There may be no such thing as a bad question, but that doesn’t mean all questions are the right ones. For example, take the question: When can we say we are lean?
When an organization poses this question, it raises red flags, says Dr. Mohamed Saleh, who hosts in tandem with John Dyer the podcast Behind the Curtain: Adventures in Continuous Improvement.
“The first problem with that question is a mindset,” Saleh says. It highlights “three buckets of mindset violations … that are happening simultaneously.”
In this episode, Saleh and Dyer discuss the three mindset violations spurred by the question: When can we say we are lean? This edition is both Part 1 of a series of conversations around lean maturity and a continuation of the duo’s exploration of tough questions about team-based continuous improvement.
Both Dyer and Saleh say it’s common for organizations that are implementing lean to ask how far they need to go before they can say, “Hey, we’re lean.” And while it may be common, Saleh says the question violates a lean mindset in three ways simultaneously. The question:
- Speaks to lean as a destination rather than a journey.
- Highlights the psychological human need for closure.
- Sends an organization on a dangerous path if it declares itself lean. “The second an organization finally declares that they've arrived [at lean] is the moment they start to decay,” Saleh says.
The podcast co-hosts delve into each of the mindset violations individually, with Saleh describing lean as a “living system of behaviors.” Like exercise and being fit, lean “is something you practice, or you lose it,” he says.
Dyer agrees. He emphasizes the need to fundamentally change an organization’s foundation to build ongoing team-based continuous improvement. Those changes include hiring practices, rewards and recognition, and promotions.
Ultimately, the right question isn’t a variation of “Are we there yet?” the hosts say. Instead, Dyer suggests an alternative that goes something like, “What can we permanently change about the way that we hire, reward, recognize, promote the various values that we hold dear in order to make this team-based continuous-improvement thing called lean a part of our fabric that never is going to change.”
