140: Kelly Mallery

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Joe Krebs speaks with Kelly Mallery about 4 elements of the book "Bringing Scientific Thinking to Life" by Sylvain Landry. Scaling the Agile Kata across all levels in an organization, Agile Kata Mindset and Agile Kata Coaching.

Joe has a book “Agile Kata” in the making, if you like to be the first to know when it launches, please visit www.agilekatabook.com.

Transcript:

Agile.FM Radio for the Agile Community.​

[00:00:05] Joe Krebs: Welcome to another episode of Agile FM. And this is a podcast as part of the theme of the Agile Kata series. And I have here today with me, Kelly Mallory, who is an operational excellence leader in a manufacturing facility in New England. Outside of her job, she supports the Kata Geek Girls and the Kata School North east where she is located as so am I here in New York. She is a little further up. Her aim is to spread the knowledge of color scientific thinking to more and more people through these communities. And obviously making the world a better place, which is a big goal we have here in mind. So I'm super excited to have you on the show here, Callie welcome.

[00:00:56] Kelly Mallery: Thanks Joe. I'm really excited to be here.

[00:00:59] Joe Krebs: Kelly, we are doing something a little bit different here on this podcast as an other podcast where we sometimes speak with authors about their book. We're talking about somebody else's book today. That's going to be Sylvain Landry's book, bringing scientific thinking to life.

And we just thought about maybe picking a few items and talk about this this book, which was I don't know, maybe a year ago or so in 2022 or so released relatively new book in the Kata bookshelf. And we want to take a few segments out of the book and obviously then talk about the segments on a broader context.

So when obviously we want to bring your experience in as well.

Yeah. Sounds great.

All right. So let's one of the segments we and I was thinking of like possibly reading out the segment first, so that listeners have a little bit of an idea where this is coming from, obviously all from the same book.

And, the first one would be about the improvement Kata is fractal. And in other words, the improvement Kata is fractal, basically the same pattern at all levels, which makes it a meta skill, a target condition or a major obstacle at the strategic level. could in turn become the challenge for the level below and so on.

The overall challenge reappears in successive smaller challenges as you move down in the organization and each of those challenges is reached by striving for successive target conditions. This fosters strategic alignment, connect strategy and execution and becomes a source of dialogue, coherence and motivation across the organization, not At least because people at all levels are practicing the same basic scientific way of thinking and acting.

Now that's the segment we want to touch on first a little bit on from Sylvan's book. That would be on page 41. If somebody actually has the book in front of them listening to this. This is an interesting one because in the agile community when we are talking about processes like scrum, for example, Kanban there's always a conversation about how does that scale, how does that go into the large, how do we depart from a team to a larger level of the organization.

I think that piece here from Sylvain's book hits that right at the mark because it shows how. It possibly could scale. What's your take on that segment from surveillance point?

[00:03:29] Kelly Mallery: Yeah, I agree. And my experience in various manufacturing facilities. This comes in from a strategic planning standpoint.

That's where my mind immediately goes where. At the highest levels of a company or an organization, you develop strategic plans and visions that are five to 10 years out. And then the expectation is it cascades down to the next level and the time horizon changes. But where I have seen this breakdown is some of that connection and embedding scientific thinking inside of that process.

And what I believe Sylvain is talking about here is. Taking that strategic vision and. Morphing it more into the improvement Kata framework. . And how there is a deeper connection then at every level of the organization. Where the vision for a company that's five to 10 years out cascades down into three to five year strategic targets, which become the challenge.

At the next level down. . And then they cascade that down to one year achievement targets, which can be cascaded to challenges there. . I love to think about this in the context of how beautiful those coaching interactions would become and how connected the organization becomes in that unified way of thinking.

[00:04:58] Joe Krebs: And what I like about this is also that there is a as you just said there is even on the highest strategic level, there's still a goal. There's still something they would like to achieve. Now that might be on a much, much longer radius. In terms of the timeline and size of of the challenge, I remember at in the old days, it's probably not up to date anymore, but at Mercedes Benz, there was a product cycle of development for a new car was about like every seven years, a new car came out, right?

From a model and so that is a longer period of time, obviously that is not something you can get some really concrete action items out of it as a team or as an employee. And I think that's, works very nice here in terms of his explanation. And when you read this, these basic steps of scientific thinking, how they trickle down into a small level, how do we break those seven years down?

I think that's what he means by that, right?

[00:05:49] Kelly Mallery: Yeah, agreed. And I like what you mentioned about the connection of that longer term strategy to the people doing the work. And what I think this, the fractal nature of the improvement kata really helps with there is breaking down that challenge into target conditions that are more achievable and manageable.

