Driving Strategic Alignment with the Lean Management SystemNovember 19, 2025 •4:00 PM UTC

[00:00]

Dan: Our speaker today is Peg Pennington, President of MoreSteam. She’s on the Board of Directors of the Lean Enterprise Institute. She used to be the Executive Director of the Center for Operational Excellence at The Ohio State University. She’s a frequent speaker at conferences and involved in all sorts of good stuff.

Like I said, we’ll get right into a few housekeeping notes. Chat is going to be disabled during today’s session. I did see a couple of chats already – somebody said “Go Bucks!” and “Great to see you, Peg.” That chat function is going to be disabled, so please do not use chat; use the Q&A instead.

Please go ahead and put your questions in the Zoom Q&A panel. I’ll be monitoring the Q&A, and I’ll look for good stopping points to jump in and ask Peg your questions.

I’ll also save some questions for the end, because we’ll have time at the end for Q&A. I might hold a few until then, especially so we can keep moving through the topics.

Soon, the materials from today’s webinar will be posted on the MoreSteam website under the Resources section. We’ll send you an email when those materials are available. There will also be a short survey at the end, so please stick around. You’re all in quality and continuous improvement, listening to customer feedback and surveys, so please take the survey so we can listen and improve.

Peg, now I’m going to turn it over to you. Peg Pennington, everyone!

Peg: Okay. Hey, thanks so much, Dan. I really appreciate that. And welcome to our webinar on Driving Strategic Alignment with the Lean Management System.

My former mentor – actually, still my mentor – is Peter Ward. He’s an emeritus professor at The Ohio State University. He would always stress to me that the Lean Management System is deceptively difficult.

Everything I’m going to share today will sound like common sense. But it takes a lot of discipline and a lot of persistence to have your organization truly follow the principles of a Lean Management System. So, let’s talk through what that is today.

When we think about the Lean Management System, it’s really four systems.

I’m going to start at the top today, which is our strategy system, and that’s what creates alignment so that every team member knows what “winning” looks like.

Then we’re going to move into the problem-solving system, and I’ll spend a lot of time there. The problem-solving system is really how strategy becomes reality. They’re all connected: from the strategy system to the problem-solving system.

The problem-solving system is the method for closing the gaps identified by the strategy system.

Then we talk about the daily management system, which, to me, is the heartbeat of the Lean Management System. It creates accountability and transparency, and it provides early warnings for potential problems.

Finally, the people system is really the glue that holds everything together. Without leaders who model the right behaviors and employees who feel supported and empowered, the other systems fail.

So let’s start with that strategy system.

[00:05]

This is the image I’m going to keep coming back to today and building out components of. We start at the top, in the purple, which is where our True North and overall strategy live. Then we move into the blue, which is the problem-solving system. Then into the orange, the daily management system. And eventually we’ll finish with the people system.

These are all components of the Lean Management System. While I’m starting with the strategy system, that’s not always how it unfolds in your organization.

Sometimes people come into this Lean Management System at the problem-solving level. For example, “Let’s use a structured methodology and start a problem-solving system.” Then eventually they say, “How is this connected to strategy?” and “How are we maintaining that system?”

So, while I’ll talk about it in this order, that may not be how your organization actually started down the path.

As leaders set the strategy, we eventually get to this idea of True North. You may have heard people talk about that. What is True North? It is the long-term, unchanging direction of the organization.

We want to communicate that throughout the organization so we have alignment. It might be something like, “We want to be the number one car company in the world,” or “We want to be the best car company in the world.” People align around that.

But once you have your True North, it also helps you know what to say no to. And we’ll see why that’s important in a second.

When we think about the strategy system, it translates our high-level goals into clear, meaningful targets at every level. Not lots of targets – but a few targets that are very important.

I like to think of those as voice-of-the-customer metrics. Because without our customers, we’re not going to be in business. So we need a customer-facing metric that everyone can see and understand.

The challenge is that, at this level of the organization, whether it’s customer metrics, financial metrics, or supplier metrics, they tend to be lagging metrics.

If you think about accounting or financial metrics, we have to close the books and roll them up. We see those after the fact.

