Understanding Lean Teamwork

Business901 Podcast Transcription
Implementing Lean Marketing Systems

Understanding Lean Teamwork
Guest was David Veech

Related Podcast:
The Lean Concept of Respect for People

Sponsored by

Copyright Business901


David Veech is the founding member of the Institute for Lean
Systems and serves as its Executive Director. He also serves as
Senior Advisor and Director of Finance for the Compression
Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated
to guiding learning organizations to
dramatically reduce consumption of resources
while maintaining or improving the quality of
life of its people and its community.

He is a faculty leader for Penn State
University’s Smeal College of Business Executive Programs, and is
a guest lecturer in The Ohio State University Fisher School of
Business Masters program in Business Operational Excellence.
Finally, to focus on the fun part, David’s the owner of the
Bluegrass Revolution, a professional Ultimate team in the
American Ultimate Disc League.

His coaching focuses on people in
organizations and how lean, leadership, and
learning systems contribute to overall
employee satisfaction and well-being. He
delivers keynotes and seminars on topics
related to leadership, problem solving,
suggestion systems, employee involvement,
team building, and creating satisfying
workplaces.

He is the author of “The C4 Process: Four Vital Steps to Better
Work” (2011, Business Innovation Press, an imprint of Integrated
Media Corp.) and “FirstLine: A team leader’s guide to lean
thinking” (2005, PKI).


Transcription of Podcast
Joe Dager: Welcome everyone. This is Joe Dager, the host of
the Business901 podcast. With me today is David Veech. David
thinks that work should be fun, exciting, challenging, and
interesting, and knows that it is leaders who can make or break
this workplace.

His coaching through his organization, Institute for Lean Systems,
focuses on people in organizations and how lean, leadership, and
learning systems can contribute to overall employee satisfaction
and well-being.
David, I would like to welcome you and could you fill in some
background about yourself and how you became, I don't want to
say an HR person, but how about a people person?

David Veech: I spent 20 years in the army, so coming out of
college and going into the army as an officer. I was in infantry for
the first half of that and then they sent me off to grad school. I
got a degree in Industrial Management, and my second specialty
was in acquisition. So I did a lot of work with defense contractors,
and they started talking about Lean things back then, and I
started to want to learn more about that.
I had read the "Machines Change the World" back in grad school,
and I found it interesting. But it wasn't until I got an opportunity
at my last job in the army.

I was assigned to the Defense Acquisition University, and I was
teaching people in the production and quality manufacturing
career field how to deal with these new changes that they'll
probably be seeing in these defense contractors and how they
should be promoting these same kinds of changes.
But at that time, I only really understood lean as a cost saving,
cost cutting, kind of measure. As I started learning more about it,


and as I started pulling the curriculum for it together for the
Defense Acquisition University, I met the guys down from the
University of Kentucky.
When Toyota built a plant outside of George Field, Kentucky, part
of the package was that they would support graduate education
and had a pretty good partnership with the university.

So they were firsthand observers of this second generation of the
Toyota production system that they were deploying in Kentucky.
So working with them, we pulled together this curriculum that I
started teaching pretty regularly, developed a few simulations,
and then when I retired from the army in 2001, the University of
Kentucky hired me.
I worked there in the College of Engineering in the Center for
Robotics Manufacturing Systems developing and teaching Lean
courses and spending a boat load of time at Toyota to learn
more.

About five years into that, we, my colleagues and I there, we
started to observe things like while we were getting good
feedback from the workshops, we were teaching and everything.
A lot of the people really didn't have the confidence to take more
aggressive action, to improve the workplaces, so we wanted to do
more of this hands-on consulting.
We ran into some issues in the University about being a business
like that inside the University. So we ended up having to separate
from the University, and we set up Institute for Lean Systems in
2006 as a result, and it's been a fun ride ever since.
We've got some great results from a lot of great organizations
and had a lot of fun. I guess the mortgage is getting paid so it's
not too bad. I started with the industrial management focus, but I
would always watch these defense contractors whom I was
working with, and I'd watch them do a kind of event.

I would see how they would have a group of experts kind of
descend on the shop area where they were going to focus, and
they would spend the week just turning this place on its head and
then they'd leave.
Then I would come in a week or so afterwards and talk to some
of the folks, and they would end up undoing most of the stuff that
the experts had done, so I figured they had to be something else
going on.
They didn't talk to their people very much. And of course,
everybody in lean knows now that you got to get your people
engaged. We've been talking about people for a long time, but
that kind of sparked me to start learning about how people learn.
One of the workshops that I took at University of Kentucky way
back then that I sub sequentially started teaching, really focused
on problem solving as the main learning vehicle for people in the
workplace. And I thought those were the coolest things I had
ever heard.

