Day 107: Anthony Bourdain, Jiro, and the Search for Perfection

Anyone who knows me knows I am a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain. From his books to his various shows, adventures in street meat and 3 star Michelin restaurants, I get a vicarious kick outta this guy. 

I was watching "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" this past week, and Bourdain was a guest on this particular episode. 

The host asked: "If you could have one last meal, where would it be?"

Bourdain said "Jiro's."

I had just watched the movie "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" earlier that day, and was somehow not surprised.

The movie is about 85-year-old Jiro, a sushi chef, a master, and his lifetime of striving for perfection. It showed his demanding approach to ingredients, to preparation, to planning for his customers' visit, to actual execution. Bourdain, who loves Tokyo, had visited the restaurant as part of filming his tv series in 2008, and it obviously left an impression on him.

But back to Jiro for a moment. Here is a man who had a very short childhood, with little to no relationship with his father. He started working as a child, and spent virtually his entire life making sushi. I don't know where his desire for perfection came from. Maybe having had so little, he found solace in the simplicity of the act of making sushi. His three sons had been raised not to go to college, not to become engineers or doctors, but to follow Jiro in making sushi. It was as if he knew and wanted nothing else, and assumed the same for his children.Jiro said "I have spent 75 years doing the same job every day and I have never not loved doing it."When I heard that, I actually felt a bit sick to my stomach - I could in no way imagine doing the same job for that long. But there was a slight subtlety here - the film had two sets of subtitles and while one used the term "job", the other used "craft".Ahhh, the craft. The OED defines craft as: an activity involving skill in making things by hand. Sushi is definitely made by hand, so it involves skill of some sort. I certainly could make sushi by following an SOP but it would be pretty pathetic. I wouldn't know how to find the best ingredients, even with a decent buying guide. I could make the rice or the egg (tamago) from a recipe but it would be sub-par and I probably wouldn't enjoy eating it myself, let alone serving it to others.How long would it take to develop a reasonable competence in a new skill, such as making sushi? Probably years. How is a reasonable competence assessed? Assured? When is "good enough" and who decides that? We usually say it is the customer who determines "good enough", but for Jiro, he was the judge. I think this is an important point. We are trusted by our customers to make the decision of "good enough" on behalf of them. We are the judges. And if we aren't our own toughest judges, our own harshest critics, then how will we not disappoint our customers? By striving for perfection, even if true perfection is unattainable, at least we hope we can be satisfied with our work. And by extension, we hope our customers will be satisfied as well.From "Kitchen Confidential": "Cooking is a craft, I like to think, and a good cook is a craftsman - not an artist."Art has its time and place, where beauty is in the eye of the (individual) beholder. But there is always room to improve your craft, whatever it may be. 

AMac

Day 99: Make your own tuna sandwich

This past week, I spent three days at a local tech company with one of my coaches helping the company's employees with value stream mapping, cycle time reduction, root cause analysis, and standardization of processes. The group had three processes to work on, so they broke into three teams and went off to their meeting rooms, VSM kits in hand, somewhat tentative in what they were expected to do, what the outcomes would be.

This work is very much what I did in my Greenbelt, so I found myself thinking back to that experience. I remember feeling very lost and quite unsure in what the end result might be. My role this time was to help keep the teams moving, get them unstuck when they got stuck, and to challenge them. Challenge them to think big, think differently, to be brave and seek innovative and creative solutions to problems.

This is what I was going for:

Instead, this is what I saw:

During our hansei at the end of Day 1, I asked them all how they were feeling about their progress so far. They were frustrated, tired, annoyed with each other, and pretty much demoralized. Exactly the way I felt after Day 1. It was great! Seriously! I reassured them that this was perfectly normal, and they seemed happy to hear that.

Day 2, some of the teams were having some real "Aha!" moments, but some were struggling. My first instinct was to just jump in and tell them what to do - so I had to be very conscious in what I said to them - to not give too much direction, to not solve their problems for them. I had to channel my inner coach and quiet my outer handyman (woman?).

The old saying "catch a fish, feed a man for a day; teach that man to fish, feed him for life" popped into my brain here. I was not here to make people tuna sandwiches - I was here to show them how to make their own sammies, right? One team was trying to solve bottlenecks in an area completely foreign to the members - I heard a lot of assumptions and guesses and maybes - so when in doubt, what do you do?

GO TO GEMBA!

Which the team did - and they talked with the stakeholders - and they saw what was happening, what was contributing to the bottlenecks. Eureka! Major light bulbs going on there folks! This team suddenly started working together, with other employees, I'm talking Sales staff working with Warehousing and Shipper/Receivers! Boo-yeah!

