Chapter 4

Day Zero

Introduction

Perhaps the most difficult step to take in a lean IT transformation is the very first. We’ve seen many companies with the best of intentions start talking about lean—they send staff to conferences, go on gemba ¹ walks, and become quite excited about their coming transformation, only to fizzle and never really get started. Why? A big reason why companies fail on their journeys is that they do not know how to take those first formative steps to ensure a solid start. They get lost trying to figure out where to start—asking questions such as, “What processes, practices, and tools should be used to build a solid foundation for the transformation? Not wanting to make a mistake from the beginning, they never get started in the first place. And while those first steps do not need to be (and in fact will not be!) perfect, they are critical in building credibility and visibility for the transformation. Visibility is essential to keep the interest of the decision makers in the organization and get everyone’s ongoing attention. So much of a transformation’s longevity is dependent on gaining the collective attention of the executive team, introducing a story that captures their imagination and keeps them wanting for more. Perfection is the enemy at this point; you need a start that is good enough to begin to build your lean organization.

At the end of Chapter 3, your homework was to determine the purpose of your transformation—your True North, the compass setting that will guide the direction and course corrections along your path. In this chapter you will take the first steps on that journey that will move the lean transformation from theory to action. These are steps the authors have taken in leading companies on their journeys and steps we have observed in companies effectively implementing lean IT. Along the way we’ll take a look at some of these companies, both successes and failures, as examples to learn from. Ultimately, you must decide which steps to take, but we will be with you each step of the way. Commit to taking concrete action sooner rather than later—let’s get started and get that ever-difficult first step out of the way. It’s important to get into the habit of applying PDCA (Plan–Do–Check–Adjust) thinking directly to the transformation, treating every step as an experiment to constantly test understanding, observe the results, and adapt based on the evidence.

Before applying any lean thinking or tools, first decide where to start in the organization. This choice is important and should not be made in haste. You need to select a model line, ² an area where you can apply the principles and tools, learn, make adjustments, demonstrate success, and then apply what has been learned to other areas. This model line serves as both a proving ground and an ongoing laboratory that will be used in rousing support within the organization.

You are looking for a few things when choosing the model line:

1. An organization, function, or department complex enough to be credible when talking about results, but not so complex as to prohibit a reasonable chance of success. Size is also a factor; our recommendation is to start with a group of 100 people or less in large IT organizations; smaller organizations should get started with a group of perhaps 10–20 people
2. Enthusiastic support—or at least a general interest and no public opposition or hostility ³ —from the local management team
3. Sufficient time, interest, and resources available from management and frontline associates (requirements will be described later)
4. A willingness to learn and apply new ways of acting and thinking, and being comfortable with the uncertainty that goes with discovering innovative ways of doing work and improving work processes

Spend some quality time applying these four guidelines to select the right place to start. Measure twice, cut once—you often only get one opportunity to make a first impression and convince people the transformation can really work.

Now that you have identified and recruited a group or function that will be the model line, it is time to solidify the support and operational models. If this is your organization, it certainly simplifies things, but let us assume that you are neither the CIO nor an IT director within the group, but rather outside the direct leadership reporting structure for the organization. The first order of business is to gain executive sponsorship within the group. Get an executive sponsor at a level as high as possible in the direct management chain of the organization who is inclined and able to provide active support—including time commitment and the willingness to participate in the transformation.

Ideally, this sponsorship would come from the top—the CIO or even the CEO, but often this is not possible. ⁴ The main objective is to demonstrate success and capture the attention and encouragement of the senior executive team.

Your executive sponsor provides vocal and demonstrable support for the transformation; in fact, executive sponsors will be going through a transformation of their own during the process. As you’ll learn throughout this book, the transformation of IT teams is heavily dependent on the transformation not only of the frontline associates, but also of the management teams. We will focus not just on the way management teams view and interact with their teams as they go through the transformation process, but also on the roles and responsibilities of management in the new organization. In fact, the local and executive managers for the model line must lead the transformation. You may be in charge of the transformation or a subject matter expert in lean, but to gain buy-in of the associates and managers, it’s critical that the direct management team is leading the work. This will require all the influential and political skills you possess!

