How to Speed Up Lean Learning in an
Organization?
If you believe in lean, it is quite obvious that
you want to apply lean to your organization too because you have seen the
results. But, it gets very difficult to instill lean practices into your team
members. You will have to teach different members differently. Among them will
be some who can grasp your teaching instantly while, there might be others who
take a long time to learn. Here the question that is likely to arise in your
mind would be - 'How can I speed up my team's lean learning?'
You must understand that to speed up the process
for your team, it is you who has to become a role model for them. So, to have
an impact on your team's learning, you need to speed up your own learning
first. Now, you might say that you have learnt lean so how does the question of
speeding up your lean learning arise. It is a fact that as adults, we always
see the practical value of what we learn before putting in efforts to learn. We
choose what we want to learn and what we want to leave behind. This is not what
is called learning. Instead, this means only adding new ideas to what we
already know.
When you have a coach or mentor to teach you
something, you might have seen that he insists that you work out on things that
are difficult and meaningless too. You don't find it necessary to work out on
those points but, it is your coach or mentor who knows that it will be useful
only after you acquire the skill. Similarly, even some aspects of lean learning
might seem to be slow and useless to you. So, you might be picking out to learn
only those aspects of lean that you find useful to solve your immediate
problems. But, this is just not right.
Those aspects that help you solve problems right
away might seem sensible to you while, those that are hard or not useful at
present might seem unworthy to you but, it is actually these aspects that lead
to lean transformation in the longer run. This is where the two terms come into
existence - assimilation and accommodation.
Assimilation means adding new information to what
you already know and understand, which is very easy. While, accommodation means
using new facts to change your own understanding. This becomes difficult
because as adults, our understanding becomes very consistent and rigid, and
changing it completely becomes very difficult. When you are expected to change
one field and start working towards achieving it, it leads to changing the
connections to every other field too and soon you will realize that you need to
change all your understanding towards the field because your thinking just
doesn't fit in anymore. So, you will have to let go of your mental comfort
zones.
You now understand that you need to learn lean
further. So, make efforts to learn and speed up your learning process so that
you can help your team members learn faster too. You will either need a sensei
to teach you or you will have to work hard on your own but, you have to work
towards understanding the unfamiliar aspects of lean thinking, not those that
you already know. This process is going to be difficult but, rewarding too.
Without a mentor, it is quite natural to pick up the learning that is easy to
assimilate and avoid all the unfamiliar stuff that will force us to
accommodate. But, you must understand that learning the unfamiliar aspects will
lead to increasing the scope of performance improvement. If you let go of your
comfort zone and practice daily, you will definitely be able to discover a 'new
you'.
There are many workshops that provide the best lean training in India all throughout
the year in different states. Here is a list of the upcoming workshops in the
country for the next four months -
Lean training Delhi - 14 to 16 December 2015 and
16 to 18 March 2016
Lean training Mumbai - 18 to 20 January 2016
Lean training Bangalore - 15 to 17
February 2016
