In businesses where there’s no true belief in Lean and its underlying philosophies, some leaders tend to sugarcoat things.
A while ago I lead an event where I touched upon some concepts of problem solving, maybe one of the most powerful tools in a Lean Leader’s toolbox. As I was talking about problems, one of the senior leaders in the room came to me and suggested I refer to problems as issues, or (worse) opportunities. He thought that this word might be too negative for the audience and raise some resistance to the topic.
I did my best to explain, in the spirit of Lean, what a problem is. A problem is a KPI that is red multiple periods in a row. It is the realization that the current state of something is not where it should be or where we wanted it to be, as expressed by a KPI. Nothing less, nothing more.
The resistance to the word ‘problem’ for me looks symptomatic to the lack of understanding to one of the ground rules of problem solving. A red KPI describes the performance of a process or the effectiveness of a piece of Standard Work. It should not, not ever, reflect bad on an individual. It’s about actions not yielding the results needed, it’s not to blame any person, operator or individual performing those actions.
My golden rule with problem solving: the root cause can never be about God, the weather or your CEO… or any mortal for that matter.
If you’re not ready to call a problem what it is, what does that say? If you’re not actively asking your teams to raise issues, problems, to discuss them, to make them known, then what kind of leader are you? Do you really care about progress?