Leader-Led: GEMBA Standardized Coaching

I've decided to repeat the first and last portions for every Leader-Led post I write.

Over the years that I have been leading myself (and others) on the journey to a culture of continuous improvement, I've learned that the most important thing is the leaders are the first followers.  That means that; they implement the tools in their own areas before expecting others to do it, a.k.a. walk the talk.

For my fourth entry, I am going to talk about GEMBA walks, also known as Process Coaching, or a floor walk.   From my perspective, names aren’t important. If I had my choice, I would actually call this GEMBA Standardized Coaching, and you’ll understand why by the end of this post. Beyond just a name explanation, I'm going to share how to implement and use GEMBA Standardized Coaching as a Lean Professional (or a leader who wants to use the tool to set the example).  I will start with us because Leader-Led is the title of this series.

GEMBA Standardized Coaching is the most important tool that you can use as part of a LSW (if you want more about that subject, see my previous post).  GEMBA means “on-site” or “on-location” in Japanese. Standardized means you are following a written standard or expectation.  Coaching means there is feedback and goal setting agreed upon by both parties.

So, if you combine those into one, it means you are:

1. Going to the point of occurrence.

2. Using a standardized form.

3. Doing a +/Δ/Action.

Why is this important? Because you can use it to change the culture of a workplace directly! Think about any company mission/vision/values. I’m going to use Starbucks mission and values as examples. Their mission: Creating a culture of warmth and belonging, where everyone is welcome.

Their Values:

· Delivering our very best in all we do, holding ourselves accountable for results.

· Acting with courage, challenging the status quo and finding new ways to grow our company and each other.

· Being present, connecting with transparency, dignity and respect.

That sounds great, but how do you put those into Hoshin Kanri?  How should Starbucks translate this onto the floor and into the meeting rooms across the company?  How do you consistently measure and trend your ability to improve these things?

One way that people have frequently done this is through employee surveys.  Those are good, but you’re using a lagging indicator that should be a result of your efforts.  What you really want is a leading indicator to measure your efforts directly.  As Deming said “Management by results — like driving a car by looking in rear view mirror.”  The answer (as you may have guessed) is by using GEMBA Standardized Coaching.

The easiest, and typically most effective, place to start this process is within a daily Tiered/LMS/SQDP meeting.  The reason why I usually start with this meeting is because it happens frequently, it is typically lead by leadership, and usually it has the most structure.  This makes it easy for your team to get their feet wet and adjust/adapt behaviors quickly.

Ideally you start the same way you implement any new CI/Lean/Six Sigma tool, by adding it to your strategic planning and Hoshin Kanri.  I would add this underneath the Lean Management System as the step right after it has been rolled out.  You can name it as “GEMBA Standardized Coaching” or “Process Coaching” or whatever suits you.  As you probably figured out, I like the first one, but honestly use whichever one works best for you.

Start by making a draft of very basic questions.  I usually use these:

1. Did the meeting start and end +/- 5min of scheduled?

2. Is the agenda for the meeting posted and followed?

3. Are all attendees (or backups) present?

4. Reviewing an Environmental, Safety, and/or Quality moment for that day?

5. All KPIs reviewed, filled out, and have clear R/Y/G status?

6. Action or Root Cause created or followed up with for all red KPIs?

7. Follow up on all actions due that day?

*FYI the questions you want to start with may already exist in some assessments that your company has for their CI programs.  You should add or integrate the relevant assessment questions with these.

Those first questions are straightforward and very audit-like.  Your making sure that the group is following standards and expectations.  The next 3x questions align with the cultural and behavioral transformation:

8. 3x Positive Feedback tied into company values?

9. Setting 3x (or more) daily goals for each person?

10. Steering conversation back to agenda?

For scoring, I like to use the typical Red/Yellow/Green scheme.  I also like to keep the criteria simple and say that a red (or a zero) means that no standard exists, yellow (or a 1) means a standard exists but it was not followed, and green (or a 2) means the standard exists and was followed. That gives you a max score of 20 and you can easily calculate a percentage.

So now you can start measuring behaviors.  Behaviors over time equals a culture, thus scoring and trending over time will push your culture in the right direction.  The 8^th question ties directly into what I was mentioning before about applying your company values to the meeting room.

The final and most important part is the reflection section.  You should have 3x positives (+), 3x improvements (Δ), and 1x Action.   I like using a simple diagram like the one below.

Action:

Put the questions and diagram into word or excel, making sure it fits to 1 8.5" x 11" page. Then setup a meeting, typically right after the one you want to coach, and let everyone know that this is the first step on the Hoshin Kanri project.

During the meeting review the questions with them and tweak as needed.  Try to keep them in a format that makes sense from the R/Y/G perspective.  Also make sure people understand their input and thoughts will be vital to the coaching. This is not a one-sided audit nor an exam.  This is us trying to improve our management system over time.

During the agreed-upon coaching meeting take notes without interrupting.  This is to ensure that you capture the process as-is.  Then, when it is time to do the coaching, ask people to volunteer the 3x positives and deltas.  This is to make sure you don’t influence their answers and they know they have a say in how they can improve.

Give everyone the score, letting them know that typically meetings are in the 30-50% range to start with. Your goal is to (over the next few months) get to a sustained 85%.  Then, based upon the Greens, give 3x +’s.  Based upon the Reds (or yellows if there aren’t any reds) give 3x Δ’s.

Get consensus with the meeting attendees and leader what 1x Δyou want to make an action for.  People may want to do more; however, I would suggest you try not to make people think about focusing on one improvement at a time.

At the end, setup a 10min re-occurrence one level up in terms of cadence (e.x. if the meeting is daily, then coach weekly.  If the meeting is every shift, then it should be coached 3x per week, etc.) Let everyone know you will start sharing the scores and trends.  Typically I use an excel file and email out the results and a score trend line chart.

With the fact that each leader should be coaching the “layer” that reports to them, ask the manager/director if they can start sitting in on coaching with the intention that they will take over with the cadence you setup. Use the tell/tell/show/show method to get the leader trained. Once you stabilize at 85%, move on to the next area.  Repeat these steps for every meeting in the management system and processes.

When you have 2x to 3x meetings being coached, setup a Coach Strategy meeting for every other week (can be every week or every month, but I like the every other week cadence).  Include the manager and directors that are already existing as coaches.  Start looking at performance KPI trends and see if they match up with the coaching scores. Take out anomalies and stick with longer-term trends.  Short terms and single-point issues are better dealt with through root cause analysis and actions.  Tweak the coaching(s) as needed to make sure things are trending in the right direction.

Now you are on your way to making a true Continuous Improvement Culture!

Congrats and pop that champagne.

Just like the other posts, the last section is also worth repeating.

If you are on a CI team (CI mgr, Lean practitioner, OpEx Lead, etc.), that means your daily management system should be done before expecting others to do it.  Then when you start training people, you can bring them to your area to share.  Then they can start implementing in their own areas and train others based upon doing to themselves first.

This, everyone, is simple and invaluable to an organizations Continuous Improvement culture.  As with all CI/Lean things, I cannot guarantee this will give success, but without it I can 99.99999% guarantee failure.

In my next post, I will share how to tweak this process for the shop floor, or customer service center, or any area you want to implement that is involved with making a service and/or product.

Thanks for your time,

Lean Matt