Management Reality

I've started a new job recently as Director of Quality and Continuous Improvement. One might think that after having over ten years of CI/Lean experience that it would be no problem to jump right in and start making changes to improve the business. One would be wrong.

What I've realized very quickly is that Lean tools are not going to improve anything unless the people that I work with are responsible for the job of creating standards and improving those standards. I could make mandates, but what will that gain for us? Probably too much change with a good dose of resentment heaped with resistance and backsliding. The result is kind of like a diet without the discipline of daily of exercise...frustration with the same results.

What does all this have to do with TWI? Well, if daily self-discipline is the problem, then I guess thats where to start. The J-skills have self-discipline already built-in. A simple concept in the J-skills that helps us with self-discipline are the pocket cards. They are like little management checklists whether you are dealing with creating and training people in standards (JI), involving people in the improvement of standards (JM) or dealing with issues that involve people (JR).

Here is a podcast link to a January 7 talk delivered by Atul Gawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.


Yup. The thing I plan on doing over the next several months is using TWI pocket cards checklists to remind myself the crucial steps that I cannot forget to take in leading people. Anything more than that is just asking for trouble!