Go Fast and Break Things

Yesterday I read this article about some things learned about Facebook from their recent IPO filing.  Mined from the pages and pages of legal discovery were the following 5 "facebookisms":

1. Done is better than perfect.
2. Code wins arguments.
3. Move fast and break things.
4. The riskiest thing is to take no risks
5. This journey is one percent finished.

I was struck by how "lean" these 5 ideas are.  They could easily be the core value drivers of any lean journey.  In particular I like "move fast and break things."  This really embodies the spirit of constantly challenging the status quo and continuing to improve.  I also couldn't help but draw yet another parallel with Mathew May's 6 Laws of Subtraction, specifically:

     #5: "Break" is an important part of any breakthrough

I think Facebook certainly qualifies as a breakthrough.  I also think it's important to remember that true breakthrough achievement requires a certain willingness to shake up the system.  Monumental change is never without its setbacks and unintended consequences.  We need to recognize and embrace this, rather than fearing it.

Action!

Someone once said:

"Don't just do something, stand there!"

And Matthew May's 6th Law of Subtraction states:

"Doing something isn't always better than doing nothing."

Wisdom lies at the intersection of understanding and action, the wisdom to know when to act and when greater understanding is required first.  So why then is the kaizen mind so often described as having a "bias toward action"?  At the heart of kaizen is genchi genbutsu, "go and see".  This reflects both action ("go") and understanding ("see").  So in fact the action required is often to go and see.  This may seem like a passive activity, but it is critical to taking effective action and yet often overlooked.  But it is the wisdom that comes from time and experience that is required to turn real understanding into effective action.

The Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr says,

"God grant me the serenity 

to accept the things I cannot change; 

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference."

At the risk of committing sacrilege, I might tweak it a little bit to reflect the kaizen spirit:

Grant me the patience to understand

when understanding is needed;

courage to act when action is needed;

and wisdom to know the difference.

A Salty New Year

I think salt gets a bad rap.  It's wonderfully comforting and yet oh so bad for us.  We're always being told to avoid it, reduce it, stay away from it.  It's linked to everything from high blood pressure to cancer.  (I think it even kills puppies.)  And yet we often overlook the fact that salt is absolutely necessary for all human life.  As an electrolyte, sodium is vital to maintaining our body's fluid balance.  And the more output our bodies produce (in the form of physical work) the more of it we need to consume.  Not only is salt not evil, we actually really need the stuff.  In the proper quantity and at the proper times.

Salt is a lot like inventory.  We all know how bad inventory is, and we're always trying to figure out ways to hold less of it.  But inventory, of and by itself, is no more "bad" than salt.  The fact is that without it you couldn't have flow or level loading.  And like salt, the more output you produce the more of it you need.  It is essential to a successful operation.  In the proper quantity and at the proper times.

So as we continue our work to banish waste from our value streams, lets not demonize inventory too much in the process.  As with a well-balanced diet let's just be smart about how much we use and where we use it.

Happy New Year!!

Systems Thinking and Turkey Frying

On Christmas day this year, as is the tradition at my house, I fried a turkey for the family meal.  The secret to a good fried turkey is keeping the oil temperature at a rock steady 325 degrees for the entire cooking time (about 45 minutes for a 13-lb. bird).  This is done by monitoring the temperature and adjusting the gas flow as needed.  The problem is that it takes a great deal of energy (and therefore time) to raise and lower the temperature of 5 gallons of boiling peanut oil.  Naturally as a would-be systems thinker I try my best to apply systems thinking to this problem.  This diagram I believe represents the balancing loop at play:

The rather crudely drawn hourglass on the left represents the delay between taking the countermeasure (increasing or decreasing gas flow) and seeing the impact  (a change in the oil temperature.)

So the game often goes something like this:  The oil temperature drops below the target, so you turn the gas up.  Nothing happens so you turn the gas up more.  Still nothing, more gas. Then the temperature starts to rise.  And rise.  And rise some more.  Pretty soon you're over the target so you cut down the gas.  Nothing happens, so you reduce it some more.  I think you can see where this is going.  That delay is really a problem.  As a result you can oscillate wildly back and forth above and below the target the entire time.  (So the average cooking temperature is fine, but that's no way to cook a turkey.)

