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What Is the Joiner 7 Step Method? The Joiner 7 step method is a technique that can prove very useful in tackling large, complex issues, including in cases where the fundamental problem is not fully understood, and the lack of information can prevent an analytical approach to finding a solution. The method is based on the idea of breaking down the problem into smaller sub-problems, which can be effectively studied and analyzed, allowing the organization to develop individual solutions for each of those problems, which are then combined to tackle the larger issue. It’s an effective technique partly because it forces the organization to take a closer look at their fundamental requirements, and this can sometimes uncover problems with the core philosophies that govern their work. This is a similar approach to other problem solving methodologies, such as PDCA and DMAIC. #1 – Define the project strictly This means that the organization has to define their requirements for the current situation as clearly as possible. Creating good, valid requirements is a separate skill of its own, but it’s important to get it right from the beginning, if you want to make sure that the subsequent analysis of your operations is based on valid assumptions. If your data is based on the wrong requirements, it won’t help you much in determining what you need to change about the operation of the company to resolve the problem at hand. This step also includes the development of performance indicators that the organization can use to figure out if things are going in the right direction. The set of indicators that are chosen has to be small enough to prevent the data being polluted with irrelevant facts, while on the other hand, it also has to offer sufficient coverage. Make sure that requirements are not gathered only internally, but in coordination with the customer as well! #2 – Current situation In this step, the organization has to collect data about its own performance, and determine where exactly they stand in the grand scheme of things. It’s critical that the data collected in step 1 makes sense, and targets the appropriate aspects of the company’s work, as this is the only way to ensure that you can define the current situation properly in this step. A common mistake made at this stage is to try to describe the problems with their assumed root causes. This is wrong, and the whole reason for performing this procedure in the first place is because you likely don’t know the root causes of your current problems. You should therefore try to keep things as factual as possible, such as “Measured output was 5% lower than required”. #3 – Analyze the root cause Now that you have the data from steps 1 and 2, you can investigate the actual root cause of the problem at hand more adequately. This is the step where you can safely start developing those theories that are going around in your head, trying to see if any of them match the data at hand. Whatever you believe the root cause may be, the important thing about this step is to verify your theory by matching it to the data you’ve collected, and discarding theories that don’t make complete sense. There are numerous problem solving tools available to get to the root cause, including failure analysis tools used at NASA #4 – Develop a solution By now, you should hopefully have a clear idea of the root cause behind the issue, and you’ll know what direction you need to move in to resolve it. In this step, it’s time for the organization to actually figure out how they want to go about addressing the problem, ideally by developing several solutions, and testing them against each other, to determine which ones work properly. The important thing to remember here is that you should be as diverse as possible in developing those solutions, and you should do your best to come up with at least several plans of action. You should definitely ask the actual workers who know the product or service better than anyone, and consider asking people outside of the work area. This will generate a bunch of great ideas! You may end up discarding some of them later on, but as long as they’re all based on accurate data gathered in the previous steps, this should not be a problem. #5 – Study the results Once you’ve started applying your proposed solutions in practice, it’s time to figure out if they really work or not. At this stage, you will be collecting and analyzing a lot of data to determine how well the different solutions you’ve developed can work for the problem at hand. It’s a good idea to develop a systematic approach for comparing the results to the original plans, even more so if you run this procedure regularly, and want to have some comparison data for the future. A critical factor required to make this stage work is the presence of valid key performance indicators. Without that, you simply can’t know if you’re analyzing your data on the right points, and you might be working blindly, or falsely assume things are improving when they are not. #6 – Standardization Now that you’ve determined exactly what needs to be done to improve the company’s process, and you’re sure that the original problem