Practice Makes Perfect

Our philosophy in executing the transformation has a bias for action and learning while doing. We’ve found that behavior-driven lean transformations have a much greater chance of success than heavy classroom style training. This is not to say that you won’t do any classroom work or reading, but those learning methods supplement the learning that occurs at the gemba. The best way to think about this is that it is easier for the organization and staff to act their way into thinking than to think their way into acting. ⁵ How often have you seen training programs that get people excited about a new way of working or learning a new skill only to lose the knowledge before getting a chance to put it into action? We have seen countless companies send staff to classes such as Certified ScrumMaster ⁶ training and believe when they come back they’ll lead the organization through an agile transformation. Most are left disappointed with the results. The amount of information provided in a classroom, without an opportunity to start using the learning, is simply too much to retain. You must create an environment that provides the information needed and quickly get people using that knowledge to ensure it sticks. Learning about lean and implementing lean are not the same thing!

Change management is often addressed in a clinical fashion—it’s a distinct effort that runs parallel to the process changes, often by a consultant or other dedicated resource. Many large companies have hired outside consulting firms or created entire competencies around change management. Your lean transformation will certainly benefit from an understanding of the mechanics behind why people do or do not change their actions and thinking, but we suggest making it easy on yourself—spare the expense of the consultant and focus on learning by doing and getting people into the habit of applying lean.

From this point forward, think about the transformation from two viewpoints: management and frontline associates. Their perspectives are different and you must account for this in effecting the transformation. Managers have a broad view of the business needs and vision of where the company needs to go; frontline associates have the know-how to execute and improve the daily processes that make that vision a reality. We will share with you an approach to employ for each group and how to bring the groups together to create a foundation for your lean system.

Management’s First Steps

First things first—the management team of the group going through the initial transformation needs enough information to get started, but not so much that it becomes overwhelmed. Let’s take a look at how to inform and educate them about this coming change.

We’ve often found that middle management is by far the trickiest part of the lean transformation and also has a disproportionate amount of influence on the ultimate success of the effort. This group of people often perceive that they have the most to lose from the change of becoming a lean organization. The idea of an empowered workforce, where it’s no longer the manager’s job to solve all the problems and direct others on what to do, can be a frightening prospect for some managers (and exhilarating for others!). Through the transformation they’ll come to understand that lean actually gives them more responsibility and greater impact on company strategy and results, but that will not be readily apparent at first.

There’s a balance between providing enough information for context and our bias for action. We have to create an environment that makes people feel comfortable with (or at least not threatened by) change while not arming those that will use the information to try to battle the transformation team. To do this, we suggest the following principles for the management transformation:

1. Do not overload the management team with details they do not need (until they need them). For instance, there’s no need to go into the details of strategic deployment or other advanced lean concepts the first time you introduce the foundational ideas of lean!
2. Focus on connecting the work of managers to the value-adding processes of the front line. Make the transformation about providing ever-greater value to customers, not a management efficiency program.
3. Address any negativity or sabotaging of the transformation with speed and directness. While almost without exception the developers, testers, analysts, DBAs, and other frontline IT staff will be able to make the leap to lean, some managers simply will not. This is critical: One influential manager actively working against the transformation can kill it! When that happens, move quickly to work with the person and, if required, find alternative work in another area—outside the company if necessary.

Management teams rightfully do not like to be surprised about major transformations, or any change for that matter. The first step is informing them of the effort, ideally in person. No one likes to hear through e-mail that his or her world is changing. And please refrain from using social media for this first announcement. Twitter is not the best medium for change management at this point in time!

