Kata Creates Culture

© Mike Rother TOYOTA KATA 1

KATA CREATES CULTUREKata Creates CultureMobilize and focus capability in your organizationby coaching and practicing the Improvement Kata

Copyright © 2012 Mike Rother, all rights reserved1217 Baldwin Avenue / Ann Arbor, MI 48104 USA / tel: (734) 665-5411 / [email protected]

Mike RotherJuly 2012


MANAGING FOR IMPROVEMENT,ADAPTIVENESS AND SUPERIOR RESULTS

Coaching and practicing the Improvement Katagives your organization an advantage

The ability to meet challenges and improve -- to learn, adapt, grow and evolve -- is a critical 21st Century task throughout society

“In times of change the learners will inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists”

~ Eric Hoffer


WHY HAVE CONCEPTS LIKE SYSTEMS THINKING,LEARNING ORGANIZATION AND LEAN THINKING

NOT TAKEN HOLD?These concepts were presented as a guide to management practice but havenʼt achieved the hoped-for success. Why?

We can talk about an alternative management model, we can describe it, we can prove that itʼs better and we can show examples. But none of that is going to lead to its adoption or to change. Such approaches are at odds with how we acquire new knowledge and behavior. We need to focus more on building compact and clear methods or routines that people can physically practice.

People donʼt behave a certain way because they lack information. We behave one way or another because weʼre in a groove. Our brainʼs neurons have repeated that groove for a while and thatʼs become our way of thinking.

Hoping to create different behavior by trying to persuade people doesnʼt work. What can work is deliberately practicing a different routine -- a kata -- that over time becomes a new mental groove; a new habit of thinking and acting.

As people and organizations become proficient in practicing a new pattern they can adapt it to suit their own environment and style. Thatʼs a normal process of technology transfer.


A QUICK EXPERIMENTTake a moment... please cross your arms.

Then re-cross them the other way.

How did it feel the second time compared to the first?

For most of us the second time feels odd. You have to consciously think about it and be more deliberate.


UnconsciousThinking

DeliberateThinking

Our brain creates habits for efficiency; to free up capacity for when deliberate decision making is necessary. Unconscious thinking enables you to get through the day by taking care of routine decisions with minimum fuss.

Unconscious thinking is fast and instinctive, while deliberate thinking is slow and intentional.

The subconscious can process billions of bits of information per second, while our deliberate mind can only process a few thousand per second.

OUR UNCONSCIOUS HABITS ARE FAST & POWERFUL


Habits are behaviors that have been repeated regularly and occur unconsciously. The repeated behavior develops neural pathways in the brain, making the behavior easier to complete.

Much of what happens in an organization is a consequence of the habits that people in the organization have learned through practice, whether deliberately or by happenstance.

MUCH OF WHAT WE DO IS HABITUALLike crossing our arms, performed almost without thinking

However, a pitfall of many habits is that the past experiences that created them do not necessarily represent future situations


Our habits work well under many circumstances, but in certain cases they lead to errors known as cognitive biases.

To navigate the world our brain tries to create a coherent interpretation of reality from the inputs it receives, but it hides from us the inferences itʼs making.

Because our unconscious responses are automatic, hidden from us, emotional and potentially biased they may not always lead us where we would like to go.

WE ALSO HAVE COGNITIVE BIASA tendency to draw incorrect conclusions

in certain circumstances based oncognitive factors rather than evidence


UnconsciousThinking

DeliberatePractice

develops

You can rewire your thinking and habits by deliberately (consciously) practicing a different behavior pattern.

Once the pattern youʼre practicing enters your unconscious it gets smoother and faster and becomes the normal, habitual way you operate.

BUT WE CAN CHANGE OUR AUTOPILOTHumans have the power to develop new habits.

Thatʼs what the Improvement Kata & Coaching Kata are about.

You can change the culture of an organization,and even an entire society, this way.


What would happen if you practicedfolding your arms the other way every day?

It would become normal; something you can do without thinking about it.


DEVELOPING NEW SKILLS & MINDSETWe may have grown up thinking all skill and behavior is innate -- that youʼre either born with it or not -- but thatʼs not 100% correct.

Constantly under construction


DEVELOPING MORE EFFECTIVE HABITSFOR IMPROVEMENT, ADAPTIVENESS

AND INNOVATIONHow can we be creative and effective in dynamic conditions if we tend

to automatically apply old thinking & solutions to new situations?

