Memorial Day: Remembering the Sacrifice of Freedom

www.memorialday2014.net

Memorial Day has come to signify the start of summer for many Americans and is often celebrated with cookouts, family get-togethers, road races and concerts. But the real meaning of Memorial Day has, for too many Americans, gotten lost in holiday hoopla.

Memorial Day is a day of reflection and remembrance. It is a day to remember all of our Fallen Heroes from all of the wars. It is a day to think about the families that will forever grieve for their lost loved one. It is a day to be thankful to those who have served and made the ultimate sacrifice. They fought and died to win the freedom and democracy that we Americans cherish so dearly. They also fought and died to bring that same freedom and democracy to the people of other countries as well.

In the words of Thomas Sherlock, Arlington National Cemetery Historian, “the most important thing parents can tell their children is that we, as Americans, are able to enjoy the freedoms we do because there have been men and women willing to sacrifice their lives so that we can be free.  We should all stop and remember this on Memorial Day.”

 The true meaning is to remember and honor veterans of all wars and peacetime service who paid the ultimate price to keep America free. They will long be remembered in our hearts.

“The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.” John Fitzgerald Kennedy

This Memorial Day, enjoy burgers and hot dogs with loved ones, but take a moment to remember those who can’t do the same. Remember those families who will have an empty seat at their table and the men and women who used to occupy it.

Take a moment this Memorial Day to remember all those men and women who have so bravely and honorably served this country. The courage and sacrifice of all who died in military service will not be forgotten.

We can't say enough for your kind deeds and dedication. God bless you and God bless America.

Lean Quote: Celebrate Your Successes

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"It's when ordinary people rise above the expectations and seize the opportunity that milestones truly are reached." — Mike Huckabee

Long ago, ancient Romans placed stone pillars called “obelisks” along the sides of roadways. Typically, the stones were placed a mile apart. Each “mile stone” was given a unique number, serving as a mile marker.

Today most people are familiar with the word “milestone,” but we use it in a slightly different way. Our modern-day use was inspired by the Romans’ ancient practice. Just as Roman mile stones helped travelers know how far they had come on their journey, our modern use of this expression does the same thing.

Instead of marking our journey on an actual road, however, milestones mark significant events in our lives. People reach milestones throughout their lives. This week I reached a couple on this blog: 1) 1000^th Blog Post and 2) 5thYear Anniversary Blogging.

Reaching milestones is something that must be rewarded. We tend not to recognize our successes, when we should. Celebrate your successes, each and every one of them.

When you've reached a goal that your organization or initiative has worked toward for a long time, or that acts as an organizational milestone, it's important to recognize that achievement. Within the organization, such recognition helps to build commitment and to provide motivation to employees. In addition, recognition adds to and maintains the organizational culture, history, and myth.

 

5th Anniversary of A Lean Journey Blog

Today marks the 5th anniversary of A Lean Journey Blog and as tradition here each year I take the opportunity to reflect. The act of "self-reflection" is called Hansei is Japanese. It is the practice of continuous improvement that consists of looking back and thinking about how a process can be improved.

I’d like to think that I turned my naive endeavor to share learning along my own journey into a successful contribution in the Lean community. As I have said before this labor of love has been a tremendous learning process both from the great fans and other colleagues online that I exchange with and from the process of distilling my own learning with you.

I love statistics, so with this milestone, here are some numbers from the blog:

Total Posts: 1001 (see my 1000th post)

Most read post:  DOWNTIME and the Eight Wastes (with over 18,000 views)

Least read post: Times is Money, Use it to Your Advantage

Number of countries/territories who have visited this blog:  209

Top 3 Countries with the most views:

1. U.S.A.
2. United Kingdom
3. Canada

Total views:  Over 580,000 and climbing

Unique visits: Over 425,000

Total comments:  Over 1,500

Total Facebook Fans: Over 1,000

Total Twiter Followers: Over 2,200

LinkedIn Members: Over 800

Top 5 posts this past year:

1. Top 10 Reason Why Lean Transformation Fails
2. The Right Order of MUDA, MURA and MURI
3. Lean Leadership Lessons We Can Learn From Geese
4. Poka Yoke: Mistake Proofing to Reduce Errors
5. Visual Management, A Status At A Glance

I would like to thank all the visitors and contributors to A Lean Journey Blog this past year.  It has been a successful Journey this past year. Please, share your feedback so that A Lean Journey can be even more successful next year.

