present” at work because of issues at home. Don’t just talk about those routines, write them, create a check sheet and have them track adherence to them. It becomes another basis of comparison for your coaching sessions. Make sure you recognize when they do a good job of sticking to routines. Use open questions and reflection techniques when they miss them. Evoke ways to prevent them from missing those routines.

Recognize that for them to trust that you are just as committed as they are to their goals, you need to work on career aspirations as well. Some of the items on their plan should support them in achieving those career aspirations. Even if some of those aren’t related to the organization, spend some time on them. Again, you are engaging and building trust that way.

Do

DWYSYWD: Do what you said you would do. The coaching relationship is based in the promise that both of you will uphold the standards of the agreement. You, as the coach, will be there for them when they need support and not miss a single appointment. Imagine if it was time for your doctor’s appointment and they were not there? In turn, you expect that they do the same in addition to giving their best effort towards achieving their plan. During the development process, many of the coaching interactions will be based on safe and reflective conversation around whether or not they did their best. There’s a story about Henry Kissinger who had Winston Lord writing a speech for him. Here is an excerpt from Winston Lord:

He called me in the next day and said, “Is this the best you can do?” I said, “Henry, I thought so, but I’ll try again.” So I go back in a few days, another draft. He called me in the next day and he said, “Are you sure this is the best you can do?” I said, “Well, I really thought so. I’ll try one more time.” Anyway, this went on eight times, eight drafts; each time he said, “Is this the best you can do?” So I went in there with a ninth draft, and when he called me in the next day and asked me that same question, I really got exasperated and I said, “Henry, I’ve beaten my brains out – this is the ninth draft. I know it’s the best I can do: I can’t possibly improve one more word.” He then looked at me and said, “In that case, now I’ll read it.”

The message of the story is that Kissinger required excellence but did so without being destructive to Winston’s confidence. When you are coaching, you don’t have to be the one to point out the specific problems or flaws. Draw it out of them.

Check

In order to check on the quality of their development, you should fall back to the measurable pieces defined in the plan. Be objective. “How did you do on your routines this week?” “I had trouble keeping up with the routine of coordinating between departments. For the 10 days since we last met, I only did it 6 times.”

“It’s a big change from the way things were. It’s good that you have done it 6 times. Did you notice any changes in the other departments since you started doing it more?”

“Well, I’ve noticed that they are bringing issues to me to resolve before they become a problem. It’s been helpful because when we have our interdepartmental production meeting, we already have countermeasures in place, those meetings go more quickly, and we are working from facts. There’s a lot less finger-pointing. I think to make it happen more frequently, I’m going to take my routines and build them into a daily agenda for myself. If I can get that done before lunch, there’s a better chance of it happening”.

The simple exchange that focused on the positive (you did it six times, that’s a big change) was effective.

Adjust

Those exchanges serve the purposes of checking the effectiveness of the plans put in place. The next step is adjusting the plan. You already saw that the person decided to create a daily agenda and set those routines to occur at a time. This becomes an adjustment to the plan that will be monitored for effectiveness. When things are not effective, we go back to problem-solving. The same steps apply: here is the situation and here is the target situation we are trying to achieve. Then we use the behavioral intervention approach to evoke from them some root causes and what they are going to do about it. The resulting modification to the plan becomes the new standard from which we “check”.

The rigorous process of PDCA, when applied to people development, becomes the foundation of the organization’s transformation to the organizational behaviors that support the lean systems that support the strategy that is designed to achieve the vision and future state. Many efforts to move an organization towards the goals are often met with what they determine is resistance. Leaders often characterize that resistance as an individual flaw or even a pocket of flawed individuals. This thinking must be reframed as resistance comes from the gravitational pull of status quo, and to escape that pull, critical mass must be achieved. Everyone plays a part in the formula for critical mass and must be treated as a unique element to be developed. Human development occurs as a result of change and that change can only occur if they have an internal motivation to do so. Group training and management systems that promote lean are only a part of that sustainment formula; individual fears must be overcome through safe, one-on-one coaching. This coaching relationship must be as well structured as a lean management system and problems must be resolved with a sense of urgency.

Summary

• Implementing the tools, methods, processes and defining the vision and value of lean is not hard.
• Getting some people to be enthusiastic, supportive and to work hard every day towards the implementation of lean systems is not hard
• Having everyone change and contribute to the sustainment of lean, is hard.
• The barriers to helping people change are real, rational, and can be overcome with diligent and persistent behavioral intervention through a systematic coaching regimen.

Getting Started

1. Identify the vision and define a future state of the organization
2. Define a strategy for achieving it
3. Define what lean systems support the strategy
4. Define the organizational behaviors that sustain the lean systems
5. Define the individual behaviors by role required to achieve the organizational behaviors
6. Using the principles and techniques defined in this article, work with everyone in the organization to determine their gap between their current state and the defined behaviors for their role.
7. Initiate coaching relationships with each individual to help them close the behavioral gap. Start with a pilot group at the top. Get coaching for the senior leadership so they can learn to coach.
8. Cascade the coaching program throughout the organization.
9. Make status and progress visible – manage it just as you would the production system. You are creating an environment that produces great employees.