“gemba walk” (lean thinking term) to go to the actual place where value is added + “walkabout” (Australian aborigine) a short period of wandering bush life engaged as an occasional interruption of regular work
———————————————————————————————————-
From a Sensei at one of our HCVLN Organizations:
Earlier this week I had a chance to gemba (we call it rounding) with several teams that span the spectrum of Lean maturity and performance. Two weeks ago I had a similar gemba with the CEO of the organization. At the time I realized that both gembas were different, but I struggled to figure out why. It is always fun when you have representatives from four levels of management participating (Executive all the way down to the frontline managers). While it is hard to stay focused, especially on work content when it is a large group it was a unique opportunity to check on the effectiveness of our Lean Management system. We have often in the past had the different levels of management gemba together, but we have never been very clear on the purpose nor were the differently levels able to easily find shared content to discuss. Thus, it often took the form of the lower two tiers of leaders rounding together and a bunch of “suits” along for the ride.
Reflecting on these gembas I am now beginning to grasp what is different from the past and the implications are profound. For several years now we have worked to define and implement a Lean management system, but the journey has been slow and we have often not understood what we were doing. In other words, on a massive scale we have been “acting our way into a new way of thinking.” Each level/area has been working to improve performance and change behavior, but the linkages between the level and across areas have been slow to develop. This is what is different; the linkages are beginning to form.
For example:
- All four levels were really comfortable with each other. It was not a PR visit and if the executives were not wearing suits you would not have known who they were. Each level talked about problems and nobody was blaming.
- All four levels were speaking the same language of improvement. Everyone understood the PCDA process, how to read A3’s, etc.
- Follow up from previous gembas was visual at each level and everyone had done their work from the last gembas. The level of discipline was evident everywhere.
- At each level the performance has been made visual and you can clearly see the “deployment” of measures down through the organization. While many of the cause and effect relationships between measures are not always understood for the first time the leaders could see where these gaps exist and the dialog was rich in debating how close them. The executives could ask questions about the strategic plan and the frontline leaders could easily point to what they are doing each and every day to support that plan. They all knew something about each other’s work and they all had shared work.
- At each stop problems came up and there was a conversation about where was the best place to solve this problem. Was it localized, or was there a more systemic problem that needed a higher level sponsorship to solve. All four levels ended up with follow-up. A couple of years ago in most of those cases we would have just talked about the problems, gone through and explanation and then moved on.
For 64 years the organization has strived to have this level of alignment. With the Lean management it is coming to life.
