June 23, 2011

The Gemba Walk

Jim Womack
Senior Advisor, Lean Enterprise Institute

8
 The Gemba Walk
• The purpose is to grasp the situation:
Go see
Ask why
Show respect
• When there is an issue (a “problem”) or…
• An opportunity/need to improve

9
 Who Should Gemba Walk?
• Someone at a higher level or with a broad
span of responsibility.
responsibility Who should:
Observe the actual work being done to create
value and achieve some organizational (and
customer) purpose
Focus on a particular process (value stream)
Start at one end & walk to the other
Engage the people touching the process

10
 Who Should Gemba Walk?
• Line managers, to grasp the situation in
processes over which they have authority
• Individuals taking responsibility for
understanding and improving processes
over which they have no authority
Value stream “manager”
manager (or “responsible”)
responsible )
Improvement team members
Consultants
Me!

11
 Things to Avoid While Walking

• Doing harm!
• Giving answers!
• “Management by walking around”
• Going
G i alone
l

12
 Focus for Gemba Walks
• Technical (“Taking a Value-Stream Walk
at Firm A”)
• Social ((“Making
g Everyone
y Whole”))
• Organizational (“Becoming Horizontal in a
Vertical World”)
World )
For the remainder of this webinar let me
focus on the “organizational” gemba walk.

13
 Three Simple Observations
• Value streams in all industries flow
horizontally across complex organizations
But…
• Almost all complex organizations are
vertical in orientation
• In consequence, smooth, rapid, waste-
f
free fflow ( = lean) is difficult
ff to achieve

14
Vertical Orientation of the World

15
 What This Means
• Lean thinkers now need to learn to:
Think horizontally ( = see the flows from
end-to-end)
Act horizontally
h ll ( = collaborate
ll b across
verticals to optimize the flows)
• T
To provide
id ever more perfect
f t value
l with
ith
less time, effort & cost (waste) = lean
Taking a gemba walk is a great way to
learn!

16
Horizontal Focus for the World

17
Changing Focal Planes Is Hard
• We struggle with authority (vertical)
versus responsibility (horizontal)
(Matrices simply create conflicts of
horizontal versus vertical authority)
• We lack a context (and a mechanism) for
a creative conversation to optimize the
horizontal flows
Gemba walks can help create the context.

18
 Authority vs. Responsibility
• We all understand (and seek) authority, a
vertical concept
concept.
• We neither understand nor feel comfortable
with responsibility as a horizontal concept
concept.
But…
• We can’t turn organizations sideways
sideways.
• So…we need to experiment with assigning
responsibility for value streams to individuals
with no authority…………
who can lead the gemba walks!

19
 A Context for a Conversation
• The walk should lead to a conversation
across the
h verticals
i l about:
b
Current performance of value streams
The gap between current & needed
performance to achieve a purpose
R t cause(s)
Root ( ) off the
th gap
The most promising countermeasures to
close the gap
Who must do what when to introduce &
sustain the countermeasures
20
 Why This Is So Hard
• The conversation uncovers all of the
contradictions and conflicts between the
verticals.
• Most senior managers have no means to
see their core p
processes,, are paralyzed
p y
by conflicts between the verticals, and
don’t know how to respond (so…they
don’t and the most powerful vertical
wins!)

21
 Mechanism to Help the
Conversation
• While walking, agree to create a value-
stream map showing the performance of
every step in the process/value stream:
Engaging everyone touching the
process
Embedded in an A3 to permit PDCA
• Then
e ass
assign
g sosomeone
eo e tthe
e responsibility
espo s b ty to
periodically repeat gemba walks along
every value stream….forever!

22
What Senior Managers Must Do

• Listen to the value stream conversations

• As necessary, go see (join a walk), ask
why, and show respect
• Avoid giving answers; just ask questions!

23
What Senior Managers Must Do

• Hold joint conversations with the leaders

of the verticals (who still have authority)
and those assigned responsibility for the
horizontals on how the behavior and
mission of each vertical must change to
optimize the horizontal flow of value.

24
 Do We Know
How to Do This Today?
• No! So what we need now is:
Horizontal, cross-vertical gemba walks,
leading to experiments with ways to
optimize different types of horizontals
((“The
The life of lean is experiments.
experiments ”))
Wide and rapid sharing of findings
I’ll try to do my part as I continue my
gemba walks and share my findings!
25
 The Gemba Walk

Questions & Answers

26
 Stay Up-to-Date on Webinars

• @LeanDotOrg (Twitter)

27
Resources:
• Visit
Vi it lean.org
l
• Receive the Weekly Eletter
• Check
Ch k the h Workshop
k h
Calendar

• Questions:
info@lean.org
f l
617-871-2900

28