My 1000th Post

Today’s post marks a bit of a milestone for me, as this post is the 1,000th one since I started this blog back in May 2009.

This is a big milestone for me as I’ve never seen myself as a writer and when I started, I wasn’t sure where it would lead.

This blog is dedicated to sharing lessons and experiences regarding Lean thinking, improvement practices, and leadership. I started this blog to share my perspective of Lean and to chronicle my own “Lean Journey in the Quest for True North."  I hope this has inspired, encouraged, and equipped you for your own journey.

This has been a labor of love and I enjoy the challenge of coming up with enriching content to share with all of you.

Here are the top 10 posts of all time:

1. DOWNTIME and the Eight Wastes
2. The Six-Step Problem-Solving Process
3. Draw a Pig to Learn the Importance of Standard Work
4. Ten Ways to Show Respect for People
5. The "Hot Stove" Rule of Discipline
6. Defining the Problem Statement
7. Free Online Process Mapping Tool For Value Stream Maps and More
8. Personal Kanban Kaizen - It's all Digital
9. Personal Kanban Kaizen
10. 10 Characteristics of a Good Measure and 7 Pitfalls to Avoid

Lean is not about the destination but rather the direction or path you take toward this idealistic place. It is about the constant, persistent, even relentless pursuit of improving your current situation. This improvement then brings you to the next current state and so on. ALeanJourney.com shares lessons and experiences along this journey to “True North” as a way to support learning and reflection, without which there can no lasting improvement. Lean is a "learning" process so sharing your lessons and opinions here are welcome.

A big thanks to everyone for your support so far, I appreciate every subscriber, reader and person who has taken the time to comment over the years.

You guys are a constant inspiration to me and I love hearing from you.

Lean Quote: Empowering is About Coaching Not Managing

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Empowerment is all about letting go so others can get going." — Jack Welch

Empowerment may not be a new concept to you, but many organizations experience problems because they don’t know how to ‘live it’. Employee empowerment has been described and defined in many ways but is generally accepted as: the process of enabling an employee to think, behave, act, react and control their work in more autonomous ways, as to be in control of one’s own destiny.

Many managers feel that by empowering employees, they relinquish the responsibility to lead and control the organization. This is not the case. Empowerment is actually a culmination of many of the ideas and tenets of employee satisfaction.

The best way to empower employees is not to manage them. Coach them to success. This is a process of developing their skills and providing them specific feedback to meet high standards. Employees want to be on the same team with their bosses.

Empowering employees is the ongoing process of providing the tools, training, resources; encouragement and motivation your workers need to perform at the optimum level. When you show an employee you trust them, and give them timely information and the authority to find solutions, they will be able to solve problems and provide solutions more rapidly than someone without that empowerment.

 

Book Review: Value Stream Mapping

Value Stream Mapping is a foundational approach to visualizing your systems to optimize value through focused improvements. My good friend Karen Martin and Mike Osterling present a detailed guide to this approach in their book Value Stream Mapping.

Karen and Mike attempt to address 3 common gaps in value stream mapping (VSM):

1)    Unfamiliarity with VSM as a method to build an outstanding organization

2)    Under-utilization of VSM due to lack of understanding

3)    Misusing VSM and not reaping the full benefits.

They focus of the benefits of value stream mapping, how to conduct them, and how use them for improvement and sustaining gains. Karen and Mike provide tips (guidelines) from experience for impactful and expedient improvement.

Value Stream Mapping is primarily written for organizations in information-intensive offices, service, and knowledge work environments. They focus on processes in a wide range of industries and professions.

