Coaching Lean

 Getting Started

My approach when getting engaged with a new team or organization is to first listen and understand the entire context of the client: the executives, the leaders, the teams, their work, their customers and their history.

Second, understand the goals and constraints of the client, the teams, the leaders, the people, etc, in terms of how they want to be coached: Hands On? Back of the Room? Sensei? What do they know already? What would they like to learn? What are their challenges? Current pains?

Then engage to empower the team – when I am successful, they will own their own continuous improvement – able to “Learn Their Way” out of any problem and into greater and greater success.

At any time, this may involve training and coaching teams, leaders, individuals, executives through the three levels described below.

Ongoing

I pay close attention to team dynamics, interpersonal relations and communication styles.

I seek to understand what their experience with “agile” or Lean has been. Scrum, Kanban? A scaling framework like SAFe or Spotify? What worked or not? What did they like or not?

I want to get as much face time as possible as quickly as possible with all who have issues, confusion, doubt, resistance or reluctance. I have extensive experience with agile “anti-patterns” and ill-fitted frameworks. Many times issues can be resolved quickly by getting practice with the very process of continuous improvement itself. I set up open training sessions, Q&A sessions (office hours, ask-me-anything time), and informal “lunch and learn” sessions for various tools and techniques. I hold “student pilot” sessions (private, small group or open as appropriate) for people to try ideas out. As much as possible I seek to get leaders, managers, and executives involved in the Lean adoption (learning how to improve) process.

Three levels of Coaching

In coaching I provide large group training, team coaching, individual counseling and executive coaching to meet the organization in their own context at three levels:

Strategic / Principle:

• What is the Value we deliver to the Customer? How do we get better (Kaizen)?
• What is the Work needed to create that Value? How do we get better?
• What are the Skills and Knowledge needed to do the Work? How do we get better?
• What are the Behaviors and Systems needed to do these? How do we get better?
• What is the Culture needed to empower the organization to accomplish this? How do we get better?

Operational / Attitude:

• Establish a Sense of Urgency: What is the most important thing to finish today?
• The Three Pillars of Respect (Respect for Customer, Respect for your Craft, Respect for People)
• Kaizen in Your Heart (Continuous Improvement)
• Go and See (for leaders and executives: Genchi Genbutsu)
• Problems Are Treasures
• Eyes for Waste (eliminate the 15 kinds of waste)
• What is Standard Work?
• Make Retrospectives meaningful
• Lead with Data
• Substance over ceremony
• Flow 
• Deming’s 14 Points

Tactical / Tools and Techniques

• Visual Management 
• PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act)
• Andon (Stop and Fix)
• Use of the A3 (scientific method)
• Statistical Process Control (e.g., using the Jira control chart)
• Root Cause Analysis 
• The “Periodic Table” of work
• Value Stream Analysis
• Global Best Practices (Yokuten)

Depending on need and interest I instill these principles, attitudes and techniques so that they are part of everyone’s “common sense” behavior of how to get things done.