Toyota Kata : Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results

by Rother, Mike

  The catch-22 is that at the outset there are not enough people in the organization who have enough experience with the improvement kata to function as coaches. This is not unlike Toyota’s problem as it grows rapidly. It will be imperative to develop at least a few coaches as early as possible. (See “Establishing an Advance Group” later in the chapter.)

  Who Practices First?

  At Toyota, the improvement kata is for everyone in the organization and everyone practices it. No one group is singled out. However, Toyota is not trying to change its kata; it is continuing with the same basic approach it has been following since the 1950s.

  On the other hand, if an organization wishes to effect a change in culture rather than continuing on the same path, it requires leadership from one group in particular: the senior level. In such a change situation, the senior managers should practice the improvement kata ahead of others in the organization.

  Managers and leaders at the middle and lower levels of the organization are the people who will ultimately coach the change to the improvement kata, yet they will generally and understandably not set out in such a new direction on their own. They will wait to see, based on the actions (not the words) of senior management, what truly is the priority and what really is going to happen.

  Figure 9-8. Distribution of reaction to change

  George Koenigsaecker, an early lean thinker in the United States, has depicted this effect using the normal distribution curve in Figure 9-8.

  What Mr. Koenigsaecker’s diagram suggests is that only a small percentage of people in the organization (the right tail of the curve) will welcome a change effort and actively participate. Another small group (the left tail) will fight it actively. And the great majority—although they may nod and indicate their support—will be on the fence and waiting to see what is going to happen. Although many have criticized mid-level management for avoiding change, if you think about it, the wait-and-see attitude is an understandable reaction to uncertainty by managers who are on a career ladder in an organization. Also, do you want your managers to easily jump from one way of managing to another?

  The point is:

  (a) The way the majority of managers and leaders behave—the people in the middle of the normal curve—will determine how people in the organization act, and thus determine the organization’s culture.

  (b) If the senior managers do not go first in personally practicing and learning the improvement kata, then it is unlikely that they will be able to effectively enlist, mobilize, and guide those managers and leaders toward the desired behavior pattern. The kind of cultural shift we are talking about cannot be delegated by the senior leaders.

  Establishing an Advance Group

  Before starting to teach senior managers the improvement kata, we have tended to first establish a small advance group. The initial purpose if this group is to develop familiarity with the subject and how it works. It is this advance group that actually goes first with practicing the improvement kata.

  I include a senior executive—the senior executive in the case of small and mid-sized companies—as a member of this group. The advance group is not a staff group or lean manufacturing department that will be responsible for all mentoring and training, or for making improvement happen at the process level. That will be the responsibility of the local managers and leaders at each level and in each area in the organization. Do not create a lean department or group and relegate the responsibility for developing improvement-kata behavior to it. Such a parallel staff group will be powerless to effect change, and this approach has been proven ineffective in abundance. Use of this tactic often indicates delegation of responsibility and lack of commitment at the senior level.

  The advance group is responsible for monitoring, fine-tuning, and further developing (via PDCA) the organization’s teaching approach. The advance group is the organization’s “keepers of the kata,” so to speak. However, this group will to some degree also assist with coaching at all levels of the organization so that it can maintain a grasp of the true current situation in the organization.

  To be a workable size, the initial advance group should consist of no more than about five people. This group needs a mentor—for example, an external consultant. If you utilize an outside coach, it is important that you hire this coach specifically to help you get started and develop your internal coaching capability. Do not hire an external person to do the coaching work for you, because then you will not build this important capability in your organization. An external coach’s job is to accelerate and help guide the development of your capability.

  A good first step for the advance group is to simply try applying the improvement kata to a few assembly processes, all the while reflecting: “What are we learning about the improvement kata, our processes, our people, and our organization?” This allows the group to develop a better understanding of what the improvement kata entails and to simultaneously gain a firsthand grasp of the current condition at the process level in the organization. A good place to begin practicing the improvement kata is at a “pacemaker process.” Appendices 1 and 2 explain what that is and provide detail for assessing the current condition of a production process, which is the beginning of the improvement kata and prerequisite for establishing a target condition.

  Something this group can do immediately, for instance, is to assess the stability of a production process, as described in Chapter 5. This involves timing and graphing 20 to 40 successive cycles at several points in the process and then asking, “What is preventing this process and the operators from being able to work with a stable cycle?”