And inside of that. You have to have right outcome metrics, which tell you, yes, we have achieved that, but there's the leading indicator process level metrics that you experiment against. So it does become much easier to take those big grandiose goals and create really tangible measures and therefore actions and experiments at The people doing the works level so that they can feel connected to the higher level strategy and know exactly on any given day, how do I contribute to that as an individual?

How does my work matter?

., absolutely. And I, what I also think is fascinating when he points out that the scientific thinking process is the exact same at all levels. And I think that is an interesting point for linking this is to the agile community where there are other processes, if you're scaling or if you're integrating other parts of the organization, that's actually very different here.

[00:07:14] Joe Krebs: I think that's a huge difference we can carve out is the pattern of scientific thinking is still the same. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:28] Kelly Mallery: It is. And it doesn't matter, right? The scope or scale of the work. So if you're working at a CEO COO level, you have a challenge that is very high level and your process for scientific thinking, the difference may just be the time scale.

Yeah. And then at the ground floor where the day to day work is done. You're looking, your time horizon is much shorter, but the thinking process stays the exact same. It is wonderful. And imagine, I love imagining, because I have not yet experienced this. And I say yet, because I hope to. An entire organization where everybody has that thinking pattern.

And just imagine what you could achieve.

[00:08:16] Joe Krebs: Yeah, that is true, right? Obviously, there are some examples on Toyota, but we don't know if that's the exact same thinking pattern in all parts of a very large organization. So that will be very hard. Have you personally experienced any of these levels, not in the entire organization, working with unstrategic items versus very tactical and seeing that in action, what Silvani is talking about?

[00:08:43] Kelly Mallery: I have in pockets. So in probably mid 2023 I was a part of a team rolling out strategy and we were looking at it from a cascading challenges perspective. So we got as far as. Taking the site level strategy and actions developing. Okay, the outcome metrics. What does that challenge statement look like?

What might the process measures be for that? And therefore, what would the next level downs challenge be? And so we went through that catch ball process of cascading those challenges down. And then beginning to see what the tactical target conditions and experiments would be. So I began to see some of that, but that scale was, it confined to a single shop inside of one value stream.

However, what I saw was the clarity that drove up and down the organization. As far as where are we going and how does each level connect to that? Yeah, I think

[00:09:51] Joe Krebs: That's a good point, right? Also in terms of a vocabulary, right? So let's say you work with an executive leadership team and you're talking about a target condition and you're working with a team and you're talking about the target condition and you're bringing these streams together for communication.

Everybody knows what a target condition is. SO there's not a separate process. It's not like leadership is working with this or in terms of agile teams. That could be safe as a process where it was money's using safe to scale or Nexus or or Scrum at scale or less. And in all of those things so these would be different terminology and vocabulary, which is not the case in this one, which I think is a huge benefit of that.

Kelly if you're okay with that let's move on to a second piece of the book. Yes. Okay, and that would be a Toyota Kata and Lean which readers, if you are interested in following up on this topics, that would be somewhere between, I think, 84 and the page here. So that would be chapter six.

So the segment here is for the past 25 to 30 years, lean efforts in most organizations have focused on implementing lean tools and practices that were. Benchmarked and copied from Toyota and on eliminating waste through three to five day Kaizen events run by Lean office staff in indeed as Leico Jeffrey Leico in this case mentions too many people think about Lean as a mechanistic process of applying off the shelf solutions to an organization's problems.

This is decidedly unscientific compared to these Implementing an event based approaches to continuous improvement. Toyota CARA is clearly about skill building application practice through daily improvement that's aligned with the organization's strategic objectives. Now, that segment, there's a lot of stuff in here to to unpack.

What's your take on this segment? It's another highlight of Sylvain's book. There's a lot in there which we can connect to agile, but I'll let you go first.

[00:11:59] Kelly Mallery: I, I remember reading this book and when I read this this section I felt like I needed to facepalm a little bit because my entire career of 10 years in manufacturing has been focused on CI and lean and reading this, I had that, oh my gosh.

Duh, this is why what I have seen with lean and continuous improvement initiatives have not gone so well and why sustainment is hard because we cherry pick a solution thinking that's exactly what is needed in any given situation compared to really Understanding the problem and determining and figuring out through experimenting, what's the best solution for this problem using guidance and principles from what Toyota has developed from those tools.

But if you think about how they got there they developed the tools based on a problem they had. And then because of their success, we assume that just using the tools in that way means we can take them, copy and paste, but I've never seen that work.

