The Control Tower – Learning to See What Is

Pascal Dennis, co-author of Harnessing Digital Disruption

See what is - Pema Chodron

Last time I talked about the cognitive biases that afflict human beings and hinder our ability to see. I used the Electromagnetic spectrum as a metaphor, explaining that we only see a tiny portion of what’s there. I suggested visual management, humility, diversity and going to see for yourself as possible countermeasures to our inherent near-sightedness.

How do you build all this into your management systems & daily routines? I’d like to talk about perhaps the most useful management system: the Control Tower (aka Big Room, Cockpit or ‘Obeya’). This is a large room in analogue and/or digital space that expresses ‘What is Actually Happening’ (WAH) and ‘What Should Be Happening’ WSBH with simple, clear visual systems. Typically, the Control Tower has three ‘walls’:

• What’s our Aspiration & Winning Logic?
• What is happening right now versus what should be happening?
• What are our biggest blockers & what are we doing about them?

In earlier articles I described the four levels of visual management. We need to apply these ideas to tell compelling stories for our key audiences. Typically, our audiences include:

• Our team
• Those who report to us
• Other teams whose support we need, and sometimes
• The Board

Each audience has specific questions it wants answered.

We need to define our Rules of Engagement in advance, and senior leaders are responsible for setting the tone. Here are a few sample rules:

• Talk less - seek to listen and understand.
• Leave your rank at the door
• No HiPPOs or ZEBRAs¹
• Data trumps ‘blah blah blah’
• Encourage broad engagement. Ideally, everybody should speak (with brevity & focus)

We also need to define our Control Tower’s ‘Operating Rhythm’ comprising the Purpose, Process, Expected Outcome, Inputs & Timing. Each session should have a meeting owner and a meeting observer who provides objective feedback: (‘How well did we follow our Rules of Engagement and Operating Rhythm?’)

The Control Tower is a form of theater that reflects our values, standards and culture. We’re telling a true & meaningful story to audiences that are deeply invested and whose help we need to succeed. We’re also expressing who we are, and what we believe in.

As in any good drama, leave the boring parts out. Keep report outs short & focused. ‘Target, actual, please explain’ is an excellent mantra, reinforcing the virtue of simplicity and clarity. ‘Blah, blah, blah’ usually means we don’t know what we’re talking about.

Senior leaders must set the tone by reinforcing standards of behavior. One of my formative experiences was an inept presentation to senior leaders I deeply admired. The President looked at me and simply said, ‘Please do not come here unprepared again, Pascal-san.’

The ensuing silence was painful, but I got the message: Why are you wasting everybody’s time? You know our standards. We expect much more from you. I resolved to do everything within my power to improve. That’s the power of the Control Tower, standards, and strong, ethical leadership.


^{1. Highest Paid Person’s Opinion; Zero Expertise But Really Arrogant↩}

Best wishes,

Pascal Dennis

E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org




In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look….

The Hardest Thing - Seeing What Is
Fundamentals of OpEx/Lean, Part 2
Fundamentals of OpEx/Lean, Part 1
Canada's Innovation Makeover: Singapore’s Cheat Sheet

The Hardest Thing - Seeing What Is

Pascal Dennis, co-author of Harnessing Digital Disruption

See what is - Pema Chodron

I’ve spent the past few decades working with Boards & C-suites around the world - smart, successful people, and for the most part dedicated to the common good. I’ve tried to help people understand a) how to protect the core business using the powerful methods of OpEx/Lean, and b) how to ignite new growth using the methods of Silicon Valley & Singapore. Such ‘ambidexterity’ is the essential to sustained prosperity.

What’s the biggest challenge? How to see what is actually happening (WAH)? Way back when I was a fledgling Toyota manager & engineer, WAH was a central theme. Our splendid mentors (senseis) drew circles on the shop floor and asked us to stand there, observing a process closely. After an hour or so, they’d ask, ‘What do you see?’

With practice, I learned to see waste, variation and strain (Muda, Muri and Mura, the ‘3M’s’). Then our senseis would ask what should be happening (WSBH)? which opened up the worlds of flow, ergonomics and process management. I learned an invaluable lesson: If you can define WAH and WSBH you have a good understanding of the problem. You can start think about countermeasures to bridge the gap. In strategy, we call this the ‘winning logic’, which informs all our activities. But it all begins with Pema Chodron’s simple request, quoted above.

