A lean “wash” won’t make problems go away
Editor’s note: Chris Irwin is the Senior Manager of Ontario’s Lean Office, where he leads a team of practitioners who use the lean approach to improve flow, visualize work and teach public servants how to solve problems. Lean is a methodology used to streamline processes by identifying and eliminating non-productive activities such as errors, extra steps, and waiting times. A lean approach is becoming increasingly popular in government contexts. Chris’ motto for the team is: We love problems. We eat problems for breakfast.
I read a story a few years ago about Australian industrial researcher and psychologist, Elton Mayo. In the 1920s, Mayo led a research project in a textile factory.
The hypothesis was something like this: if we change the work environment, we will decrease employee turnover.
I find Mayo’s experiments with lighting levels to be the most interesting. Mayo discovered that when light levels were increased, worker productivity increased. That makes sense right? Next, the experimenters turned the light levels back down, expecting productivity levels to return to normal. To their surprise productivity went up even further!
Years later, these experiments inspired further research for what is now a widely known explanation for short-lived increases in productivity — and more generally — that the act of being observed changes one’s behavior. It’s called the Hawthorne effect. It takes its name from the location of the original research at the Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois.
I cite this as a cautionary tale for those who might be engaged in another, less known effect, that I like to call “leanwashing”.
“Leanwashing”
“Leanwashing” occurs when we make improvements to processes without following the fundamentals of lean.
Using a lean approach may seem straightforward; if we apply lean methods then things will improve, however, as was demonstrated in Mayo’s experiments, making improvements to the way we work are not as straightforward or logical as they may seem. If you don’t understand and solve for the root cause of a problem, any improvements will likely be short-lived.
We can’t just make tweaks around the edges, we need a tested problem statement, to collect the right data and to engage the client in the process.
When I’m invited to a service delivery area, I often hear, “Lean? Yes — we practice lean, every day, and things are so much better than they used to be.” When I ask to see a team’s problem statement, or current state value stream map — an important approach in the lean world to help visualize the current state of a problem, reduce waste and improve the end-user experience — I often get “Oh, we didn’t bother with that because we already knew what needed to be fixed and we did it.”
Moving ahead with only small tweaks here and there is more akin to the Hawthorne effect than the sustained improvements we need to deliver simpler, faster, better services that meet people’s needs in a digital age.
Small tweaks might also fix a symptom, yet miss the root cause, which can have unintended consequences further down the line.
While I am the first one to encourage an agile and adaptable approach to lean, common standards can ensure that we maximize value for people while minimizing unnecessary process. For example, lean practitioners should always:
- look at the process end-to-end
- consider the process from the client’s perspective
- capture metrics around time such as waiting times and comparing the time spent actually working on the project itself versus the total elapsed time of the process
- dig down to the root causes of process problems
Our lean office is partnering with lean practitioners across the Ontario Public Service to incorporate the fundamentals of lean into various projects. Recently, we’ve partnered with ServiceOntario to explore how public servants can improve the process for someone who needs an accessible parking permit.
What I’ve learned working in lean
My experiences working in lean have taught me that that when we let go of the fundamentals of lean we lose the opportunity to sustain meaningful and long-lived increases in productivity.
Throwing a set of lean tools at a problem is easy. But applying lean tools with skill is hard work. Ultimately, the goal is to develop a lean mindset that can sustain improvements, over the long term.
If you want to simply adjust the lighting levels hoping that it will sustain improvement — knock yourself out. If you want to do the hard work of making meaningful, sustainable improvements, focus on the lean fundamentals.
Want to learn more about what we’re doing as a team? Contact us by email at: leanoffice@ontario.ca.
Additionally, you can read how our lean office got started in the Ontario Public Service here.
