Day 50: Balancing Act

I have a pretty busy life, I cram a lot into my days and weeks. I'm OK with that. Work, family, a crazy dog, sports, small business*, and so on. Downtime is a luxury. For example, after my Florida lean tour last week, I tacked on a hop through Quebec City so I could race in the Canadian National Master's long track speed skating championship. Yeah seriously. That's just how I roll.


So, I come home very late on Sunday, completely physically and mentally exhausted, and behind the 8-ball on a number of other TODOs on my list. Monday is busy, very busy, and I don't feel as if I've accomplished much. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday all fly by, and before I know it - it's Friday. Friday. Where did the week go? What did I accomplish this week? Was it enough? More importantly: Were they the right things? 

I am a big fan of Covey's Quadrants - shown below - in helping me to navigate my daily tasks.

I try to ask my self: where does this task belong? And is it the right thing to do?

So let's look at it, let's break down the week (or at least some highlights/lowlights);

Monday
Team huddle & gemba walk - Quadrant II
Worked on creating a better production job book - created a sample and gave it to Production to play with and give feedback - Quadrant II
Expense reports and email backlog - Quadrant III/IV
Responded to a customer regarding a proposed contract - Quadrant II
Weights at the gym - Quadrant II

Tuesday
Ran with the dog in the morning - Quadrant II
Team huddle & gemba walk - Quadrant II
Worked on our departmental objectives and strategies for the year - Quadrant II
Coaching a co-worker - Quadrant II
Too many emails - Quadrant IV
Watched "Rick Mercer Report" - Quadrant IV

Wednesday
Worked on a presentation - In-between Quadrants I and II
Team huddle & gemba walk - Quadrant II
Continued on production job book prototyping - Quadrant II
Too many emails - Quadrant IV
Dentist appointment - Quadrant II
Speed skating in the evening - Quadrant II
Watched "Dragon's Den" - Quadrant IV

Thursday
Ran with the dog in the morning - Quadrant II
Spent all day in a strategy meeting - In-between Quadrants II and III

Friday (so far)
Cycling - Quadrant II
Team huddle & gemba walk - Quadrant II
More production job book updates - Quadrant II
Updated internal CI activities & projects - Quadrant III
Lunch with my team - Quadrant II (and a bit of IV :-))
Worked on my MBB blog, talked with my coach - Quadrant II

Not too bad... better than I expected. 

Is it balanced? I think it is... I constantly receive comments along the lines of "how do you find time/energy for all those things?" And while there are some days I feel less productive, or more stressed, overall I think it's pretty evenly spread out. 

The weeks I travel for work are obviously completely different, and I think that is where the challenge comes in. There are so many activities associated with business travel that fall into Quadrants I and IV that it is almost inevitable that stress and frustration increases.


Running between gates? Quadrant I
Checking in? Quadrant I
Running the gauntlet of security and/or immigration? Quadrant IV (in my opinion)



Boarding and trying to stow your bag(s)? Quadrant I
Trying to sleep or watch a movie? Quadrant IV
Almost any other in-transit travel activity? Quadrants I or IV. 

I see almost nothing that fits into Quadrant II.

I used to try and work on flights, but in all honesty, as soon as the person in front of me reclines their seat, I cannot operate my laptop. So I don't bother anymore. I deal with it once I am at my destination and spend the time thinking. But perhaps this explains a bit why I feel so unbalanced when I travel for work. 

The nature of the activity guarantees it.

I guess the trick is to identify ways to maintain balance during these times. 

AMac

Day 41: Our second day of the Jacksonville Lean Tour

Today we had two tour stops planned, both in the medical field. Stop number one: The Mayo Clinic

It's a big campus with a hospital, education centre, and outpatient clinics. They have been in operation for 150(!) years as a not-for-profit organization, and it is truly an impressive operation. They have only really been at lean management in the last few years at this facility (they have two other clinics in the US), and started with focusing on teamwork, internal communication, and training.

They branded their lean initiative "The Culture of Safety" which I thought was very clever... Don't necessarily use the terms "lean" or "continuous improvement" or six sigma" or other words which may make people nervous... However in the healthcare field, employees care very deeply about their patients and really just want to give them the best care possible. So to use the Safety card to get employees engaged - extremely clever :-) The focus on safety was a good way to encourage everyone to feel safe to speak out about what could be done to improve patient care, without feeling pressured or afraid. 

