After one of my recent rants on the devastating impact Wall Street is having on our manufacturing base, a reader by the name of Mike, wrote:
"Just saying "we have to get lean" isn't enough. Just saying "we have to start manufacturing again" isn't enough. HOW to make these happen is the difficult part, but also the vital part of the equation. Rants are fine, but unless you are Sean Hannity, I'm going to ask for more solutions–not LEAN, because we already know that, but rather how to wake up those who need it, get the message out, start moving things in the right direction, etc."
He makes a very good point. Since Mike made that comment, I have been doing quite a bit of thinking about why I write what I do, and what I hope to have come out of it. It is not for personal gain – of that I am sure. My blogging antagonizes many of my peers in the lean consulting community, and drives away far more potential consulting clients than it draws in.
No, my primary motive is to share the hard lessons I have learned from seeing woefully little lean progress over the course of my 25 years of involvement in trying to unravel and put to use lessons from Toyota. It is to challenge conventional thinking and to force people to think. I live under a, perhaps naive, hope that some of the Evolving Excellence readers are sharing some of this stuff with their associates and leaders, and asking 'wuddya think?' And that something constructive is coming out of those conversations about the direction of their individual company.
From my own experience, I have found that the best learning comes long after the formal education process ends. The most important management lesson I have learned came from Dr Seuss, rather than anyone writing for the Harvard Business Review. In On Beyond Zebra, the good doctor wrote,
Said Conrad Cornelius O'Donell O'Dell
My very young friend who is learning to spell
The A is for ape, the B is for bear,
The C is for camel, the H is for hare
The M is for mouse, the R is for rat I know all 26 letters like that
Through to Z is for zebra, I know them all well
Said Conrad Cornelius O'Donell O'Dell
Now I know everything anyone knows
From beginning to end, from the start to the close
Because Z is as far as the alphabet goes
Then he almost fell flat on his face on the floor
When I picked up the chalk and drew one letter more
A letter he had never dreamed of before
And I said 'You can stop if you want with the Z
Most people stop with the Z, but not me
In the places I go there are things that I see
That I never can spell if I stop with a Z
I'm telling you this 'cos you're one of my friends
My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends
My alphabet starts with this letter called YUZ
It's the letter I use to spell yuzza ma tuzz
You'll be sort of surprised what there is to be found
Once you go beyond Z and start poking around
So on beyond zebra explore like Columbus ……..
When we do all the right things, exactly as proscribed, but do not get the promised results, it is quite evident that the prescription was wrong, or lacking something. There is something on beyond zebra that we have not been taught that is necessary for success. When Cliff Ranson did his study several years ago and concluded that over 98% of the publicly traded companies that announce a lean strategy have little or nothing to show for it on the bottom line 5 years later, I found that significant, and something that demands to be addressed.
So back to Mike's question. I have taken you On Beyond Zebra and hammered home the point that we are hog tied by destructive laws and financial practices, and that our regulatory and cultural infrastructure is not only anti-lean, but anti-manufacturing. Mike asked, "how to wake up those who need it, get the message out, start moving things in the right direction, etc." He is correct in saying that, without this answer, I am just ranting.
The honest answer is that I don't have the full answer, but I know that I could have been writing about myself when I hijacked the U.S. Grant quote, "So Fair An Opportunity" for a title to a recent post. The silver lining to the current economic disaster is that the time is ripe for questioning and challenging the laws and the practices of the financial community that caused it. Obama says he wants to get the best and brightest out of derivative scheming and into making a real contribution, but it is evident that he has no idea how to make that happen. The Republican Party is fumbling for an answer, and everyone is struggling to understand how General Motors has so utterly failed. If there has ever been or will be a receptive ear to the lean message, it is now.
The existing PACS and lobbies are not a useful vehicle for taking our political and business leadership out here Beyond Zebra where things look so much different.. For the most part, they are dominated by the the Wall Street gang, and the Main Street voices are drowned out. So a new vehicle must be created. So Mike and everyone else, but I am working on an answer. I have had the great good fortune of getting to know many of the leading lean thinkers in the world, and I am engaging some of them in this question. Within the next couple of weeks I will let you know exactly who you can talk to, what you can do, and how the collective voice of America's manufacturing professionals can be bundled up and put into a package loud enough to be heard.
Kurt says
Ohno said “In the beginning, there was need.” This economy is need. One can only hope these companies that are ‘too big to fail’ can also ‘see’ this need. However I agree with you that the Wall Street crew seems to have the President’s ear. He could be well served to listen to some of his constituents here in the midwest for manufacturing improvements.
Kevin Carson says
Lean is alive and well in Emilia-Romagna. If anything, an industrial district on the “Third Italy” model is better suited to lean than Toyota, because with local supply and distribution chains it doesn’t just outsource inventory to the trucks and container ships (come on–why do you think they call it “warehouses on wheels”?).
And when all the “too big to fail” manufacturing companies fail, the American economy that emerges from the ashes will probably look like a hundred Emilia-Romagnas.
Andy Wagner says
Bill,
I’m in.
-Andy
Chris Baldwin says
Count me in too
Luis P says
Anything you are going to do that helps get manufacturing back on track works for me.
Mike Taubitz says
Bill,
Your book “Rebirth of American Industry” provides the foundation for understanding. After 43+ years in GM, I can assure you that their “lean goggles” only apply to the factory floor.