By the start of Day 3, the teams were well along, most had new VSMs that had substantial time savings, and a list of TODOs to follow up on. More importantly, they were working across departments, and always thinking about their customers. It was great to see the progress achieved and the changes in the team dynamics. I think I did an OK job and was reasonably helpful. I hope they saw value in what we did, and will keep the momentum going.

Guess I can eat that tuna sandwich after all.

AMac

Day 92: Standardizing Work and Standard Work

It's Friday, blog posting day. Today I put aside time to try and make sure I get at least one post a week done and published. Some weeks are trickier than others, either due to lack of time or lack of topic. This week I am out of time. So I will post our internal EXCEL team model and philosophy. I hope you enjoy it!

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Different Types of Tasks require Different Thinking

The degree to which a task can be standardized, compared to the degree of variability in the types of tasks performed, can give structure to work done by different roles.

Work that is low in variety and can be highly standardized would be the type of work you might see on a production line, at receiving, shipping, order entry, A/P entry. This is where the day to day problem solving and elimination of muda happens.  At Alpha, these are our White Belts, our EXCEL 201 students.

Work that is high in variety and is difficult to standardize would be something associated with a leadership position, where focus must be on long-term strategy, long-term people development, and enabling the other two sectors (often team leaders, junior to middle managers) in problem solving end elimination of mura and muri. This is where Black Belts, positioned in the top right hand quadrant, should be actively coaching and mentoring the Green Belts, positioned in either remaining quadrants.

• At a frontline level the focus is on process, problem solving, and the elimination of waste (muda)
• At the mid-management level the focus shifts slightly to resources, team development, and the mitigation of unevenness in operations (mura), and overburdening of people and equipment (muri)
• At the leadership level the focus shifts to systems and strategic alignment along with the mitigation of muri and mura.

So if we map our EXCEL Training model against the above matrix, it might look like this:

Servant-Leader Model

The EXCEL team is structured around a Servant-Leader model, where more senior team members are expected to coach, mentor and train more junior members. In the past, when someone had completed a Green Belt level of training, they expectation was that they were immediately more effective at CI activities. While perhaps better equipped with new tools, a degree of experience in the use of those tools and techniques was sometimes lacking.

Green Belts have been matched up with Black Belts in a casual, informal way, to allow the opportunity for Black Belts to actively coach and mentor Green Belts in continued use of newly learned tools and techniques. Sustainment requires a degree of discipline; Black Belts are here to help Green Belts develop that discipline. The nuts and bolts of how Black Belts and Green Belts do that is defined in their Standard Work.  Standard work is essentially the things Black Belts and Green Belts must do on a regular basis to continue their respective development and develop the discipline that yields sustainment alongside continuous improvement.

This model requires sufficient capacity of all Black Belts and Green Belts to complete their standard work, as well as sufficient numbers of each belts to avoid overburdening. We currently allocate no more than four (4) Green Belts to any one Black Belt, and we make an effort to match outside of departments. These matchings are not fixed in any sense, that is, they are intended to be fluid based on the needs of the Green Belts. With 20+ more Green Belts having recently joined the EXCEL team, we will need to add more depth at the Black Belt level.

Standard work may be created for other roles within the organization; we will begin by defining Black Belt Standard Work, Green Belt Standard Work and Leadership Standard Work, communicating the expectations for completion of the standard work to Green Belts and Black Belts, and ensuring there is sufficient support by the Leadership team for the EXCEL team to complete their standard work.

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We have defined Green Belt and Black Belt standard work, and will be working on the Leadership standard work this summer. 

AMac

Day 89: People and Laws and Questions

I wanted to share a favourite image of mine - it's from the inside cover of "Factory Physics" - and I have it posted on my office door:









They are simple laws and yet how often are they ignored? Or forgotten? Or devalued?

What have I done today to ensure that I avoid failing my team in these areas?

I often think about the "Gallup 12" (from 12: The Elements of Great Managing) - 12 key questions that can be used to effectively assess employee engagement within any organization - as follows:

1. Do you know what is expected of you at work?
2. Do you have the materials and equipment to do your work right? 
3. At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day? 
4.  In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work? 
5. Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person? 
6. Is there someone at work who encourages your development? 
7. At work, do your opinions seem to count? 
8. Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important? 
9. Are your fellow employees committed to doing quality work? 
10. Do you have a best friend at work? 
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress? 
12. In the last year, have you had opportunities to learn and grow?

I love this set of questions - I think they are very revealing questions to ask, even if employers don't really like the answers they receive. The results then allow you to slot employees into one of three categories:

• Engaged employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organization forward. 
• Not-Engaged employees are essentially “checked out.” They are sleepwalking through their workday. They are putting in time, but not enough energy or passion into their work.  
• Actively Disengaged employees aren’t just unhappy at work; they’re busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers undermine what their engaged co-workers accomplish. 

