Year: 2021

In his 2012 book “Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder,” author Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes iatrogenics as “harm done by the healer, as when a doctor’s interventions do more harm than good.” Then, in expanding this idea, Taleb defines general iatrogenics as “the harmful side effects of actions by policymakers and activities of academics.”

We shall use this description of general iatrogenics as the jumping-off point for this article and see what avenues we can explore together.

Imagine the scenario: the manufacturing plant where you work is experiencing issues with its quality, cost and delivery metrics. People around you are scratching their heads, as these challenges seem to have appeared from nowhere, and none of the myriad charts, graphs and reports predicted this strange turn of events.

Across the business, kaizen teams are being hurriedly pulled together to address the perceived glitches in the corporate machinery. Again, no one quite knows what these glitches are, but there must be some special cause variation, mustn’t there? After all, data has never been known to lie.

We must do something! Busy support staff caught up in the fervour, and each kaizen group, driven by their work ethic, plus a bit of healthy competition with the other teams, begin to intervene in the system with the adjustable spanner of their lean techniques. A few days later, the problems have got worse.

Our heroic improvement teams retire to the meeting rooms that are free and ponder a little bit more. Then something miraculous happens. Whilst the Powerpoint presentations are being tweaked, the problems begin to recede. Equilibrium and stability follow shortly behind, and our teams relievedly conclude that their probings were ultimately successful. Congratulations abound, and all return to normal life to await the next crisis.

Of course, the difference for the next crisis is as follows: our now experienced interventionists exclaim, “I have seen this before!” and deploy the trusted methods that were so successful on their last foray. This time, things get somewhat worse than they did before, though again, during some hansei on the sidelines, the problems curiously disappear. More mental data is gathered on the importance of interventionism, and the next cycle is primed.

There is a quote, often attributed to Albert Einstein – of which one of the variants looks a bit like this:

“If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution.”

In lean circles, we assign this thinking to the habit of going to the gemba with humility, thoroughly understanding the problem and asking “why?”

When we happen upon an improvement opportunity disguised as a problem, there is an overwhelming desire to immediately spring into action – if only to show that we are actively working on the topic.

In the decade I have been working with continuous improvement, I have certainly fallen into this trap. Like a bull at a gate, I have charged in, forgetting to document the current condition and delivering an “improvement” that negatively impacts someone further downstream.

But age and experience have mellowed me. Like many, I now take the time to understand the process that I am looking at. I slowly draw up a hypothesis of the problem root cause and carefully design experiments to test my thinking. I measure at the beginning and end of each PDCA learning cycle, and I ask myself three questions: what do I expect to happen, what did happen, and what did I learn?

And it is the learning that is the key. Sometimes though, I will apply an experiment, and what I expect to happen does not occur. Puzzled, I will stroke my chin thoughtfully and return to my Ishikawa to interrogate another potentiality.

But what if there is no deeply embedded special cause variation or combination of special causes? What if the right thing to do is to do nothing?

One indicator might be if you cannot recreate the problem you are looking at and simply keep coming up against dead ends.

There is no shame in not knowing and taking a step back.

On occasion, that ailment I take to the doctor will disappear faster without treatment than with the aid of the pills and the creams.

The human body is a remarkable machine. It can fix itself, especially if we treat it with care and the autonomous maintenance of good exercise and nutrition.

The same is true of your processes and business systems. The lifeblood of those systems, the experts that run them, will find a way. Sometimes the expert facilitation and tweaking are not required. Trust the machine. More often than not, it will fix itself – not every little thing requires a sticking plaster.

When that desire to do something, anything, surfaces, consider sitting on the sidelines just a little longer. The outcome might surprise you.

Sometimes on this site, we review a non-lean book with a view to drawing parallels and insights into lean thinking. And that is exactly what we will aim to do here. Whether this article is hit or miss is largely unimportant. What is great is having the opportunity for discussion, so let’s dive in.

Modello was the name of a housing project just south of Miami with a reputation for drugs, alcohol, violence, prostitution, truancy, and many other social disorders.

The book tells the story of how this community turned itself around. The sub-titles on the cover give an extra clue. One states, “A story of hope for the inner city and beyond.” Another, “An inside-out model of prevention and resiliency in action.”

At the centre, at least initially, is Dr Roger Mills. Dr Mills was a traditionally trained psychologist whose life was turned around by exposure to the wonderfully charismatic Sydney Banks.

Banks, previously a Scottish welder of average education, had come to a realisation about life that had changed his entire outlook. Banks distilled this understanding down to three principles, those of mind, consciousness, and thought.

Mind is the innate wisdom, common sense and mental health available for all. Consciousness is the essence that allows us to be aware of our day to day experience, and thought is the commodity that powers our experience in the moment.

