Kata

Creates
Culture
KATA CREATES CULTURE
Mobilize and focus capability in your organization
by coaching and practicing the Improvement Kata

Mike Rother
July 2012

Mike Rother

Copyright 2012 Mike Rother, all rights reserved

1217 Baldwin Avenue / Ann Arbor, MI 48104 USA / tel: (734) 665-5411 / mrother@umich.edu

TOYOTA KATA

MANAGING FOR IMPROVEMENT,

ADAPTIVENESS AND SUPERIOR RESULTS
Coaching and practicing the Improvement Kata
gives your organization an advantage

In times of change the

learners will inherit the
earth; while the learned find
themselves beautifully
equipped to deal with a
world that no longer exists
~ Eric Hoffer

The ability to meet challenges and improve -- to learn,

adapt, grow and evolve -- is a critical 21st Century
task throughout society
Mike Rother

TOYOTA KATA

WHY HAVE CONCEPTS LIKE SYSTEMS THINKING,

LEARNING ORGANIZATION AND LEAN THINKING
NOT TAKEN HOLD?
These concepts were presented as a guide to management practice
but havent achieved the hoped-for success. Why?
We can talk about an alternative management model, we can
describe it, we can prove that its better and we can show examples.
But none of that is going to lead to its adoption or to change. Such
approaches are at odds with how we acquire new knowledge and
behavior. We need to focus more on building compact and clear
methods or routines that people can physically practice.
People dont behave a certain way because they lack information.
We behave one way or another because were in a groove. Our
brains neurons have repeated that groove for a while and thats
become our way of thinking.
Hoping to create different behavior by trying to persuade people
doesnt work. What can work is deliberately practicing a different
routine -- a kata -- that over time becomes a new mental groove; a
new habit of thinking and acting.
As people and organizations become proficient in practicing a new
pattern they can adapt it to suit their own environment and style.
Thats a normal process of technology transfer.

Mike Rother

TOYOTA KATA

A QUICK EXPERIMENT
Take a moment... please cross your arms.
Then re-cross them the other way.

How did it feel the second time compared to the first?

For most of us the second time feels odd.
You have to consciously think about it and
be more deliberate.

Mike Rother

TOYOTA KATA

OUR UNCONSCIOUS HABITS ARE FAST & POWERFUL

Our brain creates habits for efficiency; to free up capacity
for when deliberate decision making is necessary.
Unconscious thinking enables you to get through the day by
taking care of routine decisions with minimum fuss.
Unconscious thinking is fast and instinctive, while deliberate
thinking is slow and intentional.
The subconscious can process billions of bits of
information per second, while our deliberate mind can only
process a few thousand per second.

Unconscious
Thinking

Mike Rother

Deliberate
Thinking

TOYOTA KATA

MUCH OF WHAT WE DO IS HABITUAL

Like crossing our arms, performed almost without thinking
Habits are behaviors that have been repeated regularly and
occur unconsciously. The repeated behavior develops neural
pathways in the brain, making the behavior easier to complete.
Much of what happens in an organization is a consequence of
the habits that people in the organization have learned through
practice, whether deliberately or by happenstance.

However, a pitfall of many habits is that the past experiences

that created them do not necessarily represent future situations
Mike Rother

TOYOTA KATA

WE ALSO HAVE COGNITIVE BIAS

A tendency to draw incorrect conclusions
in certain circumstances based on
cognitive factors rather than evidence
Our habits work well under many
circumstances, but in certain
cases they lead to errors known
as cognitive biases.
To navigate the world our brain
tries to create a coherent
interpretation of reality from the
inputs it receives, but it hides
from us the inferences its making.
Because our unconscious
responses are automatic, hidden
from us, emotional and potentially
biased they may not always lead
us where we would like to go.

Mike Rother

TOYOTA KATA

BUT WE CAN CHANGE OUR AUTOPILOT

Humans have the power to develop new habits.
Thats what the Improvement Kata & Coaching Kata are about.
You can rewire your thinking and habits by deliberately
(consciously) practicing a different behavior pattern.
Once the pattern youre practicing enters your
unconscious it gets smoother and faster and becomes
the normal, habitual way you operate.

Deliberate
Practice
develops

Unconscious
Thinking

You can change the culture of an organization,

and even an entire society, this way.
Mike Rother

TOYOTA KATA

What would happen if you practiced

folding your arms the other way every day?

It would become normal; something

you can do without thinking about it.

Mike Rother

TOYOTA KATA

DEVELOPING NEW SKILLS & MINDSET

We may have grown up thinking all skill and behavior is
innate -- that youre either born with it or not -- but thats
not 100% correct.

