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Let people make mistakes? Tough Love of Leadership!

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While leading an event this week, I came across a common situation that I have faced over the years.  The group, very new to pull, wanted to implement a particular piece of the pull system in an exact same way that I have failed in a past life.  Despite my best efforts through education and description of the past shortcomings, I couldn’t convince them to set it up any other way.  As an event leader what do you do next?    Impose your will on the group or let them make the mistake and learn the hard way?

My answer is the dreaded “it depends.”  These situations are where you really earn your money as a leader!  Obviously if it’s a safety concern you absolutely cannot compromise but these seem to very rarely come up with a long standing debate.  More often I come across situations like this week, where the group is fairly inexperienced in an area that I have previously failed and learned.

The correct answer comes from a deep evaluation of the situation.  I have done both in the past, imposed my will and also allowed the group to make (what I thought) was a mistake.  I strongly prefer to allow the alleged mistake to happen, have the group monitor the situation closely, and eventually allow the group to analyze and solve the issue themselves.  Obviously this creates the best learning atmosphere and builds a very strong team.

However, there are situations where I impose my will on the group.  This normally comes when the team is focusing on an area of the plant where I feel success on the first try is crucial.  This may be due to a large amount of negativity towards lean in the area and I don’t want to provide ammunition to the naysayers.  It may also be a situation where we would be putting our customer in jeopardy.

Whatever the situation, I don’t use the “impose my will” method without some serious analysis of the situation.  You can really crush your informal leaders and destroy momentum.  You will also be inadvertently teaching the group that its okay to impose your will at all times.  You are developing  leaders for future events and you can quickly spread this dangerous situation across your enterprise!  Some discussion needs to take place to ensure that everyone understands why you are pulling out the dictator card on them!

So in summary, make sure you allow your groups to make mistakes, learn from them, and are teaching your leaders to support this method.  In areas where you are imposing your solution over the group’s desire, use caution and good communication to limit this path to only extremely rare and crucial situations.

I’d be very interested in how you have approached this type of situation in your plants……..

Bryan


Filed under: Leadership, Lean, Lean Manufacturing, People, People Skills, Polls, Respect for People Tagged: continuous improvement, employee involvement, hansei, Leadership, respect for humanity

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