This is a common theme, it seems, regardless of industry. People fear raising their hand to ask for help or to point out a problem. 

Why is that? 

Is it culturally-isolated to North America? I don't think so, I have seen it in Europe, China and Japan. 

Is it only front line workers? I don't think so either, I have seen many a c-level employee exhibit this behaviour.

I suspect that it is inherent in everyone to want to please others, and this, coupled with fear of public shame, is what drives this behaviour. Can we learn to manage this response? You bet. But how many employees, supervisors and managers are actually taught anything useful about human behaviour in order to do just that? If they are, it's often only later in their careers. A long time ago, a very good manager of mine (one of my first) told me that "people are messy". She didn't mean it in a bad way but in an honest, let's-face-reality, kind of way. It was her way of saying sometimes people's lives get messy and it's in no ones best interest to make it worse. I have found that showing true respect for people means that you actually have to respect people's lives including what lies beyond the work day.

Mayo also had an impressive simulator lab - a dojo - for learning and testing new tools and technologies. It included this amazing digital anatomy table, where you could take real CT scans and spin, slice, add or remove layers. Absolutely fascinating, but imagine what they could use this for in the future? Pre-planning surgeries. Creating custom joint replacement parts (3D printing anyone?). I have to imagine that in my lifetime, everyone will receive regular full body CT scans as part of preventive medicine.

For the afternoon, we visited Medtronics, a manufacturer of medical devices and consumables. they had aligned their teams into Value Streams, something we are attempting at Alpha. Medtronics had gone further than us (to date) and created a Value Stream Manager position. I have a feeling we will gave to evaluate the need for this type of role - I am curious to see where we end up - but it was great to see a real-life example.

Medtronics had decoupled most of their manufacturing processes from their ERP system, and simply replenished what was purchased by customers. They had a small amount of inventory as safety stock, set into a two-bin kanban system, such that as soon as the first bin was picked and shipped, a trigger was sent to production to replenish the safety stock. When raw materials for production ran low (similar two-bin system), a trigger was sent to purchasing to buy more. So simple. They used heijunka to redirect excess staff to improvement activities, or to overburdened areas. If pick to ship was slow but production was hopping, staff could be moved to where the need was greatest. They also used a simple red card/yellow card for issues - at the line, in each functional area, and cascading up to the value stream level. Red: needs action. Yellow: actioned with a due date. Daily 12min huddle only focused on the red cards or overdue yellow cards. 

The thing I like about this approach - as you can see by the picture above - is that the supporting functions realize that if they want to be part of the process (managing and resolving issues that is) they need to actually participate.

In university, I had a chemistry prof who used to joke: "if you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate" (insert groans here). 

But if you don't participate, you aren't part of the solution. Even if it is messy at times.

AMac

Day 40: first day of Florida lean tour in Jacksonville

We finished up day one of our lean tour in Jacksonville with a pool-side hansei - what did everyone take away from our visits today? Was there any one thing that stood out, perhaps as something to try at their work? 

We had visited Dr. Bahri, an area dentist who spent many years learning about lean before trying it in his practice.  After 13 years of reading and learning about lean processes, he starts with....

SMED

Yes, SMED - or single minute exchange of die - where one tries to minimize the changeover time between jobs - or in the case of our dentist friend, the setup and changeover time between patients and even multiple operations on a single patient. Not an easy place to start.

We are used to lean n00bies starting with 5S, maybe basic value stream mapping, heck even heijunka or load levelling. But SMED? Not a typical starting point on the lean journey.... But it was very interesting to see what he and his staff had done to make significant improvements in a dental practice. Customers were happier; less chairs had to be filled; the waiting room was empty - real wasted space it was. But the good doctor had real passion for continuous improvements, particularly those that made his customers happier.

For the second half of the day, we visited Saft Batteries, who were in a relatively new plant (2011).