To be clear, what Sydney Banks, Roger Mills, and many others were saying is that each of us is experiencing the result of our thought at this instant. If we change the thought, we can change the experience. It is an inside-out model of life rather than an outside-in. Through understanding when a low mood, for instance, is colouring the lens of our outlook on life, we can embrace the realisation in the moment, smile at it, and move on the something more positive.

If this seems fanciful or non-sensical, I will invite you to sit with the explanation above for a while. Better still, why not look up Sydney Banks online, or perhaps modern practitioners, such as Michael Neill or Jamie Smart.

But what the book “Modello” offers is the transcription of this method applied practically to deprived and ignored housing projects in Miami. It is a joy to read first-person accounts from residents throughout the book in their authentic language. Through these accounts, we see a transformation in a group of individuals, which seems to seep out and change the community.

Take, for example, Ruby. Ruby was addicted to crack cocaine and, through gaining an understanding of her own thought, was able to find the motivation to seek help and attend a rehabilitation clinic.

Then consider Lenny. Lenny was bright and ambitious but had sought to steer his talent towards selling drugs. The logic seemed simple. Looking around, Lenny could see that those young men around him who had nice clothes and cars were selling drugs. It was a straightforward story to keep repeating that this was the only way to succeed. However, because one of the Modello ladies reached out to him, recognising his talents for what they were, Lenny not only changed himself but influenced his friends as well. As the book closed, Lenny and his friends had established a Student Tenant’s Association and were all in college – this coming from a background where college would not previously be considered an option.

The book contains many similar tales of triumph over perceived adversity. Schools were turned around, Parent Teacher Associations created, and neighbourhood crime seemingly defeated. Individual women stopped drinking, ended abusive relationships, went back to school, and found meaningful jobs.

So what happened? I think people made a connection with their natural mental health and common sense. People also realised that their lives had value. With this realisation, it didn’t make sense to take drugs, drink, or endure an abusive relationship. Then, free from the shackles of vice or abuse, people began to see hope, which fuelled their subsequent actions.

Allow me to address the topic differently. Imagine our lives as a notebook. At birth, it is full of pristine sheets of paper. This blank page is our mental wellbeing, and in this state, the paper is open to receiving anything.

But as we grow, things are written onto those pages. In moments of reflection, we re-read the sentences, add to them, and create the person we recognise as us. It doesn’t matter if what we read is positive or negative; we build upon our stories and embellish everything with thought.

If challenged, we become defensive and fight tooth and nail for this self-created picture – this notebook that makes us an individual, but as the words on the page, self is a series of repeated beliefs – many of which do not serve us.

For, despite all of the writings in our collective notebooks, one fact remains true. The pristine page still exists underneath it all, and the greater part of ourselves exists in the space between the letters. Through recognising the words as thought and having the consciousness to realise that we are just a book, we have the opportunity to connect to the pristine page of mind.

What is more, there is only one infinite notepad, and all of our lives are written on it. At a fundamental level, we are all connected. When, on some level, the residents of Modello and Homestead Gardens realised this, suspicion, hate, and violence no longer made sense. To hurt another was to hurt oneself. The only emotion that makes sense, after that, is love.

In my book “Super Lean – Unlock Your Company’s Million-Dollar Edge,” I have attempted to describe the impact of this understanding on lean transformations.

Continuous improvement is the responsibility of everyone within the business – but each person is telling themselves their own story. We must recognise this and engage with people to understand that the past does not equal the future.

For example, we will have team members who have “seen this lean thing all before.” It might be that their experience was less than positive. Part of successfully engaging this tranche of the team is showing them a different experience, but secondly, convincing them that their previous exposure lives in the past, and therefore only as thought.

Because this thought, even if it is not fully conscious, may block both full engagement and creativity. Coaching the three principles within the workplace, perhaps alongside other coaching models, such as kata and GROW, is the key to unlocking the final percentage points of human potential. At this point, a learning organisation will begin to buzz. Learning can be an activity that comes with fear, especially the further into the learning zone you get. But, as before, fear is just a reaction to our thought in the moment. Think about something that you are scared of. Do you start to feel a physical response? Knots in the stomach, or similar? I get this when I think of snakes, even though a real snake is not present.

It, therefore, follows that some negative thinking around continuous improvement and lean may have zero relationship to the reality of the current situation – yet this thinking is blocking learning and creativity.

So how, in our lean efforts, do we get past this potential blockage towards full engagement. The answer is straightforward – through awareness and giving room to feeling.

A simple coaching question like “where do you think that feeling comes from?” is a super start. Then we can employ PDCA style questioning, such as “what insights are coming through for you?” “What do you see now?” “What might you try if you knew you were not going to fail?”

