Lean Thinker Challenge #2

Engage his mind and listen to him. Really listen.

If Jimmy has expertise I would publicly recognize that during the Kaizen event and steer his participation into positive avenues. I would acknowledge that the success of the kaizen depends on his participation and that his approach and his words have a lot of influence.
I would also remind Jimmy and the team that a high profile kaizen event gives us a terrific amount of leverage to fix issues that may be driving some of his frustration. In addition, since he has taken a closed posture in the room, I would break that behavior by asking him to help facilitate the meeting by passing out papers, wrting on the board, leading teams etc. and like Kris, I would make him a key part of the presentation.

There is an assumption: “You’ve been planning this particular event for 2 weeks. You’re ready. You might be wrong”.
Team members are essential for a Kaizen event. Jimmy has his own needs and values that were not properly identified. Maybe one of the “team members who definitely respect him” can be asked to convince Jimmy.
Not mentioning the fact that the lean thinking culture implementation has started a year and a half ago. Maybe there was something wrong from the very beginning: communication, assessment of interested parties, what is critical to employees. The organization needs to understand that its future lies in the success of the value-adding employees, people like Jimmy. One of the roles of a Lean Six Sigma expert is to convince ”hard working who and genuinely do the best they can each and every day”, that we are part of a team which really values their experience and commitment.
I would be more careful on change management.

The trouble brewing is expressed up front in the problem statement. It’s not that Jimmy is against the “stuff”. The trouble is that it has not been acknowledged to now just how much Jimmy knows and already does “right”. And now he is in training where the implication is, to his outlook anyway, that Jimmy doesn’t know how to do his job, does not produce successful results, and so now Jimmy has to be trained because of it. It probably is simply not so, and there are various degrees of Jimmy everywhere, in all of the training programs – in every session that has been held so far!
Sometimes the biggest part of this type of training, like lean concepts, is not actually the “concept” at all. The concepts very often are already there, especially for the people who are very close to the work. Sometimes the biggest issue for those close to the work is really the language, a vocabulary. For example the design engineer can easily get all hung up over the difference between a “bolt” and a “screw”. The engineer says it is about whether there is a “nut” used– or not. But to the front line worker, well if it uses a “wrench”, then its a “bolt” regardless. The SMART engineer learns to talk in the front line worker’s language, and use it. He doesn’t necessarily strive to make the mechanic or machinist speak the language of the engineer. What is the point of that? So here is Jimmy, who may actually be a “lean thinker”– (has anybody asked?) and now he HAS to be in this seminar listening to stuff he feels he already knows, except for all of these words and phrases that are—- from Japanese language! Jimmy believes— why are we doing stuff in Japanese? Why not in our own language? (This is a really good question isn’t it?) Could it be (Jimmy is thinking) that all of this foreign language stuff is just to make this Kaizen leader promote his own importance? (Another good question isn’t it?)

So— considering all of that, what DO you do? See, Jimmy is only a visible thermometer for what is actually flowing throughout most of the organization and the Kaizen membership. A large faction will be “going along” because— well the best way to get along with the management is to go along. They will nod yes, volunteer agreement, and point out how this Kaizen stuff is the most amazing, fantastic stuff ever, and we need more of it! When pointed out that the company CEO is behind it 100%, the seminar members will point out “but of course— I am but a mere shadow in his brilliance!” But actually for success of the local organization, Jimmy is probably the most important in the room, maybe in the organization. He is a strong personality, a leader, and whatever outlooks are coming from Jimmy are what is really happening from most of the organization just below the horizon.

It may be time to recruit Jimmy, and the more expressive others like him to be a part of the leadership of the operations improvement efforts. Since there were a few (I thought) good questions mentioned so far, a really good one is: what took so long for that idea to appear? Why wasn’t he an “insider” right from the very beginning?

I would present a tricky situation and further explain to the audience that Jimmy who is sitting at the back is a very senior colleague and has many a times faced these dire situation and got out of them. I would up the ante and ask him to give a real life example thus opening him up. Once his confidence will be back and he will know how important it is for him to take the lead, he will become a more positive influence on the event.

The thing is, Jimmy’s usually are lean thinkers already at the principle level. They insist on working according to standards, they hate to pass on defects and they hate waste. In fact they hate waste so much that they insulate themselves from it by creating their own standard work which maximizes their own productivity.
I know a Jimmy and he requires consistent coaching to show how both his local productivity and his abrasive attitude can cause problems. We have many ups and downs. I have to walk the walk too because he despises a hypocrite.
I like Kris’ approach and I will try that in my next project.

An earl step in our training plan is to introduce ourselves to each other. We do that with a question – are your a willing participant, neutral or a “hostage”?

Sometimes people are “willing” to attend and sometimes they are “ordered” to attend.

We close by promising the team that we will work to convert hostages into willing participants and re-check their attitude when we finish formal training.

Obviously, we expect the hostages to follow all rules but if they become disruptive, we work to preserve the team and mission – up to and including “voting them off the island”.

Engaging them in the mission is critical to convert them into willing participants.

The planning should have included “Jimmy.” Big mistake to not get him involved earlier. At this point, it’s probably worth postponing the event, apologizing to Jimmy, and explaining to management that the planning was botched – lesson learned and with a countermeasure plan for how that will be avoided in the future.

I use Ice breakers before every event especially to get the operators talking. One of my faves is getting them to write on a post it somthing that no one in the room knows about you and I put them all on the wall and we talk about each one. I had one once “I met my wife in a car crash” ! If that didn’t work with jimmy I would just make him lead some of the kaizen for example if they were going to go look see get jimmy to lead the way after all he is the expert

I had a ‘Jimmy’ in one of my lean events once. It was only the second event I had ever ran so I was not completely prepared for ‘Jimmy’! I decided to leave him where he first sat at the back of the room until I could find an opening to involve him. This didn’t happen! Jimmy disrupted the whole morning session with negative comments so at the first break I gave him the option of staying but only speaking up if it was something positive or if he could not manage that then he should not come back into the training. To my absolute dismay he didn’t come back to join us. However, the remaining team did stay and had fun learning new things. Then guess what? After lunch Jimmy asked me if he could join back in. I welcomed him back into the training session, I never mentioned anything he had said earlier in the morning, I simply involved him and pretended like nothing had happened. Jimmy ended up being the main driver behind the improvements, he bought into the methods completely and he was the perfect bridge between management and the shop floor. After a few months I asked him why he wanted to join us again, ‘it’s simple’ he said ‘you were having way more fun than I was’!