Improvement Kata Learner Lessons from Step 2: Grasp the Current Condition | 055

Improvement Kata Learner Lessons from Step 2: Grasp the Current Condition | 055

Welcome to Lean Leadership for Ops Managers, the podcast for leaders in Ops Management who want to spark improvement, foster engagement, and boost problem solving – AND still get their day job done. Here’s your host, Leadership Trainer, Lean Enthusiast, and Spy Thriller Junkie, Jamie V. Parker. 

[00:00:29] Heads up. Wait a minute, pause, hold on, I released two episodes today and this is the second one. So if you haven’t listened to the first one yet, I recommend that you head over and listen. I think it’s episode 54. Listen to that one. 

First, it’s going to give you some background about the Kata Girl Geeks and my learning group and how all this stuff started for me. I share some of this background that may provide some more context for this episode where we’re talking about tactical improvement kata lessons that I’ve learned. 

Now, first, from an announcement perspective, this is the very last episode of my first year of podcasting. That’s right. Next week is our one year anniversary or birthday celebration, whatever you want to call it. And I have a little bit of a twist planned for you for our anniversary edition.

I’m also going to ask for your help over the next two weeks celebrating this milestone. After the anniversary edition, we’re then going to kick off year two with a special six week executive series where you’re going to hear directly from practicing operations executives. Episodes drop every Wednesday. So be sure to carve out about 30 minutes each week for the next couple of months. All right.

[00:01:51] Ready to talk improvement kata. Well, here we go. Now, I am currently a learner in one of nine Kata Girl Geek Learning groups. We’re all working on our own eight week challenge, so the same time frame, but individual challenges so that we can learn and practice the improvement kata and coaching kata. 

Now I’m the learner in my learning group, I’m the learner, Andrea Lee is my coach and Tracy Defoe is our second coach. So by the time you’re listening to this, I’m going to be further along. But I really wanted to capture my lessons learned in real time. I didn’t want to have to look back and try to remember them. 

So back in the first episode today, the one right before this, I talked about lessons learned, like on the people side, my personal reflections, like the human element and our mind drama and all that stuff.

[00:02:47] Today, I’m talking more about the tactical improvement kata lessons learned. OK, so at the time I’m recording this where I am right now from a recording perspective, is that I am 10 coaching cycles into this challenge. So we have a coaching cycle every day, Monday through Friday. So 10 means we’re two weeks in. And I just finished step two of the improvement kata: grasp the current condition. 

So what I’m going to do today is share with you four key learnings that I’ve had over the last 10 days about how to effectively grasp the current condition or interact or coach during this process. OK, all right.

[00:03:31] So lesson number one is to use the Kata Practice Guide. That’s right. I had this thing sitting on my shelf for I don’t know how long. And now I am in it every single day, sometimes more than once a day, reading it, rereading it, going back and referencing it. 

My coach and I both have it with us in our hands during our coaching cycles so that we can reference back to it. The thing is, I might conceptually understand the step I’m in, right? Like I read it, I’m like, OK, that makes sense. That’s what I’m going to do. But when I’m knee deep in applying it, I can’t make assumptions that I’m remembering it right or applying it the way it’s intended. So I actually, while I’m in the context of applying this step to my challenge, while I’m in the middle of doing the step, I go back and reread it again. 

And when you think about grasping the current condition, in particular, this step in particular, you’re going to see that within step two: grasp the current condition. There’s actually a five step process analysis starter kata. So that’s another routine that we want to practice. And one of the best ways to do it is to practice with the guide. 

So you’re lesson number one, use the Kata Practice Guide.

[00:04:51] All right, lesson number two, the coach will transition between teaching and coaching, and I’m going to give you two specific tips that I’ve learned from my coach. I mean, I guess it is possible that if you have a really experienced learner who’s really experienced in improvement kata specifically, then there might not be much teaching involved.

But for most of us, 98 percent of the time for most learners, the coach is going to have to do both teaching and coaching and transition between teaching, coaching and teaching and coaching and teaching and coaching multiple times within a single cycle. 

Now, my coach, Andrea, is an experienced kind of coach. I don’t know how many years she’s been coaching, but I don’t know maybe a thousand, probably more than a thousand coaching cycles under her belt. She’s been doing this for years now. I’ve noticed a few things that she does. And I’m going to share two specific tips with you today. 

The first tip, she asked this question and I love this question. She asks: 

“What do you understand this step to be about?” 

Now in our ten coaching cycles, She’s probably asked me this maybe four different times and, you know, over the course of the ten cycles. And it’s great because it gives me a chance to really think through it and express my understanding. 

She gives a chance to check my understanding and then correct it or add to it or reinforce it. OK, so I love this question: What do you understand the step to be about?

[00:06:26] Now, the second tip I’m going to give is that Andrea will sometimes say she’ll say: 

“The reason I’m asking this question is  . . . ” 

and this is one of her transitions between coaching and teaching, and it really grounds both of us in the activity we’re doing in the moment or the question or the topic or the step that we’re in at that moment. 