And within the framework of the PDCA approach, we should not be afraid to take actions on gut feeling. The hunches of our team members can so often hide a seam of gold – let’s not nip them in the bud with a “show me the data” request – at least not every time.

If you’re interested in learning more about the topics raised in this article, you can always read more in my book “Super Lean – Unlock Your Company’s Million-Dollar Edge.” Alternatively, there are links to books by Michael Neill, Jamie Smart, and Sydney Banks over in the shop.

I’d love for you to comment below. Best wishes – let’s see if we can truly incorporate Three Principles or 3P Lean into our working and personal lives.

Let’s start this review with by quoting the sub-title of the work:

“Self-reliance and the human side of lean; a step-by-step guide to setting and achieving personal and corporate goals.”

And this is precisely what Norman Bodek does, both by delivering his own material and interludes by the designer of the method, Takashi Harada.

But this book is also about so much more than that.

If I had to sum the Harada Method up with one word, even though the chances of that are improbable, that word would be authenticity.

Because, for me, authenticity is exactly what this book is about. Let me explain further. In the preparation part of the Harada method, the reader will find themselves directed to a set of forms. The job of these forms is not mere idle paperwork but to steer the student into taking a deep personal inventory. What really matters to you? What are your values? What makes you tick?

The stunningly simple truth is that those people who abundantly succeed do so because their goals are wholly aligned to their value system. In this sense, work ceases to be a chore – it becomes another aspect of life that is joyfully integrated. This concept seems to have been woven into Japanese culture for some time – check out an earlier article on Ikigai. But, increasingly, this mindset is a global one. People now seek work and hobbies that enhance life rather than work that merely funds it.

This outlook, that of creating meaningful, value-aligned work is, by my reckoning, what Bodek termed the human side of lean. In the subtitle, Bodek refers to using the Harada method to achieve personal and corporate goals. The job of the lean learning organisation, operating from the point of respect for people, is to remove the distinction. In the workplace where we are truly in harmony and operating in a state of ikigai, we only recognise shared goals. Our company supports us in all of the goals that are aligned with our values. Furthermore, because our values align with those of our employer, we no longer see the difference. We a so much freer to pursue the goals that our company suggests.

In her book “Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn,” Katie Anderson tells the story of when Toyota executive, Isao Yoshino, helped a shy employee travel abroad for the first time. This was not on a business trip but a personal journey, where immense growth was possible. The benefits that Mr Yoshino and his employee gained were far in excess of the tangible cost of the air ticket. I like to recall this story when I think of the Harada method in practice.

The inference is clear. Goals that are not authentic will not be chased with the same zeal as goals that are. Those deeply held target conditions that we all have can fall by the wayside eventually. Even Olympians occasionally eat junk food.

This is where Mr Bodek introduces the idea of a coach or mentor. The role of the coach is not to punish and shout, but to steer and question. Somebody holding up a mirror every so often can be very helpful.

In this case, the coach will steer you back to the Harada method. In common with other coaching models, such as Kata and GROW, the path to progress is by completing small, daily goals while continually asking what has been learned and how this learning can be integrated into future actions. The Harada method gives you a technique to draw together up to sixty-four such activities. As we have seen, these actions will be aligned to your values, so may not even feel like work.

In such a way, you will uncover a pathway to your dreams and goals.

I would recommend reading “The Essential Harada Method Guide” whether you are a leader or a student. Everybody can learn and take away something essential. But, to get the true, desired impact, I would suggest that you follow the steps detailed, without deviation. This will definitely be something that I will try.

In closing, I would like this article to be my own small tribute to Norman Bodek. Mr Bodek was a giant of lean, having translated and published volumes of classic Japanese literature on the topic. This body of work included books by both Mr Ohno and Dr Shingo. Mr Bodek was the teacher of many.

He passed away in December 2020.

Thank you for joining the discussion with our second article on the book “Antifragility” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

You may recall that the last time we got together, I mentioned that I found the book exceptionally interesting but difficult in places. I also stated that any mistakes in interpretation were entirely mine and that I was happy to own them as part of the learning process.

I stand by these statements.

I had intended to write this article on the topic of iatrogenics, but plans have changed. The reason for this is that I have discovered a flaw in my previous article, and I think it is worthy of exploration.

In my previous post, I referred to the coronavirus pandemic as a black swan, an unpredictable event with a severe negative impact. I have since seen video footage where Taleb himself asserts that Covid-19 is not a black swan event. Indeed he is thoroughly ticked off that people are mistakenly describing it as so. This reasoning would appear to be a potentially rewarding point to start today’s article. Why does Nassim Nicholas Taleb state that the current pandemic is not a black swan event?