Why is it so hard to see what is? Sages throughout history have pondered this question. A few years back, in INSEAD’s splendid Corporate Governance program, we learned about the hidden biases (blind spots) that can afflict Boards. These include the Anchoring, Sunk Cost, Status Quo & other traps that can lead to decision-making disasters. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky helped to explain our blind spots in their classic book Thinking, Fast & Slow. Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational is another fine resource.

What to do? Visual management is perhaps our greatest enabler. The ingenuity of the front line in making WAH visible is inexhaustible, and a reason why ‘Total Involvement’ is a cornerstone of OpEx/Lean.

A second enabler is humility - accepting that we are fallible creatures whose grasp on reality is imperfect. A third enabler is diversity of training & experience - the broader a team’s composition, the deeper is our grasp of WAH. A fourth enabler is going to see for yourself. Do not trust the report, chart, voice or video message. Go see it, sense it, hear it, touch it…Things are almost always different than you expected.

My core metaphor here is the Electromagnetic Spectrum, which encompasses radio waves, microwaves, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays. Visible Light (i.e. visible to humans) is but a narrow part of the spectrum (~ 400 to 700 nanometers). In other words, we only see a small fraction of what’s there.

How do you build all this into your management systems & daily routines? Stay tuned.

Best wishess,

Pascal Dennis

E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org

PS: To learn more about my executive mentoring programs: Exec 101 - Protecting the Core Business, and Exec 201 – Igniting New Growth, feel free to drop me an e-mail.



In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look….

Fundamentals of OpEx/Lean, Part 2
Fundamentals of OpEx/Lean, Part 1
Canada's Innovation Makeover: Singapore’s Cheat Sheet
The Two-Gear Economy, part 2 - Singapore’s Innovation Ecosystem

Fundamentals of OpEx/Lean, Part 2

Pascal Dennis, co-author of Harnessing Digital Disruption

The Four Levels of Visual Management, Part 2

Last time I talked about making problems visible through the four levels of visual management. I described Levels 1 and 2, which have comparatively low power. Today, our topic is Visual Management, Levels 3 and 4:

Level 3 – Organizes Behavior

Home positions for tools & equipment are a good example. In a surgery, home positions provide a nice visual confirmation that sponges, scalpels and other equipment are back where they belong – and not inside the patient!

In manufacturing, having a home position for, say, our torque wrench and gauges, ensures a) they’re there when we need them, and, as important, b) we know when they’re not there. “Right, Bonnie is doing her daily 2:00 pm torque audit.”

Other good examples include the ribbed perimeters, and studded lane lines on highways. You know at once if you’re on the median or straddling your lane. You quickly correct your behavior.

Recently, I saw a nice kaizen in the Oncology department of a children’s hospital. Infections are a major risk in such wards. How to encourage staff & parents to decontaminate their hands before they enter the room? Move the hand decontamination unit to the point of entry. You can’t enter Oncology without seeing and using the unit. As a result, hand hygiene compliance rates have spiked.

Effective Agile teams implement the Agile ‘ceremonies’ each week including the Monday morning planning meeting, Daily Stand-up, and Friday review of the week’s work. Such process discipline reinforces purpose, highlights abnormalities, and organizes countermeasures while reducing hassle.

Level 4 – The Defect is Impossible

OpEx/Lean practitioners will recognize the ‘poka-yoke’ concept. We develop such a deep grasp of our process and its possible failure modes, that we install gizmos and practices that make them impossible.

Manufacturing is full of these: alarms on torque wrenches, electronic lights and safety mats that disable the machine if a team member enters the line of fire, gasoline nozzles that won’t fit diesel tanks and so on.

A good website payment process makes it impossible to proceed to the next screen unless you have entered the needed information correctly. In Health Care, a poka-yoke on gas lines make it impossible to mis-connect oxygen and other gas lines.

As we get better at OpEx/Lean, our visual management naturally progresses from Level 1 to Level 4. Once we’re good at Level 1 and 2 visual management, we begin to think. “The same defect – here we go again! How do we prevent it?”

