Appreciating Systems

Here’s a fundamental paper that explains some of the difficulties of introducing and sustaining Lean in companies, from a Systems Thinking (Systems Dynamics to be more precise) point of view.

The paper has been authored by John Sterman and Nelson Repenning and is available here.

The paper’s very didactic and takes the reader by the hand into building the diagram step by step.

Systems dynamics diagram of micro-management addiction situations

The (real) situation

A tentative model

Upon analysis with a systemic diagram, I found a horrible picture where the more a manager would go into micro-management, the more it will feel the urge to go. Here’s the explanation why (click on diagram to open it in a new window to follow explanations)

At the beginning, there is a micro-management need, either from a personal inclination and/or from a high hierarchical position that naturally prevents someone from having detailed information about project.

Balancing loop B1: the manager being in micro-management need take on the micro-management of activities in need (from his point of view), which will, hopefully and again, from his point of view, fix any issues on these activities hence relieving the micro-management need.

This is the main reason which a micro-manager start micro-managing in the first place. Only that this triggers three different reinforcing loops that we will now describe, resulting in a classical “fixes that fail” systems archetype…

Reinforcing loop R1: out of that micro-management need, some activities are felt in need of being-micro-managed (because of perceived problems for instance). The more the manager thus focuses on these micro-managed activities, the less there’s a focus on other activies. As a consequence, issues on other activies start to raise (we’ll see why in the next paragraph). The more other activities have issues, the more they are felt as activities in need of micro-management, which increased the need for the manager to micro-manage activities.

Reinforcing loop R2: the more a manager increase his micro-management need, the less his direct reports are motivated. Which results in a decrease in management of their activities and further increase issues. Side note: an issue on an activity need to be considered from the point of view of the micro-managing manager. This further adds to the micro-management need in the first place.

Reinforcing loop R3: when the motivation of direct reports decreases (as seen in R2), so does the trust on the micro-manager in them, which further increases his micro-managing needs.

So, there we are in a situation where the consequences of micro-management further reinforce themselves.

The solutions?

So, where do we go from there?

Traditional way of dealing with “fixes that fail” archetypes is to try to anticipate the unexpected consequences (of micro-managing in this case). Here, that would mean informing the micro-managing manager of that systemic situation. As we’re talking of a personal inclination (whose psychologic causes may be diverse) it’s not sure that the person will change his behavior (further, pushing the model onto him may just raise it’s resistance to the much needed change, hence locking the situation even more).

It maybe the case that the current situation is one in which we’re dealing with a symptom instead of addressing the root cause. In that case, we’d be in a shifting the burden systems archetype situation with new possibilities arising. I’m for instance thinking of teaching people how to “properly” manage their activities such as not to trigger micro-management needs and teach the micro-manager that he needs to teach rather than do himself, just for his own sanity (hereby addressing the WIIFM: “what’s in it for me”).

It may be the time for some Solution Focus work with the micro-manager and/or the micro-managed people: what behavior worked for you in the past? How can you do more?

Or some coaching, maybe using Motivational Interviewing style where the micro-managed manager is brought peacefully to recognizing that he needs to change (for his own and his people sanity) and then coach him to change?

Have you ever been face with a micro-manager? How did you manage that situation without flying away?

From that very interesting (as is most often the case from Coert Visser!) paper here, I derive the following insights:

Lean on the motivation continuum

Self -Determination Theory (SDT) has is that motivation can be expressed on a continuum from “amotivation” to “intrinsic motivation” with three basic human needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness (all things that are also found in Maslow‘s hierarchy of needs and the notion of Flow from Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi).

Lean appears to be well on these three pillars of motivation:

• autonomy is high in an environment where management does not solve the problem of their collaborators, but instead coach them to resolution.
• this coaching leads to increased competence on the work and on the process of continuous improvement itself, along with a better knowledge of how the organization works (through A3 problem solving for instance which fosters nemawashi – japanese term for: go see all stakeholders and work with them)
• by doing nemawashi with all stakeholders, people get their relatedness level increased!

