Lean Six Sigma Academy

I am the father of 4 wonderfully perfect children. I love them more than words can describe and couldn’t imagine my life without them.

And, recently, I’ve been thinking about how much having children helps me to sharpen my lean and six sigma practitioner “saw.”

Of course this isn’t to say that those without kids can’t also sharpen their lean and six sigma saws… but we parents just might have a bit of an advantage if we leverage this gift we’ve been given.

So, with this said, here are some of the ways my children help me to be better at what I do.

Commitment

Raising children takes a tremendous amount of commitment and self sacrifice. No matter what… we know at least one of our kids will be hopping on our bed by 6:00 AM each and every morning.

Likewise, anyone serious about lean or six sigma knows how important it is to stay committed to excellence. In fact, every day you should ask yourself… have I left this place better than it was when I walked in this morning?

Patience

Ah yes, patience. It goes without saying that my kids often get on my nerves and really try my patience. Especially as they learn to ‘test boundaries.’ But I know this is part of growing up so I do my best to persevere.

Likewise, continuous improvement often comes much slower than many expect or desire. In other words, patience is most definitely required!

Continuous Learning

My wife home-schools our children and I often marvel at how much my oldest (6 years old) daughter has learned.

She, if you’ll allow a proud Dad to boast for a moment, is reading at around a 3rd grade level and can work my iPhone better than most adults I know!

But the thing I am most in love with is how hungry all of my children are to learn. I pray they never lose this.

Likewise, all lean and six sigma practitioners must continue to learn. There are many ways to go about this such as reading books, or blogs, or online training that never ends.

Long-term Thinking

As parents my wife and I are constantly thinking long term with respect to our children. We are doing our very best to form their faith while teaching them to be good citizens.

Likewise, many business owners and senior executives would do well to focus on the long term and not on how to simply make Wall Street happy this week.

Why, Why, Why, Why, Why

If there is one lean principle most kids have mastered by the age of 3 or 4 it’s how to ask why over and over.

Sadly most parents – myself included from time to time – often grow tired of hearing so many questions day in and day out which often times beats this amazing gift right out of our most important assets (our kids).

So, it goes without saying that if we grown-ups all learned - or remembered - how we used to ask why over and over… well, the world might just be a better place.

Let’s Hear from More Parents

If you’re a parent or spend a lot of time around children… what have I missed? Are there other things you’ve learned from your little one’s about continuous improvement or life in general?

One of things I’ve come to realize about myself is I can make decisions quickly.

I don’t need to think about things for days on end… and when in a crisis mode, or a situation that requires an immediate action, I have no problem stepping forward.

This quick decision making, I’d like to think, has served me well most of the time.

But, with this said, I’m pretty confident a more conservative approach to decision making would have probably been wise from time to time. This is why I am so happy to have two business partners who keep me in check!

What About You?

So, I’m curious. How do you go about making decisions?

Are you the type of person who quickly assesses the situation and ‘makes a call’ or are you the type of person who likes to take their time assessing the situation, weigh all the options, and then make the call?

Or do you fall somewhere in between? Or, perhaps, you stink at making decisions altogether and rely on others to make the call. Is this you?

I’d really like to hear your thoughts.

Last week I wrote about how geese stick together through thick and thin.

Well, I think it’s safe to say buffalo make geese look like a bunch of sissies.  Be sure to watch this all the way to the end. Just trust me when I say this this video has more twists and turns than anything I’ve ever witnessed.

We humans can learn a lot from geese. Yes, that’s right, geese.

In fact, in 1991 Angeles Arrien gave a speech called “Lessons from Geese” that was largely based on the work of Milton Olson.

What follows is my take on the story.

Lesson 1: Fly Together

It’s truly a marvelous site to see a group of geese flying together in perfect V formation. Research has shown that as each goose flaps its wings an intense uplift is created for the birds behind them. Further studies state that this “teamwork” adds 71% more flying range compared to a goose flying on its own.