So I got into a PhD program, first in educational psychology, and
then in general psychology because I had to switch schools, but I
started really digging into what makes people tick, so I did a lot
of studying about motivation, a lot of studying about leadership.
Of course, I've been a leadership student for forty years, so it's
just a fascinating field and there's never any definitive answer
that applies to everybody. So you still have to be able to shut
your mouth and open your ears and listen to somebody else, or
you're just not going to be effective.
Joe: From an article, I've read of yours recently, one of your
comments rang true with me. It was just right in the first
paragraph is it that people have to believe have to believe in
themselves, or it's really hard to contribute to the team. Would it


be fair to say you have to start to build confident incompetence at
the individual level before team concepts work?

David: I think the team will come together more quickly if the
individuals prepared. The individual, the self-efficacy, this
confidence that people bring to the table, it's really
environmentally sensitive. So if I've created a work environment
where I don't care what you think. I want you to come to work; I
want you to shut up; I want you to do what I tell you to do, and I
want you to do it right.
When I want you to go home and get the hell out of here. If I've
created that type of environment, people are going to seek some
other outlet for these needs that we have to feel like we matter.
That to me is one of the critical things, and that's a very
individual thing, but it is highly influenced by the people with
whom you have relationships.
If you have good relationships with your coworkers, then that is a
great environment to start. It's really easy for leaders to screw
that up.
Joe: I hear that a lot about giving everyone more responsibility
over their work but does everyone really want that? Are there
people that just want to come in, work eight hours, and go
home?
David: Well, in my experience, there are, in my studies, there
aren't. I think everybody has a need to feel like they are
contributing to more than just what they're doing, even a person
who's relatively introverted and pretty self-driven, and they like
to come in and do one little thing. I think when they can see that
they can have an influence over a little more, and that it is not
going to cost them in terms of their personal space or their
personal feelings, I think everybody will respond positively to


have more of this feeling of responsibility, more of this feeling of
satisfaction, this confidence that comes from self-efficacy.

I think everybody will respond positively to that. Some people
take a little longer; some people may never come around, but I
do think it is within all of us to seek more things that are going to
make us happier.

Joe: Do you think that comes from a lot of that team concept
that if you have small-enough team, it is easier to gauge and
easier to relate to other the people and have the confidence to
express yourself?
David: I do, but I want to caution that in a lot of organizations,
you do not just throw people together and expect the team to
work. If you are put on a team with people who are annoying or
really horrible, then it is going to be a horrible experience. So we
have got to really be careful about building these times. It has
got to be a deliberate action, and it takes an investment in the
organization to pull those team members together and actually
have them start behaving like a team.
Really the main thing that most teams miss when we kind of
throw them together is that they do not have that clear reason
for being a team. So we do not want to pull a team together just
to say, "Oh look, we have teams all over the place."
The teams have to be focused on the work that has to be done.
So I want a team that has to work together to accomplish the
work, and then maybe it can be a bit more effective team.
But we have got to invest in spending time with them and having
them spend time together, get to know each other, seeing what
each other can do, and we have got to lay out this pattern of
setting a standard, training them up to a standard, and
challenging them to go beyond that standard.


And having that team support structure- that really they care
about each other, they want to work together; they want to see
each other succeed- that is the most sustainable type of lean
organization I have ever seen.
Joe: So you are saying that when you are building the team, you
really do have to identify maybe even the roles within the team a
little and get the right role players just like you need to build a
basketball team up, let us say, or a football team, you have got
to have the right role players. You have got to have a rebounder
and you've got to have a shooter, a passing guard or whatever.
David: Well, and that is what the teams are going to find out.
They are going to find out who is good at what. Even some lean
organizations, even some key Toyota suppliers, even Toyota itself
in Japan, they tend to have somebody kind of focused on one
role. Where, to get the true benefits that I am talking about in
this self-efficacy efficacy article, we really need them to do
multiple things. We really need them to rotate. Now, at Kentucky,
they rotate very effectively, but when we went to Japan to see
them working at Toyota City, they did not rotate. Some of the
key Toyota suppliers, they did not rotate.
We talked to some very expert people who were fantastic at their
job, but that is the only job they get to do. Variety is one of the
key pieces of a satisfying job. Despite the wonderful work
environment that you might want to create, if your job sucks,
your job sucks.
So, if there are jobs that suck and then jobs that do not suck
quite so bad, I want you to do a variety of different things during
the day. I think that will have a positive impact on a person's
feelings of their worth, their contribution and I think it will build
better skills.
It is also safer because they work different muscle groups, and
we have less of a chance of repetitive motion injuries and