has been resolved, your next step should be to implement those changes in the organization’s standard practices, and ensure that everyone follows the new rules in the future. To achieve this, you will rely heavily on the documentation you’ve gathered over the previous steps, and you will compile a distilled version of the process from that data. Using this approach, you should be able to develop a comprehensive training procedure to get all members of the organization up to speed, and ensure that the new process will be followed strictly in the future. #7 – Future plans You will likely learn a lot from the implementation of the Joiner 7 step method, and by the end you will probably have some insights into the way your company works unrelated to the specific problem you were working on. The data you’ve collected may point in the direction of another potential problem, and this is a good opportunity to tackle that issue before it’s even manifested itself. By properly applying the Joiner 7 step method, you can be one step ahead of all issues that can arise in the operation of your organization, and you can ensure that all lessons learned while resolving those issues are properly remembered and utilized. Article Found on www.lean.org Dear Gemba Coach, Our company has a long history of lean in manufacturing, but I work in the sales department. We have our own sales improvement method, and I fail to see how lean could help, but I’m under pressure to comply and participate in the lean program. Any advice? Ah – advice on resisting (that’s easy: just don’t do it, it’ll pass), advice on how to do lean in sales (I’m not sure I know), or advice on how lean could apply to a sales department? Let me say I completely understand your reluctance and will attempt to discuss this from a different angle. The definition of lean I learned from Toyota is “to make products, first, we make people.” In this case, we would be thinking about “to make sales, first, we make salespeople.” And immediately we hit a snag and confusion in understanding lean. This brings us to three really, really hard questions:
First, Look at Ticked-Off Customers Lean tools are nothing but a learning scaffolding to help people stretch themselves outside their comfort zone and learn new things, but too often lean specialists confuse the scaffolding with the building itself, and it all becomes absurd real fast. What is a good sale? The core of Toyota’s strategy is “one-time customer, lifelong customer.” A good sale, in that sense, is one that will lead to a repeat sale, one where the customer will feel good about his or her purchase and come back for more. Obviously, this is not only dependent on the sales department since the value of what you sell really matters, but sales can assist by helping customers see how the product or service you sell actually fits their real-life needs. The first step here would be to take a step back and look at customers we’ve sold to who are not happy with their purchase. I realize that this is not a popular exercise with a team of salespeople who, more than anything, need to be motivated and optimistic (Sure, nine have said “no” but the tenth will be the deal of the century). But that’s the starting point of lean thinking. As an exercise, I’d take a page from Amazon’s book and look into how good your department is at consoling the people who come back and complain (You’ll never hear about those who are just not happy and drop the case altogether). The entry point to lean is to overinvest in the service and response department and link it to sales so that the sales team really understands what customers experience – without systematically throwing the stone at production and delivery. So far, no “lean” is involved other than finding a way to discuss with the sales team cases of unhappy customers and figure out what is sales contribution to the unhappiness. Customers are pleased with themselves when they feel they’ve found a bargain (I’m a great purchaser) and pissed off when they figure out they’ve been sold a lemon (I’ve been suckered). What can we do to handle expectations in order to, in lean thinking: Point towards the most advantageous features of the product to customers according to what we understand is their real need YET not oversell the product or service just in order to get them to sign on the dotted line – they’re going to have to live with the sale afterward. Second, Look at What Good Salespeople Do Which brings us to the second point. Once we have a clearer idea of “what is a good sale,” as well as “what is a bad one,” we can ask ourselves the question of the skills needed to babysit a good sale. Now, here we have a real mystery: on the one hand, sales techniques are all the same and known to all. On the other, a few salespeople always visibly outperform the rest. What is it they do? Think about it this way: in production, most operators in Toyota are 20% to 30% more productive than their equivalent in any other production line. Are they more motivated? Maybe. Are they more skilled? Certainly. But when you look closely enough, you discover that they work with two hands at the same time as opposed to one at a time. It’s massively quicker. But 1/ it’s hard to learn and 2/ it has to be taught all the time. The mystery is therefore to discover the equivalent micro skill in your own selling situation. Once you’ve figured out what is the detailed thing star salespeople do the others don’t, you can start training everybody to this micro skills, but since it’s usually something hard to see, and that maybe the good salespersons don’t know about, you’ve got to be looking for it. And this is where lean can help. First, set up a kanban. A Toyota production line gives the impression that it’s mass production because all cars are processed in a conveyor queue, but the reality is that there are no two cars alike. Each car has a “kanban,” a unique identity card with its chassis, options, color, etc. that helps everyone truly build cars one by one. Rather than look at the day’s sales opportunities and pick the most promising ones to move them along the process, create a visual line, like at a restaurant, that visualizes opportunities as they arrive – large and small, easy or hard. Customers are served one by one, in the order in which they arrive. This will, in all likelihood, be resisted by the team that will have found some internal system to attribute what to whom. Then, for each sales opportunity, sketch a “kanban” – what is specific about this person, what are they looking for, what do we have in stock that would be a good match, and how are we going to get them over sales fright and establish trust. (We are all scared of talking to salespeople because they know all the tricks to get money out of our pockets and we don’t.) And then sell. But … Stretch Second, create a space to visualize and discuss abnormalities. Set up a regular meeting with the sales team to discuss cases that should have gone sweetly but then something happened to turn the customer off. Yes, I know what I’m asking, and yes, some teams love it and some teams hate it. The point of the kanban is not to let individual salespeople pick their favorite victims, and the point of discussing what went wrong is not to fix it immediately but to stretch our understanding of the sales conditions. For instance, there’s such an emotional component to selling that we can’t ignore moods – the customer’s mood, the salesperson’s mood, the team’s mood, the day of the week mood, and so on. In exploring what are normal or abnormal conditions, we will stretch our exploration beyond the narrow one-to-one sales tunnel and look around: what is the context? who is the real decision maker? What are the green buttons and red buttons? What do we do or say that builds trust, or destroys it in one unhappy line, joke, form not filled in, etc. Which leads us, third, to check our sales standards and best practices for these elusive micro-skills that distinguish smart salespeople from the rest. We know there’s a knack in it somewhere, we don’t know where, so the only way to look is to discuss cases one-by-one to see whether our known standards apply or not – or whether we’re completely missing the one thing that matters. I have limited experience with sales, but the greatest salesman I know (he sells high- priced equipment) has told me he does essentially two things:
At this stage, fourth, kaizen team efforts can be really helpful to get the team to examine how they process both customers and paperwork (proposals, responses, etc.) and tackle issues one by one to forge a better team – the usual lean recommendation is one hour per week for the team to work on improving something in the way they work. The difficulty is to make sure they don’t take the path of least resistance and improve things for them, but truly focus on how they can hone their sales skills as a team – how they can help each other to better take care of customers. Kaizen is about looking for improvement potential, analyzing the current way we do things, coming up with new ideas and trying them until we forge, progressively a stronger culture. Finally, fifth, find some ways to visualize successes and progress for the sales team, beyond objectives. Invent trophies. Sales is a rough job because, emotionally, it involves keeping up optimism in the face of people saying “no.” Visualizing progress is really important, or better, visualizing happy customers, testimonies etc. that nudge the team to look beyond “making the sale” to “creating a lifelong customer.” Again, please remember my disclaimer that I’m not a sales expert, but as the CEOs I know look at lean as their strategies, in many companies, they’ve had to look into what happens in the sales department (often a “fortress”) and answer your very question for the sales teams. I believe though, the potential for lean is the same in sales as in everything else, but the trick is focusing on sales first, not just lean! WE HAD MET ALL TOGETHER ON FRIDAY MARCH 3RD AT WHEELER CAT TO DISCUSS A3 REPORTS. A3 IS A TOYOTA-PIONEERED PRACTICE OF GETTING THE PROBLEM, THE ANALYSIS, THE CORRECTIVE ACTIONS, AND THE ACTION PLAN DOWN ON A SINGLE SHEET OF LARGE (A3) PAPER, OFTEN WITH THE USE OF GRAPHICS. AT TOYOTA, A3 REPORTS HAVE EVOLVED INTO A STANDARD METHOD FOR SUMMARIZING PROBLEM-SOLVING EXERCISES, STATUS REPORTS, AND PLANNING EXERCISES LIKE VALUE-STREAM MAPPING.