At the initial meeting the executive sponsor should be prepared to discuss the framework for the transformation, what is expected of the management team, and when they will receive more information. It’s not necessary to have everything figured out, but you should be able to clearly describe the why and talk about the approach that will be used.

After the first meeting, the model line management team needs some basic education on the topic of lean—what it is and what it is not. Many managers have an outdated view of lean—namely, that it is only about waste elimination or is code for firing people. This training should introduce lean IT as a systemic approach to operating and leading the group. It should not be geared to give the management team a doctorate in lean; anything more than a day or two ⁷ of information at this point is overkill. We want everyone to use a common language and get comfortable with the purpose of the journey that he or she is embarking on.

This is also a great time to take some gemba trips to see lean in action. If you are fortunate enough to have contacts at great lean companies, ask if you can bring your management team on a field trip to see what lean in action looks and feels like. Visit companies that demonstrate great lean thinking; don’t worry about whether they are IT examples. Often the best learning comes from seeing lean outside the context of technology. Go on a gemba walk in a hospital or manufacturer, for instance, and discuss with your team what they saw and how it applies to your company. One caution is to set appropriate context with the participants; it’s easy in the early days to think you’ll never be as good as the companies you visit and use that as an excuse not to start in the first place. Going from the perspective of a traditionally managed company to see a mature lean organization can be a bit of a culture shock and leave visitors feeling as if lean is an unattainable aspiration. But with the right context, most management teams are energized by what they see and come away with a determination to make this their new reality. Gemba visits are an important part of your journey; have an end in mind before you head out. What are you hoping to see, learn, and achieve from the visit?

Now that the management team has some basic knowledge, it’s time to get them moving and have some fun. Two lean tools to focus on right away for both management and front line associates are visual management and daily standup meetings. We use these as a starting point for transformation due to their relative ease of implementation and high payback. This is precisely what is needed to gain interest from those around you to enable the team to undertake more advanced and hard-to-observe practices that will form the foundation of your lean system. We will go into much more detail about these and other lean systems as well as the principles that guide us in choosing to start with them, but for now we’ll provide enough information to get you started.

Before jumping into standups and visual management, this is also the right time for your sponsor to communicate (preferably in person) to the whole organization. The purpose of this first contact is to outline why the company or department is undergoing a lean transformation as well as what to expect and, very importantly, what is expected of everyone. The first communication sets the tone and context for the entire process and kicks off the transformation in earnest. While the most effective communication style depends upon company culture, in general the message should be upbeat and focus on increasing value to all stakeholders—including associates.

Visual Management and Standups

Two critical concepts to any lean transformation are visuality (Chapter 7) and accountability (Chapter 9). Visuality plays the critical role of ensuring that everyone has the right information when and where that information is needed; accountability is the mechanism to ensure that what is supposed to happen does happen and that process improvement stays in focus. There is no one right way to begin a transformation, but our experience has shown that these simple practices are an effective place to start. Others might choose value stream mapping or kaizen training, but nothing seems to grab an organization’s attention more than seeing visible, quick evidence of the day’s issues and progress being made. Let’s take a look at how these two lean tools apply to the management team.

Visual Management System

To start building your new visual system for the management team, choose a location that is visible to the workforce, not hidden away in an office or locked conference room. This will be the site of your visual management system as well as the location of your standup meetings. Location is important in creating an environment of transparency. As the transformation proceeds, your culture will shift to one of openness, honesty, and responsibility, and you need to start demonstrating those principles from day one. There is no better way to demonstrate transparency than by making the management team visuals available for anyone in the organization to study. Make sure there is plenty of space for the visuals at the location you choose. We prefer magnetic whiteboards directly on the walls to allow for both writing directly on the boards and hanging visuals, but bulletin, cork, and other surface boards work as well. If the walls are unsuitable for this purpose, purchase rolling boards or kiosks. Don’t let your physical workspace be a roadblock to getting started.