  These initial efforts to try out the improvement kata can easily occupy the advance group for two to six months. That may sound like a long time, but consider that we are talking about how we want the organization to operate; its culture. The advance group should not go into this task with only a shallow understanding of what is involved and where the organization is.

  These initial shop-floor activities of the advance group are also a good opportunity to get started in training your first few internal coaches. We have tended to attach two or three potential coaches to the advance group, in addition to the four to five advance group members. These coaches in training do not participate in all advance group activities, such as planning activities. They participate in the shop-floor efforts to apply and learn about the improvement kata.

  Training Through Frequent Coaching Cycles and the Five Questions

  To develop new habits, the field of psychology tells us it is preferable to practice behaviors for a short time frequently—such as every day— rather than in longer sessions but less frequently. Ideally, of course, every encounter and interaction in the organization would radiate the kata, as in the mentor/mentee case example in Chapter 8.

  To get people to frequently practice and think about the routine of the improvement kata, I currently use a concept I call a “coaching cycle.” These cycles come into play after a process target condition has been established, and utilize the five questions. The five questions are a regimen to train improvement-kata behavior. They simplify a part of the improvement-kata routine and thus make it easier to apply, understand, and transfer. One coaching cycle essentially entails the mentor going through the five questions once while standing at the process with the mentee (Figure 9-9). In most cases, we have been striving to do this at each focus process at least once per shift. The purpose of a coaching cycle is:

  Figure 9-9. Contents of a coaching cycle

  To allow the coach to quickly grasp the current condition in both the process being improved and the mentee so that the coach can judge what is an appropriate next step

  To provide a routine for conditioning training

  To recognize the mentee’s efforts

  With practice and experience, one coaching cycle should not take very long. Novice coaches sometimes mistakenly let the cycle get into lengthy discussions that cover many different factors and can run into hours. I have been
shooting for 15 minutes per coaching cycle in many cases. As soon as a single next step—not a list of steps—is clear to both mentor and mentee, then the coaching cycle is over. As in the mentor/mentee case example, the next step can and often should be very small. That is perfectly acceptable, as long as the cycles are rapid.

  A coaching cycle is not all there is to coaching, of course. Get through the five questions one time relatively quickly and take stock: “What is the situation now? Where are we in the improvement kata, in the process being improved, and in the development of this person’s capabilities? What is needed next?” After a coaching cycle, the mentor can then, for example, decide whether he should stay on with the mentee during the next step—to observe and provide guidance as Tina did in the mentor/mentee case example in Chapter 8—or return later for a check by means of another coaching cycle. The next coaching cycle should follow as soon as possible, often within hours or even minutes on the same day. If the next step can be taken right away, then by all means do that.

  A few lessons learned about coaching cycles:

  It is a good idea to limit a student’s first few target conditions to a time horizon of only one week. This way, the student can get more experience with the entire improvement kata, experience some success, and begin to develop a rhythm. After some practice you can begin to lengthen the target condition horizon a bit to, say, one to four weeks out.

  Do not wait until the end of a shift to conduct coaching cycles. Think of a check as a beginning, not an end, and do it early in the workday if possible. You can specify the time of day as part of a coaching target condition. If we’re always putting off coaching cycles until the end of the workday, it suggests the lack of a specific coaching target condition and a low level of priority.

  Whenever you approach any process, go through the five questions. In this manner you will not only be teaching others the way of thinking, but you’ll be teaching yourself as well.

  The fifth question—“When can we go and see what we have learned from taking that step?”—has been a sticking point. New coaches often ask this question thinking that the next step must be a countermeasure or solution. Likewise, the mentee often thinks this is what the coach wants. In many (or even most) cases, however, the next step is just to get a deeper grasp of the situation, as was illustrated in the case example in Chapter 8.

  Another lesson is to coach only one target condition at a time, which generally means one mentee at a time. If you try to coach several mentees at once, the dialogue tends to become too general and mentees may become less open about discussing problems. Every mentee is potentially in a unique situation and usually has unique development needs.

  Sense of Achievement

  Developing a new mindset also involves periodically deriving a feeling of success from practicing the behavior patterns. While we may think that success only comes at the end of something, there are important opportunities for positive reinforcement at all stages of the improvement kata, as shown in Figure 9-10. These opportunities should be utilized, since the objective is not just solutions, but building the capability to follow the improvement kata routine, to understand situations and develop appropriate solutions.