ATTACHED IS THE POWERPOINT SLIDE DECK FOR THIS PRESENTATION. Article found on www.mindtools.com
What is your instinctive approach to decision making? If you're naturally optimistic, then chances are you don't always consider potential downsides. Similarly, if you're very cautious or have a risk-averse outlook, you might not focus on opportunities that could open up. Often, the best decisions come from changing the way that you think about problems, and examining them from different viewpoints. "Six Thinking Hats" can help you to look at problems from different perspectives, but one at a time, to avoid confusion from too many angles crowding your thinking. It's also a powerful decision-checking technique in group situations, as everyone explores the situation from each perspective at the same time. Six Thinking Hats was created by Edward de Bono, and published in his 1985 book of the same name. You can now find it in a new edition. It forces you to move outside your habitual thinking style, and to look at things from a number of different perspectives. This allows you to get a more rounded view of your situation. You can often reach a successful solution or outcome from a rational, positive viewpoint, but it can also pay to consider a problem from other angles. For example, you can look at it from an emotional, intuitive, creative or risk management viewpoint. Not considering these perspectives could lead you to underestimate people's resistance to your plans, fail to make creative leaps, or ignore the need for essential contingency plans. In this article, we explore how to use the Six Thinking Hats technique, and show an example of how it can work. How to Use the Six Thinking Hats ModelYou can use Six Thinking Hats in meetings or on your own. In meetings, it has the benefit of preventing any confrontation that may happen when people with different thinking styles discuss a problem, because every perspective is valid. Each "Thinking Hat" is a different style of thinking. These are explained below:
A variant of this technique is to look at problems from the point of view of different professionals (for example, doctors, architects or sales directors) or different customers. An Example of Six Hat ThinkingThe directors of a property company are considering whether they should build a new office block. The economy is doing well, and the vacant office spaces in their city are being snapped up. As part of their decision-making process, they adopt the Six Thinking Hats techniques. Wearing the White Hat, they analyze the data that they have. They can see that the amount of available office space in their city is dwindling, and they calculate that, by the time a new office block would be completed, existing space will be in extremely short supply. They also note that the economic outlook is good, and steady growth is predicted to continue. Thinking with a Red Hat, some of the directors say that the proposed building looks ugly and gloomy. They worry that people would find it an oppressive or uninspiring place to work. When they think with the Black Hat, they wonder whether the economic forecast could be wrong. The economy may be about to experience a downturn, in which case the building could sit empty or only partially occupied for a long time. If the building is unattractive, then companies will choose to work in other, more attractive premises. Wearing the positive Yellow Hat, however, the directors know that, if the economy holds up and their projections are correct, the company stands to make a healthy profit. If they are lucky, maybe they could sell the building before the next downturn, or rent to tenants on long-term leases that will last through any recession. With Green Hat thinking, they consider whether they should redesign the building to make it more appealing. Perhaps they could build prestige offices that people would want to rent in any economic climate. Alternatively, maybe they should invest the money in the short term, then buy up property at a lower cost when the next downturn happens. The chairman of the meeting wears the Blue Hat to keep the discussion moving and ideas flowing, encouraging the other directors to switch their thinking between the different perspectives. Having examined their options from numerous viewpoints, the directors have a much more detailed picture of possible outcomes, and can make their decision accordingly. Key PointsDe Bono's Six Thinking Hats is a powerful technique for looking at decision making from different points of view. It allows emotion and skepticism to be brought into what might normally be a purely rational process, and it opens up the opportunity for creativity within decision making. Decisions made using the Six Thinking Hats technique can be sounder and more resilient than would otherwise be the case. It can also help you to avoid possible pitfalls before you have committed to a decision. Found on Shingo.org Dr. Morgan L. Jones, Chris Butterworth and Brenton HarderMany organizations have launched continuous improvement, business improvement, process excellence or Lean Six Sigma programs with varying success. The typical model is to employ an experienced external executive to engage directly with the senior leadership team, develop a deployment plan, train a small cohort of green or black belts, identify and deliver some immediate wins, build momentum with more low-hanging fruit and hope the top-down approach will permeate the organizational culture due to an obvious display of logic and benefits. Building individual capability of green belts, black belts and sometimes sponsors is a successful approach for creating a proof point that these methods work within that organization and its culture. