11/22/2018 What is leader standard work?

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WHAT IS LEADER STANDARD WORK? Other Michael Ballé

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Michael Ballé View Archives
8/15/2016
1 Comment | Post a Comment

Dear Gemba Coach,

Is there such a thing as leader standard work, and, if so, what

is it?

This is a very frequent – and very odd question - and I have to Books
confess not to be very sure how to address it. If we’re going into this
topic, you will have to bear with me as we clarify terms:

What do we mean by standard work? (I’ll assume here

standard work is short for standardized work)
What is a leader’s work? The Gold Lead With
Mine Respect
Standard work is often interpreted as job instructions – and Trilogy
sometimes looks like it – but the thinking behind the two concepts Study
are very different. Back in the days when all these ideas came Guide
together, Taiichi Ohno and the other engineers cobbling together the
Toyota Production System had a few counterintuitive ideas in mind:

Bean counters naturally think that it makes sense to produce

in-house all high-volume parts to lower the direct cost per
part and outsource low-volume parts to suppliers. But the
lean guys thought they should do the opposite and produce The Lean The Gold
the low-volume, high-variety parts and outsource the high- Manager Mine
volume ones. The high unit cost of low-volume parts would
put pressure on Toyota engineers for kaizen to find ways to
reduce costs, while allowing suppliers to make the high-
volume parts would also, in the end, provide a cost
advantage. The Gold
Low-volume parts naturally needed experienced craftsmen to Mine
make, but the same engineers thought that all parts should Trilogy 4
be done by regular operators to break the stranglehold expert Book Set
craftsmen had on the shops, which slowed down the
Articles
development of just-in-time production.
I have years of
The First Step in Kaizen experience in
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11/22/2018 What is leader standard work?

Intent on working with regular workers to produce at low costs in a operational excellence
high-variety, low-volume mix, Toyota’s original lean thinkers came but if I were to start lean
up with the idea of standard work (or standardized work): the written where should I start?
sequence of steps to do the job within takt time. Standard work was Dear Gemba Coach,
not thought of as job instructions – something everyone should I have years of
know by heart – but as the first step of kaizen to progressively experience in
improve machining until any worker could achieve quality within takt operational excellence
time. and have always
assumed that lean is
The sequence of steps was displayed everywhere for operators to just a more gemba-
compare how they made the parts to the standard, see problems, focused way of
and work with the team to fix them. Standard work charts were improving processes.
never supposed to remain fixed, and, for instance, Ohno later You seem to think that
recounted telling people they didn’t earn their pay if they left the lean and operational
standardized work unchanged for a whole month. Standard work excellence differ widely.
was really about kaizen. You start by adopting a standard, any If I were to start lean, in
standard, and then tackle one improvement after the other by trial your sense, where
and error. should I start?

From this perspective, standard work is rather specific to production. How do we get our boss
Can it apply to leader’s work? to stop confusing
inventory management
What Do Leaders Do?
with lean?
What is a leaders’ work for that matter? John Kotter famously Dear Gemba Coach,
argued in an HBR article about what leaders really do: “They don’t Our new boss is a lean
make plans; they don’t solve problems; they don’t even organize supporter and had us
people. What leaders really do is prepare organizations for change reduce drastically all
and help them cope as they struggle through it.” [1]Management, he inventories. Now we
claims, is coping with complexity. Leadership, by contrast is coping have missing parts all
with change. In other words, leaders make choices where managers over the place and are
take decisions. late on delivering to our
clients. I fail to see how
Hard to see how standard work can really apply to leadership then? this is going to make us
But for argument’s sake, is there a sequence of steps that could more productive.
help a leader compare how he or she makes choices to the ideal
way to do so? Should we do lean
maturity audits?
Oddly – there might be. In the lean tradition, Fujio Cho is often Dear Gemba Coach,
quoted as saying[2]: Should we continue with
lean maturity audits
1. Always think of the customer first and, if so, how often?

