For the past twenty
years, I’ve helped to develop methods for implementing lean practices in
factories and across supply chains. One of the most important things I’ve
learned is that self-reflection is as relevant to lean practices. In fact, it’s
an integral and essential part of it.
John Dewey, the
American philosopher and psychologist, said “We do not learn from experience.
We learn from reflecting on experience.”
To develop, we
need to build on our experience. Whether it’s to improve our skills and
abilities, become more competent, increase our performance or open ourselves to
new ideas. But as Dewey observed, we do this through reflection, either on our
own or with others.
In Japan, when
someone makes a mistake, they will profusely apologize, take responsibility,
and propose a solution for how they can prevent the same mistake from happening
in the future. This process is referred to as 反省 – or Hansei. Hansei is a core concept of Japanese culture.
It’s not about shame or guilt. Rather, it’s about admitting there is room for
improvement – and committing to that improvement.
To paraphrase
my friend, Jon Miller: “Han” means to
change, turn over, turn upside down. “Sei” is the simplified form of a
character meaning to look back upon, review, examine oneself. As a native
speaker of Japanese “hansei” strikes me as both an intellectual and emotional
exercise. With hansei there is a sense of shame, if that is not too hard of a
word. This may come from having been asked to do a lot of hansei as a child,
being told “hanse shinasai!” which in English might be “Learn to behave!”
The point is,
when you do hansei it is almost never because you are “considering past
experience” as if they were happy memories. You are confronting brutal facts
about your actions and the impact they had, in hopes that you can learn from
this and change your behavior in the future.
Toyota is known
as a learning organization and this is one of the reasons why Toyota has become
so successful. Hansei has a strong role in being a learning organization. In
Toyota, hansei is often viewed as a precursor to kaizen, and a pre-requisite to
being a learning organization. This is best explained as below (taken from
Toyota-Global website);
Hansei is both
an intellectual and emotional introspection. The individual must recognize the
gap between the current situation and the ideal, take responsibility for
finding solutions, and commit to a course of action. The examination involves a
review of successes and failures, to determine what works and what needs to be
improved. Hansei leads to ideas for kaizen and yokoten, the sharing of best
practices from one location to another.
At each key
milestone in a project, and at completion, the people involved meet to reflect
on their experience of what happened. However, successes aren’t celebrated. In
true Japanese fashion, they are treated with humility and modesty. Instead, the
focus is on the failures and what could have been better.
This isn’t
about pointing fingers, issuing blame or scoring points. It helps to identify
when things need to improve and prevent any of the errors that were made. Above
all, it helps to instill the belief that there’s always room and always need
for further improvement.
Hansei is one
of the keys to kaizen, as the concept itself focuses on improvement as opposed
to punishment. When we fail, we realize that we have done something wrong. So
it is important that we will learn lessons from it, and find methods to prevent
its recurrence. It is most important to
consider also how bad we feel when we hurt others in the team by not performing
to their expectations.
Why not take
this opportunity to practice some self-reflection? In what areas do you need to
improve? How can you take ownership of that need to improve? What can you do differently?
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