On motivating people to do Lean

Visser’s paper continues, on page 13, on the way Motivational Interviewing can help a professionnal helper (!) with their client, as would be the case of a Lean coach in any organization (please bear in mind that I talk of a coach, not a consultant whose approach is different). In this regard, MI is based on 4 general principles:

• the expression of empathy
• the development of discrepancy
• rolling with resistance and
• support for self-efficacy

Considering what I often saw in organizations with respect to Change and Lean more specifically, I’d say that:

• Lean change approaches are often law on empathy: “all your problems are belong to us, we’ll you help solve them”,
• with a development of discrepancy that more than often consist in management or co-called coaches finger pointing faults in those running the processes,
• a rolling with resistance that consists of stomping it for it’s the proof of ignorance in Lean matters and that so-called Lean coaches and experts know better (which is indeed true as for Lean things, but blatantly false  with respect to people’s own Gemba),
• and support of efficacy is most of the time seen as Lean consultants (whoops I should have said ‘coaches’ doing most of the job themselves (deciding on what the Future State Map for instance should look like) with only partial accounting for people’s ideas.

What I described above, though caricatural (or is it?) is still what’s even been given a name: L.A.M.E. (Lean As Misguidedly Executed).

The paper goes on starting from page 14 on some suggested questions to addresse the four principles above to move someone in the needed change direction, but with proper respect for their motivation and of them as people, by helping find how they could be engaged with the change initiative.

Reflection questions:

• As a CEO, how engaged are your collaborators in the Lean initiative? What have you done to motivate them and engage them, as persons, in it?
• As a Lean coach, how have you addressed management’s willing to do Lean? What questions did you asked them as for their own needed change with respect to Lean (that is, Lean should be done by management with collaborators, not to collaborators)?

SD Analysis of Autonomy

Reading Coert Visser’s blog post “People prefer to choose for themselves what they initiate and they want to control as much as possible what they do“, I decided to give it a shot at modelling what comes to my mind using my preferred tool of choice: Vensim.

The first analytical thinking through a problematic autonomy situation would be that people’s desire and actions to increase their autonomy is motivated by Others’ action. “Their faulty behavior against me motivates and authorizes my reacting to it“.

Of course, from the view point of others, the same thing happen with us (‘A‘ in the attached diagram).

So, although each actions from A or other tend to reach an equilibrium toward one’s own autonomy desired level (loops B1 and B2), the connection between actions (center of picture, R1) creates an overall reinforcing dynamical structure where A and Others are competing for their autonomy levels. In the end, it’s more than probable that all will loose: a typical loose-loose situation resulting from a “win-loose” mental model.

So, I added, as a proposed solution, that an overall external loop (in dotted lines on the diagram) be added where A and Others exchange on their similar desire to achieve some autonomy, and do listen to and respect the corresponding desire of the partner. In doing so, they might lower their desired autonomy level but in the mean time counter balance the negative and reinforcing loop of their action and we could hope that they reach some form of win-win equilibrium.

That solution can only exist if Dialogue is possible between A and Others.

How are you communicating about problematic situations in your organization? Do you talk them through or do you complain, finger point to one another and stick to phone and mail to fire reactive actions to one another?

Pondering on the often out of topic discussions on the LinkedIn Group Systems Thinking World, I came up to this diagram during coffee with colleagues. I guess they’re not going to take coffee with me anytime soon :-/

As you can see, there are only reinforcing loops. The sole balancing loop is in fact preventing the initial topic from being further investigated. The explanation goes something as follow:

• B1: when the initial topic is discussed, it triggers comments from people given their personal centers of interest, which of course, because the centers of interest are so different, this makes the discussion diverges, which reduces the focus on the initial topic.
• R1: this first reinforcing loop describes the fact that the more there is divergence in the discussion, the more this triggers further personal centers of interest being mentioned in the discussion, which makes the discussion diverges further and thus make more people to react.
• R2: Sometimes, someone in the discussion tries to come back to the initial topic, though, most often, through some personal path. So we have a new path which can trigger further comments from other personal topics of interest (I did not show that the new path, although related to the initial topic, could trigger other centers of interest – this is embedded in the new description of the initial topic; a case of fixe the fails, I think).
• R3: the comments from different personal centers of interest increase the systems thinking view of things (provided there has been some initial interest, but even then, interest can be awaken), which reinforces the link to other centers of interest, which further the comments from different points of view. This loop somewhat describes the self-reinforcing curiosity of systems thinkers.
• R4 shows the fact that these other centers of interest can also add to the divergence in the mind of the people participating in the discussion

Hopefully, some group rules are being researched that could help in maintaining a discussion going in the initial intended discussion (create a web place where regular summaries of the discussions could be posted, do some Dialogue Mapping, perhaps using InsightMaker which added this functionality just recently).