Your first visual management board needs only a few sections (listed here), but feel free to add others based on your needs. This board will evolve as the transformation progresses:

1. True North and the performance metrics that support it (preferably leading indicators, but more on that later) including posted simple definitions of red/green status
2. A management work-in-progress (WIP) board—representing the assignments of managers related to process improvements and the lean transformation
3. The status of your production floor—representing the value-added work of the model line, including any escalated problems or issues

Create boards that are easy to use and simple to understand. A quick test that can determine if you have succeeded is the 5 feet, 3 seconds rule. ⁸ If you cannot easily see your board and in a matter of a few seconds determine what issues need attention, keep working on the design. Use clear visual controls and definitions with posted rules of use.

Your production floor measures will vary based on the type of work the organization does—they may be project status, number of incidents in progress, server builds, research projects in process, or a myriad of other things. The principle is to represent the value-added work in flight. These measures are a roll-up of the frontline visual system that you will also create (covered later in this chapter). It is important that the management and frontline boards are linked, ensuring that what is important to the organization is represented on each. The difference between the frontline and management visuals representing the production floor is in the level of granularity displayed.

Involve the whole management team in the design of the boards, using examples from your own experience, adapted from gemba visits, or downloaded from our site. Don’t overengineer the boards—only put up what you are able to sustain. The only thing worse than no visual management is visual management that is not kept up to date. Stale visuals become a running joke in the organization and a reminder of the latest failed improvement program.

While you should expect your board to morph quite a bit in the near future, setting up a simple system such as this allows you to get the management team in the habit of using lean thinking—making things visible, creating accountability, and focusing on process improvement. Don’t worry—you’ll have plenty of time to make improvements.

Standup Meetings

Once you have a visual system established for the management team, standup meetings that occur at these boards should start. You may be familiar with the basics of standups due to their extensive use in agile; we will tweak things just a bit to get the most value for the management team.

You may be wondering why we are suggesting standups for a management team. The objectives of standups for management are very similar to why we implement them for frontline teams: namely, driving accountability, increasing collaboration, focusing on process improvement, and problem solving. The need for standups is perhaps more profound for management, where the work is often completely hidden and sometimes viewed with suspicion by frontline associates. Combining standups with visual management allows daily focus on the value-added work of managers—coaching, problem solving, connecting with associates and their work.

Those of you with exposure to agile teams are very familiar with the traditional three questions answered by each team member at standup: “What did I do yesterday?” “What am I going to do today?” and “What are my blockers?” These questions quickly focus the team with the intent of getting everyone up to speed very quickly (15 minutes or less) and setting the stage for collaboration and any additional conversations that need to happen after the standup.

The management standup is similar, but with some nuances. In Chapter 9, we’ll talk about a tiered management system that will link different layers of standup meetings, but for now this will be your blueprint. Unlike our frontline teams, this first incarnation of the management boards does not need a standup meeting every day. We’ve found that this is a commitment that very

few managers will make on day one. If you can get them to agree to meet two or three times per week, you’re ahead of the curve at this point.

The format of the standups is simple: 15 minutes or less, with participation by everyone on the management team. Unlike agile team standups, which advocate team ownership, we recommend the senior leader of the group facilitate the standup. This will help as we evolve the boards to incorporate further accountability processes in Chapter 9. The standup should focus on all three parts of the board: status of performance metrics, status of the production floor, and the work in progress.

Some Do’s and Don’ts for Management Standups

• DO review the status of the production floor every standup
• DO focus on escalated problems, risks, and issues
• DO assign new WIP process improvements with clear responsibility
• DO discuss progress of existing WIP
• DON’T review or add things already baked into your operations (such as year-end performance reviews)
• DON’T solve problems in the standup
• DON’T hide information—if it is important it should be on the board

In the standups, focus on value-added management activities and the transition to lean management. Examples of activities to add include coaching needed in the organization, improvement of management processes, key work systems that require development, and opportunities to better link tactical work to company strategy.

