That Time Improvement Kata Drove Me Bonkers | 054

That Time Improvement Kata Drove Me Bonkers | 054

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] Do you remember a time when you were learning something new? What about a time when you had to retrain your brain because you were learning new ways of problem-solving or new ways of thinking?  

Good, hold on to that, because today we’re having story time. That’s right. You’re going to hear a story that I am living live right now. One that’s giving me a whole new appreciation for what it feels like to be a learner and to talk about what that means for you as you lead your team.

[00:01:03] But first, guess what? Today is the very last day, the last day of podcast episodes of my first year of podcasting. That’s right next week will be the one-year anniversary or birthday of the Lean Leadership for Ops Managers Podcast. So next week’s anniversary edition episode will be a little bit of a twist from normal.  

And then to mark my second year of podcasting, I have a really exciting Executive Series coming up from September 1st through October 6th. Each episode will include a dialog with a different Operations Executive.  

Listen, I know that you’re facing big challenges right now: supply chains are crazy, the employment market is crazy. Most people I’m talking to have demand that’s way higher than previous run rates. 

Well, you’re not alone in this upcoming series. You’ll be able to hear directly from executives about how they’re developing leaders to be able to really navigate these enhanced operational challenges while also building cultures where people thrive. 

So, if you haven’t yet, go and subscribe or follow the Lean Leadership for Ops Managers podcast on your favorite podcast platform. And if you know someone who might be interested in that type of series, send the link to them as well.

[00:02:31] All right, let’s get to it. You may have heard me talk about the Women in Lean, our Table Group. I love them. I am building the best relationships and learning so much. It’s just absolutely a wonderful, wonderful resource and group of people. Well, my peeps and Women in Lean have been gushing over the Kata Girl Geeks.  

Now, I don’t know the whole origin story, but I think that Gemma Jones, Tracy Defoe and Julie Simmons kicked this off to create a safe environment for Gemma and other women to get more Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata Cycles in so that they could learn through doing. And that was like a year ago.  

Well, I didn’t join a year ago, but I was constantly hearing about it. Some of my favorite people are active in it, so I joined. Actually, Elisabeth Swan and I were on a different call with Susan Clancy and we decided at the same time. All right, we’re in now.  

Not long after I joined, we started a new set of Learning Groups. In fact, right now, the  Girl Geeks has nine official active learning groups.

[00:03:41] We’re all on this same eight-week challenge time frame to learn. And I’m in one of them. I am the learner in learning group number five.  Now, before I jump into more of what’s happening, which you’re going to listen to, let me give you a little bit of my history because it might sound familiar to some of you. 

I first learned Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata about five years ago, maybe, maybe even a little longer. I’d heard about it from Michael Lombards. He and I were connected through Marc Reburn and the Practicing Lean book, to which we both contributed chapters.  

We met up in Dallas at one point, and I had read his chapter and he and I talked about it, then I read the book. But I’ll be honest, it didn’t quite make sense. 

So what I did next is I enrolled in a two-day workshop with Brandon Brown, and Brandon did this phenomenal job with experiential learning. We had these dominoes with the chicken leg design, and, we went through the Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata process and it made sense. I could wrap my brain around it. So, I really wanted to do an ongoing coaching experience with Brandon, but I just couldn’t get company approval for it.

[00:04:56] Of course, I tried it on my own with one plant. The leadership team were the learners and coach, and I was the second coach. I mean, you know, clearly, I was qualified at that point. A second coach since I had done all of two days of experiential learning, right? But what do you do? 

So, this is before, well, I don’t know if they existed. I don’t know if Kata Geeks existed or anything like that at the time, but if it did, I didn’t know about it. Now there are resources; now there are ways for you to get involved.  

But I tried this with the team, and it went…ok. I tried a couple more times, either on my own or with a small group. And, the reality is, without someone who is experienced in it, we kind of struggle to really connect all of it.  

But I took it as a relative success because it fundamentally changed the way I think. I took some of the ideas and routines and questions and incorporated them into how I think about problems and how I lead and coach others. Leadership development is my jam. I know how to build leaders, and I’m damn good at it. And of course, the classroom is just one part of that.

[00:06:11] If you think back to the Five Leadership Interactions, if you’re not familiar with it, you can go back and learn about that in Episode 14. But those Five Leadership Interactions are Direct, Share, Teach, Coach, and Connect. And all five of them are necessary. And I’ve developed some really good skills across those five interactions, particularly in coaching.  

But Coaching Kata is a very narrow, specific type of coaching supporting a narrow, specific improvement routine. And I had some resistance to the structure. Like to the formal storyboard, all the steps and the order of everything, and definitely to the daily coaching cycles. I thought that twice a week is just fine. I mean, who has time to do a next step or an experiment every day and who has a schedule that actually accommodates a daily meeting? This is where my thought process was.