Moral of the Story: Partnerships and teamwork rule the day. The days of the Lone Ranger are long gone (bad example, as even the Long Ranger had Tonto but you know what I mean). If you surround yourself with excellent people you’re far more likely to succeed than if you attempt to go at it alone.

Lesson 2: Stay in formation

If you’ve ever watched geese fly, you’ve likely seen one fall out of formation. And when this happens the fallen away goose begins to struggle mightily until it manages to fight its way back into formation.

Moral of the Story: Once you’ve established a good team stay together and work together. Sure, times will get tough and you may become annoyed with one another from time to time… but synergy cannot be created by a single person working in isolation.

Lesson 3: Rotate

While flying in V formation the lead goose eventually tires and rotates to the back of the pack to re-charge their battery while another goose takes its place at the front.

Moral of Story: It’s important to share the load amongst team members. It’s also important to ensure that all workers are cross trained and able to perform multiple tasks. As an aside, we recently added a skill matrix module to the Gemba Academy School of Lean that deals with this very situation.

Lesson 4: Honk

While it’s not always possible to hear from the ground, geese are a noisy bunch when flying in V formation. There are several theories of why this is. One theory is the geese honk to encourage each other… while another theory hypothesizes the honking is used to communicate where each goose is. You know, hurry up pal (honk, honk) I’m right on your feathers.

Moral of the Story: No matter the reason for goose honking, it goes without saying that we should always communicate with one another offering encouragement as needed. We should also have ways to communicate when something is not right. This can be likened to the way lean companies “pull the andon cord” when a problem arises.

Lesson 5: Leave no Goose Behind

Whenever a goose becomes unable to fly (becomes sick, gets a bullet in the belly, etc.) two other geese fall out of formation and stay with their fallen comrade until the impaired goose is able to fly or dies.

Moral of the Story: The best teams I’ve ever been on were made of people who genuinely cared for each other and would always help each other out no matter the situation. It seems geese figured this out a long time ago.

Any others?

Do you agree with these lessons?  If you are an expert in geese please feel free to share other examples or lessons we can learn from our feathered friends.

A few weeks ago I posted an article where I asked for your thoughts on what “leadership standard work” meant to you.  As is typical, you all blew me away with your comments.

Steve Armitage, a reader of LSS Academy, captured the eye of many of you with his comment about his personal use of a leader standard work document.  He also offered to share it with us all… and as it turns out, Steve is a man of his word.

So, without further delay here is Steve’s version of leadership standard work.

Additionally, here is the message Steve sent along with the document.  Please, if you don’t mind, take a second and thank Steve for openly sharing this with the entire world wide web by leaving a short comment below this post.

I use my working menu to capture key tasks that are fundamental to the role I have as Lean Coach for our site. My team of 5 all use them and I review with them on a weekly basis. Questions I ask:

• Are you meeting the key tasks that deem you have met the minimum requirements for support as an advisor?
• If not, why is this so?
• If not, what do I need to do to help you meet this?

My aim is not to use it a session when my team member is lashed for not meeting their requirements but rather as a pre-emptive snap shot of the load my people are carrying and what we need to do to ensure the work that needs to be done gets done. The feature of this is that I get no nasty end of month surprises when my boss asks where we are at, I have already actioned catch up plans to take up any lag or headed off any potential falls.

I use the same process with my leader, he reviews my WM with me and I am able to clearly articulate where the work is happening and what is being done. The most satisfying aspect of my own WM is that if asked to take on a task that clashes with one I have already, I can point to it and ask the question about how the priority lies and have not yet had a “discussion” at the end of the month as to why aspects of work are not on time or delayed.

The roll out where I work has been a fascinating journey and to see the changes to our workplace and stability that has followed as a result has been nothing short of staggering. Let me know if you would like any further info.

Regards

Steve Armitage

Once again, here is Steve’s leadership standard work.

One of my favorite things about LSS Academy, aside from the thousands of awesome comments you’ve all left the past few years, is how I get to sneak in personal aspects of my life from time to time.