ergonomic problems. So it is really important to me that we drive
this key rotation feature. So, that means the physical structure of
the workplace, the engineering behind it, it has got to be in place
too for the people stuff to really come out.
Joe: You lead me to believe in the article that standard work can
be fun and lead to enthusiasm, but standard work has to be
pretty strong in this concept that we talked about. When we do
these job changes and roles, it has to be understood what needs
to be done.
David: Absolutely, standardized work is the single most
important tool we have in the toolbox. If we screw it up, we are
going to have problems, if we get it right, all kinds of other things
fall into place. It is hard to get right. It takes a lot of time to get
right. Once you get it right, once you enforce it -, - and you have
got to enforce it with an iron fist- you cannot be friendly and "Oh,
well that is OK; you can you do it your own way." No, it has got
to be done the way the standardized work says, so that requires
enforcement with an iron fist.

You see, there is a balancing act that we have got to kind of take
as a leader because it is our responsibility to make sure that they
are building skills, and the only way their skills are going to
improve is if we make sure they do it the same way every time.

Now, in a mature organization that is used to standardized work,
standardized work is ought to be changing every day, right? So,
how do we balance that as well, how do you have a process that
allows people to change the standardized work every day and still
build skills?
And that is one of the great mysteries that a lot of organizations
struggle with. They think as they start rolling out the
standardized work, they are supposed to be changing it that
frequently from the start. That is not the case.


You might take 6-8 weeks to define the standardized work.
During that 6-8 weeks, it is going to change all the time as
people explore new ways to do things. You get a couple of key
people who are working to try to make sure you know what the
standard ought to be.
When a small group of folks gets it right, set that standard and
then do not change that standard until everybody who is going to
be doing that work can go into that workplace and do the job to
standard without problems. When everybody has reached that
level of skills, then they are all more capable of coming up with
creative ways to make it better.
Instead of squashing creativity, which a lot of people accuse
standardized work of doing, and it sure sounds like we are
squashing creativity because, "You have got to do it this way!" it
is actually laying a foundation for creativity to explode.
When that creativity explodes, if the organization doesn't have a
defined, clear, standardized process for making changes to that
standardized work, they just screwed themselves.
One of the first things you've got to do is figure out how you are
going to change to standardized work before you start rolling it
out in a broad basis. What I think the key thing in changing
standardized work is you have to have a thought process that is
based on, well; I call it the C4 process for concern, cause, and
countermeasure and confirm. Toyota calls it PDCA. Everything
they do is driven by PDCA, as you know.

Joe: Do you think individuals or teams need a coach? Do they
need that outside observer looking in on them?
David: Yeah, I do. It's not just that outside observer looking in
on them; it's a real support structure. It's somebody that you can
go to when things aren't going so well so you can get a little help.
What we have to guard against is having people who, in that role,

having people perceive them as the problem solvers. When I've
got a problem, I'm going to go to my team leader, and she's
going to solve it for me. That's not the case.
When I got a problem, I'll let me team leader know. The team
leader comes to help, but the team leader comes and coaches me
through solving the problem so that my skills come up.

There's, again, another balancing act because many of the
problems we have at work, you've got to solve them pretty
quickly to keep things going. How do we balance the need to get
the problem solved really quickly versus the skills development?
I've got some ideas about that as well.
Joe: Do you use any simulation in your training? Do you think
that is a good way to learn?

David: I love simulations. You can do more with an effective
simulation in a shorter period of time than pretty much anything
else. The only problem is if you don't take the time after the
simulation to really translate what happened in the simulation to
what happens in real life and then take that step in real life to
make a change, then it's, "Well; we played a neat game, and
then we went back to work." The learning, the after-action review
of a simulation, has to be really well done. You really have to
tease out the key lessons that people can actually apply.
I've got this LEGO simulation that I do that I just had a blast
with. It's really complicated. I've got four different groups. They
each have to build a different section of an airplane. Then one of
the teams is the system integrator, and they've got to receive all
of these incoming materials and put the aircraft together and
deliver it on time.