In Lean, what we’re trying to do – and you’ll hear this theme as I present today – is to make sure the people working in the system have leading metrics.

So we go from the strategic lagging metrics down to leading metrics, and that is what helps create alignment. I have a picture of rocks there. These are the big rocks we want to go after in our organization. There are only a few of them.

I think strategic alignment is less about choosing what to do and more about choosing what not to do. I know when our leadership team gets together, we’re always trying to add, add, add. There’s real power in subtraction. When you start subtracting, you’re forced to decide what’s truly more important.

And as leaders, our capacity is finite. Lean teaches us that: capacity is finite. If you keep loading the system with more work, you create bottlenecks, delays, and burnout.

Strategic alignment requires us to intentionally remove work from the system so we can focus on the vital few.

You’ve probably heard this before: If everything is a priority, then nothing is.

So we have our strategy and a few key objectives we’re trying to work on. Then we want to translate that strategy into our problem-solving system.

David Upton, a professor at Harvard, wrote an article in the California Management Review about operations as a strategy. There was a line in there that I loved:

“The battle is won, not in the boardroom, but in laboratories, on the factory floors, at your service counters, and in your computer rooms.”

I remember thinking, “Yes, operations is so important. That’s where you win your customers.”

So, when I think about this, strategy is ultimately won where the work is done, not where the PowerPoint is presented.

Once we have our strategy, we have to get out of the corner office and get into the hard work of implementing the strategy. That’s where a lot of us on this call probably spend our time: in the problem-solving system.

[00:10]

Peg: So, Dan, I told you I’d give you some pauses today. As we move from True North to our problem-solving system, are there any questions?

Dan: We have not yet had a question, Peg. You must be explaining everything so thoroughly and wonderfully that no one has any questions.

Peg: They’re thinking. We’ll get to that problem-solving system and see what percolates.

So, I’m going to move from this purple part where we’re talking about those few key metrics – the big rocks – and now we’ll bring it down to the problem-solving system, where we spend a lot of our time.

First, I want to talk about the value stream. I’m pulling some of this thinking from David Mann, who wrote Creating a Lean Culture. He spent a lot of time at Steelcase. He was an industrial psychologist, and he really understood Lean thinking.

On the left, we have a traditional org chart. For nearly a century, corporations have followed this structure. Alfred P. Sloan at General Motors wasn’t the first to have an organizational chart, but he codified that body of knowledge: we have an engineering division, a manufacturing division, a marketing division, and so on.

Since then, most of us have been organized that way.

But Lean asks us to organize differently. Lean says, “Organize around flow.” It emphasizes horizontal thinking.

So, vertical thinking on the left (org chart), and horizontal thinking on the right (value streams).

I have a Pac-Man on the slide representing how the strength of the org chart – the formal organization – “eats” the value stream every day. Without a really strong Lean Management System, even when we try to organize around value streams, we often revert back to the org chart. And here’s why.

On the org chart side, we have authority, reporting relationships, and functional responsibilities. It’s administratively clear who supervises whom, who owns the budget, and so on. But it’s static.

On the value stream side, we’re organized around flow – flow for the customer, from request to delivery. The purpose is operational clarity: how work gets done across the company. It’s dynamic, not static. It should continuously change as processes improve.

The org chart is very strong because it carries so much formal authority. You may be incentivized to optimize for your function.

Some companies have a value stream leader and are organized that way, but more often we are not.

So you end up with a value stream that has no formal authority. You might have improvement teams, but they still report into functional leaders.

You have lots of measures within the silos, within the functions, but not as many end-to-end measures that everyone is aligned to.

When you move from focusing on organizational structure to value-stream thinking, you want everybody in the value stream to be organized around key performance indicators about how well the entire value stream is performing, as opposed to just “How well is my function performing?”

The org structure gets reinforced by hierarchy, performance appraisals, and all of those things – that gives it a lot of strength.

The value stream is about transparency, collaboration, and surfacing issues.

[00:15]

Dan: Got a couple questions, Peg. This is a good time.

Peg: Yeah.