Taleb’s main argument is that there have been seventy-two deadly plagues and pandemics throughout history. He also argues that many novels, films, and television shows have featured dangerous contagions sweeping through great swathes of the population. In this sense, says Taleb, one cannot argue that the coronavirus pandemic could not have been seen ahead of time; it’s just that so few people saw it.

And it is this definition that causes me a great deal of difficulty. Well, not the description, but the inference. With risk management and risk detection, what should we be scanning the horizon for, and how will we know when we have seen it?

It seems that the best an organisation can hope to achieve is to be robust to many things, antifragile to a few, and have removed the downside to almost everything. That is to say, my company is unkillable, but I am aware that some circumstances will harm it, but only temporarily.

I will go one stage further here. I think this is what lean has attempted to achieve. Another metaphor employed by Taleb is that of a forest. To remain strong, the forest must have small, natural fires to remove scrub and old material. If we attempt to prevent these necessary flare-ups, we increase the risk, and the size of the downside, of the large scale forest fire.

This is an easy concept to extrapolate to business. For commerce to remain strong, some businesses need to fail. As these businesses scale up in size, their impact on the whole increases exponentially. Global financial crises become attributable to the failure of the whale-sized few.

In our previous article, we have already discussed how this thinking can be scaled down to cover an individual, lean and learning organisation. In the early stages, those individuals who do not believe in the mission may well leave, creating growth opportunities.

But let’s go a stage lower, to the individual department or cell. In the manufacturing world, defects seldom come without warning. Part of our problem-solving methods will inevitably lead us to ask the question, “what has changed?” As thinking people, we seem to prefer problems that are mired in the complexity of common-cause variation. But the truth is that a fair proportion of opportunities fall within much more transparent special-cause parameters. The predictability of these special-cause inputs can lie in what we choose to measure.

Many of us are familiar with the ideas around lead and lag metrics, but it is surprising how often we are reliant on the latter to paint a picture of how we are doing.

A lag metric measures history – even if that history was just a few seconds ago. Quality is a lag metric. I can use a parts-per-million measure to predict, reasonably, how I will perform tomorrow, but I can never be sure – I am always in the hands of probability.

Taleb terms this as “the turkey problem.” Each passing day, a turkey on a farm gathers a growing data set that tells the turkey that she is well-loved by the farmer. The bird is fed royally, given a lovely field to peck around during the day, and is kept warm and safe from predators at night. Every day that passes reinforces, in the mind of the turkey, that life is good – that is until the black swan of Christmas arrives.

History is no guarantee of tomorrow.

However, what happens if we measure 5S adherence and improvement?

Now we have a lead metric. 5S is a lead metric of so many things. Because 5S promotes standard work, an improving 5S environment will often be correlated with a quality improvement. Because 5S seeks to reduce waste, you may find that your on-time delivery improves. And, most importantly, because 5S is a learning journey centred around respect for people, you will find that the morale and engagement of your team improve remarkably.

Such is the power of a lead metric. We can apply it at any time to increase our organisational learning and agility. We do not have to wait for a historical measure to tell us trouble is on the horizon. Nor do we have to wait for a few more days of the historical metric “just to be sure” that we’re in a bit of a mess!

Granted, such an approach would not have protected us from the Covid-19 pandemic, but it would help us create an organisation that is as quick as a cat to find the silver lining in every cloud. This organisation is populated with engaged, dynamic people who are primarily problem-solvers and thinkers before they are operators and workers.

The predictability at play here is the knowledge that our business is like plasticine – ready to be moulded into whatever the landscape requires and to be able to do that quickly while constantly learning. For to me, organisational learning through adversity makes us all antifragile.

Traditionally on this page, I have posted reviews of the books that I have read. However, every so often, a book will come along that merits a deeper reflection and a series of articles.

One such book is the work “Antifragile” by the Lebanese-American scholar, essayist, and former options-trader, Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Let me say, at the outset, that there were some bits of the book that I found hard to comprehend, but I thought that was wonderful! How great is it when a book sends you off on a sparkling learning journey?

Therefore, any mistakes in this or following articles are wholly my own, and I embrace them fully. Indeed, I would welcome your comments and corrections, either on this site or via social media.

So let begin with an overview. There is no doubt that the book is superbly written and structured. It is also, in places, tremendously funny. Mr Taleb tells you what he is going to tell you, describes it to you, and then gives you some time to catch up by telling you what he told you. The author even has the decency to tell you which bits you can skip because they are technical and boring, though they are included in the text for the sake of completion.

However, I did not feel the need to skip ahead.

