“Julie, repeat after me, ‘Lean is more than a set of tools’.”
“Okay. ‘Lean is more than a set of tools.’ But why so abrupt, Curmudge? I realize that it is a new year and all, but where are your workplace pleasantries?”
“After that long Christmas break…”
“Holiday break!”
“…I thought we needed to shock ourselves into serious thinking.”
“Okay, Curmudge, consider me shocked. My brain is booted up and ready to go. I believe that in our last serious discussion, back on December 10, you said that the real challenge of Lean is learning, accepting, and implementing its culture.”
“Right, Julie. I fear that because we Americans grew up in a culture different from that of the original Japanese Lean practitioners, we might not get beyond the Lean-is-a-set-of-tools concept.”
“So what are we going to do to overcome the problem, Curmudge?”
“My guess is that for most potential cultural barriers, we can find an American analog that might surmount it. Let’s use Jeffrey Liker’s book, The Toyota Way, as our principal reference on Lean culture. You’ve read it, of course?”
“Of course. Last week I read it to the kids as a bedtime story.”
“Do I detect a facetious note? Well anyway, let’s proceed. Liker depicts the ‘Toyota Way’ as a pyramid with each of the four levels identified by a word starting with ‘P’. Philosophy is at the base of the pyramid, and Toyota bases their management decisions on their long-term philosophy.”
“I’m beginning to see the problem, Curmudge. Most Americans don’t think much about philosophy; and if their employer had one, they wouldn’t know what it is. To many folks, philosophy is what you can study for years, earn several advanced degrees in, and still be unemployed.”
“Suppose, Julie, that here at Affinity we substitute corporate goals for philosophy. Recall a few months ago when we talked about Corporate Goals, Strategies, and Hoshins? Those terms should be more familiar to our staff than philosophy. If anyone in management doesn’t know our goals, he’d better learn fast.”
“That makes sense to me, Curmudge. Count one cultural speed bump to be out of the road. Will there be more?”
“That’s my plan. Things like hansei and genchi genbutsu. Liker translates the Japanese into English; we’ll try to Americanize the cultural concepts. Perhaps we can even ‘Affinitize’ them for our colleagues at Affinity Health System. We’ll tackle these in our next conversations.”
“It seems like a real challenge, Curmudge. I suspect that you have been hitting the books again and have found some things that will help us.”
“Right. I’ve listed some below that you will want to become acquainted with.”
Hardwiring Excellence by Quint Studer
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Lean Thinking by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones
Getting the Right Things Done by Pascal Dennis
It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy by Capt. D. Michael Abrashoff
Be, know, do; Leadership the Army way. Adapted from the official Army leadership manual.
“Curmudge, do you really expect me to read all of those books?”
“It’s like you just said. You can read them as bedtime stories to your children. Every parent and grandparent knows that children are voracious bedtime story listeners.”
“But we might get sticky little fingerprints on your books.”
“Nighty-night, Julie.”
Affinity’s Kaizen Curmudgeon
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