  Figure 9-10. Example opportunities for successes throughout the improvement kata routine

  Making a Plan

  Once the advance group has spent a few months learning by applying the improvement kata at some processes, there will be a need for a plan to begin wider development of improvement kata behavior. The time horizon for such a first plan should not exceed 12 months, since at this stage you are on a steep learning curve and your grasp of conditions is likely to change appreciably. Because of our limited experience, our flashlight does not shine very far ahead.

  Creating such a plan is the same as any A3 planning process as discussed at the end of Chapter 8:

  The advance group needs a mentor to whom it will present its planning efforts iteratively in coaching cycles. In developing this plan, the group focuses on one section heading at a time, since one section sets the framework for the next. Until the plan is signed, however, it is acceptable to go back and make adjustments to prior sections.

  Much of the benefit of the plan lies in the iterative planning process, because it forces you to get facts and data and repeatedly think through—deeper and deeper each cycle—what you are doing. The objective is not just to have a plan, but to go through the step-by-step effort to create the plan.

  It takes time to develop this kind of plan, easily two months. Continue practicing the improvement kata and testing ideas while the plan is being developed, since this helps you stay close to the real situation.

  The following key points for this planning process are presented under their respective A3 headings.

  1. Theme

  The theme is to develop the behavior of managers and leaders toward a pattern that follows the improvement kata. However, be sure to keep the theme and activities linked to continuous improvement of production processes, since cost reduction via process improvement is the overall objective. We are not introducing the improvement kata for the sake of introducing the improvement kata. We should be improving processes and practicing (learning) the routine of the improvement kata simultaneously.

  As described in Chapter 3, Toyota’s improvement kata functions within an overall sense of direction, which is provided by a long-term vision. Without this you will find people going off in several directions when they hit obstacles. Thus, one of the first questions to ask yourself is, “Do we have consensus on a vision, that is, a long-term direction?”

  I have witnessed several groups that went into long intellectual discussions about establishing a vision, and they typically ended up producing useless statements that protect several people’s sacred cows. Developing a succinct, useful, but not overly confining long-term vision is difficult. It takes a considerable amount of time and reflection, and is not necessarily a democratic process. Also, if we are just beginners with understanding the potential of the improvement kata, then perhaps this is not yet the right time to be arguing about what might be an appropriate vision.

  But you do need a vision, and if you are a manufacturer I see no reason why you should not simply adopt the same long-term vision for your production operations that Toyota strives for: “One piece flow at lowest possible cost.” As we have seen in Chapter 3, this vision does not come from Toyota or Japan, and has been pursued for a few hundred years. Why not adopt this widely recognized production vision and get going?

  2. Current Condition

  The advance group has been gaining firsthand understanding of the current situation by trying to apply the improvement kata at the process level in the organization. Summarize what is being learned in bullet points. This summary should at least describe a) the current behavior of managers and leaders, and b) how process improvement is currently handled. You can also include any additional factors you would like. Some aspect(s) of this description of the current condition should be measurable so that you can gauge if you are making progress. (More on metrics later in this plan.)

  Based on what the advance group has learned by immersing itself in the current condition, it can then establish a target condition.

  3. Target Condition

  What you are defining here is a condition you want to have in place at a future point in time (such as 6 or 12 months from now). Defining this takes some time and iterations, because it should be based on facts and data, and be specific and measurable.

  There are two aspects to the target condition in this section of the plan:

  1. Relative to process improvement activity. For example:

  Total number of processes being managed and improved via the improvement kata

  Measurable process improvement, such as process stability

  2. Relative to leader/coaching behavior. For example:

  What persons will have reached what capability level (Figure 9-11)

  What persons will be carrying out th
e improvement kata and the coaching kata, at what frequency, and at how many processes

  How you intend to get to this target condition will be the subject of the next section of the plan.

  Keep in mind as you define the total number of processes that, because the improvement kata is an approach for daily management, once you begin with the improvement kata at a process there is no end there. This means that, unlike improvement projects or workshops that have an end date, the number of processes being improved through the improvement kata accumulates and grows as you spread the approach to other processes. Do not overextend yourself at the start. In the beginning it is better to have picked too few focus processes, rather than too many.

  In establishing this target condition, something we do is describe levels of capability that we would like individuals to reach. We have often used the three levels depicted below.

  Figure 9-11. Example capability levels

  Starting from the bottom of the diagram, Level A (awareness) means that the individual has a basic understanding of what the improvement kata is and how it works. Level I (improvement kata) means that the individual can effectively carry out the improvement kata. Level C (coaching kata) means that the individual can effectively carry out both the improvement kata and a coaching kata.