Survey Blames Blame for Lean Struggles

The
LEI is out with their annual survey (pdf) about our ongoing
struggles implementing Lean, with articles (reprinting
the press release) and
blog posts already written, The results aren’t the views of the
LEI, but are the views of the respondents to their survey.

The survey asks, in part, “What
are the biggest obstacles to lean implementation at your
facility?”

I appreciate the work the LEI does, but maybe they
should change their survey to a “5 Whys” format to get to the “root
cause” of these problems. The
format of the current survey seems to ask “Who is the biggest
obstacle…?”, which reeks of finger pointing, a practice that
isn’t supposed to be part of the Toyota Way. Instead of
asking “who?” we are supposed to ask “why?” Update: Take
our trial “5 Whys?” survey on this topic.

Before the blaming begins, last year’s #1 reason was “backsliding,”
which seems more an illustration or example of the Lean struggles
than a cause itself. Anyway, it fell to #6 on the list this year.
My nitpicking aside, if we’re “backsliding to old ways of working”
(as the LEI puts it) less, that’s a good thing. Hooray, Lean world.
Rather than just pointing at backsliding, a more appropriate
question, for those who are still backsliding, would be “why are
you backsliding?”

In this year’s survey, the top obstacles are (in a “check all that
apply” format):

1. Middle management resistance (36.1%)
2. Lack of implementation know-how (31.0%)
3. Employee resistance (27.7%)
4. Supervisor resistance (23.0%)
5. Lack of crisis (17.7%)

And the list goes on through the 10 choices on the survey.

Viewed from the positive perspective, *only* 36% percentage of us
face resistance from middle managers, which might not be that bad.
64% of us are able to get our middle managers on board, maybe those
are the ones with a crisis to use as a motivation for Lean.

While the LEI press release headline says “New Survey: Middle
Managers Are Biggest Obstacle to Lean Enterprise,” that’s an
unfortunate analysis. I would have titled it “Ineffective Leaders Blame Other Employees for
Lean Enterprise Struggles.” Blame, blame, blame, maybe they
could add “our ungrateful customers” and “our lousy suppliers” as
survey choices next year?

Sorry to be blunt, but when we find ourselves saying (and trust me,
I’ve caught myself saying it before) “this Lean effort would be
going great only if so-and-so would get on board,” that’s a cop-out
and an excuse. It’s blaming others and I don’t think it’s
productive. It’s OK to identify lack of buy-in as a problem, but
then get to work on it! It’s our job, as leaders, to get people on
board. There are many ways of doing this and many books written on
the topic already. It’s not an altogether bad thing to recognize
your managers are not on board with Lean, the question is what do
you do about it?

#7 in the list hits on what I think is the real key: “Failure to overcome opposition.” That
starts smelling like more of a root cause to me. And that was only
about 4% of the responses. There’s some leaders who are looking in
the mirror (or maybe the respondents were pointing the finger of
blame upward).

I followed up with Chet Marchwinski of the LEI and he told me they
do not know the population distribution of who responded (the range
from CEO to front-line employee), but it’s interesting to see “Lack
of top management support” isn’t in the Top 10. Actually, Chet
pointed out that it wasn’t a choice and there were no open-ended
responses allowed in their survey format. Based on some feedback
from myself (and others), they are considering adding that as a
category/choice for next year.

I hate to point fingers of blame myself, but I’m more willing to
hold accountable the upper management levels who are responsible
for strategy and overall company direction.

We could do a “5 Whys” analysis, which might look something
like:

1. Why are we backsliding?
   Because we’re lacking employee buy in
2. Why do we have that?
   Because the supervisors aren’t bought in and aren’t holding the
   employees accountable
3. Why is that? Because
   the managers aren’t explaining to the supervisors why Lean is
   critical to the company’s success
4. Why is that? Because
   upper management expects their employees to implement Lean because
   they said so and without any other leadership, support, or
   organization alignment
5. Why is that? Because
   upper management is too busy blaming others (Wall St., China,
   suppliers, labor costs) to take the time to be leaders?

Any other thoughts? I’m actually going to pilot
a “5 Whys” format of this same survey question to see if we can
get to root causes and action and away from blame.