Not Waving But …

I have just read this article about Toyota’s continuous improvement culture. The article is very inspiring, I recommend it. The conclusion highlights a crucial point; one that is, I believe, the source of many of the problems introducing agile approaches.

“People who join Toyota from other companies, it’s a big shift for them,” … “They kind of don’t get it for a while.” They do what all American managers do–they keep trying to make their management objectives. “They’re moving forward, they’re improving, and they’re looking for a plateau. As long as you’re looking for that plateau,it seems like a constant struggle. It’s difficult. If you’re looking for a plateau, you’re going to be frustrated. There is no ’solution.’”

Even working at Toyota, you need that moment of Zen.

“Once you realize that it’s the process itself–that you’re not seeking a plateau–you can relax. Doing the task and doing the task better become one and the same thing,” Shook says. “This is what it means to come to work.”

Experienced agile proponents know that continuous improvement is part of the deal. In order to sell the process they usually sell a “brand” that is rolled out “as is” because they are selling to an organisation that is looking for the solution. The problem is that there is not a solution; not within a single organisation if it is any size, not even within a single team if it exists for any length of time.

There is not, and can never be, a perfect system or process. The world is a complex, ever changing environment so any system needs to continually adapt. Even if the environment did not change much changes in the process generate unforeseen consequences that require further changes to compensate.

When selling an Agile, Lean or whatever process you have to make the practitioners understand that this is simply a starting point for a continuous meta-process of continual reflection and improvement carried out by everyone involved. If they don’t understand that they (and you) are going to fail.