Who is the best source of Level 3 and 4 visual management? Front-line team members, of course, which is why Total Involvement is a leader’s priority. Alienate the front line and you lose all their insight & creativity. Problems mushroom – but you already know that.

OpEx/Lean fundamentals like visual management are also the cornerstone of Innovation. By protecting your core business with OpEx/Lean, you lay the foundation for Igniting New Growth with Digital methods.

Best regards,

Pascal Dennis

E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org

PS: To learn more about my executive mentoring programs: Exec 101 - Protecting the Core Business, and Exec 201 – Igniting New Growth, feel free to drop me an e-mail.



In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look.…

Fundamentals of OpEx/Lean, Part 1
Canada's Innovation Makeover: Singapore’s Cheat Sheet
The Two-Gear Economy, part 2 - Singapore’s Innovation Ecosystem
The Two-Gear Economy, part 1 – Canada’s Innovation Predicament

Fundamentals of OpEx/Lean, Part 1

Pascal Dennis, co-author of Harnessing Digital Disruption

The Four Levels of Visual Management, Part 1

You can’t fix what you can’t see. This applies whether you’re trying to protect your core business or ignite new Growth using Digital methods. Excellence entails making problems visible. The added benefit: visual management frees up ‘white space’ in your brain. You feel lighter, fresher & more creative.

Here are the four levels of Visual Management, in order of increasing power:

Level 1 – Tells only

STOP signs are a good example of Level 1 Visual Management. In our neighbourhood, people blow through STOP signs all the time. In fact, we call them ‘Hollywood stops’ – the driver slows by 5 miles per hour, takes a perfunctory look around & drives on through. Not exactly, Safety First.

A Digital equivalent might be a chart in a virtual ‘Control Tower’ (aka Obeya), say on Miro or Mural, that everybody ignores. Or an Agile team’s kanban board with WIP levels far exceeding defined standards but is likewise ignored.

Level 2 – Something changes, which gets your attention

Traffic lights are a good example. “Hey, the light’s changed to Green. We can drive on.”

Level 2 has more power because, done well, it wakes people up. A Digital equivalent might be a chart in a Control Tower that includes a target line, a Red/Green indicator, and a sticky note below it explaining what’s going on. And a Leader operating rhythm (standardized process) wherein we review our key indicators on a regular basis and act on significant abnormalities.

My regular readers may recall that OpEx/Lean is about wakefulness…. “Wake up everybody! We have a problem...”

Sadly, visual management in many organizations gets stuck at Level 1. Have you ever been in a hospital full of signage exhorting staff with some slogan? “Patient Safety is everybody’s responsibility!”

As W. Edward Deming observed a generation ago, such exhortations amount to blaming the worker. They subtly shift responsibility from senior management to front line workers. “Hey, don’t blame me. I told them not to do it…”

A few years back, my mom had major surgery at a local hospital. The medical staff was dedicated and capable, as usual, but was the management system making their lives easier? For example, was there visual management around infection control, or mis-medication - methods that highlighted abnormalities and triggered countermeasures?

At a deeper level, did senior leaders foster a culture of transparency, psychological safety and involvement? Did team members feel able to highlight – and fix – abnormalities? Were they trained in root cause problem solving?

No, just exhortations: Do something! It’s up to you!

My mom suffered not one, but two infections. And when I wrote to the VP of Patient Safety & Experience, I received an astonishing response. My mom was to blame, not the hospital. Evidently, in the VP’s mind patients and the front-line staff were responsible for safety. (I don’t want to be misunderstood. I’ve been privileged to work with many splendid hospitals.)

Deming taught us that the root cause of the problem is almost always in the system – which senior management owns. Senior leaders cannot take the authority, rewards and perquisites of power – and not accept the responsibility.

Next time, I’ll talk about Level 3 and 4 visual management.

Best regards,

Pascal Dennis

E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org

PS To learn more about my Strategy Execution program, Getting the Right Things Done in a Digital World, feel free to drop me a line.




In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

Canada's Innovation Makeover: Singapore’s Cheat Sheet
The Two-Gear Economy, part 2 - Singapore’s Innovation Ecosystem
The Two-Gear Economy, part 1 – Canada’s Innovation Predicament
Has OpEx/Lean Gone Wrong?