Mike Rother: The Evolution of Lean, Part One By Mike Rother, Author of Toyota Kata and co-author of Learning to See - Last updated: Tuesday, July 13, 2010 - Save & Share - Leave a comment

The question asked: What would be our best success stories to illustrate what lean is all about?

You’re asking that question at a moment when the lean community itself is trying to answer it. The thinking about lean, and the definition of it, are evolving.

Also, trying to answer the question by looking at success stories may be too surface-level. To gain a better understanding of what Toyota has been doing to generate its successes, some of us have been looking more closely at the intentions behind Toyota’s visible practices and concepts.

Learning to ask a different question

A comment you often hear when you try to introduce a lean concept is: “OK, let’s see if this will work.” This seems like a reasonable question, but it is actually the beginning of a circular argument, which is why it is utilized by persons keen to preserve a status quo. Few things work as intended the first time, the second time, or even the third time.

I used to struggle with this question. We’d go to the factory floor to try something and several people would fold their arms and say, “Well, let’s see if this works.” Naturally, within a short time the test failed. They were right, I was wrong and experimenting would be over. At the first signs of problems, difficulties or a failed step it was announced that, “Well, that doesn’t work,” and, “Let’s go back to the way we did it before because we know that works.”

A better question: “What do we need to do to make it work?”

Eventually it dawned on me how to deal with this question. Now when the arms fold up and people say, “Let’s see if this will work,” I say, “I can save you the time. Despite our best efforts to plan, we already know it probably won’t work. We just don’t know in advance when, where or why it will fail.”

At this point the arms usually start unfolding a bit, and I follow with, “What we should be asking ourselves is not will it work?, but, let’s see what we need to do to make this work.” And after calibrating a group’s thinking this way I’m almost always impressed with the smart ideas that teams come up with to achieve the desired condition.

What is lean all about?

So why the story about the folded arms? Here’s a proposal: A lot of lean, a lot of what Toyota is doing to achieve its successes, is about mobilizing human ingenuity.

The well-known lean tools, practices, concepts and principles are highly useful, but at Toyota they operate within the context of how Toyota handles any undertaking. Specifically, Toyota has its members practice and learn an effective, empirical routine for achieving desired new conditions and levels of performance, despite obstacles. When the lean tools, practices, concepts and principles are applied outside that context they tend to be reduced to only techniques for short-term cost cutting.

If you experiment with lean, if you reflect, if you learn and if you adjust based on what you are learning, then you eventually come to these two conclusions:

(1) That in addition to its tools and principles, lean is also a guide — a mechanism — for achieving challenging objectives with groups of people.

(2) That we can learn to enjoy challenges, even tough ones, if we master an effective way for meeting them. Then WE are the success story, in whatever we are trying to achieve, and lean generates continuous improvement as intended:

• Where do you want to be next?
• Where are you now?
• What stands in your way?
• What is your next step?

For more on this topic check out these items:

Be an Adaptive, Innovative, Improving Company

The Evolution of Lean

Human Endeavor