I had a morning coffee discussion with colleagues about some lack of commonly decision taking occurring in companies. We proposed that it might be a cultural bias of people here not to easily trust people, but I feel the system at play could be the same for every country. Only if we would develop a more thorough model, with quantitative value, we could probably have different coefficient corresponding to different cultures.

Anyway, here is the systemic diagram I came to, which you are free to comment below, of course!

The explanations Read more »

There are things that we just do more easily when someone is doing them with us or accompanying us in order for us to do them. These are generally the not-so-sexy-things-to-do: fat-loosing-sports, medical appointment, and on a more general scale, anything that is not bringing us satisfaction on the short term. Like continuous improvement.

If it doesn’t hurt enough, you won’t change.

So you really need to be in a catastrophic situation to ponder the possibility to change (and even then… but that’s for another article).

What’s the problem?

I think we have some very experienced Lean senseïs or Lean consultants. A whole bunch of them can be seen on The Lean Edge. I know some of them and I wouldn’t call them… gentle. Experienced? Efficient? Right to the point? Definitely! But not that pushy for clients not ready to commit deeply to what Lean requires from them. These consultants are more on the style of “either you badly want it or I leave”. Which is somewhat fine since there are quite a number of people wanting to embark on the Lean journey and there are indeed very few of these consultants. Which is a way for them to filter their clients, I guess (or a form of Lean efficiency: don’t accept bad products from the preceding step in the process – the defects there being a lack of motivation to do Lean).

What we have here is a self reinforcing loop whose limit is the maximum number of clients the consultant can handle:

Lean consultant fame system dynamics diagram

Like all growing loop, this one exhibit an exponential growth behavior:

Lean consultants fame graphic

Of course, there’s an increasing stock outside of frustrated clients that can’t be served by the famous consultants.

We also know that there are a whole lot of clients that tried Lean and failed to continue with it. We can blame the clients for not doing what Lean required of them (deep commitment). And this is in some way true and the underlying assumtion done by the famous consultants I spoke of just above (or the easy way for them to select clients). And, by coming to this conclusion, this is also the underlying assumtions of the (not as famous but still skillful) other consultants. Indeed, by accepting unmotivated clients, you get fewer results, which confirms you that your clients were unmotivated. This is indeed a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But what would happen if we’d take the assumption that the clients are willing to do Lean but need some motivation to do it before doing the real stuff?

Read more »

I was reading one of Michael Ballé’s blog article about Lean, on Lean Edge (great web site!) and it reminded me of one of those “aha moment” I had when reading the beginning of Toyota Culture. There is described the relations between production improvement and employee development (like a double DNA spiral). Then it occurred to me that I could model this using my Systems Thinking modelling tools (here, Vensim from Ventana).

Lean from a Systems Thinking Point of View

The explanation can then go something like this (of course, being circular, you can start wherever you want): by applying a Lean tool to a process, you expose some of the wastes as defined by Lean (Overproduction, Overquality, Excess motion, Excess transport, Stock, Errors, Waiting time). Exposing the wastes allows for their removal, which, by way of having people think on how to do this, develop your employees. By their increased understanding of the way the organization and Lean tools work, they become more competent at using Lean tools to expose further more waste. And so on.

One could draw lots of other systems diagrams on the effects of removing waste in an organization (I may do later on). But one can see that Lean is far more than just doing some kaizen workshops to improve something. The fact is that we can just hire some Lean consultant to tell us what to do without the burden of thinking ourselves. If the objective of the Lean program is to give short term results, it’s probably the easiest way to go. If the objective of the Lean transformation (notice the name change…) is to have sustainable continuous improvement, then there’s no better way than involve people in doing so. And it better involve management as well as frontline employees or management will end up using all employee time for production and forget about continuous improvement! I never had better long term involvement with Lean than when I had management participate in workshops (yeah, I know, I know: workshops should not be the norm, but I had no choice at that time).

I’ve already blogged about this problem of Commoditization of Lean… It’s a case of Shifting the Burden systems archetype.

Christmas is approaching. Parents and relative usually buy toys for children (theirs and others). But, given the increasing revenues in developed countries and decreasing costs of toys (thanks to production outsourced to developing countries with low production costs), children often have more and more toys for Christmas.

I tried to modeled the way children usually engage with toys and the consequences for them. The diagram is provided below.