Dan: This one’s from Kate: “Which of the things on the Lean Management System wheel are the critical ones, or what order should we do them in if we can only give attention to one in the next one to two years, to help us eventually build into the full wheel?”

Peg: Okay, I would say: instead of thinking, “I want to do A3 problem-solving across my entire organization,” ask, “Can we get to a small area of our organization and put the whole wheel in place there?”

So instead of pulling one element out – like daily management, or problem solving, or strategic thinking – I’d ask: is there a slice of your company where you can put the entire wheel in place? That slice can then become a benchmark for the rest of the organization.

You have your corporate strategy, but you can come down to a plant level or a business unit. They have a strategy. You can put in problem solving, daily management, and of course that leads back to the people system. Put the whole system into place there.

That’s my preference, as opposed to picking just one thing and trying to go really wide. It might feel disconnected. Early in Lean adoption, people would pull out just 5S. It’s a great principle: cleanliness, organization, surfacing problems. But consultants would come in and do 5S everywhere, disconnected from strategy.

People would ask, “Why does this matter to me? Why should my maintenance shop be 5S?” And it wouldn’t sustain, because it didn’t have that broader connection. That’s why I like the idea of a model cell, as Toyota calls it – one area where the full system is in place.

Good question, Kate.

Dan: Yeah, that was a great question. I’ve got a couple more questions on prioritization and organization that I’m going to save for the end so you can move on. Thank you for all these awesome questions, everyone.

Peg: Okay, I might hit on some of that. So leaders have to create this balance between a strong hierarchy and value stream thinking.

If you want to manage by value streams, the daily management system and the routines around it are really important: visual controls, standard work for leaders, and clear ownership.

So that was value-stream thinking. Now let’s talk about the problem-solving system.

We use tools like mapping – “learning to see.” I think it’s important to create a map of the work you’re trying to improve.

Value stream mapping is powerful because it brings data into the story and also shows you where flow stops.

As value-stream thinkers, we want to move from single-point improvements (“I’m improving one thing”) to system-level improvements. We want to see all of the gaps in an area so we can prioritize.

On the topic of priority – and I’m bringing this up because it sounded like we had a question about it – this is, without a doubt, the order you work in:

1. Safety
2. Quality
3. Lead time
4. Cost

Safety issues come first. That is respect for your employees. You must ensure a safe working environment, including psychological safety – making it easy for people to surface problems.

After safety comes quality. If we have quality problems, we want to fix those because internal and external failures cost money and time. Rework and defects steal your lead time.

So: safety, then quality, then lead time. Cost will fall out of the system if you improve these.

You should not work on a lead-time issue if you have a safety problem.

[00:20]

This next idea is from my colleague, Ken Robinette, our VP of Business Development, and I’ve completely stolen it from him. He always talks about “Understand, Simplify, Automate.”

When we look at the value stream, everybody wants to jump to automation – especially now, with so many tools available. But first, seek to understand:

• How does work flow?
• Why does work stop?

Then we simplify: use all those classic seven wastes from Lean. Get rid of waiting, defects, excess inventory, etc.

Then, once we have an improved value stream, we look at automation: How can automation and new tools help us improve flow even further?

I like mapping because it aligns everyone to the same reality. Many functions are involved in delivering value. Mapping is a team sport – we come together, create a shared picture of the process, identify process problems, and work together to solve them.

We want to engage the people who do the work.

I don’t think it’s particularly beneficial to have consultants come in, map everything, disappear, and then present the findings with a big “ta-da!” Because typically, when it’s presented, the people in the process say, “Yeah, I don’t like that,” or “Here’s a bunch of problems with this.”

It may never get implemented.

It’s better to work with the people in the system and get to an 85% solution that they own, instead of a 100% “perfect” solution that no one implements.

From that value stream, we’ve broken down the big rock and now we see many smaller rocks. We want to constantly break down those rocks.

I’d encourage you to choose a structured method of problem solving. There are many:

• 8D
• A3
• DMAIC
• PDCA

They all follow the scientific method.

By that I mean: understand your clear gap. What’s my current state? Where am I trying to go? Is it a gap I’m closing because of a problem, or a gap I’m trying to achieve because we have higher ambitions?

