Video Version of "My 3 Best Coaching Kata Mistakes"

With encouragement and guidance from Mike Rother, the great lean thinker and author of Toyota Kata, I turned the "My 3 Best Coaching Kata Mistakes" blog post into a voice-over presentation/YouTube video.  It was harder than I expected to produce this little 10-minute video, but I got plenty of lessons learned from it.  Here it is...

My 3 Best Coaching Kata Mistakes

Over the past few weeks I've started capturing my lessons learned from practicing the Toyota Kata approach.  First, I posted my top 10 lessons learned to my blog.  This led to some incredibly helpful feedback from the great Jeff Liker over at the Toyota Way group on LinkedIn.  It also led to the equally great lean thinker, Mike Rother, guiding me to the creation of a SlideShare version of my top 10 lessons.  The latest news is that I will have the opportunity to share what I've learned via a webinar later this month on Gemba Academy.

What's valuable to me about all this activity is that it supercharges my learning. Probably 95% of my Kata skill-building comes from real-world application (learning by doing).  But to capture that last 5% requires some reflection and external feedback, which is why it's great to have a coach or sensei as you move forward on your learning journey.  I ask you, how would Daniel-san have fared in that tournament without Mr. Miyagi?

The Challenge

Unfortunately, many of us will not have access to an experienced sensei that truly understands how to coach the Kata approach.  Most of our in-house PI folks like me (Black Belts, etc.) are great at solving problems, but aren't the ideal Kata coaches for myriad reasons, including but not limited to the following:

• They aren't trained on how to coach in general
• They aren't familiar with the Kata approach at all
• They're judged based on the ROI of their projects, not how well they spread kaizen habits

This is problematic because high-quality external senseis can be hard to find and fund.  Internal leaders outside of the PI department can be great coaches eventually, but during the early "incubation" period of the Kata approach they will need room to grow as Improvement Kata practitioners before they can be effective coaches.

In this common scenario, all you can do is move forward and treat your initial foray into coaching as a PDSA experiment.  You will have a hypothesis about what constitutes good Coaching Kata; you will be wrong.  And wrong again.  And again.

For me personally, it took performing about 100 coaching cycles with about 10 clinical leaders from across the hospital just to know what I didn't know about the Coaching Kata.  Now, after about 300 coaching cycles with about 20 people I'm finally just now starting to "get" it a little bit.  Yeah, it has been a humbling experience.

But let me share with you some of my most humbling coaching mistakes so that maybe you can move along that learning curve a bit quicker than me.  Here are my 3 best Coaching Kata mistakes ('best' because they have yielded the most insights for me):

Mistake #1:  Being Too Rigid

The Coaching Kata provides a wonderful framework for coaching.  Specifically, there are two routines we perform:

1. Instruction/Coaching:  this is the general guidance, teaching, moral support, etc. that is provided while the Learner is performing the first three routines of the Improvement Kata that make up the planning phase.
2. Daily Coaching Cycles:  this is the structured routine guided by the 5 Questions that is performed frequently while the Learner is performing the fourth routine of the IK that makes up the execution phase (we call it "being on the staircase").

My main mistake was in conflating and confusing these routines.  Because the 5 Questions Pocket Card was like a warm blanket during times of uncertainty, I would revert to it too early on in the IK process.  I was trying to do routine #2 (daily coaching cycle) while the Learner was still in the planning phase.

This made for awkward, rigid coaching.  This is because when the Learner is still trying to see the overall direction, grasp the current condition, and establish a target condition, the path forward is too cloudy to be able to concisely answer the pointed 5 Questions.  During the early planning phase, we should give the Learner a slightly wider birth.

Also, regardless of which of the two coaching routines we're performing, we should remember that these are person-to-person encounters.  Take the time to "break the ice" before jumping into the Kata.  Help the Learner get over the discomfort of a new, foreign management routine.  Acknowledge the inherent awkwardness of two novices trying to pretend like they know what to do next. It's okay!

Mistake #2:  Short-Changing True North 

The first step of the Improvement Kata is to understand the overall direction of the improvement effort.  The overall direction can be comprised of several elements, including but not limited to the following:

• Ideal Condition (perfection)
• Long-term strategy
• 1-2 year challenges
• Future-state value stream maps
• Key performance indicators

Taken together, these elements provide a True North by which we can guide our improvement efforts.  Taking the time to properly understand how our individual PI initiatives fit into the the big picture is incredibly important.  Not performing this routine properly increases the risk of poor organizational alignment, ineffective strategy deployment, "scattershot management", etc.  Bad stuff.

Yet, I still find myself to this day doing an inadequate job of coaching Learners on this first step of the IK.  We typically end up spending about five minutes just verifying that "yes, this particular PI project will help improve patient safety, and therefore, it's well-aligned with the overall direction."  That's pretty much a waste of time; we need to do a better job of connecting individual PI projects to the big picture in a less platitudinous and more concrete way. 

