Lean Leadership
Hello and welcome to Small Batches. I’m your host Adam Hawkins. In each episode, I share a small batch of software delivery education aiming to help you find flow, feedback, and learning in your daily work. Topics include DevOps, lean, continuous delivery, and conversations with industry leaders. Now, let’s begin today’s episode.
This episode continues the theme of lean leadership. So far, we’re two episodes in. The first episode covered The Coaching Habit and the seven questions for accelerating the development of people—a key pillar of lean leadership. The second episode covered Managing to Learn and using the coach-student dynamic to development problem solving skills guided by the A3 process. Both highlight the leaders responsibility to develop capabilities in others, specifically problem-solving capabilities. But why though? This is the focus of today’s episode on lean leadership.
Let’s begin with the mental model of a lean organization. Once we have that in hand, then it’s possible to understand leadership in context. I’ll do my best to provide a concise mental model here. Books have been written on the topic, so let’s see if I can compress this thing.
The lean organization aims to deliver value to the customer that is on-demand, defect-free, and without waste. The lean organization understand this is never completely unachievable but decides nevertheless to aim for this ideal process. This may also be referred to as True North. The lean organization continually moves closer to the ideal by overcoming challenges on the path through deep problem solving.
Note, that I did not include any specific practices such as kanban or continuous delivery. Practices stem from striving towards different aspects of the ideal. They’re more like implementation details. Now, back to leadership.
The leader fully commits themselves to achieving the ideal through their own self-development and personal mastery. The leader must be intrinsically motivated or they will have not the necessary energy to sustain the course of self-development and personal mastery over years and decades. You heard that right: years and decades. This is not the path of short-term thinking.
Self-development and personal mastery allows the leader to continually adapt to the problems of the present moment. Rest assured, there will be plenty problems thus opportunities to practice. This also implies the leader has expertise in the relevant practices of their domain.
This begins with problem-solving skills guided by critical thinking and the scientific method. All other practices originate from the core competency of problem solving. Here are examples.
Kanban originated from a problem-solving activity in eliminating waste of overproduction. Continuous delivery originated from a problem-solving activity for providing releasable software that is on-demand and defect-free. Jidoka originated from a problem-solving activity for eliminating waste created by broken threads in a loom. Test Driven Development originated as problem-solving activity to eliminating defects in software and keeping software in a continually changeable state.
The list goes on. The point is the leader is adroit in the problem-solving process itself and the practices of their domain. If they are not, then they cannot develop the same skills and capabilities in others.
The combination of personal mastery and teaching others creates pull-based authority. This authority doesn’t come from seniority or by station, but is earned by years of practicing genchi genbutsu.
Genchi genbutsu has been defined many times. Here’s my favorite from The Toyota Way:
The actual place and actual thing. It’s the Toyota principle of teaching by going directly to the source to find the facts of a situation, to make correct decisions, to build consensus, and to achieve goals.
I prefer this because it focuses on critical thinking, building consensus, and achieving goals. The results on gemba speak for themselves. Nothing else is needed.
The leader’s efforts are constantly aimed at True North: on-demand, defect-free, and without waste. Demonstrating problem-solving abilities that deliver results towards the aim show that progress is possible. This connects to another part of leadership.
Here’s a short quote from The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership:
The act of deeply thinking through problems, energizing people, and aligning them toward a common goal is the only way to practice and develop real leadership ability.
In this way, the leader amplifies impact by energizing more people to focus their problem-solving skills toward True North.
You may be thinking: “Ok Adam, so how do I become a leader?”. First, understand that leadership cannot be taught. It must be learned through self-development and practice.
The knowledge must come from outside. For knowledge, you’ll need a sensei, a teacher, a coach, a mentor, a guide, a sage—someone from outside yourself to provide the questions and not the answers. The answers are your own.
Taiichi Ohno would even tell his most accomplished students: “You must think for yourself!” and provide nothing else. Surely it was possible for Ohno to give his students some direction or advice. However, he chose not to, instead instilling the need for self-development in the skills needed to reach True North.
There’s a wonderful Haiku from poet Matsu Basho on this:
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the old masters, seek instead what these masters sought.
Leaders are the seeker finding their own path to True North. The path begins with individual transformation. For this, it all goes back to Deming. Allow me to close out this episode with one my all time favorite Deming quotes. This one is from The New Economics:
The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding the system of profound knowledge. The individual, transformed, will perceive new meaning to his life, to events, to numbers, to interactions between people.
Once the individual understands the system of profound knowledge, he will apply its principles in every kind of relationship with other people. He will have a basis for judgement of his own decisions and for transformation of the organizations he belongs to.
OK, that’s all for this batch. This one has been a little larger than usual. So I’ll get out of here quickly. Go to SmallBatches.fm/78 for links to the best material on leading software delivery.
I hope to see you back again for the next episode where conversations with industry leaders comes back from the dead. Well until, happy shipping.
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