The book is completed by a cast of characters who pop up to provide examples and explanatory backdrops. Socrates returns and spends time in discussion with the mafia don, Fat Tony. Both have what Taleb describes as “skin in the game,” i.e. they feel the full force of the downside of what they do. What are fun are the all-out attacks that Taleb reserves for the numerous economists and public figures that do not have skin in the game. These personages, Taleb feels, have all of the upsides of successful prediction but have shifted the downside of being wrong elsewhere – often to the public or employees. It is this sort of optionality that I would like to explore in future articles.

But for today, I would like to briefly explore the titular phrase – the antifragility that Taleb describes.

Naturally, the author describes it far better than I, so I would like to butcher his example somewhat if I may. I have recently repeated the thought experiment that Taleb describes with several people; unfailingly, it highlights the gap in perception that we are mainly educated to miss – i.e., antifragility.

Try it now. Ask anyone for the antonym of fragility, and they are likely to respond similarly – i.e. with robust, strong, rugged, unbreakable, tough, and words of that ilk.

But in reality, they are considering the middle ground.

Taleb asks us to consider a parcel. The parcel is marked with the word “fragile.” This means it is harmed by rough treatment. Perhaps it contains a vase that, as it is buffeted around the postal depot, is smashed further and further to smithereens – with no chance of recovering its pristine form.

Yes, it is true. Something that is struck by rare events (Taleb calls these “Black Swans”) without being overly harmed by them is robust, but it is here that Taleb asks us to consider a third category, the true antonym of fragility.

Imagine something that is hit by a low probability, extreme event, which actually benefits from its effects? This is antifragility.

Imagine our parcel that, no matter what poor treatment it receives, actually gets stronger from it? Would not this parcel come with the label “please harm me?”

What struck me when reading the book was simple chronology. It had been written from a pre-covid standpoint – the biggest black swan in one hundred years was just around the corner.

Some companies have failed because they were fragile to such an event, but my mind switches to antifragile organisations. The most obvious example is Amazon, but it is equally valid of all organisations that could change quickly to a delivery model.

Other businesses repurposed during the pandemic. Early in the crisis, many companies changed their dormant production lines to produce necessary PPE, ventilators and other medical equipment, often within days of receiving the drawings and specifications of the articles required.

Even a local pub near me set up its outside space to retail shrubs and plants – others, which I am aware of, challenged their kitchens to make takeaway food for hungry customers. The entrepreneurial spirit abounded, as necessity made it critical to learn quickly.

While it is true that organisations like Amazon and supermarkets were in industries that seemed favoured by lockdown (i.e. people needed supplies bringing to them), these same models had to cope with an unprecedented surge in demand.

For me, the success or otherwise of these swift corporate reimaginings is synonymous with the learning organisation. The concept of the learning organisation is at the heart of this blog. Let us turn to Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline, 1990) for our definition. He describes the learning organisation as:

“A place where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to learn together.”

My feeling is that the collective desire to emerge from the black swan of covid as a stronger organisation rests on the chameleonic learning powers of a critical mass of employees.

Unfortunately, the bitter truth is some employees and some businesses had to fall by the wayside so that those who remain can flourish. This natural selection is a further promoter of antifragility – and this is a topic that we will follow up on in future articles. In this sense, commercial business has some of the traits of antifragility, but only taken as a whole and if some parts necessarily fail. As we have seen, Amazon was antifragile to Covid, but should there be a rise of tech-hating Luddites, it would become extremely fragile overnight!

But for now, let us close by pondering a question. Are all learning organisations necessarily lean organisations? Perhaps, by extension, I am also asking, are antifragile businesses primarily lean businesses?

My gut feeling is that they are not.

But here we come across a stumbling point. For far too long, lean has been interchangeable with the Toyota Production System. In fact, many experts are simply supplying cut and paste versions of TPS to their teams. Only with a deeper understanding does the truth emerge. Lean is just learning how to solve your own problems with your solutions. This is where the term learning organisation becomes much more helpful. If we take the term lean out of the paragraph above, we end up with the rather pleasing learning organisations = antifragile organisations. Other types of commerce may be antifragile, but this is more by placement – because even a stopped clock is right twice a day. All lean wants us to do is to stop doing the stuff that it makes no sense to do. Doesn’t that sound like learning? The nudge we can get from the experience of Toyota is that there is a lot of commonality in our collective challenges.

In this sense, real respect for people and leadership towards noble, community enriching targets become our first line of defence against black swans and the stunning beautiful variation in the world. The first step towards learning is the humility to know that we must. Perhaps this is the first step towards manufactured antifragility too.

In our next article, we will discuss another of the central themes of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s work. We will consider the topic of general iatrogenics. As lean practitioners, we will be familiar with this concept: to what extent can expert interventionism, i.e. the need to do something, be harmful, particularly in relation to problem-solving and continuous improvement?

Simon D. Gary is the author of the book “Super Lean: Unlock Your Company’s Million Dollar Edge.” It is available by following this link.