The subject of the book Toyota Kata and the Improvement Kata Handbook are the unconscious routines, known as heuristics or rules-of-thumb, that we use for dealing with problems and challenges.

Your teams can work iteratively, adapt, achieve goals and meet challenges with confidence -- along uncertain paths -- when theyʼve practiced and learned a way of doing that.

The trick is to develop well-worn mental circuits not for solutions, but for a systematic, scientific way of developing solutions. Thatʼs what practicing the pattern of the Improvement Kata is about.

That skill can then be applied to an endless number of situations. Thatʼs important, because we donʼt know what challenges are coming in the future.


WHAT IS A KATA?A kata is a routine you practice deliberately,

so itʼs pattern becomes a habit

Through practicing, the pattern of a katabecomes second nature - done with littleconscious attention - and readily available.

Examples include riding a bicycle, driving acar, typing. Once youʼve learned to drive you donʼt think much about using the carʼs controls and can focus your attention on the situational aspects of navigating the road.


YOUR ORGANIZATIONʼS CULTUREPERPETUATES ITSELF EVERY DAY

Managers automaticallyteach the prevailing culture

Mindsetand

behavior

TeachesTeam or

OrganizationalCultureRoutines

HabitsRitualsNorms


KATA CREATES NEW CULTURE

What organizational culture, mindset and behavior do you want?What do you want managers to be teaching / coaching?

Here the manageris a coach deliberately teaching a way of thinking & acting

Mindsetand

behavior

TeachesAffectsPracticingspecific

newbehaviors

Team or Organizational

CultureRoutines

HabitsRitualsNorms

KATAIs Used Here


Reality is complicated. The way forward involves iterationand experimentation, aimed at a desired condition we donʼt know in advance exactly how we will achieve. But thatʼs OK.The goal of practicing the Improvement Kata is to make scientific thinking and working a habit. This makes teams more effective and allows them direct attention and ingenuity to the situational details that require conscious thought.

THE SKILL PATTERN (KATA) WEʼRE TRYINGTO TEACH AND LEARN

Predictable Zone Uncertainty / Learning Zone

Wewant to be here

nextOur Current KnowledgeThreshold

u Create more alignment and focus in your organizationu Increase the ability of teams to achieve goals and

meet challenges

Obstacles

Unclear

Territory

? ?

?


321 4Establish the Next Target Condition

TargetCondition

PDCA Toward the Target Condition

The 5 Questions

GoandSee

PLAN

CHECK DO

ACT

C C

T C

Grasp the Current

Condition

Understandthe

Direction

What challenge are we striving to meet?

A step-by-step discovery process between where we are and where we want to be next.

What pattern do you want to have next?

What is the processʼs current pattern?

THE IMPROVEMENT KATAThe Improvement Kata models the human, scientific creative

process and makes it something that's teachable andtransferrable in any organization. It has four steps.


THE IMPROVEMENT KATAIS A META ROUTINE

Itʼs working on how you think

Every organization has work routines. The patternof the Improvement Kata is a different and particularly powerful routine because itʼs a meta routine. Itʼs a "meta-habit" that aims to change our mental operating systemso our human capabilities come to greater fruition.

To understand this separate WHAT youʼre working on from HOW youʼre working on it. The Improvement Kata focuses on the HOW. That is, the Improvement Kata is a content-free pattern for how to go about improving, adapting and innovating.

Skills are usually domain-specific. You don't learn to play baseball by practicing soccer. But the pattern of the Improvement Kata is a way of working toward any objective.


AND THE COACHING KATA IS A ROUTINEFOR TEACHING THE IMPROVEMENT KATA

The Coaching Kata is a set of coaching routines to practice in order to develop effective coaching habits. It's a coaching pattern to help you teach the Improvement Kata thinking pattern.

The Coaching Kata gives managers and supervisors a standardized approach to facilitate Improvement Kata skill development in daily work.

The coach needs to know both the Improvement Kata and the Coaching Kata!


DELIBERATE PRACTICEItʼs commonplace in sports and music,

why not also in business!

Rather than trying to hold onto a sense of certaintybased on oneʼs perspective, we can derive confidence from practicing a kata for how to work through uncertainty.

I wonder how todayʼs game

will go?

Hank Aaron Practicing


Coach Learner

CoachingKata

ImprovementKata

Business

Kata Creates Culture