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Welcome back to Thoughts on Change, the podcast where we make change make sense.
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Over the last several episodes, we've been talking about credibility and the characteristics that kick-ass CI practitioners embody being a change shaper.
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At the end of the last episode, I said something that I think deserves an entire conversation.
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I said, our job isn't to force success, our job is to make success easier.
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Now that sounds simple, but I think it completely changes how we think about continuous improvement.
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Because if we're honest, a lot of us were taught that our job is to solve problems or implement lean or reduce waste or deploy a new process or just make things more efficient.
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But that's not really what we're hired to do.
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Our job is to help people succeed in a new process or a new culture or in that more efficient environment.
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And if they aren't succeeding, our job is to remove the things making success harder.
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That's a very different mindset than just implementing.
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Think about the best teachers, coaches, mentors, or managers you've ever had.
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What made them great?
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Usually it wasn't because they had all the answers.
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It was because somehow they made it easier for you to succeed.
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They gave you enough direction without micromanaging.
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They helped when you got stuck.
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They adjusted when something wasn't working.
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They believed you could do it.
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That's exactly what we should be doing as improvement leaders.
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Not creating more work, creating fewer obstacles.
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Welcome to Thoughts on Change, the podcast about the messy, political, emotional, deeply human side of leading change.
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I'm Kelly, and I believe anyone can implement lead tools until they actually have to get people to use them.
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Around here, we talk about how to move culture, how to build credibility, and how to influence without bulldozing.
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Basically, how to herd humans without losing your mind.
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So, what actually makes success easier?
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I found it comes down to four things.
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First, people need clarity about what good looks like.
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This sounds obvious, but it's amazing how often we skip it.
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We assume everyone knows what success looks like because we know.
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We built the project plan, we created the process, we've looked at the data for weeks, we studied the tools and methodologies.
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But everyone else hasn't.
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Imagine asking someone to hit a target they can't actually see.
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Sure, maybe they'll keep shooting, but they'll probably miss, and then they'll get frustrated and doing something they can't see the result of or know if they're doing it right.
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And then we wonder why adoption is inconsistent.
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One of the simplest questions you can ask is what does good actually look like?
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Not for you, for them.
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Can they picture it?
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Can they recognize it when they get there?
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Can they explain it to someone else?
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If not, we probably haven't created enough clarity.
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And here are a couple of my favorite phrases to help get clarity on what good looks like.
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Play me the movie.
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And if I peeled back the roof and watched people in this new way, what would I see?
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Okay, second.
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People need to understand expectations.
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And there are actually two kinds of expectations here: the outcome and the behavior.
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Outcome expectations answer questions like, what are we trying to accomplish?
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And what results are we after?
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Behavior expectations answer questions like, how do we work together?
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What does good participation look like?
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What should happen when something goes wrong?
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And those are completely different conversations.
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I've seen improvement projects where everyone agreed on the goal, right?
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Reduce defects, increased throughput, improve safety.
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Everyone nodded, everyone smiled, and then six weeks later, everyone was frustrated.
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Not because they disagreed about the goal or the outcome, but because nobody had talked about expectations.
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Who owns what?
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When do we escalate?
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How do we make decisions?
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Is it okay to experiment?
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Can we disagree?
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The outcomes were clear, but the behaviors weren't.
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And both matter.
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I was actually in a Kaizen event this past week where I learned right before the event started that a
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key behavior could potentially derail everything.
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The goal of the event was to smooth out the area's output so they would meet it consistently every day instead of these spikes and hockey sticks.
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In addition, we were aiming to free up about half of the labor in this area to go to another area that desperately needed help.
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For these outcomes to work, we needed to make sure that the labor was appropriately balanced and that if there were problems with supply or issues on the line, that people were able to flex to other parts of the area to help clear the issue and get back to smooth and consistent output.
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Now, three days before the event would start, I heard the site leader say that the team would look at their output for the day and say, oh yeah, we missed, but we did this other activity, look at this other thing we did.
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And in essence, they were celebrating that they kept themselves busy.
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This was a huge red flag to me about the success of this event.
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If we didn't set that behavior expectation of flexing people to help where it was needed and not just stay busy, we could make all of the improvements we want, but in the end, we would not meet our outcome goal.
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That behavior expectation there was key.
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All right.
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Third, success gets easier when people can openly talk about barriers.
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One of the fastest ways to kill improvement is making people feel like they have to pretend everything is fine.
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Because if people can't safely say, this won't work, or I don't understand, or we don't have enough time, or this creates another problem, those problems don't disappear.
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They just go underground.
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And eventually they become real resistance and friction.
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Sometimes we treat barriers like they're complaints, but barriers are just information.
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They're clues, they're the system telling us where success is difficult.
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And this one can be really hard for us CI folks because it can feel like we're being attacked when people share obstacles to an improvement.
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But we aren't.
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When someone points out an obstacle, they are really helping us.
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And instead of defending the idea, we should try to get curious, ask questions, and thank them.
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Because they're actually helping us improve the improvement.
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All right, finally, we need to make experimentation the norm.
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One of the biggest mistakes we make is assuming there is one perfect solution.
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And there almost never is.
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Every team is different, every culture is different, every shift is different, every problem is different.
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What works beautifully in one area might completely fall apart somewhere else.
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So instead of saying this is the new process, what if we said this is our current best idea and this is where we'd like to start from?
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That's a very different conversation.
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Now we're learning together instead of enforcing together.
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Experimentation gives people ownership.
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It gives them permission to improve the improvement.
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And here's the really funny thing: people are usually far more committed to something they helped build than something they were handed, even if they built it through trial and error.
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So let's put these four pieces together.
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Success gets easier when people have clarity about what good looks like, clear expectations for both outcomes and behaviors, open conversations about barriers, and permission to experiment until the process fits the people doing the work.
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Now, notice that nowhere on this list did I say push harder, convince better, get executive sponsorship, build a prettier PowerPoint.
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Those things might help, but they aren't what actually makes success easier.
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Now, you may be listening to this thinking, Kelly, I've done all of those things, I've explained the vision, I've set expectations, I've asked for feedback, I've experimented, and people still resist.
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Exactly.
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Because making success easier is incredibly important, but it's only half of the story.
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Sometimes, even when success is easy, people still don't move.
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Why?
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That's where we're headed next.
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Because resistance isn't always about the process, it's often about something much deeper.
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And once we understand that, the entire conversation around buy-in starts to change.
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We'll dive into that in the next episode.
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And until then, go make success easier for someone this week.
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Not by doing the work for them, but by removing one obstacle standing in their way.
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Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.
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That's a wrap for this episode of Thoughts on Change.
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If you're also out there trying to move culture instead of just installing tools, hit subscribe and share this with a fellow CI warrior.
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And remember, progress beats perfection, curiosity beats control, and culture beats everything.
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See you next time.