On a recent weekend walk, my wife, our labradoodle, Lily, and I ventured into the heathland that sits between our home and the sea. In the previous months, the land had been out of bounds for Lil, due to the proliferation of ground-nesting birds – the habitat offering the low-laying shrubs that certain species require.
When I had previously viewed the windswept scrub, certain areas had been scorched bare under controlled burnings, but now life had been restored under the early autumn sun.
What I did not know was that, in most cases, heathland is entirely managed. Some tracts were cleared hundreds of years ago to make way for the nibbling herds of the agricultural age. Other areas, such as where we were standing, were probably natural and represented that transitional belt of sandy soil between land and sea.
However, the idea of managed renewal intrigued me. In some cases, this can be achieved by livestock, hardy sheep sent to munch away the hardier, older shrubs. In others, as we have seen, fire can be carefully used to strip away old. Indeed, forest fires can be a natural method used to make way for new growth.
But how effective are humans at applying the same logic to their own thinking? In his work The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge describes the following circumstance, one which is no doubt familiar to us all:
“A pilot experiment may prove to everyone’s satisfaction that a new approach leads to better results, but widespread adoption of the approach never occurs…(this) stems not from weak intentions, wavering will, or even nonsystemic understanding, but from mental models.” (Senge, pp.163.)
Senge describes mental models as “deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting.”
These mental models create the need for one of the fundamental skills of the change agent – i.e., the need to sell ideas. Because we are not merely creating a shared vision – we may be asking someone to change a deeply held view of how something works, and, as we all know, mental models are often fiercely defended because maintaining a contrary standpoint feels safer than finding out that you were wrong.
Naturally, Senge proceeds to talk about working with mental models, citing reflection and safety as approaches to burn away the old growth. Another critical element that allows us to open our minds is awareness. While this might traditionally mean confronting our mental models, our approach does not have to be so combative and confrontational.
Breakthroughs can come via the realisation that we are experiencing life in the moment through the lens of thought. Outward reality does not drive our thoughts; our thoughts create our outward reality, or to quote David Bohm:
“Thought creates our world, and then says, ‘I didn’t do it!'”
I have found this quote to be endlessly fascinating for some years now, from when I first came across it used by Jamie Smart, author of the books “Clarity” and “Results.”
Bohm’s words point towards what has been said to be a great human misunderstanding. The outside world of our experience does not drive our thought – our thought drives the outside world of our experience.
It is certainly a compelling idea and one which we have all seen in practice. Two people experiencing precisely the same circumstance can and will, have entirely different experiences of the event. The event is neutral. It is their attitude towards it that differs.
If this all sounds a little abstract, let’s bring the idea back to something recognisable, like the beginning of a kaizen workshop.
The kick-off will be exactly the same as always. The target state, or problem statement, has been thrashed out, and we are ready to start receiving ideas. But looking around the room, you can see that some attendees are engaged, and some look anxious or even angry. Everyone has just received the same information, but the lenses through which each received it are different.
For Jennifer, this is a new and exciting experience – something she has not encountered before – and she is clearly full of exuberance. But Bob is experiencing something different. He has attended improvement events in the past and, as he told everyone before our session began, “Just see. As quick as a flash, nothing will happen.”
We have two options. As skilled facilitators and change leaders, we can win Bob over with some wins and evidence of progress, but it may be too late to unlock his potentially brilliant contributions.
Or we can coach him and help him to explore his thinking around the idea of kaizen. And here, I’m afraid, I will go off on a slight tangent – but bear with me.
As a boy of ten years old, I went on a school trip to a zoo on the Isle of Wight. We entered the reptile house with the owner of the zoo, a man called Jack Corney, as I recall. Forty years later, his name is still in my memory; let me share why.
In the reptile house, there was a structure resembling a fenced pit. In my mind, I can still clearly see and hear it, because, and here is the terrifying part, it was full of disgruntled cobras. But what happened next caused my blood to run cold. Jack Corney climbed into the pit. The hissing escalated but, standing stock still, Jack showed no sign of discomfort. With the hook he was carrying, he elevated one of the snakes in front of the astonished class. And there it was, an angry cobra, hood expanded, eyes burning with violent fire. I was scared, and my stomach knotted tightly. The tension was unbearable, and only subsided when the zookeeper climbed out and returned to safety.
But back to our reflection on thought. Even in the act of writing about the serpentine episode, I felt the same tension as I did all those years ago.
But the physical cause of the tension is not present – i.e. there is no actual cobra near me (I hope.) My physical reaction is caused entirely by thought – through focusing on a past event.
This is what Bob, our kaizen-doubting attendee, is going through. He is experiencing his thinking around a past event. The event, however, is gone. It should no longer have an impact. But, like my snake, thought can recreate reality across time. As change leaders, we may not be able to change the thinking directly, but through coaching, we may be able to hold the mirror up and ask, “Where do you think your resistance comes from?”
As we have explored, Bob’s resistance does not stem from the negative outcome of a historical continuous improvement cycle but from his memory of it. Bringing that awareness into our coaching practice may be enough to start dissolving the mental models that hold each of us from exploring our fullest potential, whether that be at work, a sports field, or at home. While I am aware that this might sound fanciful, or even obvious, to me, it does feel like a subtle shift in our mental modelling, from living in a world that operates from the outside-in (experience to thought) to one that operates in the opposite direction – inside to out (thought to experience.)
It is definitely worth pondering, and it may have a place, one day, in lean thinking. We help to coach people who remove waste, solve problems, and create products in that order. The only brake on that potential is the individual’s mindset, dwelling in their thought-created world. To paraphrase Eduardo Briceno and his book, “The Performance Paradox,” we either believe the landscape of our own abilities is set, and we are incapable of performing better, or we believe improvement is possible, and we are open to practice in the pursuit of greater performance.
The lever, it turns out, is merely thought, and like managing an ancient heath, sometimes it is healthy to burn away the old to make way for the new. Reflection, or hansei, is the first step of this transformation. Perhaps the real meaning of hansei is not to reflect upon the event but to reflect upon our thinking around the event. A real and powerful distinction, or just a play on words that we all intrinsically understand? Well, I’ll leave you to think about that.
Simon D. Gary is the author of “Super Lean – Unlock Your Company’s Million Dollar Edge,” where further exploration of this topic can be found.