True North metrics may not need to be reviewed at every standup, as strategy and mission are not as volatile as daily problems and metrics tied to delivery work. Do implement a regular cadence for review of these metrics, perhaps every 2 weeks or once a month; experiment to see what works best for your organization. Key to success is creating a repeatable and predictable pattern for your management standup meetings, which will become an indispensible tool for leading the organization.

Implementing management standup meetings and visual management is a great first step on the organization’s lean journey. These two practices create a solid foundation that will ensure that the organization doesn’t lose interest in the transformation and leaders in the organization are focused on the things needed to drive positive change and ensure success.

Frontline Associates’ First Steps

The journey for your frontline associates begins with the announcement from the executive sponsor as described earlier. It contains the critical

information the associates need to make sense of the coming changes. The announcement should be followed very quickly by a conversation between each associate and his or her direct manager that is focused on reassurances about the intent of the transformation. This dialogue is critical; you should equip the management team with talking points to handle the concerns and questions that are bound to come up: “What does this mean to me?” “Is my job safe?” “Things are pretty good; why are we doing this?” and from the optimists in the group, “How do I get involved?” If the transformation is aligned to your True North, you should have no trouble responding to these questions. If it is not, before going forward you need to think deeply about how the transformation can be positioned to support your True North and how it will benefit the company’s associates.

While you will implement similar systems and tools to what was put in place for the management team, the approach for the associates will diverge somewhat. The focus will be directly on the activities we want associates to start practicing. Unlike the management team, there’s no need at this point to provide generalized lean training. ¹¹ Learning will occur as you deploy the practices in the workgroups. For instance, talking about why we do standup meetings can occur as you practice the first standup. All change is messy, but active coaching and learning while doing makes it more understandable and easier for everyone.

At the same time, some people will want more information, and you should help them to learn the way that’s best for them. Provide them resources to learn more on their own or in small groups. You can do this by starting a small lean lending library, leading or encouraging others to begin a book study club, or setting up gemba walks to see lean in action. Pay attention to the people that get involved; they are your future change agents—the first adopters and potential evangelists.

Getting Started

A traditional approach to transforming the front line involves using a value stream mapping exercise to understand current state and find the sources of waste. A value stream map (VSM) is used rather than process maps in order to illustrate that any one group or process is part of a bigger ecosystem. Value stream mapping helps to avoid optimizing the parts at the expense of the whole. While we can’t argue with the logic of this approach, we have too often seen VSMs become nothing more than academic exercises. An external or internal lean consultant working with staff and management subject matter experts creates the map and identifies a myriad of potential improvements, most of which are never attempted. The exercise becomes one of so many paper exercises that never result in real, sustainable change.

Please don’t misinterpret our message—we believe value stream mapping is a very important tool in a lean IT transformation that you should make use of, but we are going to start with small steps and build from there.

Visual Management System

Just like the management team, our first lean system to implement with the front line is visual management. This will create some buzz for the model line as well as draw your executive sponsor and management team into the space, allowing them to see tangible signs of change in the organization. It will also create a connection immediately between the management and frontline lean system. Your first visuals for the associates serve to build a foundation for more advanced tools and principles later: namely, accountability and a team-based problem solving culture.

Similarly to what we discussed for the management boards, choose a location that is easily accessible and visible to the associates. These boards will be used every day and the associates need access on a constant basis— find the best location and don’t hide it away somewhere. Later chapters will cover collaborative spaces and the benefits offered in that type of a workspace. Don’t worry if that’s not your current situation. It doesn’t pay to wait for the perfect facilities layout; ¹² even if everyone is in cubes, put up the visuals where you can.

Effective visual management systems answer a few key questions: As a team, are we winning or losing? What are the most important things to work on? What issues require attention (these can be problems or opportunities for improvement)? To start to address these questions, begin with two concepts on the visual boards at this point: work in progress and problems.

