The Gemba Was IRL All Along

The other evening, a LinkedIn post from Gary Vaynerchuk caught my attention. Specifically, he predicted, “I think there’s going to be a digital detox.”

He went on to say that people keep telling him their 12- and 13-year-olds are asking for film cameras and Polaroids. He even thinks so-called “dumb phones” are about to make a comeback. His main premise is that the more digital our world becomes, the more valuable “in real life” becomes, or IRL, as the kids say.

Along these lines, I remember the time we gave one of my daughters an “old school” record player. She was amazed music could come from that strange-looking circular piece of plastic.

Now, to be transparent, I’m not sure I’m fully sold on the whole dumb phone comeback. But the bigger point? I think he’s onto something. And I think those of us in the lean world should be nodding along, because we’ve been saying something similar for a long time.

The Real Place

Here’s the thing. Gemba is a Japanese word that means “the real place.” It’s where the work actually happens. The shop floor. The nurses’ station. The loading dock. The call center.

In other words, the gemba is IRL.

Masaaki Imai built an entire book around this idea. In Gemba Kaizen, he argues that improvement doesn’t start in the conference room or the spreadsheet. It starts where value is created, with real people doing real work.

So when Gary says real life is growing in importance, I can’t help but smile. Lean thinkers have been preaching “go and see” for decades. We just didn’t have a catchy acronym for it.

Stand in the Circle

You’ve probably heard the story of Taiichi Ohno and the chalk circle. He’d draw a circle on the factory floor, have a young engineer or manager stand in it, and tell them to watch. Not for five minutes. For hours.

When Mr. Ohno came back, he’d ask what they saw. If the answer was thin, they kept standing.

It sounds a little harsh. But Ohno understood something we tend to forget. Data tells you what happened…observation tells you why.

A dashboard can show that cycle time jumped 12 percent on second shift. But it can’t show you the operator walking 40 feet to grab a tool that should be at point of use next to her workstation. It also can’t show you the frustration on her face. You have to be there for that.

Have We Digitized the Gemba Away?

Now let me be careful here. I’m not anti-technology. Gemba Academy runs a digital learning platform for goodness sake! Good tools can, and I contend should, make improvement faster and more visible.

But I’ve noticed something over the years. Many CI programs have quietly drifted toward the screen. Huddles happen on video calls. Kaizen boards live in software nobody opens. Leaders review KPIs from a conference room and call it a gemba walk.

And when we do walk the floor, how often is a phone in our hand?

This is the irony. Lean gave us jidoka, often described as automation with a human touch. The machine does the routine work so people can do what only people can do: notice, think, and improve. Technology was always meant to serve observation, not replace it.

If Gary is right and the world is starting to crave IRL again, maybe our people are craving it too. Real conversations. Real presence. A leader who actually shows up and asks, “What’s getting in your way today?”

Leave the Phone in Your Pocket

I’ll admit this is something I need to work on myself. It’s far too easy to check a report and feel like I know what’s going on.

And even at home…there are many, many times my kids are trying to interact with me and what am I doing? Well, unfortunately, I’m zombie staring into my stupid iPhone.

Here’s the main point I hope to achieve with this article. The gemba was IRL all along. The film cameras and Polaroids are just reminding us of something lean thinkers already knew. Real understanding requires real presence.

So here’s my challenge. This week, go to the gemba. Leave the phone in your pocket. Stand in your own chalk circle for 30 minutes and simply watch.

Then reflect, or better yet share with others what you saw that no dashboard ever showed you.

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