On the surface, this appears to be an easy coaching mistake to fix.  It would seem straightforward enough to help the Learner put together an A3 that shows the Ideal Condition, long-term strategy, KPIs, etc. of their PI project.  But in many organizations, it's not so easy because strategy is not transparent or hasn't been cascaded down to the level of the Learner.  We can't expect the Learner to plug & play without a port, no matter how good their dongle is.

What I'm learning as of late is that even if we don't have a mature strategy deployment system yet, we can still harness the fractal nature of the Kata approach (see page 21 of this presentation).  The target condition of a big, strategic improvement initiative can provide the big, longer-term challenge for a smaller PI project.  A practical approach to making this happen could be to have the Learners for the big, strategic initiatives be the coaches for the small PI projects related to them.

In experimenting with this approach, I've seen my ability to recognize potential synergies and detect potential misalignments improve.  It's not a perfect solution (we ultimately need something like hoshin kanri to systematically drive alignment), but it's a start.

Mistake #3:  Not Utilizing Judo

In that Karate Kid clip above, Mr. Miyagi did a great job of using the testosterone-fueled aggressiveness of the Cobra Kai against them, judo style.  He had mastered the art of leveraging momentum in a productive manner.  The same approach should be taken when practicing the Coaching Kata.

One of the toughest things for me as a Coach has been to know when to hold the Learner back a little bit and when to encourage them to move forward with change.  Any good PI professional knows that blindly implementing countermeasures before properly understanding root causes is foolishness.  This is so much a part of the Lean canon that it's self-evident.

However, in practice, it's not always clear if we have properly understood the root causes of our problems.  At some point in our analysis, we hit the limits of our knowledge frontier.  At that point, we have a big batch of root cause analysis work that needs to be validated, and as with any form of batch production, there's always a risk of delayed detection of defects (in this case, the errors would be in the form of incorrect root causes being identified).  Therefore, as Coaches, we need to be adept at sensing when the RCA batch size is getting too big and needs to be validated through some PDSA hypothesis testing.

One way to look at this is as 'mini-cycles of PDSA embedded within the Plan phase of a bigger PDSA cycle.'  It's testing, as opposed to implementing, countermeasures.  Another way to look at this is that it's the recursive nature of the Improvement Kata, with the learnings of the execution phase informing and refining the work of the preceding phases.

However you choose to see it, just know that it's one of the hardest things to get a feel for as a Coach.  You'll need plenty of Coaching Kata repetition and hopefully some secondary coaching from a sensei.  You'll also need to know your audience.  In hospitals, we have some ER nurses that would put this guy to shame in terms of being "action-oriented"...

Courtesy of www.giphy.com

My Top 10 Lessons Learned from Practicing the Toyota Kata Approach

On the day after Jimmy Fallon debuted as host of the Tonight Show, I'll go against the grain and do a Letterman-style Top 10.*  My topic will be the lessons I've learned from my grassroots effort to infuse the Toyota Kata methodology into the culture of an acute care hospital in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex.

*I'm not a huge fan of any of the late-night shows.  I like Kimmel and Conan as comedians, but the format just doesn't do it for me.  I much prefer the format of Jerry Seinfeld's new show, "Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee" (it's as ridiculous as it sounds, and pretty hilarious).  I just wish he had Chris Rock or Don Rickles hanging out in the back-seat for every episode.

Background/Context

When we began testing the Toyota Kata approach we had no experience with or knowledge of it at all, outside of having read the book a few times.  We had no budget to bring in experts or send ourselves off for formal training.  But, thankfully, we did have senior leader support to try something different; they were ready to invest significant effort in building a sustainable culture of continuous improvement at our hospital.

That's how we started.  We didn't know where the path would take us, but we took a step forward anyway.  First, we selected an Advanced Team from different departments and levels of the organization.  Then, we did a tiny bit of home-grown training and quickly got to work practicing the Kata in the real-world.  Now, after about six months of real-world application including several hundred coaching cycles, I have some lessons learned that I'd like to share...

#10:  A PDSA cycle is not what I thought it was.  I always thought a PDSA cycle was when you had identified a countermeasure to a problem and wanted to test it.  Well, yes, that is one type of PDSA cycle, but there's more than one kind.  Sometimes, our PDSA cycle consists of nothing more than a quick "go & see" to confirm or deny a hypothesis, without changing/implementing anything at all.  I've come to see a PDSA cycle as simply the act of taking a step forward with the intent of learning something in the pursuit of improvement.