It really exercises all of these lean principles of flow in the shop
floor, workplace organization, and standardized work. It also gets


into the supply chain because they all have to provide parts to
each other as well.

I have a blast with it. It takes a good-sized group to do it, so it's
not always perfectly suitable. Right now I'm using it in Ohio
State's Master of Business Operational Excellence Program. I'm
using it at Penn State, I teach a class at Penn State a couple of
times a year that's based around that simulation, plus our own
workshops as well.
Joe: One of the things that you talked about in the article is that
you need time, the "learn by doing" approach, it takes time. It
seems to be the thing that everyone is short of. We blame
leaders, that they're too focused on the short term. But they're
judged on the short term. What's the answer? What's the
balance? Can we have short-term results in training or smaller
iterations in training?
David: This is one of the harder things. When an organization is
properly aligned, and really committed to making this happen, it's
not a problem. Because everyone understands that the leader's
role is to support and develop the lead. They spend time in that
support and development role.
The challenge comes in an organization that doesn't have it like
that, but you've got a couple of very enthusiastic folks
somewhere buried within the organization, that really want to be
able to take the time to do this right. But because the
organization isn't aligned, because they haven't set this as a
priority, they will continue to pressure for results.
We've got to get results, don't get me wrong. We've got to be
competitive. We've got to be able to competent with other foreign
organizations and countries on a price basis. We've got to be
competitive, so we've got to get those results. That doesn't mean
we can't stay competitive if we don't pass these skills along.


If we just hold a few key people who are known to for being able
to get results, if we hold them responsible for keeping the
organization afloat, what happens when they leave? If we haven't
developed our organization to be competitive and responsive,
then that's a crime. We've got to have organizations be able to
deliberately able to set the time.
A lot of organizations have lots of meanings, right? The biggest
complaint I get from conventional organizations, is the meetings
are a big waste of time. If we can change the focus, and change
the method of those meetings just a little bit, we can use those
as key vehicles for developing skills and sharing information. But
it's really important that we learn how to have meetings where
we don't waste people's time.
If we've got our standardized work where we understand how
long things take, and we apply that same thinking to every
process in the organization, all the way to the chief executive,
then time becomes a weapon that you can use to build the
organization more effectively and make it more competitive.

It doesn't just become a ticking clock that can make people
panic. Time is an important weapon. But everything has to be
tied back to, what does it really take? How much time do I need
to take to get this fixed?

I've got to tell you those organizations which have taken that
step back and taken a deep breath and said; "I know we've got to
get the results. “But if we don't get the results right, we're going
to end up doing this again, and doing this again, and wasting
time. So let's stop now, do the detailed analysis we need to do
right up front. Then apply what we've learned, and then get back
on. Organizations that have done that are setting the world's
standard today.
Joe: I've always used the terminology that standard work is
what puts groceries on the table today. If you optimize your

standard work, if you get that, you do have the time to make
productive changes and do training. That's where you tend to do
the PDCA and the improvements, and everything. Do you feel
that is a correct assumption?
David: Absolutely, like I said we have got to focus on what has
to be done, how long it is going to take to get that stuff done,
how many people it is going to take to get that stuff done. And
then yeah that actually does put us in a structure that allows us
to think a little bit more clearly about what we are doing.
We do need the discipline of a problem-solving process. Within
LEAN community because Toyota has publicized the "PDCA"
process because they learned it from Deming so long ago it is
important that we do this.
But I want to tell you a little story about how PDCA relates
directly to this time thing we are talking about. Do you know
when Deming first talked about statistical quality and PDCA to the
Japanese? That was 1951.

Now I am looking at your picture here I know you have been
around for a little while. In the '60s when you have a product that
said, "Made in Japan" on it; what did you think?
Joe: It was cheap!
David: Cheap and typically crap. It didn't really work, it was
junk. In the 70's, starting to get a little better and we are starting
to see a lot more Japanese cars on the road. But in the '70s it
was still, well, you know kind of cheap still. But still not as good
as our stuff, right?
Then in the '80s, Japanese car companies are eating the lunch of
the big three; when you can't even find, except in rare instances,
USA brands of television and electronics. The Japanese are here
to stay because the stuff is great and never breaks.


OK, so from the '50s when they kept Deming in Japan for 10
years consulting on quality in the 50's, the realization of those
lessons wasn't seen in the market place for 25 - 30 years.
So we are talking about a generational change in behavior that
leads to tangible measurable quality improvements that
customers can see.

