A month ago I had the pleasure of attending the LEI Lean Transformation Summit – this year held in Nashville, Tennessee! The theme of this year’s Summit: “Want better employees? Be a better employer”.
I’m honored to be a faculty member of LEI and value the opportunity to get to go to events such as the Lean Transformation Summit. This year I was again teaching a post-Summit workshop as well as giving a “Lean Talk” on Monday night.
Fallen behind, but time to catch up
Where has the month gone? I’ve fallen way off track from my target of two blog posts per month, but there has been good reason. I’ve been on the road for work (including the Lean Summit and a new client) and personal travel, plus just launched the new AME San Francisco Bay Area Consortium and now am gearing up to leave next week to lead a Lean learning trip to Japan on behalf of the Ohio State University.
To make up for my missed cadence in April, I’ve written two posts in 24 hours – one about the AME Consortium launch and now the Lean Transformation Summit from March.
Winners of the “Clarity First” book giveaway
Also, congratulations to Mark Smeets and Ruth Archer who each won a copy of Karen Martin’s new book “Clarity First”! Thank you everyone who registered for a chance for winning.
Even if you missed the giveaway, you can read my interview with Karen about the book and how you can bring clarity to your organization and personal life.
Stay tuned for some more author interview and book giveaways later this year.
Setting time boundaries as a countermeasure for not finding time
My biggest barrier to writing any posts the past month was feeling like I didn’t have enough time to write comprehensive posts describing some of my resent experiences and musings.
Can I write this in 60 minutes?
So in the sprit of not letting perfect be the enemy of the good (or at least something), I’m sitting down and limiting myself to one hour to write and edit a post for you about the Lean Transformation Summit (I put the same boundaries on the AME launch post).
To keep to my goal, while there was so much learning at the Summit, I’m just going to highlight a few standout moments and takeaways from my experience.
Use Tweets instead of uploading photos
Also one way to keep production time down is to insert my tweets instead of formatting many photos. Better tweeted photos than none! (ps. you can follow me on Twitter: @kbjanderson).
Now back to the focus of this post: The Lean Transformation Summit 2018 in Nashville!
Nashville rocks!
My husband and I actually went out to Nashville on Saturday and had a fun child-free weekend together to enjoy the Nashville scene! As parents of 4-year old and 7-year old boys, we don’t get a lot of time out on the town together. A great time was had by all.
We’d been to Nashville once nearly exactly 10 years earlier for a wedding and couldn’t wait to get back. It was awesome to hear so much great live music in just a few days. Plus, after walking around in cowboy boots that I bought back in 2008, I realized it was time for an upgrade….alas my feet have grown after having two kids. I got to break them in the rest of the week.
Couldn’t resist getting a new pair of kickers today. When in Nashville….! What do you think @KRCLean4Service ? pic.twitter.com/qqdLwWUe75
— Katie Anderson (@kbjanderson) March 25, 2018
One highlight of the weekend was going a bit further afield from the main strip and finding a local bluegrass jam session. Awesome stuff!
Catching some local bluegrass jams with @Tomehrenfeld & @danmarkovitz after the #lean18 welcome reception last night. When in Nashville! pic.twitter.com/PA7PXW9yjv
— Katie Anderson (@kbjanderson) March 26, 2018
Lean Talks
This year I participated in the Lean Talks series on Monday night – the second time that LEI has run this experiment at the Summit (the first round last year was at the Summit in Carlsbad). Ten speakers were each given ten minutes or less to talk about a fun and engaging topic (and ideally some personal stories) to share with the group.
Sammy Obara’s talk about Japanese toilets
When I’m in Japan next week, I plan on shamelessly stealing Sammy Obara’s joke about Japanese toilets (I now realize that I’m butchering the joke as I don’t remember the actual lead in….time to email Sammy so I can tell it to my Japan study trip crew!): “What are the most important things to the Japanese when developing their toilets?…. Number 1….and Number 2”. Ha!
My talk “Getting out of the habit of telling”
My topic of “Getting out of the habit of telling” felt a bit ironic to give a talk about not telling. I tried to share more personal stories than just tell….I hope I got close to the mark!
I shared some stories and three actions that I’ve taken to help myself to lead more by asking effective questions rather than giving my opinion:
- Take a “Clarity Pause” (a term I’ve stolen from Karen Martin that describes a practice I’ve been doing for years) to connect with my intention in the moment
- Ask a question before immediately answering a question with my opinion
- Becoming more aware of the quality of my questions
I ended with this call to action to participants to set their own goals:
#lean18 pic.twitter.com/q14Gq2H5Db
— Jeromy Markwort (@jmarkwort) March 27, 2018
Jim Womack’s talk on “How Lean Got its Name”
I enjoyed the Lean Talks, but the only one I took some notes on was Jim Womak’s talk. It was a new story to me!
Jim shared the story of how in 1987 he and the group of researchers were trying to come up with a name to call this thing they had been observing as enabling the enormous performance difference in Japanese auto manufacturers from the rest of the world.
We all know that the name they settled on was “Lean”, and that in subsequent years there has been much discussion and debate on if “Lean” was the best name as it often has negative connotations. Even Jim reflected in his talk that while they described Lean as providing “MORE value with LESS resources by elimination of waste”, people tend to focus on the concept of “less” rather than “more value”.
Do you know some of the other options considered? I didn’t until I heard Jim’s talk.
What do you think about “Fragile Production”?
One suggestion was to call what we know as “Lean” as “Fragile Production” because it is all about people and expresses the fragility of the system.
