Enterprise Improvement when ‘know why’ matters just as much as ‘know how’…

You have probably seen the posts, the press, the headlines etc.

GE has been turned around.

The once mighty, once fallen, now risen again company, is making happy headlines.

Kudos is of course going to the boss Larry Culp but to those of us, in-the-know, we knew what the likely outcome of GE prizing the former head of Danaher Corporation out of his planned retirement in academia would be. The trouble is, for the headline writers and Larry himself, it all sounds too simple. Words like Value, Flow, Lean and employee engagement have been mentioned along with Kaizen, 'improvement events' and the tutelage of Danaher’s go-to consultancy Shingijutsu.

Simple eh?

Except...

Shingijutsu is no ordinary consultancy and leaders signing up for such help are not going to get a heavy and expensively produced report telling them "if you do this all will be well with your world".

Founded in Japan Shingijutsu spun out of Taiichi Ohno’s famous team that worked in the post World War Two Toyota Motor Company. Conceived as an internal improvement resource, shortly after Toyota’s infamous strike of 1950, the group’s mission was clear. Take the scientific management principles and secrets that Toyota had built into the heart of their yet-to-be famous Production System (TPS) and alloy them to a ‘partners in change’, team based approach that put the workers at the very heart of improving the work. Leaders too were quickly re-wired mentally by Ohno's team to be what today are called 'servant leaders' but crucially these were as much leaders as teachers who could lead and coach by example. Together they became the change the organisation needed to see. As time progressed and both business results and the inherent human spirit of improvement grew in equal balance, a new higher mission became clear to all. Applying common principles, by simple methods, in teams, in the actual place of flow based work, creates compounding results. Having worked at this for more than a decade with an internal focus, an army of Toyota people were now able and available to transform both performance and people alike throughout the supply chain and beyond. This paved the way for what today is called 'an on-demand-economy' but much of that concept is still misunderstood. Perhaps it is good to look a little deeper.

So, how did the Toyota organisation journey from terrible labour relations, poor quality and inferior products to become a benchmark and global leader in their industry?

In the very early days of their internal improvement work well before the strike, Toyota was, via its managers and supervisors, doing anything it could in what were called the “Catch-up with America or die” days. Having spent an extended time in the Ford Motor Company, the founder, Kiichiro Toyoda himself, had seen most of what he needed to do to emulate Ford's success. However he needed Ohno to modify Ford’s push based Mass Production System for the very different conditions within post war Japan. In brief, these were that nothing much worked at all. Power was erratic and unreliable, material supplies were haphazard and labour relations, as we already mentioned, got progressively worse. As Ohno implemented the foundations of a mass production system he did so via a well documented enthusiasm for ‘scientific management’ methods. These had pervaded the leadership in Toyota and post war Japanese managers in general as they were understood to have been a large part of why the Allies won. The Toyota people doing the work however, soon sensed that invariably this meant working harder NOT smarter for them.

Aside from some local peculiarities, progress went a lot like similar initiatives before and since around the world. Leadership tasked a small cadre of internal ‘scientific management experts' like Ohno, to find ways of getting more output from the same inputs. Needing more for less, they sought to do so by identifying and eliminating 'wasted efforts' with an almost religious zeal. Soon the pressure on the workers began to take its toll. “I was literally still making parts in my sleep - overwhelming demand and repetition does that to you” said a former Toyota worker remembering those dark days in a 1980’s BBC documentary. The toxic work environment and the threat of redundancies in a market downturn, soon put an end to any goodwill for the "catch up with America' mission. The resulting strike was only resolved when Kiichiro Toyoda himself resigned and the idea of doing change to people was scrapped and a reverse ideology was adopted. Encouraging workers and managers alike, to come up with ideas and changes known as Kaizen (incremental changes) and Kaikaku (large step changes) respectfully, the new partners in change soon started to create a progress unlike any other. The idea of pulling ideas from the shop floor, rather than pushing improvements exclusively from the management into the enterprise started to create the same compounding results that are now underway in Larry Culp's GE. The reason for this was an un-credited realisation that the thing that needed to flow faster was not the arms, limbs and motions, of the kind obsessed over by 'scientific management', but that of the flow of the very thing of value itself. It was the thing that needed to flow in order to satisfy the customer. This was a revelation to all involved.