The building - awesome. The people - fantastic. The processes - errr.... You know what? We couldn't see everything so it's important to keep that in mind, but there seemed to be an unbalanced load across the lines, such that if they had to double capacity, they could run into trouble. We saw robots on break, machines on the main line with OEEs of under 15%, and a whole new business line of large systems that was kinda crammed into a small corner of the floor. However, this is still a pretty new facility and the team has made huge improvements since 2011. They know what they need to work on, so we were all pretty confident that they will get there.

My takeaways from today? Sometimes simpler is better - it is always about the customer - and it is most definitely about the worker and respect for people. 

AMac 

Day 39: arrival in Jacksonville FL and an interesting drive

I travel more than I'd like for work, I admit it. It disrupts my entire household. However I was looking forward to this trip to Jacksonville Florida (and by the long way home, Quebec City) as it would be a chance to connect with some companies in the service sector. I tend to focus my efforts on all things operational, so seeing some service operations, well that sounds like a great idea....

4am alarm, at YVR by 5. Flight to ORD pretty straightforward... Here's what Chicago was looking like today...

Of course we were delayed. Bah. 

My smallest carry-on yet! 

Turns out my buddy Brett was on the same flight from ORD to JAX, so we managed the same drive to the hotel. Oh and our driver was a peach. I mean it. He was part Cliff Klaven, part Stephen Hawking, part Rainman. He told us about Jacksonville, seemed quite fascinated that we were going to visit the Sheriff's office (we are!), and generally kept us amused and entertained.

Once at the hotel, found some familiar faces (hello black belts!) and found some dinner. I found some good local craft beer to try, and had there was good conversation to be had. Tomorrow should be interesting, I am looking forward to the tour.

My last two years of travel in a snapshot - just for posterity ;-)

I have few more trips this year yet - but hopefully I can curb it a bit....

AMac

Day 32: Showing Leadership != Being a Leader

Last Friday (Feb 7th) was a complicated and frustrating day at work. I had a conference call with a demanding and sometimes (seemingly) unreasonable customer in the morning, followed up with a healthy dose of what we call shenanigans, where coworkers, suppliers, customers seem to make crazy decisions without - I don't know - thinking first? These are the days when it feels like we move one step forward only to take a gazillion steps backwards. Sigh. 

There are certain personality types I don't do well with, and I know which ones they are, so I try to make certain I am not letting myself get triggered into emotional reactions (as opposed to rational thoughts). However, I was really really close to letting myself get emotionally wound up this day and reacting, not thinking. Sometimes, you need to blow off steam, sure I get it. But I don't really have the luxury to do that publicly.

I am expected to show leadership.

I'd like to stop and think about that phrase "show leadership" for a moment. 

Is this showing leadership? 

Or is this showing leadership?

I personally don't think that either really do a good job of demonstrating the concept of "showing leadership". 

I think it's good to be in front, sometimes, but you can't always lead people. Some times the view from the back is more telling. And heck, I don't need to get in the way of my team - me being out front can not only slow us down but not allow me the opportunity to look around and see the bigger picture.

Being out front, leading along the path - are you pulling (C'mon guys! This way!) or pushing (Get moving!)? There is an element of leading by example here, but what characteristics are we looking to set as the example? Certainty/decisiveness, perseverance, intelligence, homogeneity, conformity?

Being up front, on the stage - are you leading by example here too? Do like me and one day, you too could be here? What characteristics are we looking to set as the example? Power, seniority, charisma, influence, emotion?

I struggle with how to define leadership or "being a leader" because I'm not convinced that we can neatly sum it up to a definition. The OED states this as its definition of leadership: "the action of leading a group of people or an organization, or the ability to do this". 

So I get it: if I am in front of the group, acting as if I am leading them in some direction, then that's leadership. Cool, got it. I can totally fake that....

Wait a minute. 

Maybe that's the nut of it: anyone can fake leadership. Heck, my dog or my ten-year old daughter could meet the meaning of that definition. Maybe either would be a better leader than some I've encountered in my past. There's gotta be more here. How on earth am I supposed to try and show leadership if that's the low standard out there...? 

Ummm yeah....

I like this blurb I found from an old RAF officers manual, I think this is a good starting point:

So I'm going to try to think about this phrase: "unselfishness is the very root of courage" along side this one: "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers" when I am at work next. And I'm going to try to be a better leader at work.

AMac