It reminds me a bit of American politics in the last decade or so.  As a nation we seem to be driving our representative leadership into wider and wider swings from left to right and back again.  George W. Bush -- Barack Obama -- The Tea Party -- Occupy Wall Street.  Each an ever more extreme reaction to a move in the opposite direction.

The trick to a good fried turkey is to make fine adjustments toward the target and then have the patience to let the changes take effect.  Maybe there's a lesson there.

Bilateral Symmetry, Standard Work, and "The Box"

All creatures great and small that have ever existed on Earth, from the lowliest insects to the mightiest carnivores, share one thing in common. Bilateral symmetry.  A left side and a right side that are mirror images of one another.  You might say it's nature's standard work, the one overriding design constraint to which all others are subjugated.

And if you knew nothing else about life on Earth you'd probably think this a pretty limiting constraint indeed.  And yet we have this incredibly vast richness and diversity of life all over the globe.  Bilaterally symmetrical creatures (including ourselves) survive, grow, and thrive in nearly every corner of the planet.  And in even the harshest and most remote environments, through millions of years of evolution, nature has never seen fit to evolve a non-symmetrical species.  For it is precisely because of this constraint that life is so diverse and adaptable.

Often the imposition of standard work is viewed as overly constraining, stifling to creativity, and inflexible.  And yet if properly applied the opposite should be true.  Standard work allows us the platform from which to solve problems, improve, and adapt.  Nature knows this and so does not violate it.  To do so would be unsustainable, like trying to walk with 11 toes.

The concept of standard work is effective precisely because it imitates nature.  This is why the Toyota Production System works so well, as beautifully described by H. Thomas Johnson in Profit Beyond Measure.

Others are getting the picture as well.  In The Myth of the Garage, the Heath Brothers dispel the notion that the way to stimulate creativity is to "think outside the box."  Instead they advocate re-defining the box.  As they put it, "A good box is like a lane marker on the highway: It’s a constraint that liberates."

And of course we can't forget Matthew May, whom I mentioned in my last post.  His 4th Law of Subtraction: "Creativity thrives under intelligent constraints."

So if you see standard work as simply something to do when everything's going well and are quick to toss it out or circumvent it the first time things get tough, keep the lessons of nature in mind.  Recognize that the truly sustainable path to improvement begins with a simple set of constraints.

Reflections on Subtraction

I've always lived my life largely by the idea that you only regret the things you don't do.  In all honesty I've probably used this mantra to justify some rather risky decision making.  However recently I've been inspired by the reflections of Matthew May and his 6 Laws of Subtraction.  (Although I liked it better when they were the 7 Guiding Principles of Shibumi, but that's okay.)

On his web site Matt quotes Lao Tzu:
     To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things every day. 

This is a profound idea, and the 6 Laws give it great clarity.  I find the 1st Law particularly meaningful:
     What isn't there can often trump what is. 

This is supported by Lao Tzu as well in one of my favorite passages from the Tao Te Ching:

     Hollowed out,
     clay makes a pot.
     Where the pot's not,
     is where it's useful.

We tend to define ourselves by the experiences we've had, but in reality we're shaped to a far greater degree by the experience we haven't had.  So perhaps that next great adventure we may be looking for is actually having the wisdom to simply stand still.  As May tells us in the 6th Law: 

     Doing something isn’t always better than doing nothing.

Perhaps this sounds like a path to inner piece, but can it also lead to real success in life.  The Tao Te Ching continues:

     So the profit in what is

     is in the use of what isn't.

Shmula Guest Blogger

I was recently honored to have been hosted as a guest blogger on shmula.com.  I've been a regular reader of this blog for a long time, so I was very pleased to be able to contribute something.

Head on over and take a look:
http://www.shmula.com/kanban-and-the-operations-management-triangle/9375/