[00:07:14] Well, guess what? In Girl Geeks, it’s designed specifically to follow the starter exactly and the expectation is that you do five coaching cycles every week for eight consecutive weeks.  

So, before I ever signed up and raised my hand saying I want to be a learner, I really had to work through some stuff to make sure I was in a position to commit to that, so I did. I worked through all my head drama and decided, I’m all in. 

[00:07:45] And I mean, every weekday at 11:45 a.m. MT with my coach, the fabulous Andrea Lee, and her second coach, the amazing Tracy DeFoe.  So Andrea, Tracy, and I meet every weekday, 11:45 MT, and we’re across three time zones. Even when Andrea’s on vacation, she’s still dialing in. We’re committed.  

Now, despite being committed and all in and excited, the week before we started, I was really nervous, actually kind of terrified. I had this mix of energy combining fear and excitement, the two mixed together. And one of the things that I thought was interesting is that I went into this with this mix of energy and I found value in the coaching process on day one, our very first coaching cycle.  

The first step of the Improvement Kata is to understand the direction or challenge. In going into day one, I did some pre-work and brainstorming. And I did the big life dreams and then narrowed it down and considered some more and picked one particular area. And then I tried to write a challenge statement.  

Let me tell you, I got stuck. I had these three columns worth of stickies. The ones on the left column were too high-level and broad; those aren’t really a challenge statement. The ones on the right were too detailed. It was more like an operating pattern of a next target condition.  

But I thought it’s there somewhere in the middle. But it wasn’t right either. It was too vague. It wasn’t clear enough. I didn’t know how to measure it. I had spent plenty of time on this process and I didn’t have it.  

And on day one, Andrea, my coach was asking me questions. Again, we follow the Starter Kata. So, she’s using the Red Card, the planning phase questions as her starting point. Then her own follow-up questions were based on her years of coaching. I don’t remember the specific question that she asked, but she’s going through this process. And she asked a question. I answered it and I nailed it.  My answer was the challenge statement. I knew it at that moment. I could feel it in my body. I imagine is kind of like what people feel when they say yes to the dress. I knew this was the one.  

You see, I had all this mush inside my head that I got out of my head into my stickies, but I still couldn’t get there on my own. And I experienced in that very first coaching cycle, the power of being a learner with a coach.

[00:10:31] So day one, this is amazing! And then I spent the next bunch of days starting to get frustrated. Mm-hmm. I sure did. You’re going to hear some truth right now.  

Step two of Improvement Kata is Grasp the Current Condition in the Kata Practice Guide, which we follow in Kata Girl Geeks. The Kata Practice Guide outlines Five Starter Kata Steps in order to grasp the current condition, the process in that five process analysis steps.  

Now I have a whole slew of tactical Kata learnings from the section about grasping the current condition and I am going to share them with you. But I’m making that a separate episode. It’s live now. You can binge listen to it today. But I want to keep those tactical Kata things separate from this main story here.

[00:11:24] Well, after this kick-ass day one coaching cycle, I then dug into the Five-Step

 Process Analysis Starter Kata to grasp the current condition. And they don’t seem that hard. I know that you describe both the Outcome and the Pattern of Work and the Process Characteristics. I learned that from Brandon Brown five years ago, and I understand leading lagging metrics. You know, yeah, it’s a little tough because my challenge is a work process where I’m the only operator and it’s in a service office environment instead of production. So, translating it might be a little hard, but it shouldn’t be that hard.  

I was taking a next step every day with a daily coaching cycle.  Day one, I’ve got my challenge. Day two is my first work grasping the current condition, and then day three, then day four, then day five. OMG, it is the end of the first week, and I’m still on step three of the process analysis trying to grasp this damn current condition.  

This is how I felt in my head at the time. But it didn’t stop there. Day six. Day seven. Oh my gosh, I’m still on step three of process analysis. Day eight, day nine, then finally, after day nine of coaching going into day ten, I am now ready to move from step two Grasp the Current Condition to step three, Establish the Next Target Condition.  

Now, when you’re listening to this, I’m further along just because of the way the timing of the episodes work. But I wanted to record this episode right at this point, so I don’t lose the in-the-moment experience and emotions and learnings. I’ll do a couple more episodes through the process, so tune in later to hear those. 

But let’s bring this back to where I am right now as I’m recording. Nine steps and coaching cycles in and just finished day two, Grasp the Current Condition.

[00:13:27] And here’s what I want you to know. My coach and second coach are both brilliant and fabulous. Andrea did an amazing job of connecting with me, you know, really considering how I am. Am I in a good place to be coached? All the things.  

