THE ULTIMATE WEAPON FOR THE WINNING ON THE GLOBAL BATTLEFIELD. --- TAS, THE MISSING ELEMENT OF PEOPLE’S UNDERSTANDING OF TPS.

Your people with their three abilities are the only weapon you really need to win on the global battlefield and drive any change programme. I think they are like a magic wand when fully engaged. They are also the only thing that will guarantee the effective and widespread use of all the other tools and techniques. Without them you will never achieve sustained success, whichever tools and methodologies you use. ---                                                                                                   You must release and focus the three abilities possessed by ‘all’ your people. They are;                                                                                                                                    Talent;         the ability to do existing tasks well.                                                             Creativity;   the ability to continuously improve what they do and the way they                            do it.                                                                                                                     Enthusiasm; the emotional ability/energy to want to use the first two. ---                This is at the heart of the Toyota Production System, and the missing element of much lean thinking. --- 

Most people see the TPS as a set of tools and techniques. It is not! It is a set of attitudes. The ones above and the respect they create are the foundation of Toyota’s Attitude System (TAS). TAS is not part of most people’s understanding of TPS. ---

As many companies have discovered just using the tools and techniques of TPS/lean do not create sustained success. When translating TPS into lean thinking the original translators missed the importance of TAS. ---

Lean without TAS, is like a body without a working heart, a corpse. It takes people some time to see it, but it was dead from the start. The initial lean activities act as a life support system, when they are withdrawn the patient/lean dies, sounds familiar. ---

R.I.P can mean Rest In Peace. or Routinely Involve (all your) People.  

YOUR CHOICE

Two of my favourite Drucker quotations sum up what we need to do next.

“All this thinking and discussing must eventually degenerate into action/work.”

“My problems don’t come from the absence of knowing what to do, but from the
absence of doing it.”

Two final quotations in case you still have any doubts about the power of people involvement, or have to convince others. They come from Confucius and Jack Welch and we show them at the start of all our workshops. ---

In 500 BC Confucius reportedly said;
“If you want one year of prosperity grow grain.
If you want ten years of prosperity grow trees.
But if you want one hundred years of prosperity grow your people”.

2500 years later Jack echoed Confucius when he said;

“We know where most of the creativity, the innovation the stuff that drives productivity lies, it’s in the minds of those closest to the work. Management is about tapping into this ocean of creativity, passion and energy that as far as we can see has no bottom or shore”.


Enough said, now let’s just do it!

A final comment on ‘Respect’ as the Password to access our people’s abilities.  It comes from one of Japan’s greatest entrepreneurs.

“We are going to win and the industrial West is going to lose out. There is nothing you can do about it because the reason for your failure is within yourselves. With your bosses doing the thinking while the workers wield the screwdrivers, you are convinced deep down that this is the right way to run a business. For you the essence of management is getting the ideas out of the heads of the bosses and into the hands of labour.

The survival of firms is so hazardous in an increasingly unpredictable environment that their continued existence depends on the day to day mobilisation of every ounce of intelligence. For us, the core management is the art of mobilising and putting together the intellectual resources of all employees in the service of the firm...

Because we have measured better than you the scope of new technological and economic challenges, we know that the intelligence of a handful of technocrats, however brilliant they may be, is no longer enough to take them up with any real chance of success.

Only by drawing on the combined brainpower of all its employees can a firm face up to the turbulence and constraints of today’s environment”. Konosuke Matsushita. - Founder of Panasonic.

In respecting our people we gain access to all their abilities. Our task as leaders is to apply this awesome weapon to win and sustain our competitive advantage on the global battlefield.

Here is  another weapon analogy I like to use.                                                                  The weapon we have to use on the global business battlefield has two edges. One is manufacturing the other is sales and marketing. The body of the blade, which provides the mass behind the edges, is forged from our people's combined abilities. The handle through which we wield this awesome weapon is made from the skills of the management team. Lean and 6 sigma are just sections of the manufacturing blade edge. The sales and marketing blade has its own individual sections. Both blade edges must be kept sharp.

I find too many people think one small section of the blade is the weapon. We must teach our companies to understand the complete weapon and how to use it. .  Too many of our leaders are qualified in the Management of Battle Administration, but don’t know how to fight and win the war.

I think the sword analogy describes the holistic nature of the business warrior’s task.

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