Karen and Mike include six examples of current and future state value stream maps drawn from the authors' real experience in across business environments as various as Outpatient Imaging Services, Purchasing, Repair Services, Shelving Systems and Software Development in the Appendices.

Many business people have an incomplete understanding of a VSM and treat it as a tool that is used once in a while with minimum results. This book explains how to utilize the VSM not just as a tool but as a way to manage business. Value Stream Mapping is an excellent step-by-step guide to doing them the right way.

Value Stream Mapping is a short quick read that is easy to understand for anyone. Karen and Mike provide a great resource to get the most out of your value stream. They go beyond the map itself to get sustainable improvement. This is an excellent book that you should read, practice, and implement.

 

The Role of the Lean Sensei

Last week on The Lean Edge authors were asked about the role of a sensei:

What is your experience of working with sensei, and what advice should we give executives seeking to learn lean deeply regarding senseis?

It is a very good question so I wanted to share my thoughts on the matter.

Lean manufacturing is a very broad philosophy for business improvement that has many tools/techniques to aid you in making your production or service more efficient and better at offering your customer a great value. Being able to successfully implement Lean across a company is not something that you can pick up from reading a few Lean implementation books, nor is it something that you can learn from a training course in your local hotel, to truly be able to implement Lean you have to have lived and breathed it for several years to gain enough experience.

This leadership role has many names.  Whether you call them a sensei, champion, coach, or leader; the role is no less critical for the organization to be successful.  I am not one that pays much attention to titles but for this post I chose Coach because it is so fitting.  A Coach is an individual involved in the direction, instruction and training of the operations of a team or of individual.

The following characteristics are desirable for a good Lean Coach:

1. Active-learner open to new ideas
2. Natural problem-solving skills
3. Basics technical skills (comfortable with spreadsheets, graphs, data, etc.)
4. Keen Observer
5. Hands-on
6. Passionate about improving processes
7. Leadership skills
8. Strong interpersonal skills
9. Excellent communicator (writing & speaking)
10. Systems thinkers (able to understand process flows, etc.)

These characteristics alone don't make a Lean Coach.  The Lean Coach must have technical knowledge in the lean tools and tacit knowledge from experience.  Nobody is born knowing these principles and how to implement them.  Everyone has to learn them through practice, trial and error, and coaching.  Success is not based on who you are but rather on what you do. Behaviors can be learned and unlearned.

Being a teacher is the most important aspect for a Lean Coach.  They are not the ones to come in and do it for you.  They are the ones to show you how to do it with confidence so that you will be able to do it for yourself.  A Lean Coach must be relentless in teaching and expecting learning through actual practice.

The focus of a Lean coach is to provide coaching on the principles and practices of Lean Thinking to individuals and groups of employees within manufacturing and service industries. A Lean coach can be advantage because of the following reasons:

Knowledge

A Lean coach brings a range of experiences from previous Implementations that can help you to ensure that your implementation will be smooth and efficient. They also have the experience of implementing the various lean tools in different situations so they will understand how to involve your people and guide them in achieving the best possible results. Most Lean coaches will also have people and organizations that they can go to gain additional expert advice and help, contacts in other industries and companies with whom you can share experiences and view successes.

Perspective

A Lean coach that is independent from your organization and not burdened by the internal politics or any pre-conceived ideas of how the place should work has a clear mind with a bias for action. They can challenge status quo and ask those hard questions to get you out of your comfort zone and to think of those out-of-the-box ideas you need.

Pressure

A good Lean coach should be continuously pushing your company. They will be able to focus on the specifics of the implementation and not be distracted by the other things that may be going on within your company. A Lean coach can apply the constant gentle pressure required for transformation to take hold.

Choosing the right Lean coach to help you make the move from traditional manufacturing to Lean manufacturing is very important. A successful Lean coach must have the ability to convince people at all levels of the organization. No matter whether you are using a Lean consultant or someone on staff, full company-wide support is imperative in making the changes work. Management will have to fully support the Lean coach in Lean projects, and employees will have to be convinced to implement the changes wholeheartedly.