I especially love to write about my kids and how they teach me so much about life – and continuous improvement.

Memory Lane

Close to two years ago I wrote about how my then 4 year old daughter (now 6) learned to ride her bike and how it taught me about why simply allowing others to try and possibly fail is so important.

A few months later my then 2.5 year old daughter learned how to swim and I was so proud and inspired by her lack of fear.

Then, last summer my kids taught me again about having no fear as they held my hand and told me it would be OK as we traveled down some ridiculously huge water slides!

Big Girl Bikes

And now, I’d like to share with you the latest edition of milestones in the Pereira family. This time we’re back to my now 4 year daughter (the swimmer) who recently learned to ride her “big girl bike” without training wheels.

You see, she’s been after me for weeks to let her have a shot… so the other night we took her training wheels off and my wife and I took turns running behind her.  And you know what?  In less than 5 minutes she had it as if she’d been riding like this for years.

The Lesson

The lesson for me was simple. Quit worrying about why something may not work… instead stay focused on trying to make it work. You never know, it may be easier than you think.

Message to my Daughter

Finally, way to go “Boo” Daddy is very proud of you!  Someday you’ll read this post and realize just how much you’ve taught and inspired me.  Keep it up sweetie!

I was recently reading my all time favorite book and came across some comments that caused me to ponder a few of the articles I’ve recently written about being an expert and how many hours it takes to become an expert.

Here’s the text that brought me amazing clarity.

They came to Capernaum and, once inside the house, he began to ask them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they remained silent. They had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest. Then he sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all” (Mark 9:33-35).

This pretty much sums it all up wouldn’t you say?

Have a safe, blessed, and outstanding weekend everyone.  And thanks for reading LSS Academy.  I sincerely appreciate it.

A person going by the name of “ford” left a very interesting comment to my post about it taking 10,000 hours to become an expert at something.  Here was the comment:

“The moment one gets into the `expert’ state of mind a great number of things become impossible” - Henry Ford
Pretty good manufacturing guy…be careful becoming an expert…

I absolutely love comments like this.  They challenge me.  They make me re-think things.  They help me re-focus on what’s truly important.

And for the record, I completely agree with what Henry Ford said (I’m assuming he said it at least?).  You see, if someone thinks they are an expert they may stop trying to learn new things which, in the end, is a deadly mistake if you ask me.

Confident, Never Satisfied

Perhaps the better approach is to feel confident in your skills… but never satisfied.  Do you agree?  Is being a so called expert actually a curse?

10,000 hours. That’s precisely how long you need to practice something before you can even think about calling yourself an expert.

Well, at least this is what Malcolm Gladwell claims in his newest book Outliers, which I must say is one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever encountered.

The Story of Success

Outliers is all about what makes people great. But it’s not your typical book that rambles on about if you believe it you can achieve it. No, you won’t read anything like that.

Instead, Gladwell explains why things such as the month you were born may very well explain why most NHL players made it to the big leagues. He also explains why Chinese children dominate American children when it comes to mathematics.

10,000 Hours of Practice

But the thing that really stuck with me, and I’d to share with you now, is how Gladwell hypothesizes that it takes - on average - 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill.

Take Bill Gates. Did you know that the young Bill Gates spent more than 10,000 hours programming computers before starting Microsoft?

How about those lads from England… you know the Beatles? I bet you didn’t know they were quite terrible before having the opportunity to perform as much as five hours a night seven days a week in Hamburg, Germany before making it big.

Sure Gates and the Beatles had talent. But they also worked extremely hard. You see, it seems they practiced their way to the top.

What about Continuous Improvement?

So I couldn’t help but wonder if this 10,000 hour rule applied to those of us “practicing” continuous improvement.

To get in 10,000 hours of practice this really means spending approximately:

• 4 hours a day;
• 5 days per week;
• Over a span of 10 years practicing your trade.

What do you think? Is there anything to this 10,000 hour rule? If not, are you willing to prove the hypothesis wrong?