2. Go and see first-hand

Webinars
3. Ask why five times
The Way To Lean
4. Show respect.
How to Lead With
Respect
I recently witnessed a boardroom discussion where the issue was
how to deal with a subcontractor that kept delivering subpar quality.
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11/22/2018 What is leader standard work?

Not surprisingly the talk went back and forth on the different ways to The Business Case for
put pressure on the supplier to deliver better quality – penalties Lean
were discussed, going straight to the supplier CEO and
Go and See: Why go to
complaining, or getting purchasing to replace them altogether and
the Gemba and what to
so on.
do when you are there
At some point, the leader stopped the discussion and decided to Creating the Lean
actually go and see first-hand. What he discovered completely Manager (with Freddy
floored him. Central purchasing had negotiated such a low fee that Ballé)
the subcontractor was not making any money and, therefore, not Making Lean Stick:
staffing enough people to do the job properly. Furthermore, quality What Do Lean Leaders
penalties were already applied, making it even harder for the Do? (with Freddy Ballé)
supplier to achieve the required quality. The supplier’s CEO had
tried to raise the issue several times but purchasing would not let
him talk to any one else in the company.

Sure, there were many things that could be done to improve: For
starters, better training of the subcontractor employees, but this
would take time away from production – the vicious circle continued.
Furthermore, having been squeezed hard over the past couple of
years, the supplier’s management was extremely suspicious of any
overtures by operational management – they expected the client
simply to look for new ways to screw them over. The first thing the
leader had to do was to ease up on the quality penalties – although
quality was still poor. The second was to have a political fight with
purchasing over what was better for customers.

Leadership Reinforced

So did the lean standard work of think of customers first, go and

see, ask why, show respect help? Actually, yes, it worked exactly as
standardized work in machining. By having this standard in mind,
the leader and his team saw the situation differently from their
original discussion in the meeting room. By comparing how they
were making their managerial choice to the lean leader standard,
the team saw the gaps in its own approach and corrected them.

I understand that this is probably not what the people who’ve

mentioned leader standard work had in mind, and indeed, one can
be a bit more tool-focused:

1. Always think of the customer first: What are the quality and
delivery metrics to show this?
2. Go and see first-hand: Check the visual management system
to see better on the gemba (pull system, andon, production
analysis boards, etc.)
3. Ask Why? 5 times: Develop problem solving through A3, 4M
and so on

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11/22/2018 What is leader standard work?

4. Show Respect: Show interest in teams’ 5S, kaizen efforts,

individual suggestions, and help people with the obstacles
they encounter.

Although “leader” and “standard work” seem not to blend easily,

conducting the thought experiment is, in itself, very valuable and
thought provoking! Certainly, in the previous gemba example, the
leader’s standard work led the leadership team to change its
approach to the supplier – and in doing so reinforced its leadership
skill.

[1] Kotter, J. 2001, What leaders really do, HBR

[2] Turner, T. 2009, One team on all levels

1 Comments | Post a Comment

andy carlino August 20, 2016

I do not see any real mystery to leader standrad work. No question

that leaders at all levels do not repeat the same act or acitivies day-
to-day and that those days are even more variable the higher an
individual is in an organization. It's also important to recognize that
"leaders" exist at multiple levels of the organization. The leader
standard work model we use is modeled after the airplane pilot
checklist process developed in 1935. Every pilot performs pre-flight,
in-flight and post-flight checklists. Supervisor and most mid-level
mangers will requie the pre-flight checklist (what is needed to
assure we have what is needed to meet todays requirements) and
post-flight checklists (are we leaving the work and area for the next
person/shift to take over). Middle management and senior
leadership likely don't require pre and post flight checklists.
However, supervision, managemeet and senior leadership all
require in-flight checklists.This is simply a checklist of those
important acts or activities that if missed will potentially result is a
negative outcome, and those acts or actvities neccessary to
contribute to CI in the organization. The difficulty is to determine
those important act and activites (requires careful documentaion of
day-to-day activitiy for at least 2 weeks), but once documented it is
almost effortless to execute the checklist. I have been using this
approach for years and I have found that once "leadrship" adopts
the checklist process, they will never go back.

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