But as Jim said, no CEO will want to say that they are committed to “Fragile”….so the name was tossed out.
Was “Lean” the right name at the end of the day? Jim asks himself if they could have done better, but concluded that it is hard to know….and it too late now to go back and make a change.
Little known fact learned tonight from Jim Womack – the runner up for the term “lean” was “fragile production”. Ruled out because what CEO wants to be committed to a fragile production system? #lean18 pic.twitter.com/0QNHMLFCyu
— Katie Anderson (@kbjanderson) March 27, 2018
Drinks with Shook, Womack, Orzen and Smith
After the Lean Talks session wrapped up, I found myself chatting in the back of the room with just a few remaining people including Renee Smith, Mike Orzen, Jim Womack and John Shook. I was ready to head out for some casual relaxation post Talks, so turned to Jim and John and asked them if they wanted to go out for a drink with Mike, Renee and me. They said yes, so off we went to their hotel lobby for some food and drink.
No photographic evidence exists or notes taken from our conversation, but it was definitely a highlight of the week to have such personal catch up time with these great thinkers!
Well, some photographic evidence exists….Mike Orzen and I found a selfie photo booth at the hotel lobby and snapped a photo at the end of the night. It was great to get to know Mike and I’m looking forward to exploring some collaboration together in the future.
An irreverent selfie in our hotel lobby after an night of Lean Talks and Lean conversations about mindfulness & intentional practice with @MikeOrzen at @LeanDotOrg #lean18 pic.twitter.com/pBveDmjcEE
— Katie Anderson (@kbjanderson) March 27, 2018
Other Summit Program Highlights
I usually find that the key learning opportunities at events such as the Lean Transformation Summit are not just in the formal programs, but also in the conversations and in between moments to meet people and catch up with others….Dan Markovitz, Sammy Obara, Darril Wilburn, David Verble, Helen Zak, Larry Anderson, Fred Pinto, Flavio Battaglia, Tom Ehnrenfeld, Rose Heathcote, and the Genentech/Roche crew are just a few of the lean thinkers and colleagues from around the world that I got to spend some quality time with during the Summit. Thank you all for adding to and challenging my thinking!
Joining the #lean leaper band at #lean18 in Nashville. Earlier today gearing up for my Lean Talk. pic.twitter.com/16N0wkbhrB
— Katie Anderson (@kbjanderson) March 27, 2018
Here are just a few other learning highlights for me from the event. There are many more, but I won’t meet my target of keeping my post writing to under an hour to get to them all!
Lean in Hotels
I went to a breakout session facilitated by leaders at a hotel in Tenerife. They had a fun interactive session that highlighted their previous current condition of managing food and beverage orders at peak times. Through Lean thinking and practices, they have made tremendous improvements across all areas of the hotel.
Applying #lean thinking to improve customer service in the hospitality industry. My menu today – a burger, fries and 3 margaritas (random chance)! #lean18 pic.twitter.com/CRQmuNGBGo
— Katie Anderson (@kbjanderson) March 26, 2018
SMED and kaizen to speed up drink service
One important improvement was using SMED to make mojitos – from originally several minutes per mojito down to 90 seconds, and now it is at 45 seconds through small daily kaizen by the bar staff!
Demand disguised by wait times
Another improvement and comment that stood out for me was their improvement to the omelet making stations. They realized when they made improvement to the process that they had actually been disguising actual customer demand as customers were opting out when they saw a long line. So they had the unexpected problem of now having to meet increased demand.
It made me reflect on how much do we really know about actual customer demand, and how is our behavior as the service provider influencing or hiding actual demand. Good questions to ask!
You think your customers are happy because the queue isn’t growing but many people aren’t joining queue because it already exists. Actual demand is disguised. Story about improvement in a Tenerife hotel. Demand went from 600 omelets to over 1500 per day through kaizen! #lean18
— Katie Anderson (@kbjanderson) March 26, 2018
Livestream conversation with a bartender in Tenerife about how a kanban system helped improve beverage service in the hotel. #lean18 pic.twitter.com/q9GwV8mTjq
— Katie Anderson (@kbjanderson) March 26, 2018
A few other highlights
Other highlights and key learnings can be summed up by the Tweets I made real-time.
First episode of be new @LeanDotOrg Podcast: WLEI! Recorded live at #lean18 with @Tracey_san Ernie & @jyshook pic.twitter.com/HkYrzvAm5H
— Katie Anderson (@kbjanderson) March 26, 2018
Developing people WHILE asking the work and THROUGH doing the work is how we will really create learning organizations. – John Shook #lean18 pic.twitter.com/GqjR4uydIG
— Katie Anderson (@kbjanderson) March 27, 2018
The options as a result of eliminating waste in our orgs. We have decisions that impact levels of trust and operational effectiveness. -John Shook at #lean18 pic.twitter.com/TGRy4qddag
— Katie Anderson (@kbjanderson) March 27, 2018
Time is up – and please share your reflections
My time is up to write (in fact, I’m about 15 minutes over my allotted 60 minutes), but it feels good to have finally gotten time to reflect on the Lean Transformation Summit and share my reflections here.
Thanks for reading and I welcome your comments.
See you in Houston – March 2018
It can’t beat Nashville as a location for an event, but I’m looking forward to more learning and sharing next year!
Next year’s #Lean Transformation Summit will be in Houston, Texas from March 25-28. Mark your calendars! I’ve never been to Houston – putting it on my calendar now! #lean18 #lean19 @LeanDotOrg pic.twitter.com/8S5RdqmkJN
— Katie Anderson (@kbjanderson) March 27, 2018