We need to have execs
– 5S their own office to learn how to identify waste
– demand value stream mapping to unlock hidden waste
– actively lead employee safety
– demonstrate lean leadership and lean thinking using A3 reports and a host of other lean tools for the management end of the business.
The office is their gemba and it is there that lean must have a foundation. Then, and only then, will US industry have a prayer.
Leaders who follow your book and “preach what they practice” will gain new understanding to challenge the paradigm that lean is only for direct labor.
Rick Bohan says
I admire the spirit but I think you’re on the wrong track. A search for a new “method” that will work in all cases and situations will be fruitless. We have methods that work. And they’re actually pretty robust, i.e., they work pretty well even when not implemented to perfection.
Why do people smoke even after heart surgery? Why do people gain weight even when they have advanced diabetes?
If you can answer these questions, you’ll be able to figure out how to get senior level execs from destroying value…over and over again.
mattf says
The printing industry is my bench. There are so many printers around me going out of business and I feel that there needs to be a progression on how we operate. I know lean is our best chance for this, and I’m confident that it can be successful if people are open to the opportunity.
Count me in.
Randy Voss says
You have inspired me to write in here, because going to “lean” is exactly the same dynamic as why one should “innovate.” The real root of all evilis how manufacturing has driven behaviors over the years that don’t get the job done at all. Why? We take cost upon cost out the sytem and beat suppliers down to the milli-cent, and then drive the manufacturing to China to save a few bucks more. Once you have driven that lowest possible cost, then what are you left with? Where do you go next? Now your shareholders and Wall Street rebels against you and you cease to exist….. And here we are. Lean out all you want, but in the end, there are a couple steps one can take to rise above the fray. Let me say at the outset, there is no free lunch in this at all. As consumers, we want it all, but we want it for free, and that just won’t cut it. There are things that flat out cost money. Deal with that. As an innovator, I continually fight the battle that says you must innovate by putting as much “new $” into your product or service as what you “lean out” on the cost side. I realize it’s not a true 1:1 situation, but the focus has been too lopsided really. And I will agree that certain industries haven’t capitalized in the right way, Detroit for example. While they have innovated some areas on product in a nice way (arguably, they have not innovated on some of the areas where some real lean opportunities exist. See, innovation and lean can co-exist.
So I’m now ranting and I shouldn’t, but all this discussion of continually taking out just frustrates the hell out of me.
Louis English says
Lean success will only come when the senior leaders of these companies get the courage to break away from the values,innovations methods and measures that made them personal successes. Imagine what it takes for a traditional leader to decide that all that he/she achieved, invented, admired, agreed to, advocated over the years now has to be put on the trash heap in order to pursue and entirely different approach to manufacturing,people development and measurement. Until that happens “Lean” will remain a localized manager’s pet process instead of a serious organization wide transform.
mikeT says
Perhaps, your blog is a free method for weeding out those prospective consulting clients who would’t be able to stand your presence for long.
mikeT says
Get someone important and visible like Obama to visit a toyota factory. Throw in some governors too and a few reporters. Then send them to a GM plant. Go see. Go to the Gemba. Take some non-lean execs also. Is there a better way to get into lean than seeing lean being practiced?
Bill Waddell says
Could be, Mike. I am rarely the first consultant they bring in – usually four or five politically correct consulting firms have preceeded me, and failed. I am the guy they bring in when they are really in trouble and realize that another consultant coming in to tell management what it wants to hear doesn’t get the job done. If the blog saves my time and the money of a management team that is looking for easy solutions, it is well worth the time it takes to write it.
Concerning having the politicians visit the gemba, that is a great idea. I suspect that with many companies, getting their senior management to actually go to a factory floor will be an even bigger challenge.
david foster says
A fundamental problem with many American companies is the idea that “strategy” and “execution” are two different worlds, and that “strategy” should be conducted by the cognitive elite, while “execution” can safely be left to lesser minds.
Field Marshall Lord Wavell, in his little book On Generalship, said:
“Unfortunately, in most military books strategy and tactics are emphasized at the expense of the administrative factors. For instance, there are 10 military students who can tell you how Blenheim was won for one who has any knowledge at all of the administrative preparations that made the march to Blenheim possible. (Wavell uses “administration” largely in the sense of “logistics”–ed)…Again, Marlborough’s most admired strategem, the forcing of the Ne Plus Ultra lines in 1711, was one that a child could have thought of but that probably no other general could have executed.”
and
“When you study military history don’t read outlines on strategy or the priciples of war. Read biographies, memoirs, historical novels…Get at the flesh and blood of it, not the skeleton. To learn that Napoleon won the campaign of 1796 by manoeuvre on interior lines or some such phrase is of little value. If you can discover how a young unknown man inspired a ragged, mutinous, half-starved army and made it fight, how he he gave it energy and momentum to march and fight as it did, how he dominated and controlled generals older and more experienced than himself, then you will have learnt something.”
This should be mandatory reading for b-school professors.
Mark Graban says
Going to the gemba is fine as long as the senior execs or politicians are getting “real” gemba as opposed to a planned, staged, dog and pony show. Many execs are used to being guided around and they don’t see or hear reality.
David Roberts says
Just stumbled upon this blog post. It reminds me of the work by the Hopper brothers and their publication http://www.puritangift.com.
Going to the Gemba, the real place, is good but once there the important message is to understand what is going on at the coal place and then working out how to make things better.
Gemba, Gembutsu, Genjitsu.