SD diagram for a fix that fail in buying more toys for children

It goes something like that:

When provided with toys, children play with them, which directly reduces their need for new toys. But, the more toys are provided to the children, the less they can engage with them (because their attention is spread over all the toys). The less engaged they are with the toys, the more boredom they experience, which increases their need for new toys. And then, because/when parents can offer new toys, the cycle goes again, this time with even more toys provided, which on a short term allows the children to play with them, but in the longer term, further spread their attention and then will increase their boredom.

So providing a lot of toys works on the short term, but fails on the long term. This is an archetype of Fix that Fail.

What are effective strategies? The archetype proposes two of them:

• advance planning, which would mean anticipating the situation and don’t offer too much toys
• disconnect the unintended consequence from the action (offering toys), which would mean here to provide toys that don’t induce boredom. Maybe toys that are so versatile that each time you engage with them, they provide for something new? This might be an explanation of why Playmobil, Lego, Meccano or other dolls are so popular, even after all these years: you can create stories out of them!

I would also encourage parents not to provide too much toys to their children (and ask relatives not to compensate for that!) That’s heartbreaking for sure, but we (yes, I too have kids) need to think to their long term benefits. Didn’t your parents or grandparents talked about when they were kids and could play for hours with very few toys?

So, should we inquire into what works for the sustain enjoyment of kids, we would know the answer. How come we can hardly apply that knowledge?

I’ve been thinking lately about the very low success rate of Lean turnover. Rumors has it that it’s as low as only 2% of organizations trying to transform themselves into a Lean system to successfully achieve this. Why is it so?

Apart from putting this onto top managers and other collaborators’ change resistance, I’d be thinking that people trying to introduce Lean may be the very root cause of that failure (2% success is a failure for me and the approach should be changed!).

So, being interested in Systems Thinking (all because of Michaël Ballé as I’ve tried to follow what he wrote and writes; he notably wrote “Managing with Systems Thinking“) I started to investigate using that line of thought. Which threw me into the world of archetypes and frozen situations where “the more you change, the more it’s the same” (in french: “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose“). The archetype that kept coming back over and over in this case was “Shifting the Burden“.

Using consultants is a bad thing

First, the archetype appears in it’s most evident form: most consultants trying to introduce Lean in organizations do so from, well, that consultant posture which more than often triggers the “Shifting the Burden” systems archetype:

The archetype is the part delimited by the bold arrows. Other arrows are decorations (additions) of mine:

• R3 shows what the organization is missing: collaborators development that allows them to become better at doing Lean. Should the top manager conduct the Lean transformation herself, she could learn as well.
• R4 shows that the more someone else does the work, the less one can do it oneself (hence the less one learns and the less one will be able to do it later)
• finally, R5 shows why organizations keep contracting consultants: because they get short term results!

The problem being that since nobody usually learns during the consultants’ contracting phase (often too short for people to have learned themselves), the transformation is not sustained after the contractors leave.

Commoditizing Lean is also a bad thing

The next appearance of our Shifting the Burden archetype may not be that evident (it wasn’t for me). We often see Lean advertised as a toolbox and/or a succession of so called “kaizen workshops”. That’s what I call “commoditizing Lean”. When you select a few parts of method and turn it into something easily usable, well, you’ll make people use it. Moreover, you allow for a manager to give that commodity (or tool, or package) to a team to use it and to deploy it in the company. The consequence is that the team may learn from applying the tool, but the manager doesn’t. The team becomes the “someone else does the work”, and because it gets results, it gets management support to continue using it. Yet, in the end, should the management leave and the Lean initiative be stopped, there’s nothing left, Lean won’t be sustained.

From a constructivism point of view (Wikipedia definition: Constructivism is a theory of knowledge (epistemology) which argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from their experiences) management has not learned (and the team probably has only learned to apply the tools).

What  works

So, given that two traps into which lots of people fall (I’ve been the “someone else” myself!), what works for deploying Lean? I’m not going to be original because it’s been said before: find a coach/senseï  you (as a top manager) can work with and do what he tells you to do. You’ll learn by doing, you’ll model behavior, your people will feel appreciated and motivation for “doing Lean” should raise as a consequence.

Of all the “lean workshops” I’ve done when being the “someone else”, only two had a lasting effect after me going away. These were the workshop where middle management participated and worked to improve things along with their collaborators. I guess they probably understood some Lean things since they continued during many monthes after the workshop to visually manage their performance and solve problems to continue improvements. A great lesson for me. Alone.

There’s obviously a lot more to say, I’ll come back to that topic in other articles. Meanwhile, I’m eager to listen to your opinions on that topic, below.