Go and See
Photo by Stephen Dawson on Unsplash
Inspired by Taiichi Ohno
Every business teeters on oblivion. Survival is not assured by virtue of incorporation. Early in an organization’s life, this instability permeates everything — uncertainty is the norm. As a venture grows, presumably finding a better fit with the market and adding more people to its ranks, these fears fade evermore into the background.
Company growth is a sign of success and certainly preferred to the alternative, but there is a downside — without discomfort there is no growth, and the palpable feeling of risk dissolves as employee count rises. The specter of things not working out is always there, but growth creates disconnection — an unwelcome byproduct of more.
“This might not work” — Seth Godin
Specialization too accompanies the pursuit of growth and so, over time, less and less of us can see the company’s clockwork — how everything comes together. The actual work is obscured behind layers of status reports and organizational boundaries as real as any physical blockade. Our senses are dulled by distance — degrading the signals that tell us when we are off course. Our hand is on the hot stove and we can’t feel it.
Disconnection driven by growth is daunting, but Toyota Motor Corporation found a way to ‘tune-up’ our sense organs. A secret of their success is the principle of Genchi Genbutsu, translated as actual place, actual thing. Truth is found on the shop floor.
“Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others.” — The Toyota Way
The longer we go without the connection to how things are getting done, the more our intuitions about the work become deranged. The compass spins wildly as we struggle to make sound decisions — disoriented by the lack of tactile input and an intuitive understanding of how the overall system works.
The instrument cluster works — we can see our altitude dropping, but we’ve no idea if pulling up on the yoke or increasing thrust to the engines is what’s required. Disconnection has made even how these actions impact one another opaque to us. We’re too far from the actual place, too far from the actual thing. The teams of real people, doing complex work, have become a hazy outline; perspiration evaporated into metrics.
Too many leaders live in a world of abstract decisions and dashboards, pulling levers and twisting knobs almost at random — fumbling in the dark. There is a big difference between reading a speedometer and feeling the vibration of the engine or the outward pull when taking a corner too fast. The effective leader guards against this loss of sensory input, by learning the lesson of Genchi Genbutsu.
Spend time with customers, and as importantly, the team doing the work.
Go and see.