Understand the gap, then work on root cause analysis and improvement.

Again, 8D, A3, DMAIC, PDCA – they are all forms of the scientific method. It’s more important that your team adopts one methodology and uses it consistently and thoroughly, than which one you pick.

We want to make sure each project has an owner, and we want a method to share learnings across the organization.

Dan: Yeah, this question is specifically about problem solving. We have a number of questions; I’m going to save a lot of them for the end, and some of them are very similar in nature, so if I don’t get to your particular question, I apologize in advance.

Here’s one that relates to what you were just talking about: “In an organization that is heavy on hierarchical structure, it breaks the effectiveness of the problem-solving system. Is there a way to break that cycle if all the power is set in the hierarchy?”

Peg: That’s a very good question.

When we think about the daily management system – which I’ll get to in more detail – I would want to start by bringing that leader to the Gemba.

At some level, that leader is responsible for a value stream. Bring them to Gemba and start looking at how the process is actually working. Where is the process broken?

Part of this is helping them see the process problems. You have to coach up. That can be difficult, but you can coach up in a way that’s respectful, not arrogant.

Help them understand the power of the Lean Management System: surfacing problems, going to Gemba, understanding the value stream.

I also think it’s useful to take senior leaders out of the organization – literally – and go on a benchmarking visit. Seeing how another organization runs a Lean Management System can be powerful. Sometimes they don’t want to hear it from inside; they have to see it from another leader.

That power of education is really important. Great question.

[00:25]

In our problem-solving system, we’re starting to work through these problems. I think about this a lot now, given all the changes happening in our world of work with AI and machine learning. We have more tools available to us, but we still have our traditional Lean tools.

We learned them from Toyota – not that Toyota created all of them, but people there codified them:

• Standard work helps create stability.
• Visual management helps create flow.
• Error proofing at the source prevents defects.
• Pull systems, line balancing, quick changeover – all of these help with flow and pull.

These fundamentals aren’t going away. We still face flow issues. Flow breaks down. The physics of that hasn’t changed.

What has changed is that we now have more tools to work with – but they still align with stability, flow, and pull.

For example:

• Predictive maintenance is the next generation of error proofing and total productive maintenance.
• Automated SPC is just faster, more powerful visual management.
• Digital twins let you see flow problems in ways earlier tools did not.

AI-enabled tools are not replacing Lean; they’re extending it.

So we continue with our thinking: understand, simplify, then automate. There will be many tools available to the continuous improvement community, and it’s on us to learn how those tools can enable quick changeovers, improved visual management, and better quality systems.

I’m really excited about these new opportunities to make our value streams even more robust.

Peg: So, Dan, I’m going to move on to the daily management system – unless you want to ask me something.

Dan: There are a lot of questions in the Q&A so far. Here’s one that’s kind of general. This might be a good time to answer it.

The question was essentially: “Is there a way to fully implement the wheel in a corporate pocket? Is there one giant playbook?”

Peg: I’ve read a lot, and I don’t think there’s one giant playbook. There are a series of excellent resources.

For example:

• Managing on Purpose by Mark Reich (from LEI) is great for hoshin planning – that’s the activity of taking your strategy and cascading it down to lower levels of the organization.
• MoreSteam has lots of wonderful training on problem-solving systems, including A3 and DMAIC.
• David Mann’s Creating a Lean Culture is excellent.
• Pascal Dennis has a good book – Lean Production Simplified – that people often reference.
• Learning to See is a great book on value stream mapping.

So there’s not a single book, but a body of work you can draw from.

A lot of people start their Lean training at the DMAIC or A3 level. We have a problem; we want to solve it. They dig in and use the methodology. Eventually you’ll bump into the question: “Am I solving the right problem for the organization?”

For example, “The cafeteria line isn’t fast enough” – that might be worth solving, but is it strategic?

From the problem-solving system, once you change something, you need to come over to the daily management system to make sure you stay in control.

It feels natural to start with the strategy system, but many of us actually start with the problem-solving system, then work up to strategy, and then implement a daily management system.

