Construction, like healthcare, is learning from another industry. I was just watching David Fillingham, Chief Executive, Royal Bolton Hospital NHS Trust give his speech on Managing the Lean Hospital: what it takes to engage the whole hospital for the Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit 2009. In this he has four points on how to convert the skeptics that I thought fit very nicely to our industry (construction):

• Rigorous use of lean methods
• Convincing data
• Hands on experience
• Reinforce through changed management system and leadership style.

So, in my own words this means that we need to:

• Adopt some tools and not to deviate from them. Make a concerted effort to use the Last Planner® System, A3 Learning, and a Visual Management System like Toyota's Safety-Quality-Deliverable-Cost-Morale work cell management boards.
• Find success stories and share them. Celebrate and publish all the wins. Go to www.leanconstruction.org and share a new presentation with your team once per week. 
• Get into action early and reflect on the learning. Experiment! When is it the right time to change anyway?
• And finally, change at the top. Leadership needs to be fully engaged. The Project Executive needs to be very well versed in Standard Work and all the tools that are being adopted so that they can coach the practice.

I have not been doing lean consulting long enough to have a career's depth of war stories. When faced with some regular questions, I have to pull from the underlying philosophy rather than a real world example. Even in the Lean Construction history, there is not a lot of examples. Peter Block defends this approach in his 2003 book, The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters. 

He says that the typical How questions are a defense against action and change. When we ask how much time is it going to take, we avoid asking about our level of commitment. When we ask how much it is going to cost we avoid asking what the price is we are willing to pay. 

The book is about the meaningful questions that we should be analyzing. Questions about our desire to create a future together. Questions about personal risk, freedom and responsibility. As I see it, progress won't happen if you study how others did it. Get your philosophy straight first and act on that.

Pete Abilla recently wrote about why transformation efforts fail in his popular and personal blog - shmula. He cites an often used statistic that a majority of attempts fail (he uses 70%; some estimates are much higher). Reason is, he claims and I agree, that about half the time management doesn't do what they are suppose to and the other half the time subordinates don't do what they are suppose to do. Of course a lack of resources and other reasons contribute.

http://www.shmula.com/1510/why-transformation-efforts-fail

The Squeeze: A Novel Approach to Business Sustainability by Gary Langenwalter.

The common names of the green movement don't do justice to what the possibilities are with sustainability. It is time to stop going to work and doing things that aren't aligned with who you are at home. We must consider why we do what we do and change the why to fit what we want. The Triple Bottom Line (profit, planet, people) can now make sense and we can now take real action on it.

The author stylizes a set of characters to send the message. We follow a family owned business through the worst of the worse. Part romance with a critical message embedded, the author demonstrates how to go about a sustainability transformation. The recipe could be used by any lean team. Targeted towards executives as well as front line supervisors, The Squeeze will help your team become open to how deep the needed shifts are. But the beauty of sustainability is that this gives us permission to behave the way that we know we should be anyway.

1. Maintain physical fitness

2. Acknowledge the negative and accentuate the positive

I am part of a study group reading and discussing one chapter per week of Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way, a book that may be more appropriate in your lean transformations than The Toyota Way. Chasing the Rabbit and The Elegant Solution are some other top recommendations. Anyway, today we discussed Chapter 10: Two Way Communication and Visual Management. Wow, was I surprised! I know the importance of disciplined communication - I help construction project teams setup effective planning systems regularly - but Toyota is over the top. They have a well thought out way to communicate everything that is needed. And in true Toyota fashion, I am sure they are continually looking to be even more effective in their communication efforts.

Let me say a couple of main ideas from the chapter that hit home for me.

P. 290 - "one of the best ways to build trust is to actually listen to concerns and to address them as they are spoken."