So this whole idea of getting things done quickly, if we can get
over that and recognize that nothing really happens quickly that
lasts, then I think we will be in the right mindset for documenting
our standardized work; for designing our jobs, for designing the
work people have to do and standardizing that so that people can
learn it more effectively. So this stuff takes time.
Joe: What is the best way to introduce change at the team
individual level? Is there a blue print? Is there a thing you can
leave listeners with? If I've got to start, here is where I start?
David: To me it always starts with the work that has to be done.
Figure out what exactly the work has got to do. We have got to
do some detail analyze of the job and break down the job.
Training and industry stuff has all that stuff written down the
standardize worksheets have all that stuff broken out if we just
follow the set of rules that we have already given ourselves, it is
really not that bad.
It has got to start with the work, Joe. We have got to look at
what we have got to do, and we don't want to build waste within
the work.
Where we can organize a team of about four to five people, let's
put the work together, organize that team and do a little of a
pilot. So pick a spot, do a pilot, learn how to do this for your
organization.


Figure out how to make it work, take six months, take a year
with that one pilot area and then start spreading it around.

If you try to do it at too many places at once you run out of
resources pretty quick you overwhelm people, and your
organization tends to push back and say we are not going to do
this.

So take a pilot, learn from that pilot and try whatever you want in
that pilot. So you have got to get the right people that you got to
select the people who are early adopters for that pilot and play
around with it until you can learn and then start spreading it
around.
Now in a lot of cases because we work in systems and every
organization is a complex system we can't just make one thing
perfect and expect it to show up on the bottom line.
So that can be our learning area, but we are going to have to
start improvements in other places pretty quickly. But remember
if we don't learn how to do it? We are going to pay some pretty
severe lessons later down the road.
Joe: David, what is on the horizon for you?
David: We've got a few things cooking up. Thanks to the Lean
Frontiers guys who released this white paper. They are going to
have me come speak at their HR Summit, November 8th and 9th.
We have also got a boat exhibition, "The International Boat
Exhibition" in Louisville, Kentucky; October the 1st through 3rd. I
get to do a half-day problem solving workshop on the first day,
and then I am teaching one of the workshops in there, and I am
going to deliver a key note address at the Marine Dealers
Conference and Exhibition.
The thing I am most excited about is the stuff that we do we
have got a Lean system workshop coming up. We've got a series


of three workshops that are very hands on, very practically
focused that is going to start at the end of August; we are going
to do a week in August.
Give people some homework bring them back in September,
some more homework projects and finish up with a week in
October.

And then December 3rd through 6th, we are going to do an
executive program that is a two day lean overview based on a
simulation focusing on system-level stuff, and then two days of
bench marking and some more class organizations nearby.
So we have got some fun stuff coming up this fall, I am looking
forward to it.
Joe: Where would someone find this information at?
David: You can go to our website at www.theleanway.com.
There are a lot of details about that. You can send me an email
DavidVeech@theleanway.com. LEAN Frontiers is going to be
promoting a lot of this stuff as well.
Joe: If you could leave the listeners with one message, what
would that be?
David: Well, a lot of people talk about respect for people, and
you know that is one of the two over-arching drivers of the
Toyota way. Respect for people and continuous improvement. We
seem to pick up and get the continuous improvement piece, and
we say that we respect our people.

We don't really understand that whole concept, and I would urge
people to think about what it really means to show respect for
someone else.
When you choose because it is definitely a decision when you
choose to show respect for your workforce then that is going to

open up tremendous amounts of creative resources that will
change the way you think about your work.

That will lead to a happy road down the way. It will make your
work meaningful; it will make your work significant, and it will
make your work special.
Just by having a better relationship with the people with whom
you work.
Joe: I think that is a great message to leave everyone with. I
would like to thank you very much. This podcast will be available
on the business901 blog site and the business901 iTunes store so
thanks again, David.
David: Thanks, Joe.



Joseph T. Dager
Business901
Phone: 260-918-0438
Skype: Biz901
Fax: 260-818-2022
Email: jtdager@business901.com
Website: http://www.business901.com
Twitter: @business901

Joe Dager is president of Business901, a firm specializing in
bringing the continuous improvement process to the sales and
marketing arena. He takes his process thinking of over thirty
years in marketing within a wide variety of industries and applies
it through Lean Marketing and Lean Service Design.

Visit the Lean Marketing Lab: Being part of this community will
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