And so she might ask the question and we have a little bit back and forth because there’s, you know, follow up questions, of course. Right. So we have a little bit of back and forth. And then she’ll say: “the reason I’m asking this question is . . ” 

And she’ll explain the why. She’ll explain what we’re trying to learn or what the purpose is of doing it this way, of following this routine. I’m asking this question, what are we trying to get at? 

And she doesn’t just say this when I, like, get it, quote unquote wrong. Like if I’m going down a rabbit hole or, you know, off on whatever a different tangent. She also says that when I’m on point. Right. Like I might be on point, but she will say this and then explain the why, which really helps me to connect the dots of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and that I love it because, you know, yes, I can learn just by answering her questions and going through that process. But when she adds that teaching piece in, the reason I’m asking this question is now it helps me to get a deeper understanding which is going to help me repeat it in the future. Right. So I love this. 

So lesson number two, the coach will transition between coaching and teaching. And the two specific tips are the question, “What do you understand the step to be about?” and “The reason I’m asking this question is . . “

[00:08:15] Lesson number three, lesson number three, it takes practice to scope the next step effectively. Oh, my goodness. Listen, I’m not even talking about, like, the PDCA iterations where you’re experimenting your way to the next target condition. 

Remember, I’m still in step to grasp the current condition. I don’t I don’t have a next target condition yet. It took me eight next steps to grasp the current condition, eight next steps, eight days, eight coaching cycles. And there are three different things I’m going to call out of some things that happen in this process.

So, number one. First there was one of these times when in these coaching cycles, I was struggling to commit to a next step, like to come up with and commit to it because, you know, we’ve kind of gone through this process. I knew what it was we were trying to achieve. Like, what do I understand this step to be about? I knew that. And the next step that I had, like, it wasn’t going to get me to the answer. Yes, it was. I was going to learn more. It was going to move me toward that direction. But it didn’t feel like that was a good enough next step because it wasn’t going to get me all the way to the end, wasn’t going to get me to the conclusion. I wasn’t going to be able to finish that step in the process analysis. 

And Andrea really helped me understand that. That’s OK. Sometimes, you know, you can’t get all the way to the end of step two or step three of the process analysis in one next step. Right. And so this was just a place where I did not feel comfortable with the next step because I wanted it to be more. I wanted it to get me to a conclusion or to an end. And that was just some old way of thinking. So that was the first thing to happen. 

But that wasn’t it. Because then there was a cycle. Remember, we have these eight cycles for grasping the current condition. So then there was a cycle where I came up with my next step. It sounded really great. I was like, yep, makes sense. Here’s what I’m going to do. Here’s what I expect to happen and what I expect to learn from it. Right. I got it. And then I went to do the step that evening and it took me three hours to do. 

Three hours to do one next step in a daily coaching cycle. Who has three hours? I certainly didn’t intend to spend three hours on it. If I’d known it was going to take three hours, I wouldn’t have picked it. Right. 

So here I was. I was working that night to finish it and I chose to do that. I could have not finished it all and learned that was too big of a step. I chose to finish it and also learn that there’s too big of a step I just picked. Too big of a step to try and complete on a daily coaching cycle. 

But that’s not it, because there was this other cycle, one of our cycles where I came up with the next step, like, cool, this is perfect is exactly what I want to do. Here’s my next step. Here’s what I expect to happen when I expect to learn. And our coaching cycle ended. And I was like, well, here, let me go ahead and do it like I’m in the zone. 

Let me go ahead and do it. I’ve got some time before my next appointment, and I finished it in maybe like 15 minutes. Right. So my cycle ended. I took the step, I reflected. I captured what I learned. I updated my current condition like I did all of the things that I was supposed to do in like 15 minutes. It was like, huh, we’ve got more than 23 hours to go before our next likelike. I’m thinking, oh, I could have put a bigger step in here. I could have done more. This wasn’t big enough. Right. So everything from this isn’t good enough to this is too big to this is not big enough.

And here’s the thing. I don’t think there is any way to learn how to scope the next step without practice, without doing it as you go. 

So that’s lesson number three. You need to practice to be able to get good at scoping the next step.

[00:12:13] Now, the last lesson I’m going to share with you today is a super, super critical one, OK? This was an AHA light bulb. Oh, I was doing that wrong before. And it ends up being more than one lesson, like it’s one lesson, but it snowballs into multiple little lessons. OK, so, you know, I don’t. I don’t know, maybe you noticed, but it was like whaaaat mind blown me. All right. 

Lesson number four, when you grasp the current condition, it’s the actual condition now. Like today. Now. For real, right now, current. It sounds simple, right? But it took me six cycles of grasping the current condition before I got it, before I really understood this at my core. 

You know, when I did my first iterations of my block diagram and process characteristics, I would literally have things that would say sometimes this happens and sometimes that happens. And sometimes I do it this way and sometimes I do it that way. And the reason is I was like trying to do this block diagram, kind of looking back at, you know, the last 10 days of my process. And there’s all this variation. And it wasn’t a consistent process every single step. 