Constantly
under
construction

Mike Rother

TOYOTA KATA

10

DEVELOPING MORE EFFECTIVE HABITS

FOR IMPROVEMENT, ADAPTIVENESS
AND INNOVATION
How can we be creative and effective in dynamic conditions if we tend
to automatically apply old thinking & solutions to new situations?
The subject of the book Toyota Kata and the Improvement
Kata Handbook are the unconscious routines, known as
heuristics or rules-of-thumb, that we use for dealing with
problems and challenges.
Your teams can work iteratively, adapt, achieve goals and
meet challenges with confidence -- along uncertain paths -when theyve practiced and learned a way of doing that.
The trick is to develop well-worn mental circuits not for
solutions, but for a systematic, scientific way of developing
solutions. Thats what practicing the pattern of the
Improvement Kata is about.
That skill can then be applied to an endless number of
situations. Thats important, because we dont know what
challenges are coming in the future.

Mike Rother

TOYOTA KATA

11

WHAT IS A KATA?
A kata is a routine you practice deliberately,
so its pattern becomes a habit

Through practicing, the pattern of a kata

becomes second nature - done with little
conscious attention - and readily available.
Examples include riding a bicycle, driving a
car, typing. Once youve learned to drive you dont think
much about using the cars controls and can focus your
attention on the situational aspects of navigating the road.
Mike Rother

TOYOTA KATA

12

YOUR ORGANIZATIONS CULTURE

PERPETUATES ITSELF EVERY DAY

Managers
automatically
teach the
prevailing culture
Team or
Organizational
Culture
Routines
Habits
Rituals
Norms

Mike Rother

Teaches

Mindset
and
behavior

TOYOTA KATA

13

KATA CREATES NEW CULTURE

Here the manager
is a coach deliberately
teaching a way of
thinking & acting
Practicing
specific
new
behaviors

Affects

A e
T
A
K Her

Team or
Organizational
Culture
Routines
Habits
Rituals
Norms

Teaches

Mindset
and
behavior

ed
Is Us
What organizational
culture, mindset and
behavior do you want?

What do you want

managers to be
teaching / coaching?
Mike Rother

TOYOTA KATA

14

THE SKILL PATTERN (KATA) WERE TRYING

TO TEACH AND LEARN
u Create more alignment and focus in your organization
u Increase the ability of teams to achieve goals and
meet challenges
Reality is complicated. The way forward involves iteration
and experimentation, aimed at a desired condition we dont
know in advance exactly how we will achieve. But thats OK.
The goal of practicing the Improvement Kata is to make
scientific thinking and working a habit. This makes teams
more effective and allows them direct attention and ingenuity
to the situational details that require conscious thought.

Predictable Zone

Uncertainty / Learning Zone

Ob

Our Current
Knowledge
Threshold
Mike Rother

le
c
a
t
s

?
ear
l
c
n
U
ry
o
t
i
r
r
Te

We
want to
be here
next

TOYOTA KATA

15

THE IMPROVEMENT KATA

The Improvement Kata models the human, scientific creative
process and makes it something that's teachable and
transferrable in any organization. It has four steps.

Understand
the
Direction

Grasp the
Current
Condition

Establish the
Next Target
Condition

PDCA Toward the

Target Condition
ACT
CHECK

CC

What challenge
are we striving
to meet?

Mike Rother

What is the
processs
current pattern?

What pattern
do you want to
have next?

PLAN
Go
and
See

Target
Condition

DO

TC

The 5
Questions

A step-by-step
discovery process
between where we
are and where we
want to be next.

TOYOTA KATA

16

THE IMPROVEMENT KATA

IS A META ROUTINE
Its working on how you think

Every organization has work routines. The pattern

of the Improvement Kata is a different and particularly
powerful routine because its a meta routine. Its a "metahabit" that aims to change our mental operating system
so our human capabilities come to greater fruition.
To understand this separate WHAT youre working on from
HOW youre working on it. The Improvement Kata focuses
on the HOW. That is, the Improvement Kata is a contentfree pattern for how to go about improving, adapting and
innovating.
Skills are usually domain-specific. You don't learn to play
baseball by practicing soccer. But the pattern of the
Improvement Kata is a way of working toward any objective.

Mike Rother

TOYOTA KATA

17

AND THE COACHING KATA IS A ROUTINE

FOR TEACHING THE IMPROVEMENT KATA
The Coaching Kata is a set of coaching routines to
practice in order to develop effective coaching habits.
It's a coaching pattern to help you teach the
Improvement Kata thinking pattern.
The Coaching Kata gives managers and supervisors a
standardized approach to facilitate Improvement Kata
skill development in daily work.

The coach needs to know both the Improvement Kata

and the Coaching Kata!
Mike Rother

TOYOTA KATA

18

DELIBERATE PRACTICE
Its commonplace in sports and music,
why not also in business!

I wonder how
todays game
will go?

Hank Aaron Practicing

Rather than trying to hold onto a sense of certainty
based on ones perspective, we can derive confidence
from practicing a kata for how to work through uncertainty.
Mike Rother

TOYOTA KATA

19

Coach

Learner

Coaching
Kata

Improvement
Kata

Mike Rother

TOYOTA KATA

20