This is an excerpt from the book "Five Minute Lean", by David McLachlan - a wonderful book that blends teaching of the tools, culture and philosophy of traditional Lean with a modern-day Lean parable. You can get the whole book on Amazon here and enjoy your own copy.
The Five Minute Catch-up
One of the biggest challenges of a Lean transformation is getting everyone on the same page with the problem solving, job improving tools and methods, and creating a culture that supports it.
Having this book in everyone’s hands is a good start, but if you want to ensure things move along quickly, you can use the “Five Minute Catch-up” to keep the method front of mind and increase your Lean momentum further.
As a Leader, it simply involves catching up with your team-mates for five minutes, once a week, and asking the questions below. The questions might seem simple, but they are designed with the “power of incentives” (5.5) in mind. Remember, what we measure, tends to improve. Asking these questions by catching up once a week is a friendly way to measure progress, and ensures the skills do not fade away. In practice, this might mean stopping by our team-mates’ desk or workstation (the Gemba), or catching up at lunch or morning tea.
The questions are:
- Where are you up to in the book?
- What is your favourite part today?
- Which part puzzles you?
- What part(s) can you use currently to improve your own personal job?
- How can I help you do this?
Other options might be to make the questions visible (on the wall or workstation) so everybody knows what to expect. Then team-mates, leaders, managers and even CEOs can stop by at any time and ask – everyone is on the same page.
If people aren’t reading the book, or say they find it annoying or distasteful, don’t worry! Disagreeing with something is how we come to understand it. Keep going routinely through the questions each week, and encourage team-mates to seek and discover answers for themselves. The problem solving culture will form, and you will find that the biggest critics often evolve into the greatest supporters.
This is an excerpt from the book "Five Minute Lean", by David McLachlan - a wonderful book that blends teaching of the tools, culture and philosophy of traditional Lean with a modern-day Lean parable. You can get the whole book on Amazon here and enjoy your own copy.
Selected chapters from the story within Five minute Lean:
- Lean Parable – Where Lisa Makes a Change
- Lean Parable – Where Lisa Discovers a New Way
- Lean Parable – Where Lisa Performs a Balancing Act
- Lean Parable – Where Lisa Pulls the Trigger
- Lean Parable – Where Lisa Sets a New Standard
- Lean Parable – Where Lisa Becomes a Leader
Check out these selected chapters from the teachings within Five Minute Lean:
- Five Minute Lean – Use Feedback to Fix and Guarantee
- Five Minute Lean – Introduction
- Five Minute Lean – Go to the Gemba
- Five Minute Lean – Work Towards One-Piece-Flow (and Reducing Silos or Batching)
- Five Minute Lean – Map the Value Stream to Reveal Opportunities
- Five Minute Lean – Help Your Process Flow with Line Balancing
- Five Minute Lean – Collect and Measure Feedback With the Net Promoter Score
- Five Minute Lean – Get Your Map Started with a SIPOC
- Five Minute Lean – Gather Direct Feedback and Indirect Feedback
- Five Minute Lean Summary
- The Five Minute Catch-up
- Five Minute Lean – Organise Your Process with Five S
- Five Minute Lean – Implement With Agile for Fast Iterations and Feedback
- Five Minute Lean – Solve the Real Cause of the Problem
- Five Minute Lean – Create a New Standard Procedure and Checklist for Quality Control
- Five Minute Lean – Use Kaizen and Kaizen Events to Help Stakeholder Buy-In
- Five Minute Lean – Use Pareto to Find Where to Start
- Five Minute Lean – Make Feedback Meaningful with Kano Analysis
- Five Minute Lean – Create a Pull System with FIFO, Kanban Triggers and Visual Management
- Five Minute Lean – Build in Quality with Error-Proofing and Autonomation