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), a 2015 Shingo Silver Medallion recipient, and the Bank of New York Mellon (BNYM) decided they needed to try a different approach, and they have had tremendous success embedding a culture of continuous improvement through the application of five simple habits.Taking lessons from the Shingo teachings, both organizations started with defining the culture they wanted and the ideal behaviors that would be needed to bring this culture to life. However, it was felt that something more was needed to really bring the behaviors to life, so they defined five simple habits that everyone could learn and constantly practice in the workplace. The habits also enabled the practicing of the ideal behaviors as they were not just some theoretical “nice to have,” but they were actively demonstrated by applying the habits. The habits quickly became a way of changing the way people thought about their job at all levels of the organization.It is important to keep the habits as simple as possible. It is very easy to make things complicated and continuous improvement professionals need to avoid complex models that may well be intellectually stimulating but do not help widespread understanding. Keep it simple – if it takes a lot of explanation and people do not immediately connect with what’s proposed, then it needs changing. The four core habits used in this case are:
Figure 1.1 The four habits working together. Source 4+1 by Jones, Butterworth, Harder 2017 As seen from figure 1.1, there is also a direct link between the habits and customer value. The Customer Value Proposition (CVP) is used to document a deep understanding of real customer value, and this in turn is translated onto the VMB. The habits drive a culture of constantly striving to make the customer experience better, whilst at the same time making things as simple as possible for everyone. It quickly became apparent in both organizations that the habits where actively embedding the ideal behaviors and that practicing the habits created the opportunity to practice the behaviors. A lot of research in the field of neuroscience explains how the brain quickly adopts new habits that are regularly practiced and equally defaults to existing behaviors and assumptions unless given new stimuli and challenges. Understanding the underlying neuroscience is a key aspect to the successful implementation of the habits. In other words, HABITS drive the right BEHAVIORS that deliver the right CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, highly engaged PEOPLE and sustainable business RESULTS. The ideas in this short article are discussed in much more detail in a new book, 4+1 Embedding a Culture of Continuous Improvement in Financial Services. The authors will donate all proceeds to a Children’s Cancer Charity. Click here to view the article from the Shingo Blog. |
helpful LinksThe Lean Enterprise Institute is a nonprofit research, education, and publishing institute with the goal of making things better through lean thinking and practice throughout the world.
Names after Dr. Shigeo Shingo, the Shingo Institute's purpose if (based on timeless principles) to shape cultures that drive operational excellence. Their mission is to conduct cutting edge research, provide relevant education, perform insightful enterprise assessments, and recognize sustainable world-class results.
(Photo and except above taken from shingo.org) The premier organization for the exchange of knowledge in enterprise excellence. They envision a manufacturing renaissance driven by peoplecentric leadership coupled with enterprise excellence, and their mission is to inspire a commitment to enterprise excellence through experiential learning by bringing people together to share, learn and grow. AME's values include volunteerism, being practitioner focused, integrity and trust, passion for excellence and being engaging and welcoming.
(photo and excerpt above taken from ame.org) The UUMEP Center is part of the nationwide Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) network and the only public-private partnership dedicated to serving small and medium sized manufacturers. Since 1988, the MEP network has worked to strengthen U.S. manufacturing. The national network of MEP centers work directly with manufacturers and contribute to the growth of well-paying jobs, dynamic manufacturing communities, and American innovation and global competitiveness.
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