And sometimes I did it this way and sometimes I did it that way. And so this was this mental block that I had to break through, because as long as I was trying to capture all of these multiple different versions, I couldn’t figure out how to draw it. Right. And because of that sometimes, I didn’t know the actual right now I didn’t know the actual current condition. 

So my coach Andrea gracefully helped me to commit to figuring it out with the one best way to do that, which is what I know you know this. . . .  To go and see. 

That’s right, go and see. For my challenge and focus process, this involved me recording myself working. So I had screen share. I had a webcam pointed at my desk to see what I was doing and recording when I was recording myself working and then going back and watching it and actually observing as an outside party, not just once, not twice, but three times over the course of my eight day grasp the current condition step. And I’m sure I will go and see some more after this.

But what I was then able to do by doing that is I was able to document the current condition based on what I actually saw, what actually happened with hard data, with defined steps. And it was totally OK if that wasn’t what happened three days ago or five days ago or eight days ago, because I was grasping the CURRENT condition.

[00:14:58] And that leads me to the next part of this lesson. If the current condition is capturing the process now, today, what’s happening now, then guess what? Tomorrow it might be different. And the day after that, something else might have happened. And the day after that, I might have observed another characteristic that I hadn’t noticed before, and you know what that means? It means that I update my current condition every cycle. Maybe it’s the process metric or the outcome metric, but a lot of times it’s even more than that. Maybe it’s the steps on the block diagram or the process characteristics. 

But every single cycle I revisit the current condition because guess what? When you grasp the current condition, the current condition is dynamic, not static. 

Now, maybe you knew this, but I did not get it. I’m pretty sure when I tried this before, when I tried an improvement, caught it before, like, grasp the current condition and step two and kind of set it. And then every time I established a new next target condition, I would revisit it. But in between that, it basically stayed the same. Like I would update the data, of course. Right. Like put the new data in. If there was a major change, I might have penciled it in, but that was it. It was just like, oh, I grasp it. And then I was kind of it until two weeks from now when I have my next target condition time.

So this was a really big aha for me. And I wanted to share this lesson number four, when you grasp the current condition, is the actual condition now like today, now what’s happening. Exactly. And to do that, you have to go and see and then you update the current condition every cycle, which means two things. One, it’s accurate. It’s accurate. Right. You can see what’s actually happening now. And the second is by doing this, by updating it, all that variation I talked about before, sometimes I do it this way, sometimes I do it that way. Now it really starts to become visible. And I’m aware of the exact variation that’s really happening, actually happening because I’m updating my current condition accordingly.

[00:17:10] OK, so I had some other tactical learnings from my real world practice. But for now, these four are the ones that I really wanted to share with you. 

Lesson number one, use the Kata Practice Guide. 

Lesson number two, the coach transitions between coaching and teaching. 

And two specific steps are tips for this are the question “What do you understand the step to be about?” And the phrase, “The reason I’m asking this question is. . . ” 

And those I specifically have picked up from my coach, Andrea. 

Lesson number three, you’re going to have to practice in order to be able to scope the next step effectively, like there’s no other way around it, you gotta do it. 

And lesson number four, when you grasp the current condition, it’s the actual condition now. And it’s dynamic because the current is current in the present day.

[00:18:09] All right, next up, how about for you? 

If you practice improvement kata? Here’s your next step. I want you to hop on LinkedIn and share your lessons learned about grasping the current condition, whatever those might be. What was one of your lessons learned when you were learning how to grasp the current condition and tag me in the post? 

Now, if you don’t currently practice improvement kata, first of all, that’s totally cool, like you don’t have to, you don’t ever have to do this. But if you are kata curious, I encourage you to check out the show notes for this episode. 

Remember, you can always find the show notes for our podcast at https://processplusresults.com/podcast/  

There you’re going to find some resources that you want to explore the improvement kata further. So I will link to things like Mike Rother’s kata site, Lean Frontiers Katacon if you want an in-person event. And the Kata Schools worldwide. These are groups. These are ways that you can engage with other people who are practicing kata. So I’m going to link to that as well.

[00:19:15] Now, last up, I’m going to ask for your help:

Will you please help us celebrate one year of podcasting? 

My team is putting together different social media images and quotes and things that you can post and share on social or via email. 

And when you do, encourage others to listen and share our podcast link https://processplusresults.com/podcast/ 

Now, what I would love from you is I would love to hear about your favorite episode this year or maybe that one little thing, that one little nugget that just has stuck with you. Who knows when you heard it. But man, you just hold on to that one.

[00:20:00] Post about it and tag me on social. Now, I’m going to be facilitating some live workshops on our anniversary, which I think is just so fitting, because on my launch day, the very first day of the podcast, I was doing a keynote, a live keynote. It was actually live and virtual, like virtually and in person. But yeah. So here I was not even able to enjoy it. I’m like up on stage and my podcast is launching. And so again, I’m going to be not on stage but in front of the room doing workshops when this happens, our 1 year anniversary. 

But I will be checking it. OK, so I’m still going to go on to Social and check in. So post about your favorite episode or that nugget of something that really stuck with you and tag me in it. 

I’m going to be looking out for your comments all week and I just want to say thank you. 

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for helping us celebrate. 

Until next time.