So, know that the frustration I’m talking about, it’s all mine, right? This isn’t frustration that has anything to do with somebody else. It’s mine. And it’s coming from a place of how we normally do things, and how we’re taught to do things, and what it’s like to be performance and outcome-focused versus learning-focused. 

[00:14:03] What have I learned and why is that important to you? Now, remember that there’s the second episode to talk through some of the tactical learnings, but business is personal. Organizations are made up of people and leadership is a relationship between people. What were my people learnings like? What was my self-reflection?  

Well, here are my two big takeaways, and they relate to my thoughts and corresponding behaviors, but two thoughts in particular: I want to get it right, and I want results now. Those are the two thoughts. 

I want to get it right, let’s talk about that. Confession time, I haven’t told anyone this yet. So, Andrea, Tracy, Susan, any KGGs out there, if you’re listening, just go with it. Don’t judge.  

In KGG, all of our Leaning Groups, we fill out every day a microlearning sheet of what our microlearning is from that coaching cycle. And I would go into the Google sheet and read other people’s micro learnings because, of course, I want to learn from what they’re doing and what they’re learning, right? Do you know what the real underlying reason was? I was trying to gauge where they were in the process and how I compared to them.  

I can’t say that with a straight face. I looked at it and would think, I can’t believe it. Amber has a next target condition already. What am I doing wrong? She must be smarter than me. Better than me. Compare and despair. This is ridiculous, right? But I did it because my inner desire to be right is so ingrained. 

And I know intellectually that this is a learning experience and I’m supposed to get it wrong and learn through the process. Of course, that’s the whole point of the Kata Learning Groups. I mean, they’re called Learning Groups, for goodness sake. And that means there’s no getting it right. There’s no such thing as getting it right. But knowing that intellectually doesn’t automatically negate this desire that’s built up over 40 years of conditioning.

[00:16:14] Here’s the thing. There might be people on your team right now who have the same strong pull to get it right, whether that’s based on a fear of failure, fear of judgment, or having been conditioned like they need to be smart to add value or to have value, to have worth. Whatever reason that might be there for them, it might impact how they respond to feedback or how comfortable they are raising problems, learning something new, adopting new ways of thinking or working, taking on a challenge, being vulnerable.  

As a leader, be aware of this. All right. So that was my first big notice around. I want to get it right.

[00:16:55] The other was I want results now or I want to go faster. Yeah, I get it. I’m a lifetime learner. I come from a family of teachers. I value learning, but I also want results. When do I get to set a next target condition? When do I get to PDCA and iterate my way toward it? When do I start getting to run experiments? When do I get to start overcoming obstacles? I cannot wait.  

It was highly uncomfortable to spend almost two weeks on Grasping the Current Condition. It doesn’t matter what I know or understand intellectually about that process. It doesn’t matter that I could see how I was learning and building my skill through those cycles upon cycles.

[00:17:45] My brain, my automatic thoughts, and corresponding feelings were that it’s taking too long. There won’t be enough time left to iterate. I want to get better now, not later. All the things.

It’s like making leadership or production decisions for the short term instead of the long term. Because I totally get that really learning this process now and going slow will yield better results. Not just for the challenge, which is secondary for this, but for me, how I’m able to problem solve and how I’m able to iterate toward a future challenge, how I’m able to understand the Improvement Kata on a deeper level. 

I understand all that. I know that intellectually in my conscious brain, but I’m still highly uncomfortable with it and left unchecked, my brain would have had me abandon the process and go back to the status quo.  

The reality is that for someone on your team right now, they are sitting in a place that is highly uncomfortable. You’re trying to help them think differently or lead differently or manage their lines differently. Something that maybe doesn’t match up with all the things they’ve learned and experienced over the years, that history of valuing results and outcomes over process and learning. 

 And I know that you’re a good leader, and so you tell them that it’s a safe space and that you connect with them on how you understand, and you let them know you tell them that it’s OK for them to fall down. But you telling them that is not enough to remove the discomfort.

[00:19:17] I was in Grasp the Current Condition for eight days, eight coaching cycles, and I was uncomfortable about it through probably six of them. Knowing it intellectually and experiencing it are two different things. Someone on your team might be wrestling with that type of discomfort right now.  

Listen, I am so grateful to be living this and experiencing this right now, I think not only does it help me improve myself and help me better serve my clients, but it also helps me connect to people with empathy for their experience.  

So what about you? Here’s your next step. I want you to reflect on these two statements, my big personal aha moments for me. They might not be relevant for you, but maybe they are, I don’t know, but I’m going to just say reflect on them.  

So here are the two statements:  

I want to get it right.  

I want results now.  

So how do those two show up for you and how do those show up for your team? Reflect on those two things. 

And if you want to hear my tactical Kata lessons learned from grasping the current condition, then listen to the next episode. It is ready now. I’ll see you there.