“Bask in the glory, of all our problems. ‘Cause we got the kind of love it takes to solve ’em.”

Issues written by Benjamin Levin, Tor Hermansen, Julia Michaels, Justin Tranter, Benny Blanco, Mikkel Eriksen

 

Practice the Lean ethic long enough and you will start hearing Lean references in some unexpected places, such as popular music.

A still too common mindset is to seek to avoid problems, especially at work yet also in our personal lives. The people in authority within command-centric enterprises don’t want to hear about problems, presumably because the blame for the problems may reflect poorly on them. And when someone is willing to identify a problem there quickly follows a rush to judgment. What is true at work can also be true at home with family or out in the world with friends.

The Lean ethic requires that we judge the root cause of the problem, and not the person we think is responsible for the problem. As the song says…

“‘Cause you don’t judge me. ‘Cause if you did, baby, I would judge you too. No, you don’t judge me. ‘Cause you see it from the same point of view.”

A major reason Taiichi Ohno sought just-in-time material and parts delivery while shaping the Toyota Production System is that he saw this as an opportunity to “lower the river to see the rocks,” rocks being sources of variation in the flow of work. Variation in Lean is a problem, and problems are to be embraced and solved.

Sometimes we see problems frustrate people adopting a Lean approach to work. They have been working diligently for two or more years, and have been successful in improving the work. The progress they have made is visible and significant, and yet they still run into problems in planning and executing the work. They ask, “when will we stop seeing problems.”

They won’t.

The good news is that the problems they are now addressing are at a much higher level, and previously invisible to the project team. They are functioning at a much higher level than two years before, and when the solve these new problems they will be functioning at an even higher level. These are performance gains that the people on the project will take with them through the rest of their career if they remain diligent.

Here’s where the second phrase of the opening lyric comes into play – “’Cause we got the kind of love it takes to solve ’em.” Love in the work team context means trust and respect. Teams need to develop high levels of trust and respect is they are to successfully address difficult problems.

So seek problems, and bask in their glory, realizing how important it is to develop the trust and respect necessary to solve those problems; along with the understanding that solving them will only invite new, and better, problems. That’s true at work, at home, and with friends.