Chapter 23. Go see, ask why, show respect

by Horia Sluşanschi

The best way to help your team serve their clients better, and to achieve and sustain a culture of continuous improvement, is to start by showing them deep respect.

How can you best show respect? Consider Jim Womack’s excellent advice in his collection of essays Gemba Walks (Lean Enterprise Institute, 2011).

You do this by challenging their thinking about the current work process, asking lots of open, probing questions to uncover the root causes of current impediments. No process is ever perfect, but you can focus on helping the team to discover what its key constraint is at any particular moment, and then devise countermeasures to remedy it.

The key constraint is the area in which ...

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