[00:13:09] Joe Krebs: Yes. And I think in the agile community, we have a very good example for that.

There's even something called the Spotify model. So that's a way of Spotify working in agile ways, and they're very transparent about how they operate and make diagrams out of it. And then people follow these things in a totally different company. And and sometimes they often they struggle, sometimes they fail.

Because they're applying a solution to for something that was created based on a very unique problem of a company that is in the digital music industry. And that might not work for somebody in a different industry. But the idea is, how do I come up with that model? And I think that's what this is all about, right?

So Kada could bring you to, to a model like this. You can say it could be a Spotify model, or there could be a company X, Y, C model that was created using the Kata. And I came up with my own model. Now, inspiration is great. I think that's always good to look outside of your organization and see what's there.

But I do think the Kata can help you guide you, steer you into the right direction, I believe.

[00:14:14] Kelly Mallery: Agreed. And I think that starting with models or artifacts that already exist. Is great and a wonderful place to start maybe for a first target condition, say, let's try to execute this model or work within this artifact that already exists and see what happens.

But I think what's important there and what we miss a lot in this community when we take tools and try to implement them is really observing how is this working in our environment and what can we learn from that? and adjust as needed. Keeping principles in mind over a specific tool.

[00:14:56] Joe Krebs: Yeah.

What do you think about the following? The, I noticed a sentence that is really specific to, the Kaizen events so the Kaizen events he's pointing out obviously it's more like a philosophy within an organization. However PARA thinking is continuous and there are some organizations that are using, I think that's.

I don't want to put words in Sven's mouth here, but maybe he mentions like something like Kaizen events, which are very workshoppy kind of environments where we have a single improvement in mind solving that. And then we feel good about that. Whereas Kata would be possibly improving that, but then continuing improving, right?

I think there is a subtle difference. How does that relate for you in terms of Kata and where you come from and what you do in terms of Kaizen versus Kata, continuous work versus workshop for improvements. And then having these feel good moments, it's we're done, we have improved.

Everybody's great. But the journey should continue,

[00:16:02] Kelly Mallery: right? Yeah. Agreed. My experience with that is very aligned with what you've talked about and what the talks about where my first events that I was part of and facilitated. We're very much, very good prep, good scientific thinking inside of the event, but then Friday comes noon and the report outcomes and you wash your hands of it and you say, look at everything we did.

And then sustainment happens, but that's more a check the box and an action newspaper compared to continual learning right at that phase. It's just about implementing and not necessarily experimenting. And my, when I began to learn and practice the improvement kata, I started experimenting with kata inside of Kaizen events over the last couple of years in 2022 and 2023 and found some really wonderful things could happen from that where you can embed coaching cycles inside of the event, get people acclimated to that and that thinking.

And then post event. It's not so much about implementing actions, but it then becomes about, okay what's our target condition in this situation are the metrics we expected to achieve from this event? Are we performing to that? And if not, wonderful. What obstacles are preventing us? What are we going to do next?

And it becomes more about continued experimenting and learning and not implementing further actions.

[00:17:38] Joe Krebs: And it doesn't feel so hard then on the individuals either. It's just Oh, this is this improvement effort now. And how do we go about it? And how do we structure this? And what's the timeline on it?

Because you're replacing it with scientific thinking. It's ongoing. It's your new habit. It's there's no interrupt not to the way of how you work, but also what you produce, right? Because you're producing while you're not improving for the next three months and not producing anymore. You're Yeah,

[00:18:06] Kelly Mallery: and I think an important thing to shift your mindset about when you, if you want to pursue this kind of thinking inside of events is that an event, a Kaizen event then becomes accelerated target conditions and coaching cycles.

So your preparation phase is that initial grasping the current condition. And inside of the event, you strive for multiple target conditions, and you have a focused effort on that. And then afterward, it just becomes a normal target condition and experimenting so that You can continue that learning, and I agree.

I think then what has to happen is going into an event. It's not about what is the exact solution we're trying to achieve. It becomes really about do I understand the problem and our current condition, and it does take away a lot of pressure and stress, especially from a facilitator standpoint, which I can speak to, about having to know exactly how it's going to work out and what that solution is going to be. Instead, I just focus on the thinking and the process. And then to your point, it should become more about continued learning and experimenting and not about an action plan afterward.

[00:19:27] Joe Krebs: Yeah. What if companies out there already do these kind of improvement workshops?

