LEI（精益企业研究所）主席John Shook分享了他关于成功的精益领导力（lean leadership）的文章。

他认为，精益实践是关于个人和组织的学习，如果精益活动只是失衡地关注精益的工具和技术，没有“社会方面”-人们一起学习和工作的成功，大多数精益实践者知道精益努力在“运营方面”是不能成功的。

每一个成功的精益实践者都有“喜欢学习”的特点，他们是“愿意（willful）”的“学习者（learner）”，有时候我们会满足于成为“知道者（knower）”，这会忽视停下来简单地问：“我们是否真的知道这个情况，我们需要学习什么”的价值。

Jim Luckman 认为，如果个人缺乏做为“学习者”的心态，则难以做为一个组织共同工作。

精益系统（lean system）运用具体的精益工具和方法（精益学习机制）迎接这个挑战，如PDCA和愿意的学习，具体如：Standardized Work（标准化作业）, Kata（套路）, Strategy Alignment（战略校准） (aka hoshin kanri方针管理) and the A3 process（A3流程） among others.

最后，他倡导将“共同学习Collaborative Learning”做为今年LEI Lean Transformation Summit的主题。

原文如下： 

I wish I knew more about learning. I know quite a lot, just not nearly enough. Like you, I’ve been educated – hopefully even learning throughout that process – for many (too many?) years. I’ve – again hopefully – continued to learn outside of formal “education” throughout my life, as have you, in work and personal life. I’ve also read a library full of books on just about every dimension of learning you can imagine: child development, adult learning, socialization as learning, organizational learning, the neurological science of learning, and of course the various principles and techniques of learning as they apply specifically to lean practice.

If you’ve read this far, you know by now that lean practice is in fact all about learning. At the individual level, at the organizational level. If many corners of the lean movement started out with an unbalanced focus on tools and techniques, most lean practitioners know by now that no lean effort will succeed on the operational side without success on the social side – the dimension of people working and learning together.

So, here’s an observation. Recently I was part of a passionate discussion with a high-powered group of leaders regarding the requirements of successful lean leadership. The group listed a list of things that leaders need to do to lead a successful lean transformation. The only thing I added was the following.

There is one characteristic that is common among every successful lean practitioner I have met: they love to learn. They are curious by nature, but more, they are willful learners. You could say that, as humans, we all learn all the time, right? Maybe, but here are two things to consider. First, that modifier of “willful” is important. You can usually learn more effectively if you are intent on learning from the beginning of each activity, rather than sit back to passively expect that learning will happen. Listen to your favorite athlete or musician describe how he or she attained their skill.

Secondly, sometimes we become content to fall into the more complacent frame of mind of the “knower.” It feels comforting to think you know the answer in each situation. In fact, most traditional organizations encourage such a mindset. In such settings, leaders at all levels are expected to know, to know the best way, the right way, to know the solution, no matter what comes up. While knowing things is important, such an attitude – so often so pervasive – can disregard the value of stopping to ask simply, “What do we truly know about this situation, and what do we need to learn?”

In The Learner’s Path – Practices for Recovering Knowers, author Brian Hinken explores the minds and behaviors of “knowers” and “learners.” In reality, we all switch from being learners in one instance to knowers in the next. But, the more we train ourselves to embrace the learner within us, the more … we will learn. LEI faculty member and lean coach Jim Luckman makes that distinction – among others – a key component of our intense three-day Transformational Leadership workshop. If it’s a challenge to maintain a learner’s mind as an individual, it’s exponentially harder when we are working together as a group, with deadlines looming, problems rampant, and the demand for knowing the right answer omnipresent.

It’s a challenge to do this, and that’s why lean systems (the ultimate social-technical system, where the operating processes are the people developing processes) respond to this challenge with specific tools and methods—mechanisms for lean learning. There are a handful of core lean practices whose purpose is to serve as mechanisms to enable the practice of PDCA and willful learning, notably: Standardized Work, Kata, Strategy Alignment (aka hoshin kanri) and the A3 process among others. Each is a PDCA based learning cycle – the key to learning faster and deeper in dynamic real-world circumstances is to cycle willfully and cycle fast.

Consider the story of my longtime friend and colleague Gary Convis. In the excerpt (which you can find in our lean.org A3 dojo) from his new book The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership, co-authored with Jeff Liker, Gary shares the story of how he learned the power of the A3 process at NUMMI—where he learned that his role was not to oversee and order his engineers around, but to learn how to coach them to become effective owners of their problems and countermeasures. In an interview we will post next week, Gary will expand on his use of the A3 as a collaborative process that enabled him to achieve learning and alignment among the far-flung members of the global organization of Dana Corporation.

Still, I wish I knew more about learning. And that’s why we made “Collaborative Learning” and its application to lean practice as the theme of this year’s LEI Lean Transformation Summit. We chose to focus on collaborative learning not because we think we know everything about it. Rather, we know we want to learn more about it and recognized there would be no better way to learn than to gather together with you to share the experiences of the Lean Community. We asked prominent lean practitioners with extensive experience in leading lean consortia, networks, and clubs to share their learning in the, well, collaborative learning environment that is the gemba of our annual Summit. Click here if this sounds interesting and you’d like to join us March 7-8 (in person in Jacksonville Florida or through internet streaming, which makes it possible this year for the first time for you to join us no matter where in the world you may be).

John Shook
Chairman and CEO