Further, by finding a practical way of implementing Kiichiro’s original idea that Ford’s ‘push’ based flow production - therefore pushing products into the market - be switched to a pull based flow where work was only triggered by real sales, what I call the busyness culture was changed. Make no mistake, the raw foundations of both systems (Ford & Toyota) are the same, they even look the same at-a-glance. The revolutionary aspects of the Toyota Way however, were finding a role for all of their people in improvement and the primacy of the customer pulling the value through the flow. So, one mystery still remains even to the most committed students of this phenomenon.

How did the two forces for improvement - the individual and the whole - never clash?   

The answer is found in the linkage and alignment that results from a commitment to pull based flow as the ideal way of working. If you work in any kind of pushed flow it soon becomes overwhelming. Problems arise all the time and are you are soon buried under a level of problems and work that cannot be done. Critically, as problems mount they seem to be of equally unknown importance. Managers, workers, suppliers and even customers alike start to argue about their priorities. The stress becomes unbearable and there are / will be many casualties along the way. It is as certain as night follows day. The difference with pull based flow, if you are brave enough to convert and stay the course, is that as soon as a problem arises and the flow is stopped, there can be no debate: Whatever caused the flow to stop is THE most important problem to solve. Staying stopped, and finding the root cause to take the appropriate countermeasure is the most rational and sensible action to take. To do this as team makes even more sense seeing as the instinct to just get on with something else will not only create a distraction from the task at hand but also create more waste.

Right here right now as the song goes.

I like to say:  “Doing nothing is better than creating waste…however…when you have nothing to do, why not find and remove more waste?”

So, having cultivated a large number of people who are highly competent at solving all sorts of problems to the root causes and then integrating the solutions into the “current best way” of doing things - for Toyota the more they stopped, the better they got. For those following the existing paradigm the more they stopped the worse it got. This went on for years until they were decades ahead and no one outside Toyota was any wiser.

The irony is that now, it is apparent that most work places are stuck in even earlier push based forms of working. All are in a late stage operating paradigm that has become buried under the solutions to the problems they have encountered along the way. Each problem badly solved has the sticking plasters and extra work-arounds, intended to be temporary, that are now solidified into what we call bureaucracy or red tape. Is it any wonder that our economies show all the symptoms of constipation. If we want to increase productivity which is an urgent need in our economy as a whole it's worth looking in the rearview mirror occasionally for some hints. Yes we want to do some automation, yes A.I. may help too but these things can also bake in waste if we allow it and make it even harder for us to see and remove.

So, let us move forward in the spirit of partners in change, for positive change. Workers, leaders, technology, A.I. et al because technology can either be both a force for good or a force for bad. Our vigilance to avoid waste and efforts to add value are eternally critical.

Forever improve is a goal everyone can agree to, removing waste is, as they say, a no-brainer, but few know realise that to do this viably you must first commit to go with the flow…

At STRAKT Flow is what we do and we believe in pul not push.

So, if you want to pull for our help:

Tell us, How is work done in your workplace?

If you want to see what might be possible give us a call at STRAKT

We specialise in putting strategic intent into tangible sustainable action with you and your teams.

PICTURE: The first assembly line at the Ford Highland Park Plant in Michigan, was relatively crude. Here, in 1913, workers built Model T flywheels. Each worker installed a few parts and simply shoved the flywheel down the line to the next worker to progressively build the flywheel. A dramatic increase in productivity and quality (400% increase) was the result and this triggered the desire to expand the concept eventually into everything the company did. This was the birth of Push - Flow working. This has long since been eclipsed by Pull - Flow working.

Picture source - Ford Methods and the Ford Shops  - Fay Leone Faurote and Horace Lucian Arnold : 1919