You don’t start everything at once. It’s like running a marathon. You don’t just wake up and run a marathon; you do lots and lots of training runs.

Dan: And Peg actually does run marathons, so that’s not just an analogy.

Two quick notes before we move on, Peg: Rachel says the Pascal Dennis book is called Lean Production Simplified – thank you, Rachel. And Ronnie asks if we can share the material being displayed. All of these materials will be available on the MoreSteam website shortly after the webinar ends, and we will send an email to all attendees with the details.

Back to you, Peg.

[00:30]

Peg: Okay, thanks – great questions.

So, we have our strategy system at the top. We then break the big rocks apart through the value stream and problem-solving system with A3s and DMAIC projects.

Then we come over to the daily management system. We have the discipline of the problem-solving system, but to make it effective, we need the daily rhythm that makes gaps visible, enables rapid response, and keeps improvements from eroding.

Let’s look at the daily management system and how it works with leader standard work. We could spend an hour just on this – honestly, we could spend a day on each component – but I’ll give the overview.

Leader standard work is what enables the daily management system. Leaders hold themselves accountable:

• What do I have to do?
• When do I have to do it?

They create a cadence of checking their system and understanding real-time performance. They want to see problems as they occur, confirm that flow is consistent, and verify that stability is being maintained.

To do that, we need:

• Visual controls
• Daily huddles
• Standard work for leaders
• Rapid problem solving
• Clear escalation pathways
• Clear ownership for each metric
• Follow-up routines

Daily management is really hard. It requires persistence and consistency.

I show a picture of an electronic circuit on the slide. If you change a circuit, it’s permanently changed. That’s not typically how work behaves.

Work is more like a campfire. You put it out with water, stir the coals, maybe put sand on it, and think it’s out. But there are still embers burning, and you might walk away for an hour or two and suddenly you’ve got a fire again.

That’s how some of our process changes behave. It’s not like changing a circuit – it’s more like trying to make sure the fire really stays out. Without persistence, old habits relapse.

That’s why leaders have to show persistent, consistent behavior: going where the work is done, checking on changes, reinforcing new standards.

Culture change is harder than technical tool adoption. Habit change is much harder than installing a new tool.

[00:35]

When we think about the daily management system, we go to a huddle.

At that huddle, we want to track a handful of key metrics: maybe safety, quality, lead time, and cost – whatever metrics help you understand the flow of work.

This creates line of sight for all associates in the organization.

I started by saying I want people connected to the True North of the company. If True North is “We want to be the best hospital in the region,” what does that mean to someone working in radiology, or transport, or the lab?

All of those functions contribute to how long a patient waits in the emergency department. We can’t be the best hospital if we have long lead times, or a lot of patients leaving without being seen.

If I work in the lab, I need to understand that for certain tests we must get results back in less than 30 minutes. That translates True North down to my level. It might mean our lab is laid out so I can easily access materials; everything is clean and ready.

That’s where 5S comes in. I might adopt 5S not because someone told me to clean up, but because I want to turn around lab results in less than 30 minutes. That reduces ED lead time, which contributes to being the best hospital in the state.

So we translate from True North all the way down to where the work is done. If we’re not achieving that 30-minute turnaround, it becomes visible at the stand-up meeting.

When problems can’t be solved at that local level, they might escalate to A3s or DMAIC projects. In this daily huddle world, you’re looking at the “sand”: the things that grind your gears – long lead time, missed supplier shipments, recurring quality issues.

Those issues are usually not strategic problems. Strategic problems get their own A3 or DMAIC. Operational problems also get structured problem solving, but on a different scale.

Leaders in the middle of the organization have to work on the business and in the business at the same time. The best way to do that is to solve problems in real time as they’re occurring with simple tools: Pareto charts, trend charts, basic root cause discussions.

Solve them when they’re “baby alligators,” not 8-foot alligators.

Dan: I do have a question, not necessarily about the daily management system, but one that’s been out there a while.

Hector asks: “How do you recommend leadership balance the traditional functional structure with a value-stream mindset, so we avoid local optimization and still maintain clear accountability?”

Peg: Great question. We’re coming back to horizontal versus vertical.