Work-in-Progress (WIP)

A WIP board is essential for a few reasons in order to show:

1. The total work to be completed
2. Prioritization of the work
3. Where bottlenecks are occurring

A common problem in IT (and everywhere else for that matter), regardless of the specialty, is more demand than capacity. Unfortunately, lean cannot instantly solve that problem! ¹³ There’s likely always going to be more work to be done than the team can possibly accomplish. Where lean can help, though, is by making sure the amount of demand is visible and ensuring that the work that does get done is of the highest value to customers and is done in the most efficient manner possible. To start down that path, create a WIP board for your model line. Depending on the number of teams in scope for your transformation, this may be one board or it may be many.

The simplest versions of these types of boards have three columns: To Do, Doing, Done. A note card with a needed task or activity is placed in the appropriate column. Let’s expand the card information just a little and add a few additional features: specifically, the expected completion date and the status of the task or activity—either on track or not, red or green. ¹⁴ Additionally, let’s create another column and series of rows on the board to show who is assigned ownership of the card. All work for the team should be represented on the cards. If the team performs a task or activity, it should be represented on the board. This allows the visual system to accurately represent the full scope of work and enables a view of work flow for both value-added and non-value-added work items. A simple example can be seen in Figure 4.1. Spend some time and create WIP boards for each of the teams that are in scope for your transformation.

Be sure that you involve the frontline practitioners in the creation of the boards and tracking cards. Nothing will stall progress as fast as a staff that feel like change is being done to them, rather than with their input.

Problems

Problem solving is the most critical skill for people in a lean organization. We will always have problems. Let’s say that again—we will always have problems. If anyone tries to tell you that an improvement system will make problems obsolete and a thing of the past, run the other way. If you can’t find a problem in your operations, you’re not looking hard enough. The point isn’t to eliminate problems, but rather to create a methodical process to rapidly identify and solve them. Mature lean organizations learn how to address problems soon after they are noticed, as quickly and effectively as possible. Once the capability of daily problem solving is embedded, imagine a new environment in your company that moves from solving the crisis of the moment to solving tomorrow’s problems before they occur. ¹⁵

To do this, you must create an environment where it is safe to talk about and escalate problems. We’re describing a culture that rewards people for talking openly about things that are not working well instead of hiding them or creating workarounds and pretending everything is OK. Every organization has problems. A true lean organization seeks them out, makes them visible, and applies PDCA thinking to resolve them as quickly as possible.

Creating a culture focused on problem solving is a tough challenge, one that will take time and ultimately a demonstrated behavior shift in management. This section of the frontline visual management system will be used to start this cultural shift. For now, the intent is to get the team comfortable with identifying problems, making them visual, and assigning owners responsible for solving the problem. Create an area on your boards that allows for the team to post note cards or post-it notes with problems they need help with. This can be related to a current assignment, a process problem, or anything that simply isn’t working as well as it should be. A key practice here is to manage WIP. Don’t take on more than the team can handle. Set a WIP limit: say, two or three problems that the team will commit to actively working. Place other ideas in a holding area until an item has completed the necessary PDCA cycles and been resolved. It is much better for the team to see a few problems addressed than to see many problems in process but progress rarely achieved.

Standup Meetings

Once you have a visual representation of the work that each of the teams does, it’s time to implement standup meetings. Unlike for the management team, these should occur daily and focus on tactical topics related to the work on the WIP board. The meetings should be held at the visual boards and follow a pattern used often in agile development teams. This includes ensuring equal participation by everyone on the team, quick updates lasting no longer than a total of 15 minutes for the whole team, and a focus on discussing topics important to group collaboration. Specifically, implement the standups with the following guidelines:

1. Standups occur at the visual management system for the team
2. Each member should provide a quick status of the tasks he or she is assigned and whether there are any roadblocks to the work (30–45 seconds each)
3. Each member may raise an issue or problem that he or she is struggling with or needs to escalate (just describe the what in 15–30 seconds)
4. Table any long discussions or problem solving until after the standup

Emphasize updates that focus on things that impact others on the team; care should be given to avoid long-winded updates best handled outside the standup meeting. The direct manager and team lead should be present at the standup meetings and encourage everyone to participate. Additionally, the manager should take any escalated problems for placement and ownership assignment on the new management boards. Only problems that the team is unable to solve should be escalated to the management board. Problems should be solved at the lowest possible level in the group whenever possible. Take care to ensure that the manager does not dominate the standup. These meetings are about team collaboration and problem identification (not solving); management has a supporting role in this, but associates have the lead role.