The title of this piece is a quotation credited to Mahatma Gandhi.

It is a quote that we often see paraphrased in business, and I know that I have used it to encourage others who were struggling to make, what they perceived, were positive changes in the way that they worked. They felt, rightly or wrongly, that their efforts were doomed to failure – that others simply would not come along for the ride. In such cases, you can easily come up against the phrase, “why bother?”

This view is why the video below held such resonance for me when I watched it. I embed it here with the kind permission of Katie Anderson who, alongside Isao Yoshino, gave us one of the lean publishing highlights of last year, “Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn.”

I really love the message in this video, and the challenges that come with it.

How can we align to our true purpose today, and improve ourselves, through self-disciplined action, towards the greater good? The essence of kaizen is right there, and it is so amazing!

I watched another video this weekend. In it, Paul Akers was making a rousing keynote speech to the delegates of AME Boston 2017. At one point, he starts telling the story of Sakichi Toyoda, describing how, and why, he invented the automatic loom. Akers, author of “2-Second Lean,” describes how the driver was not money, nor fame, but the desire of Sakichi to help his mother – to see her work with less effort and pain.

To achieve this goal, Toyoda had to learn, through many PDCA iterations, and apply the discipline to keep on keeping on, even when things looked bleak. Why? Because it was the right thing to do for both Sakichi’s mother and the wider weaving community. Sakichi Toyoda wanted to see a change, so he became it.

In my 2020 book, “Super Lean: Unlock Your Company’s Million-Dollar Edge,” I reflect heavily on this people-oriented, purpose-driven side of lean.

One thing that came to mind during the writing, as the 2020 Covid Lockdown was unfolding, was that the building in which I worked was sitting empty. So, I wondered, where was the company? Did it even exist?

The company was not the building, how could it be? The company could not even be said to be the product. That was the output. So much had to happen before our customers could have their purchases. So where was the business? Was it a set of papers, stored in a vault somewhere?

It couldn’t be that either.

Then I had a realisation. The business was in the hearts of the people, both the workers and the customers, the same hearts that Katie mentions in the video above. That was the only place that it truly existed. It was a brand that we all carried within and brought to life with our minds, thought and consciousness.

As with anything, we were experiencing the business as a manifestation of our thought in the moment, held in our collective minds, and powered by consciousness. (These three principles of thought, mind, and consciousness, were reiterated by Sydney Banks, and form the basis of what I call “3P’s Lean.”)

So, it makes so much sense when you see the true meaning of kaizen as improving yourself with self-discipline, towards a greater good – because that is the only thing that you can do.

Isn’t that liberating?

You are not responsible for changing the world for everyone, but you can change your world by changing you and your view of it. In this sense chasing waste can become fun, and obvious, rather than arcane drudgery. Improving your processes becomes the right thing to do because we value our customer over ourselves, and we recognise the greater good of looking after our companies.

With this thinking, departmental battles and silos just drop away. We simply have to ask, what is right for the customer? What is right for the community? What is right by the North Star? What is right for the future?

Because we are only temporary custodians of our jobs. We owe it to those that will follow to leave our tasks and workplaces better than we found them. Work as if you are leaving your job to your child. In a sense, you are. Isn’t this the zen meaning that Katie Anderson speaks about?

You can find Katie Anderson’s book “Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn” by following this link.

You can read my review of “Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn” at this link.

Or you can visit Katie’s website at Home – Katie Anderson (kbjanderson.com)

Simon D. Gary is the author of the ground-breaking book “Super-Lean: Unlock Your Company’s Million-Dollar Edge.” In it, you can learn more about the concept of 3P’s Lean, as outlined above.

Patrick Adams is an internationally recognised leadership coach, consultant and professional speaker. To this impressive resume, Adams can now add best-selling author.

It is straightforward to write a dry textbook about approaches to Continuous Improvement, but what struck me first about this book is how much of the author is invested in it.

From his early life in the US Marine Corps to his successful coaching practice, Adams is not afraid to share himself, which makes the book very engaging.

This transparency is also the trigger for most of the successful structure of the book. Adams poses twelve questions, which you could imagine being part of one of his coaching discussions. However, the information gleaned is not for the author but the reader.

The book challenges each of us, as lean leaders and change agents, to take a fearless inventory of the environment in which we are operating and to go away and reflect.

In this sense, Patrick does not offer a roadmap to lean success, saying, “there you go, follow that.” As he explains, that would not work. What the book does do, and with great success, is steer us, via our own reflection, to create our own bespoke pathway to lean success. Generic models work, but fitted models excel.

Following a generic plan will inevitably lead to what Patrick Adams calls “fake lean” – or lean for show. Cleverly, Adams highlights the gulf between fake and authentic lean through entertaining discussions around two real companies. The author calls these diametrically opposite businesses Company Continuous Improvement and Company Continuous Appearance – the trap that the title extols us to avoid.

