The Dull Saw: A Leadership Lesson

Years ago, I watched a maintenance technician struggle with what should have been a simple task.

He was cutting through a piece of metal with a handheld saw. What should have taken only a few minutes stretched into nearly half an hour. The harder he pushed, the slower the progress seemed to become.

His frustration was obvious.  Finally, another technician walked over and asked a simple question.  “When was the last time you changed the blade?”

The technician stopped and looked at the saw.  “I honestly don’t remember,” he replied.
The second technician handed him a new blade.  Within minutes, the job was finished.

As I watched the exchange, I couldn’t help but think about leadership.  Too often, when performance falls short, leaders respond exactly the way that technician did. We push harder.
We ask employees to work faster. We increase expectations. We add urgency. We schedule additional meetings. We demand greater accountability.

In many cases, these actions come from good intentions. Leaders want to help the organization succeed.  The problem is that effort is not always the issue.  Sometimes the blade is dull.

WHAT LEADERS OFTEN MISS

Most employees want to do a good job.  They want to contribute. They want to succeed. They want to take pride in their work.  Yet many organizations unintentionally make success difficult.  Processes become complicated. Approval loops multiply. Reports are added. Workarounds become permanent. Technology creates new frustrations. Meetings consume valuable time.  Over time, people spend more energy fighting the system than performing the work.  When results begin to suffer, leaders often question the people rather than the process.

A different question may be more valuable:

What is making success difficult?

That is a leadership question.

THE LEADERSHIP RESPONSIBILITY

One of the most important lessons Lean teaches is that leaders are responsible for the system.
Employees operate within the system. Leaders influence the system.  When performance problems occur, the natural temptation is to focus on individual behavior.

More often, however, the real opportunity lies in improving the environment where people work.  The best leaders I have worked with understood this.  They went to the gemba. They observed the work. They asked questions. They looked for barriers, delays, rework, and frustration.  Most importantly, they viewed every performance challenge as a signal that the system needed attention.  In other words, they looked for dull blades.

SHARPENING THE BLADE

Leadership is not about pushing harder every time results fall short.

Leadership is about creating conditions where people can perform at their best.

That requires continuous improvement. It requires removing obstacles. It requires simplifying work. It requires helping employees solve problems rather than simply demanding better outcomes.  As the system improves, performance improves.  As performance improves, frustration declines.  And as frustration declines, engagement grows.

A QUESTION FOR LEADERS

The next time a team misses a target, a project falls behind schedule, or productivity begins to slip, resist the urge to immediately ask for more effort.

Instead, ask yourself:

Are my people struggling because they are unwilling to perform?  Or are they trying to succeed with a dull blade?

The answer may reveal that the greatest opportunity for improvement isn’t with your people at all.

It may be with the system you have asked them to work within!

Think about it!

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