Howdy folks, it's that time once again for another entry into the blog of the Lean Cowboy. This entry is going to cover the topic of education and how do I educate my team, better yet how do we sustain this education and pique their interest for more. So grab a cup of coffee and sit around the campfire for a while.
Every Wednesday morning it starts. We have 3 white boards near my desk, one is a 4x8 pick board in which we have divided up so that ideas can be solicited from the team. The other two are the Lean Term board where a Japanese term is written on the board with its definition. Since we clearly defined the word we have to use relevant examples in our environment. When doing this it makes the term relevant. If we were to use some example from say ohhh.. a Toyota factory yes it would still be a relevant example, though it wouldn't have direct context with the team. Something tangible where it is visible to the team and guess what? A lot of time I learn something, see something I'm not doing right as a leader, someone comes up while I'm writing on this board engages me in a conversation, etc... See where I'm going with this? It is a visible means in which to convey a term, define the term, keep it up there a week for all to see and engage with, see how it applies to us as a team and generally exposes everyone on the team to our term of the week.
The continuing education component of the term of the week comes in where I as the leader, circle back to everyone, yes thats right, everyone. When circling back engaging everyone in conversation. This does a few things, it affords me direct personal interface with the team to know how things are going with that individual, see if they understand what I was scribbling on our board, and most of all I get input back from what I was doing right or wrong in the course of the week and give them an opportunity to critique me and upwardly evaluate what I'm doing. See cowpokes a Lean culture is a learning culture. We are a collective learning unit that pull each other forward with simple things such as boards, 10 at 10 Ohno circles, the Wednesday morning huddle with the team. These are the elements of Lean that we are mastering. The basics are the key. My team knows that I've had a couple different careers before coming into manufacturing and that I bring a unique perspective and teaching style. They will tell you that a mastery of the basics is a mastery of the art, we train until we can't get it wrong. Hence we PDCA all the time. For you Demming purists, yeah we PDSA for we do not like reworking the improvement due to the fact we didn't think it out in the planning stages.
These sustainment component and continuing education modules come in the work. It is required of me as a leader to actively engage my people respectfully, even when the idea is unsound or my idea would be better served at the bottom of a campfire. The active engagement facilitates the learning processes and pulls us all forward. Though I may be the trail boss at this organization, I learn just as much from my team as they learn from me. This is the beauty of it all, the beauty of Lean. A learning collective coupled with implementation and improvement with active engagement from the team. For if it were not for those hardy souls that ride the trail with me on these 60 plus hours a week thru thick and thin, disagreements and victories, we wouldn't go anywhere. We would all be stuck back at the stable bickering about which horse we would get.
The continuing themes are prevalent here once again, People/Process/Culture, *head nod and smile to yoda*. We must engage our people to improve the process and change the culture. You'll notice I've only written about the first board and did so for a reason, I'm going to revisit this in a second entry discussing my second board where I discuss the concept board and how theory and application merge into what we do everyday. See as an engineering student I've got the hands on of manufacturing supervision first, my other careers where life and death were a daily and very real issue, and the cowboy code and lifestyle I lead are very unique to our Lean journey.
I'd like to thank you for stopping by my campfire this week and sharing in this entry. I'd also like to thank yoda, for without her, my journey to find true north would have never started and would have stayed the course a solitary man. Until next time buckaroos, keep your head up and keep smiling. Simple words and concepts, yet powerful when applied.
Cowboy
No comments:
Post a Comment