#9: Cues, routines, & rewards matter.  In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg explains that for habits to form, we must have a habit-building loop in place consisting of a cue, routine, and reward.  Since modern organizations have so many built-in impediments to organic continuous improvement (annual performance reviews, TPS reports, etc.), we must actively pursue continuous improvement through organizational habit-building.  The Toyota Kata approach provides all three elements of a habit-building loop in abundance:  1) cues via formal coaching sessions and visual signals such as the 5 Questions pocket card; 2) routines (i.e. the Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata); and 3) rewards via the intrinsic satisfaction of learning, solving problems, attaining Kata mastery, etc.

#8:  Track the metrics of habit-building.  In the early stages of Kata adoption the focus is more on building habits than producing huge process improvements with eye-catching ROI calculations.  Therefore, it's advisable to have a way to measure progress in terms of habit-building.  For example, we can track the # of Kata "practitioners", # of Kata coaches, # of PDSA cycles performed, etc.  I'll admit that this is a highly imperfect set of habit-building metrics, so I'm hoping as a community we can come up with something better.  One option might be to measure what level of mastery our people have attained using a standardized rubric, as suggested in some of Mike Rother's online material.

#7:  Clinicians and other front-line staff tend to like the Kata approach.  I think this is because it allows them the freedom to take one bite of the apple at a time.  They are free to try a small change or just go get more information, all in the pursuit of learning and iteration.  This reduces the fear of failure and the stress of trying to do too much all at once.  It's quite liberating actually.

#6:  It works on big projects too.  We've seen great success in using the four routines of the Improvement Kata as a roadmap for fairly large improvement projects.  This is where the fractal nature of the Kata approach comes into play.  In our model, the first three routines (1. Understand the Direction, 2. Grasp the Current Condition, 3. Establish the Next Target Condition) are performed in a team environment utilizing techniques such as kaizen events and work-out sessions.  While this has the downside of producing large batches of improvement work with fewer opportunities for iteration, it has the upside of allowing us to build cross-departmental consensus quickly.  The fourth routine (PDSA Toward the Target Condition) occurs via multiple "learners" pursuing their portion of the target condition in parallel, with a single coach guiding their work and connecting the dots.  It's not perfect because doing multiple tests simultaneously makes it harder to understand cause & effect, but this approach does have the advantage of allowing us to expedite the change process.

#5:  Target Conditions ≠ Numerical Targets ≠ List of Countermeasures.  This was one of the hardest things for me to grasp as a coach.  I almost immediately understood that a target condition is not the same as setting a numerical target or goal; yes, we actually have to describe the future mode of operation that will produce the results we seek.  This I understood.  What I didn't understand was that describing the future mode of operation does not require us to know exactly how we will achieve it.  In other words, we don't need a specific list of countermeasures to be able to describe the target condition.  In fact, it's better not to lock ourselves into pre-conceived notions of what solutions are needed before we've began testing via PDSA.

#4:  Root cause analysis is an iterative process.  I always thought of root cause analysis as a routine we performed prior to identifying potential countermeasures.  We'd use 5-Why? or whatever to identify a root cause, then come up with countermeasures to address it.  What I learned through the Kata approach is that we don't have to fully understand the root causes of a problem before we can start testing countermeasures.  In fact, the act of testing countermeasures (via PDSA) is in and of itself a fantastic way to identify root causes in an iterative and scientific manner.

#3:  Coaching is tricky.  Even though the Coaching Kata provides clear instructions on what questions to ask (the 5 Questions), novice coaches typically struggle with how to stick to the script without being too robotic and awkward about it.  It's a balancing act.  A coach must be able to sense when the learner is in need of strict structure (new learners often go off in ten directions at once and need to focus on the single next step) and when a more creative, free-flowing discussion is appropriate.

#2:  Coaching is largely about providing a safe environment to fail.  This is because mastering the Kata is mostly a learning by doing approach that relies heavily upon repetition and deliberate practice.  A coach must foster an environment that allows the learner to practice and fail (and trust me, in the early going most of the practice results in failure).  Because 'practice' in this context occurs in the real-world (not in some classroom simulation), these failures must also be done in a safe manner that causes no irreparable harm or embarrassment.

and finally...

#1:  When in doubt, take a step forward!  Fortune favors the bold.

Freudian Gaps (The Softer Side of Lean)

The fundamental talent of a lean coach is to get a team to see the difference between the ideal state and the current state, but in a way that does not alienate team members or cause inadequate solution selection.  In other words, in pointing out the gap, we can't just come out and say what the gap is.  People in our culture equate identifying a gap with assigning blame for a gap; we're not great at separating problems from personalities.  So, don't be blaming, i.e. don't be pointing out gaps.

Instead, help the team gradually come to gap realization in a methodical way that decouples gap existence from gap culpability by means of an almost subconscious circumvention of the blame-game gag reflex.  Before the team members even realize who is "guilty," they will have been introduced to the gap in an impartial manner.  This impartiality helps drive more nuanced understanding of the problem, and thus, better interventions that more directly address root causes.  So in other words, ask questions; be a coach.