Since most North American organizations have a very small population of engaged employees, I have to imagine that my organization may be very similar. So how likely am I to convert a "Not-Engaged" to an "Engaged" employee? 

What are the chances? Are they 50-50?

Let's take 99 people, and say they fall into equal thirds in each group. 33-33-33. If I convert half of the middle third from Not-Engaged to Engaged then I am left with 49-18-33.  Converting from Not-Engaged to Engaged takes time and work on the part of management.

But let's say I take a different approach. Let's pretend I am the Ice Queen and I wield a big ax. What if I let the bottom half of the Actively Disengaged staff go, so I am left with 33-33-18. That's out of a total of 84 people. That means that I go from 33% Engaged to 40% Engaged.  Is that progress? 

While it is never good to keep Actively Disengaged employees within an organization, the cost and effort to move the Not-Engaged to Engaged is not trivial. So if I had full decision making power, and I could clearly identify those employees that are truly Actively Disengaged, I would consider a third option: letting ALL Actively Disengaged employees go, so I can spend my remaining resources on the Engaged and Not-Engaged.

Sound harsh? It is. 

Let me give you some insight into my rationale.

I used to be a Corporate Security Officer, responsible for the security of people, material, facilities, and information that had national security implications. The number one risk to any industrial security programme is an Actively Disengaged employee. I cannot stress this enough - an employee who actively undermines the organization's purpose will be the biggest risk to its security. Security, in the original context, was about securing information or material from illegal use or transfer. But in a broader context, Actively Disengaged employees are the rot deep within the organization. They not only consume resources with no appreciable positive return, they can - if allowed to operate unchecked - affect those employees who are Not-Engaged, perhaps making it even more difficult for leaders to convert those Not-Engaged employees to Engaged. 

50-50? Not even close - if you don't address the Actively Disengaged.

AMac

Day 85: Art and revealing myself

Friday afternoon we (the new MBBs - Brett and I, the graduating MBBs from CP rail, their Sponsor, and the LSI team) went to Raw Canvas down in Yaletown for some lunchables and some ART! 

Yes, this restaurant not only has tasty food and bevvies but they have a whole art studio set-up - with resident artist to help you along the way. Very cool stuff!

I am by no means an artist. But I was very excited to give it a rip. Lunch was charcuterie style - which I love. I had been asked to pre-order the evening before, and the menu options were pretty numerous, so typical to my nature, I just said "whatever the staff recommends..." (more on this later).

Here's what I got:

Nom nom nom

Cured meat? Check. Smoked cheese? Check. Tasty almonds? Check. IPA to wash it all down? Discount-Double-Check.

That's Aaron Rodgers, puttin' on his Green Belt oh yeah

So after this great lunch, and some great conversation, we all put on our smocks and got messy. Here's a pic after most of us had finished... you can see the wide variety of images that came out from the process. 

Brett and I had spent the previous day completing our MTBI step II - so I admit I had all that data that in the back of my mind as we painted. I am a INTP* - with the *caveat that I am really in-between E and I (extrovert and introvert) - two years ago I was a reasonably strong E but I now come through as a little "i" I. 

Some of the key characteristics about me that this analysis (re)confirmed include: 

- Strong preference for patterns, abstract concepts, theories - "jump to conclusions"

- Very strong preference to not over-plan anything - "let's see what happens"

- I work best under pressure, and will often delay starting a task to almost artificially create this "pressure"

- I prefer face-to-face communications over other styles

Some characteristics that the analysis suggested that really surprised me include:

- I present as uncaring and aloof, almost unemotional

- I do not share or express emotions with others

- I am contained, and very private about who I am, about my thoughts and feelings

- I naturally take a critical or critiquing stance with almost anything, and think it's ok to ask almost any question

- I embrace change for the sake of change and value originality very highly

Some of these traits are great for a Quality Leader, but some of them are definitely not great for someone who should be focused on coaching people to be great at change, at solving problems. I spent a lot of my career learning to hide my feelings because, in all honesty, a woman who operates in male-dominated fields (as I have since University) needs to not be perceived as overly emotional. And heck, if you want to be an effective Quality Leader, you can't be perceived as the one who harps on all the time about quality this and quality that - you have to DO not just SAY - all with a degree of reasonableness and common sense. So as someone who is very emotional, almost too emotional, I have had my feelings pushed down and down and inside and away from the surface in order to survive and be successful in my career. Now I need to unlearn that behaviour.

I will have to learn how to:

- Stop solving problems for people

- Start showing more emotion even if it feels unnatural

- Learn to actually ask less questions - try to let others ask before I do

- Not immediately think that change is the required solution

No idea how I'll do this, but I'll have to try if I want to become a good leader. 

AMac