These were the sections of the book that I enjoyed most, as they were charming and humorous. I winced at points where I recognised elements of companies that I have been exposed to in the past. But, and I think it is the following that sets this book apart from many; I emerged with tangible, actionable improvement topics that I can take forward into my continuous improvement work.

These actionable outcomes make this book worth many times its cover price. For this reason, I would urge you to add this book to your lean library. If you can, get the paperback, then carry it with you and scribble notes inside it – because isn’t that what lean books are for?

A five-star read, for sure.

Order your copy of “Avoiding the Continuous Appearance Trap” by following this link.

Patrick Adams also runs a charity to support at-risk youngsters. You can find out more about that at www.remembranceranch.org

Patrick’s business site can be found at www.findleansolutions.com. There are some great resources available.

Simon D. Gary is the author of the breakthrough book “Super Lean: Unlock Your Company’s Million-Dollar Edge. Further details are available here.

I have recently got a new phone – and it led me to think about a few things.

Let’s be straight from the outset; I wasn’t looking to upgrade, but the financial elements of my contract were such that I wanted to re-negotiate. The new handset was the sweetener in the deal.

I had resisted upgrading for some time because I was happy with what I had. The device did what I needed it to do, and I had become increasingly aware that more and more of my life was tied up in the phone that I owned.

In short, my perception was that the pain of change was greater than the pain of standing still and experiencing a catastrophic breakdown later on. So, I chose to look the other way.

Isn’t that what we do all too often?

I remember working with a business which was operating with old machines. At the time, the maintenance department did an excellent job keeping them going, and all was well. However, the original machine manufacturer had long since gone bust, so the spares on the shelf were not going to last forever. Also, the business running the machines had neglected to buy the drawings when they had the chance. Hence the opportunity to manufacture spares had also been lost.

This organisation was faced with a ticking time bomb – but the pain of doing anything about it caused them to look the other way – much like me and my phone.

It is true that until the discomfort of the present moment becomes greater than the perceived fear of the change, and hence the unknown, that most of us will put up with what we have today, even with the threat of something catastrophic occurring.

To plan for painful circumstances is not something that most of us feel comfortable doing – but when we hedge against the downside, the balance tips in favour of the transaction’s upside. We start to think more in terms of positive benefits, and action is then seriously considered.

Part of my perceived pain around swapping to a new phone was the estimated work of moving every piece of data across and starting again but, as it turned out, I needn’t have worried.

The handset I selected was a new, all improved, latest version from the same manufacturer and operating system that I was used to.

In this sense, the swap could be viewed as more of a gentle augmentation and gradual introduction of new technology. We often see a “fix the world” introduction of something that doesn’t fit with our current systems, which only causes more difficulty in the long run. Be honest – how much of your data is held “outside” of official systems, hidden away on individuals computers?

My decision to purchase something compatible undoubtedly paid off. Just moments after unpacking my shiny new device, it had connected itself wirelessly to my old phone and was transferring all of my data across! I didn’t have to refer to a hand-written list of telephone numbers once!

To me, this feature was way up in the stratosphere of the Kanu diagram and had undoubtedly influenced my purchase decision. Jeffrey Liker describes the eighth Toyota management principle as “adopt and adapt technology that supports your people and processes” – which strongly resonated at the time.

In wireless data transfer and set-up, the technology available certainly supported me in my need to change equipment. In terms of downtime, I was without a phone for approximately ten minutes. Technology had struck a huge victory for set-up reduction.

But has getting this new phone changed my life? Did I become instantly more productive?

The answer is no.

So why not?

Because I haven’t changed.

Think about where you work. Is there anything particular enabling technology from which you don’t get the full benefit?

Such a deficit is undoubtedly the case with me and my phone. I use it to make calls, text, take photos, and use social media – but I know it can potentially do so much more for me.

So, we circle back to the central theme of everything that I like to talk about, both in my books and on this site. Develop and place your faith in people. If you are a leader, your job description is clear; set the direction and coach people towards it – everything else on your scorecard comes for free.

If am I to get the full benefit of the astounding technology at my fingertips, I need to trust and take responsibility for my own learning. I must immerse myself in what is new. Only in this way can I release the technology’s potentiality and turn it into a tangible reality.

Then again, the actual truth is somewhat starker. People are the technology. Human beings are remarkable, yet we still do not understand our brains’ full functionality, any more than I comprehend the functionality of this shiny new phone.

Perhaps the question becomes this. Do we have the humility to learn?

