How Well Does Your Organization Handle Problems?

How Well Does Your Organization Handle Problems?
A couple of years ago I got a chance to attend a Lean training session where the topic was “how do you assess the progress of a Lean transformation.”  The instructor, who is very well respected, made a comment that he thought it was fairly easy to tell how successful an organization was at putting in place a culture of continuous improvement.  All you needed to do was to spend some time with managers at any level in the organization and observe how they handle problems when they come up.

• Do they ignore the problem?
• Do they blame the problem on others? 
• Do they accept the problem as “always having been there” and do nothing about the problem? 
• Or, do they accept that most problems are a result of the process and/or the system and they take responsibility for doing their part in helping solve the problem?

The class had a robust discussion for the remainder of the day and I still have not found a better way to think about assessing Lean capability. Every day I am in situations where problems are made visible.  This gives me ample opportunity to assess my own behaviors and the behaviors of the leaders I am working with.  While this all sounds fairly remedial I would encourage everyone to spend a day assessing your organization through this lens if you don’t already, because you will be surprised with how much you learn.
I also find it useful to pay particular attention to assessing how teams manage problems over time.  They often follow a fairly predictable pattern:

• First, teams get frustrated as Lean tools begin to make problems visible (especially if their individual performance is transparent) and while the problems have always been there and were talked about, they were never documented.  This often turns into a conversation about integrity of the data. 
• Second, they then often complain that the problems are caused by someone else.  Upstream, downstream or management.
• Third, teams begin to accept that they may have some control over the problems, but they do not have time to solve them (got to do the “real work”).
• Fourth, teams begin to solve some of their own problems and realize that it is okay to talk about problems.  Responsibility begins to take hold.
• Finally, teams are completely engaged and not only do they take responsibility for their own problems they are willing to take responsibility for problems that are not clearly within their sphere of control.