This does create complexity, but I think the best thing is to have value stream managers. Some organizations actually have that role.

Value stream managers may have certain reporting relationships into functional managers; your organization has to decide how strong those dotted or solid lines are.

Going back to the emergency department example: you might have someone in charge of the ED value stream. They’re thinking about reducing lead time through the ED. That leader needs relationships with housekeeping (room turnover), the lab (test turnaround), the physician group, nursing, and so on.

You have to create a structure where they work together.

You also need strong end-to-end KPIs that both the value stream leader and the functional leaders own. That way, functional leaders are incentivized to work with the whole team.

Thanks, Hector.

[00:40]

Now, the people system. Perhaps I should have started here, because it’s really the core.

We talk about:

• Go see – leaders must go where the work happens to understand reality.
• Ask why – scientific thinking, encouraging questioning, cause and effect, understanding.
• Show respect – respect for people is not soft. It means creating conditions where people can succeed.

Leaders as teachers are also important. The more leaders teach Lean thinking, the more they reinforce their own learning and deepen the culture. They shouldn’t just sponsor Lean; they should model it and teach it.

They need to model how to think through problems, not just provide answers.

That’s hard. Leaders are often promoted because they’re great problem solvers. Then we tell them, “I don’t want you to jump in and solve this quickly – I want you to develop more problem solvers.”

Instead of saying, “Here’s what you should do,” they need to ask:

• “What do you think you should do?”
• “Why do you think that?”
• “How do you know that?”

That’s a big culture change.

We also want psychological safety, as Amy Edmondson at Harvard talks about. We want to create a culture that’s free of blaming. When we start problem solving, we don’t want naming, shaming, and blaming. We want to understand the process problems.

When people fear getting in trouble, they hide the truth – and that destroys improvement.

Leaders have to do daily Gemba walks – going where the work is done – and have regular coaching cycles. They must check key metrics and key process metrics, and have a Kaizen mindset.

A Lean mindset is humility, curiosity, patience, a willingness to learn from frontline staff, and openness to being wrong. Our goal is communication and transparency.

[00:45]

How does this Lean system work altogether? I’ll give you an example.

I’m from the 80s, so I had to put an 80s picture in the slide – big hair, shoulder pads, and big hair bands. The greatest decade.

If I think about Coca-Cola in the 1980s: imagine being a plant manager at Coke. You’d come to work, you’d have big tanks, and your job was basically to make Coke. That’s it. You’re in the big Coke vs. Pepsi market share battle.

The market was broad, the product mix was simpler, and Coke had a lot of power in the supply chain. Independent grocers didn’t have big purchasing power.

You’d make Coke for a week, store it, ship it. Not a lot of changeovers.

Fast forward to today.

Most organizations on this call do not have fewer SKUs than in 1980. They have more. Your customers are in smaller niches. You’re chasing micro-segments.

Coke now has:

• Many different product lines
• Multiple Diet Coke flavors
• Region-specific variations (like Mexican Coke with cane sugar)

They have small tanks, frequent changeovers, lots of SKUs, and endless complexity.

And they no longer have the same leverage. Now they’re selling to Walmart, Sam’s Club, Costco. Those customers tell them when to show up, exactly what mixed pallets they need, and when to unload.

So the only way they’re going to be successful is to have operational excellence:

• Quick changeovers
• Clean, well-maintained lines
• Strong inventory systems
• Reliable dating and rotation on products

Every day, when people show up at that plant, they need crystal clarity:

• What are we making today?
• How many?
• Are there problems with labels, materials, or where we’re pulling inventory from?

They need a Lean Management System in place. And then they can layer on improvements from AI and digital tools to further improve the process.

So going from Coke in 1980 to where organizations are now, that Lean Management System – from strategy, down through problem solving and daily management, aligned with the people system – is how you’re going to win customers: with consistent, persistent problem solving and daily management, close to where the work is done, with leaders engaged.

[00:50]

Dan: I’m going to pause here. How much more of the presentation do you have?

Peg: That’s it. I was going to go to one more slide, but this one is prettier and I can talk to it.