We are each of us living in the experience of our own thought in the moment. Further, we are all doing the very best that we can with the information that is currently available to us. Through mind and consciousness, we project that outwards into the physical environments where we live and work – and get tricked that the transaction is happening the other way around.

To change how we experience our environment, we only have to accept that thought is pulling all the strings.

So, at the age of 46, I may consider that I am too old to learn all this new stuff – and that may be my resistance point when you ask me why I cannot use all the features on my new phone. But perhaps you might coach me, and ask: “where do you think that your resistance to learning is coming from?”

I might point to a host of poor learning experiences in the past – which I have built up into a portfolio of evidence that I cannot be developed any further. It is my wall which I hide behind, the wall that prevents me from changing and allowing the processes to improve around me.

“And where are those experiences now?” you ask.

“In the past.”

“So can they hurt you anymore? Is it possible for your resistance to travel through time, from the past?”

“Well, er, no?”

“So is it possible that you are experiencing your thought in the moment?”

Who knows where such a transformative coaching discussion could lead? But imagine if breaking through resistance to change was that easy?

The truth though, is that it is.

I speak more about the impacts of 3P Lean (the three principles of Thought, Mind and Consciousness) in part two of my book “Super Lean – Unlock Your Company’s Million-Dollar Edge.”

I would love you to read it and help push the discussion forward. Thanks for your time.

This review piece is something of a first for me, here at simondgary.com.

Instead of reviewing one book, we’re going to be looking at two. The books are the hugely important “The Toyota Way” first and second editions, by the highly influential Jeffrey K. Liker.

I first read edition one of “The Toyota Way” over a decade ago, when I was fresh to my journey as a lean learner. If I am honest with myself, I probably didn’t understand a lot of it. Still, I took enough to know that it was a very significant book – after all, I had seen it being distributed as a course text for a high-level workplace course of which I was aware.

Fast-forward to the end of 2020, and I become excited to learn that a second edition is about to be released. What will be added, what will be changed? To help me understand, I immediately re-read the first edition and waited eagerly for news of the second.

A decade on, I was immediately able to understand just how magnificent the “Toyota Way” was. Further, I was able to see that many, perhaps including myself at times, had incompletely understood the message – picking up on the tools and missing the cultural side of transformation. I wondered how Mr Liker would address this in the second edition.

As a UK learner, I had to wait a little while to get my copy. I do not think it is an over-exaggeration to state that this was the most eagerly awaiting lean published event in nearly twenty years. You could not get a copy of “The Toyota Way: Second Edition” for love nor money.

When it eventually arrived, it was like Christmas morning all over again. I tore at the packaging to reveal a beautiful, bright red cover, bearing the legend “The bestselling classic – completely updated.”

And it was. Wonderfully so.

Both books are tightly structured around the fourteen TPS Management Principles, but the new copy dives straight in. It is bigger and heavier than its predecessor, but that is because Mr Liker has packed in a great deal more fantastic material.

The Second Edition feels more people-centric to me, which is a trend that I am seeing in a lot of lean books now. The tools have become secondary. People are the beating heart of all business systems. Mr Liker explores the people element of lean very thoroughly, clearly delineating mechanistic and organic business systems.

The language is clear and concise, but the book’s beauty comes in the myriad examples, not all of them from Toyota. All of the anecdotes and stories are told in a superbly engaging way, leaving ample room for reflection on the reader’s part. Though each comes with the caveat: do not copy and paste – think how you could adapt this principle for yourself.

And it is in this caveat that the biggest, and most crucial difference between the two editions exists. “The Toyota Way: Second Edition,” has a much bigger focus on scientific thinking as part of our PDCA learning cycles. Here is where Mr Liker truly pinpoints the people element of the lean business system. Develop people, and everything else will naturally follow.

In “The Toyota Way: Second Edition,” Mr Liker offers the key to a sustainable, continually-improving crucible of a workplace, in whatever industry or sector that may be. Mr Liker’s book truly is for everyone.

I think it may be obvious that I think “The Toyota Way” is a remarkable book, fully deserving of its label as a classic. Further, I will state that I believe the Second Edition is an even better iteration, and the spirit of PDCA and kata is evident.

Lean authors, myself included, owe so much to heroes like Mr Jeffrey Liker. Every book that follows will owe a great debt to this most esteemed of writers. Mr Liker has given me much to think about and has offered me much to learn and be grateful for.

What the future holds? We cannot be sure, but it is comforting to think that great companies, like Toyota, and great minds, such as Mr Liker, will have a part to play.

Please, please do read this book. Five stars.

Please use this link to order your copy of “The Toyota Way – Second Edition,” by Jeffrey K. Liker.

Simon D. Gary is the author of the groundbreaking book “Super Lean: Unlock Your Company’s Million-Dollar Edge,” which is available for purchase by clicking this link.