Standup meetings paired with visual management are an excellent place to start lean transformations for frontline associates. First, they create a higher level of accountability through the public posting of commitments as well as verbal affirmations of work status. Just as in agile teams, it’s much harder to hide as a poor performer in this type of an environment. We’ve found that people who want to just coast and provide minimum work effort end up self-selecting out of lean teams. Second, standups allow management to gain a better understanding of the value-adding work of the front line through hearing daily the work progress and problems the staff are experiencing.

An important purpose of the lean management system is to create a direct connection between management and value-added work, and this is one of the best ways to make it happen. We’ll layer in a coaching system later that will make these tools even more impactful.

Building a Purpose-Driven System

In this chapter, we have described the key components to put in place as you kick off your model line:

• Basic education
• Communication and collaboration
• Visual management system
• Standup meeting process
• Transparency and connection

Using organizational purpose as a guide, all the components of this lean system are oriented toward that common theme. The impact of this method is hard to overstate! Your people will see the pieces of the puzzle (the various tools, concepts, and practices) come together as an integrated system where all the parts contribute to a common purpose.

To avoid confusion, let’s be clear about what we mean when we use the word system. A system is a collection of tools, policies, practices, and procedures combined to achieve a specific goal or outcome. The components of a system are point solutions—for example, an A3 form, a standup meeting agenda, or gemba walk guidelines. Systems create the collective effect of a selected group of tools, policies, and procedures, ultimately changing the daily behavior of people.

So what behaviors do we want to drive from our lean system? Respect, engagement, enablement, enthusiasm, teamwork, openness, trust, and ownership are some of the central behaviors that are often identified. But these words mean different things to different people. What does ideal behavior look like? When we add a clearly articulated purpose (a True North) to the conversation, describing and modeling the specific behaviors we hope to influence through our lean system, new ways of acting and thinking become much more attainable.

An example may help here. Let’s assume you are preparing for Day Zero but you have not given much thought to your True North homework from the previous chapter. Standup meetings are a key element of your model line and you are hoping to instigate some great discussions among your team members. You have a standard agenda, a visual board with measures, WIP, problems/issues, and a manager and team ready and willing to give it a try. It’s like you are at the edge of the woods with a troop of people and basic hiking equipment, but without a map! If we let people just figure out the best route, we could engage in endless debate and still not necessarily select the appropriate direction to take.

So how do you know if your standup meeting discussion is focused on the right topics? How do you know if the actions and behaviors of the team are aligned with the ultimate goals of the company? There are many things they could focus on, but what issues should they focus on? Without a solid understanding and acceptance of a True North, it is a matter of opinion. Often the manager’s opinion trumps the opinions of the other team members (just what we don’t need—more command and control!), which has the effect of shutting people down.

Now let’s take the same scenario and add a clear purpose statement: Dedication to every client’s success. Fortified with this aim, the team could easily monitor, assess, reflect, and adjust its standup meeting by asking the simple question, “Was our focus during today’s standup on the client’s success?” Common agreement of purpose (our intent) acts like a set of guardrails to keep us all on track and focused on the things that matter most.

Day Zero Wrap-Up

Starting a lean journey is no easy decision. Getting started is often the most difficult step. As we progress through this field guide, we’ll revisit the concepts briefly discussed here as we build a comprehensive lean system. Implementing simple visual management and standups will create a solid foundation on which we can build and improve.

Notes