Dan: When you mentioned Coca-Cola in the 80s, I thought you were going to mention New Coke.

Peg: Oh yeah, New Coke. I always think about that. They reformulated in the 80s – I think 1985 – launched “New Coke,” and it was such a disaster. I always wonder: there must have been so much testing and sampling. How did they make that mistake?

Dan: Peg, I’ve got a couple questions I want to ask you. I apologize, I won’t be able to get to all of them. Some are similar to earlier questions.

One person mentioned that outside of manufacturing, data for good value stream maps are often nonexistent. “Are VSM workshops still valuable?”

Peg: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Two thoughts:

First, a value stream map is more than just a process map. A process map is good – first step. But a value stream map shows you where flow stops, which is powerful.

Second, if you feel like you don’t have data, you can ask your team to collect two weeks of simple data before the workshop:

• Where does flow stop?
• Where are the quality issues?
• How long do key steps actually take?

You don’t need perfect data with confidence intervals. Most office and service processes are so broken that you don’t need an enormous dataset to know you have a problem. Two weeks of data is often plenty to identify directionally correct issues.

If you’re at Honda on an assembly line producing a car every 55 seconds, you’d better have a lot of data when you make a change. But in many office processes, rough data is enough to improve.

So yes, value stream mapping is absolutely still valuable outside of manufacturing.

[00:55]

Dan: Peg, I want to ask you a few questions about going to the Gemba. When I interviewed Mark Reich for the Quality Time with MoreSteam podcast, he said the importance of going to Gemba cannot be overstated.

We’ve got several Gemba questions, so I’ll bundle them:

• What are some examples of bringing a leader to Gemba in different environments?
• How do you train leaders to be good at ‘Going to Gemba?’
• What are the important things to look for at the Gemba?
• How does a Gemba walk work in a virtual world?

Peg: Great set of questions.

If this is brand new to a leader, I’d start by having them attend a daily huddle – silently. Just observe. Listen. Then we go to Gemba.

At Gemba, they want to understand:

• What should be happening here?
• What is happening here?
• Are those the same, or different?

We coach them that their role is to ask questions for clarification and understanding, not to interrogate or blame.

In a virtual environment, you can still go to Gemba by asking people to share their screen:

“Show me how you process this mortgage application. Walk me through your screens.”

Immediately, you see the complexity: multiple systems, multiple logins, lots of clicks. It becomes very obvious what’s hard about the process.

So even virtually, you can go to Gemba by watching the work happen in real time.

Sometimes leaders will need to physically travel. They’re responsible for big organizations.

I like the example of Jamie Dimon. When JPMorgan acquired a West Coast bank, he put all his leaders on a bus and they went on a big tour, visiting branches, talking to customers and employees, and discovering process problems first-hand. He knew he couldn’t understand those banks from New York alone.

So Gemba is about going where the work is done – physically or virtually – and seeing reality.

Dan: We don’t have much time left, and like you said about earlier topics, we could probably talk about Gemba for a week.

Peg: Right. So here’s what I suggest: when this webinar ends, please tell us in the survey what you’d like to hear more about.

For example:

• “Could you talk more about leader standard work?”
• “Could you go deeper on Gemba?”

Let us know. As always, give us feedback. If you want to reach out to me, there’s my email address on the slide: peg@moresteam.com. And I invite you to connect with us on LinkedIn.

Thanks for your time today!

[01:00]

Dan: Thank you, Peg. Just a few things to wrap up.

First, I wanted to read this message from Kim:

“I like the idea of picking one problem-solving methodology, starting with A3. Thanks for the new MoreSteam course on A3. We are already using this to further develop our A3 problem-solving capabilities.”

Thank you so much, Kim, for that comment.

There have been some great compliments on your presentation, Peg.

To let everyone know: These materials will be available on the MoreSteam website soon. When they are available – the PowerPoint and the webinar recording – we will send an email to let you know when and where you can find them.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We recognize that you’re really busy. Continuous improvement work is hard work. We appreciate you taking the time out of your day to be here, and we hope you learned something. We love sharing our knowledge with you.

Thanks, everyone. Have a great day.

Peg: Thank you!