Kata and Freedom

I had the inspiration for this blog entry during several walks with our young German Shepherd – not yet a “real” dog but no puppy anymore. I hesitated for some time about writing it because using a puppy as a starter in the context of talking about Toyota Kata seemed disrespectful. But then I decided that anyone liking dogs will realize that there is no disrespect intended towards people involved in Kata implementations – and the parallels are just too good to miss. However, as a disclaimer – walking with a puppy in the wild surroundings of my village is not intended as an analogy or a metaphor even , just a source of inspiration.

So, to come to the story, I was going through our routine set of exercises with our dog , on a field rather far away from the village. This involved letting her off the leash, allowing her to run freely for some time and then calling her back. The idea is to develop a connection between the dog and the owner where they can trust each other – I can trust the puppy to not run out of the world after a rabbit and she can trust me to be there when she comes back from a sprint.

So, on this particular day, we met another dog-walker who kept the rules 100% and even on this field, had his dog on a leash. He informed me immediately that the law requires all dogs to be walked on a leash. The idea for this entry popped up as I, without thinking about it,  asked him: how do you train your dog then? 

Later, during this and subsequent walks I was pondering that spontaneous answer. Toyota Kata has an ideal state we are all striving towards – and this is an organization, a community of intelligent and active people working to achieve a common goal. This ideal is not a particularity of Toyota , ask any plant manager and they will all agree that this would be an ideal state of affairs.  The problem is, such communities do not grow spontaneously , without any effort.  To achieve the goal of reaching the organizations common objectives we can take a simpler road  -namely to regulate all processes by standard procedures  and just require from everybody to follow the rules.

This approach was probably the best one in a situation where the processes were simple, so few rules were needed and the environment was stable so that the rules stayed valid for long periods of time . (And I hope the image of a puppy on leash pops up in your mind about now).  Just last week a colleague told me about a training they had at a very traditional organization where even during simulation games a typical reaction to most, even hypothetical,  challenges was “I am sorry but this is not in my job description”. This is all nice and good if the processes and the environment are stationary , but could be catastrophic in a rapidly changing world. Just to come back to my example – imagine a puppy whose only training was to follow obediently the leash, suddenly getting off it. I believe the chances that it will be lost are really high, it never having encountered such a  situation and never having been trained for it.

This brings me back to our Toyota Kata coaching routines, especially the PDCAs. In order to really train this way of thinking the learner teams must be allowed the freedom to test things out and to fail. Learning what doesn’t work can be just as valuable as finding something that works. If the teams believe that their job is to immediately find the optimal solution and any failed PDCA is a sign of inadequacy – no one will ever be happy to suggest an experiment.  This will lead to sad, formal PDCA meetings, where people just shrug and wait for someone else to be reckless or stupid  enough to suggest something, even though all know what should be tried. Or, maybe even worse, suggest expensive, unrealistic solutions that get them off the hook -along the lines of “well, if the company wants this fixed, we have to buy this new equipment for x hundred thousand Euros and the problem is solved”.

What can we do in a situation like this? This has not so much to do with Toyota Kata, as such – it is more of a mindset change issue. I would suggest to be very much on the lookout for signs of this problem : defensive behavior during the PDCA meetings, people telling you in private “we all know what needs to be done, just no one will say it out loud”    , maybe a middle manager asking angrily – “who suggested this for a PDCA?” or even worse  “whose stupid idea was that”? You will easily see the signs in real life.

Once identified, the counter actions are not difficult. As strange as it might seem people must be praised by management just for suggesting an experiment, even if it does not lead to a solution.  Also, for suggesting a topic for a new PDCA even though it will not be taken up, for any of a range of possible reasons. The perception that people are now free to think and act in a way to improve the everyday performance at a plant must be reinforced consistently and continuously at all levels.   Without assuring everybody that they now have the freedom to intelligently experiment, our initiative will certainly fail.

I would like to close this with the best memory I have of this positive management attitude. In a chocolate plant the team discovered at the production line a lever that has not been moved since the installation of the line, and no one had a clue about what it did. So, during an optimization workshop they tested the other setting of the lever, which promptly broke off causing an unplanned stoppage of the line for 10 hours. The next morning the whole factory got an e-mail from the plant manager telling everybody about this mishap ending with the message “Do not be discouraged by this, I want you to continue experimenting as this is the only way we can learn about our machinery”. I can guarantee, that not a single person had the mental image of a puppy on a leash after reading this mail.

The mail was a tremendous encouragement. The team went on running experiment after experiment and achieved savings in the order of 400 000 pounds within the year.