“What is the South African term for ‘workaround’?"
I was sitting chatting to Jim Womack and Dan Jones at the
recent Lean Summit in Atlanta
when Jim put the question to me.
‘Workaround’ is a word used quite regularly in the US and British
lean contexts. Here is an example
(though using the fuller term ‘working around’) taken from Steven Spear’s
excellent recent book, Chasing the Rabbit:
“Some of the temporary
fixes were creative and expressed the nurses’ determination to meet the needs
of their patients, but they had the inadvertent consequence of leaving in place
the factors that had caused the problem in the first place. (One nurse with whom I worked, when
confronted with this reality of working around problems, blurted out, ‘I
thought I was a great problem solver, but I just realized I’ve been solving the
same problem every day for twenty years!”
He then adds:
“We’ll visit with her
later (in the book) and see the
results of her change from persistently working around problems to seeing
problems and solving them.)”
So what is the South African term? I don’t think we have a single word, but if
you can think of it, please let me know.
The phrase “’n Boer maak ‘n plan” is the only one that comes to mind as
a near-equivalent to ‘workaround’. The
phrase conjures up the scene of a redoubtable farmer on a remote and isolated
Karroo or Eastern Cape
farm confronted by a mysterious illness in a precious ram, or an irrigation
channel washed away by a flash flood.
Perforce thrown upon his or her own very limited resources, the farmer
proceeds to craft an ingenious way of dealing with the problem and rescuing the
situation.
I am left thinking that our equivalent of ‘workaround’ has a
positive, near-heroic spin to it, whereas the US and UK settings cast it in a less-than-good
light. Even our use of the term ‘quick
fix’ can often have a positive bias (and of course quick fixes are oftentimes
absolutely necessary as the first line of response as a problem becomes
apparent). But what the Spear quote
above reveals is how limited and limiting the persistent use of quick
fixes/Boer maak ‘n plan can be.
I would go as far as to say the term ‘workaround’ captures a
principle at the core of a proper understanding of lean. Lean requires that we hold in creative
tension the twin concepts of ‘best operating practice’ (standardized work) with
‘best improvement practice.’
‘Workaround’ implies that in a particular situation the standard way of
doing things has not provided the desired outcome, proper root-cause analysis
has been ignored, and a quick fix has been applied to rescue the situation.
In a number of the factories, hospitals and offices that I
have visited in the past few months the notion of standardized work is so alien
that quick fixes are the order of the day: fire fighting is the norm. In such environments if you want to be
noticed for promotion, you had better be a front-line fire fighter! In this way the organisational culture breeds
exactly what we don’t want.
My sober conclusion is that most South African workplaces
are so far removed from lean that ‘workarounds’ are the norm. Rather like
the puzzle raised by the question, “Does a fish know that it is wet?”, Jim’s
question to me about our term for ‘workarounds’ raises the question of whether
many of these workplaces know there is another way of working, one where
standardized work is combined with root-cause problem solving.
I try not to use this letter to advertise the services,
courses, etc. of the Lean Institute Africa, but I am going to do so today. Firstly it seems that many of you are unaware
that by ordering books through LIA rather than directly from Jim’s Lean
Enterprise Institute (www.lean.org) or Dan’s
Lean Enterprise Academy
(www.leanuk.org) you can save money. Please speak to Lorraine Govender at 021 406
1226 about ordering through us.
Secondly, I am delighted to be able to tell you the lineup
of keynote speakers for our Lean Summit Africa 2009 (21-23 September in Cape
Town): Jim Womack, David Meier (co-author with Jeffrey Liker of both the Toyota Way Fieldbook, and Toyota Talent), Michael Balle (you will
doubtless remember him if you were at the 2007 Lean Summit Africa) and David
Brunt, Dan Jones’ right-hand man. Furthermore,
Jim has agreed to ‘go to the gemba’ rather than run a workshop on Monday 21st
September: he will spend the day at an organisation, walk the processes with a
small group of that organisation’s managers and then lead a discussion on what
is seen vs. the aspirations of the overall lean journey. Interested?
Finally, let me just say that the main take-away for me from
attending the Atlanta Lean Summit in early March was the re-affirmation of
value stream mapping and standardized work as core tools and concepts in
lean. The LIA workshops (see www.lean.org.za for details) provide a
thorough grounding in mapping and confirm the need for standardized work.
As the economy struggles, let us re-examine and re-affirm
the need to eliminate waste and respect people in the lean workplace; and let
us avoid ‘workarounds’! Good luck as you
continue on the journey.
