I call it the American disease.  The person who has it the worst is always the person driving behind me on the road, except when I’m the one following a driver who is obviously lost and dreaming.

 

How does impatience affect our approach to learning Lean?  We become immediately discouraged when we find out that it will take more than 5 minutes to implement.  We don’t want to take the time to plan.  Doing is good, talking is bad, planning is talking, therefore, planning is a waste of time.  With this kind of attitude, lean will never happen.

Sometimes I am reluctant to call my boss because he is going to tell me what he thinks of my work.  Sometimes, he says, “it sucks”.  This is hard to listen to.  I start to question my value to the company, the skills I thought I had, my own self-worth.  It takes a high degree of presence of mind to say, “tell me more about that” or “what do you mean by that?” in a non-defensive tone of voice. 

 

But here’s the key.  If we keep talking, I find out what I can do about it.  Change this, learn that, pay more attention to something else.  Get a better idea of what is wanted.  Instead of feeling powerless and invalidated, I feel determined and energetic.  I can say, maybe I am not perfect, but I can still learn, I can still change my behavior, I can still become more effective.  Now, I am in a different mood, and I can begin again.

So, a couple of months back I was reviewing Quick n’ Easy Kaizens with a small group of three accountants. Something pretty cool happened. The situation started with one of the accountants sharing her QnEK of posting the 5 most commonly used expense codes right on her cubicle wall. People were constantly coming up to her to ask her for them – interrupting her work or causing them to wait if she was on the phone or away from her desk. Now when they came to her desk, regardless of what she was doing, they could see the 5 codes right there in front of them.

The interesting thing to me is that it wasn’t till she shared her improvement with the others that they even realized this situation had any opportunity for improvement. It was something that neither of the others had ever given any thought to. The group talked about her improvement and discussed other improvements they could make to the situation. One of the others suggested emailing those 5 common codes around to everyone that used them. They talked about that idea for a while and continued building off of each other. After a few minutes of discussion, the third person in the group very excitedly shared that they could put those codes right on the expense reports. This would completely eliminate the need for anyone to look up the codes because they are right there, where the work happens.

This situation represents one of the hidden beauties of a good QnEK program. When people get in the mood of improving together, their ideas bounce off each other and grow from each other. They actually inspire and drive each other to continue stretching their minds for even better improvements. If these three people didn’t communicate about the situation and the improvements, minimal improvements would have been made. Through collaboration, this team found a way to reduce the defects in the incorrect processing in these reports for themselves, and they also found ways to eliminate unnecessary movement and reduce waiting for many others.

  My peripatetic colleague directed my attention to another web posting this week,

http://zenhabits.net/2009/03/the-biggest-waste-of-time/ .  I didn't immediately see what the connection was between Zen habits and lean, other than they are both Japanese traditions, but I thought I would check it out.

The author, Mara Rogers, claims that the time spent between receiving a request and saying "yes" or "no" is wasted time, saying "to make a decision quickly and not vacillate or second guess oneself is a critical life-skill."  Her primary concern is that people will agonize over saying  "yes" when they don't mean it, putting other people's concerns ahead of their own well-being and thereby fostering resentment.

Saying "yes" and saying "no" are actions we take by speaking.  We all act in order to take care of our concerns.  Every time we receive a request, we must fit it in to our pre-existing network of commitments.  This effort requires that we consider our concerns and those of the requestor.  They may be at odds, they may be aligned, they may be somewhere in between.  I don't think that taking some time to consider and think this through is necessarily time wasted.  I may need time to check my calendar, investigate the implications of my choice, or develop a counter-offer.  I may need time to go and see.  Moreover, my own concerns may not always be aligned with one another.  I need to decide what my current priorities are.  This may require some listening to my inner conversation and paying attention to my mood - possibly a meditation, not a waste of time, and maybe even Zen.

When you get angry when someone screws up or when you use anger to motivate, it causes fear in the person you are working with. This eliminates any sense of experimentation because the person doesn't want to repeat screwing up because of the horrible results. They are reduced to doing what they are told. Learning stops. Improvements discontinue.

Anger is one of those interesting things that we can't use for good reasons very often. Anger is difficult to contain. If you get angry about something, people will remember it. They'll assume that you can be set off for a variety of reasons and will stop sharing information with you, again out of fear. 

Please don't spread this culture of being angry when someone screws up. Instead learn from failure. You must view failure in terms of what has been learned. Evaluate people on their resilience and the ability to define and solve problems, while also functioning as a team player.

  Last week, we talked about cultivating a mood of inquiry and the moods and attitudes that might get in the way of that.  What are the moods we can bring to learning that encourage the mood of inquiry?

Openness - I am willing to change my interpretation of what is so and what is possible based on my interaction with you.

Questioning - It is possible that what I have learned and assumed up until now might be incomplete.  There might be an interpretation of of the available facts more powerful than the one which I now hold.

Curiosity - I think it will be enjoyable to find out something new.

 A mood - something we call a feeling that lasts - has to do with our assessments about the future.  We may think of our future in terms of concerns that we want to take care of.  We may be optimistic or pessimistic, we may see possibilities opening up or closing down for satisfying our concerns, for getting what we want. 

To build a learning organization, we need to cultivate a mood of inquiry, an open-minded attitude toward learning.  What are some of the enemies of this mood?

Cynicism - The future looks bleak, no improvement is possible, and I am sure that nothing you can tell me or teach me will make any difference.  So there.

Boredom - I don't care about what you care about and you don't care about what I care about, so this conversation is irrelevant.