Let's say there was a company and they have the occasional or rhythmic Improvement efforts, but they say we believe in improvement. We have quarterly sessions where we discuss these things and we do certain things. And then after that, we go back to our regular business until the next improvement effort is going to take place.

So it could be periodic or not, or rhythmic. Kaizen, let's say, or Kaizen events, right? There's a huge opportunity for using those events to start with Kata, right? So it's actually using them as a. As an as an entry entrance to, to cut us like, okay, this is an event. Why don't we approach that as usual, but then introducing Cata for long lasting change and continuous change.

How do you feel about that?

[00:20:18] Kelly Mallery: I think that's a brilliant idea because then also you're not trying to add another thing to learn about you embedded into a system that you already have. And then it's just about changing the way that you practice for those events, right? We no longer practice building action plans and practicing accountability.

We practice establishing target conditions and experimenting to them and coaching to that.

[00:20:49] Joe Krebs: Okay. All right. Awesome. Kelly, number three, shall we do it? Yes. Okay. Here's another soundbite artifacts or mindset question mark, both exclamation point. That's something you would find in pages one 26 to one 29 in Sylvain Landry's book bringing scientific thinking to life.

As Leiker and Meyer, 2006 emphasized, the Toyota Kata is about tacit knowledge, non explicit procedural knowledge. Tacit knowledge is the craft type of knowledge that you gain from experience. In the practice practice and reflection rather than from reading a recipe. Of course, there are also specific artifacts such as work standards, A3s, and kanbans that are distinctive elements of the Toyota production system.

Perhaps they too can be viewed as a form of cutout or practice routine at Toyota, where they are combined with feedback from a seasoned Toyota coach. So we are exploring artifact versus mindset. For the agile community, that is also a very comical as a tools, a lot of like just to put that out as a lot of agile teams that are using a tool like JIRA from Atlassian and and they feel like.

That is agile, like by using the tool or in this particular case, applying a specific artifact or a recipe for some sort. And here, so then makes a connection between both of them. How do you see this shape?

[00:22:18] Kelly Mallery: Yeah I've actually had some recent experience with this in about November of 2023.

The company I had been working for decided to. rollout, and I will say rollout CADA practice. And the questions that came from that are what is this new thing? Does this replace anything? What if, does this replace A3? Does this replace practical problem solving? And then we ended up getting into large debates about, do you need a storyboard?

Do you need the artifact? And lots of schools of thought, and we can go deep into the whole starter kata conversation. buT ultimately scientific thinking and practicing the improvement kata is inside of every lean tool every agile tool, every problem solving. And so the artifact needs to be there to help you learn and practice.

But beyond that, once you have that mastery or at least competence, then it's important to understand that it's a thinking process. And that means you don't have to have a board or an A3 in front of you to think scientifically. But the conversations I had, people got very stuck on. I cannot do this if I don't have a storyboard.

And they begin to connect the artifact with the thinking process. And I think that's where those questions came from of is Kata replacing something. And so I think as people, we get stuck on needing a physical artifact because it, it's a visualization of thinking pattern and it's easier to learn and practice.

So when you want to break away or when you need to break away from the artifact, it is scary because you no longer have that safety net. Yeah.

[00:24:16] Joe Krebs: I also, I saw that's not, I believe it's not from a events book, but I saw connections and some really good explanations on the storyboard myself.

And I do the idea is that you, when walking through the section of the storyboard, excuse me, you bring the ideas back into your memory. That is a strong thing. And maybe that is kata.

[00:24:42] Kelly Mallery: Yes. Yes. So if you read the starter kata or any. Any artifact, which is just a physical manifestation of some process are designed and exist to help us remember and learn something and the connection between physically interacting with a space or an item versus just thinking about it cements that in our minds.

So I have no, I don't recall who this quote is. Assigned to, but right. Ink makes you think the act of writing changes the way that you think about things and it cements that into your mind. So the artifacts are really important as learning aids, but then it is also critically important. To try to step away from them, because that will tell you and confirm if the thinking process has been cemented.

Yeah.

[00:25:36] Joe Krebs: One thing I want to throw into the mix is also that in agile environments, we work in teams. Where if you were looking at Toyota literature, we often see coach and learner as a one to one association doesn't have to be like this, but I'm saying in the HR community would most likely see a team based approach.

In that context, I do think a storyboard has a great place, because. The team might not feel like it might actually as you said, ink makes people think. And as a result of that, you might spot some ambiguity and misunderstandings. And I think that's just natural in human language that we would write on a board.

Yes, it could be starter. It could be starter Kata related with, so let's practice this on a board. I give you the opportunity to update your board. It's your board. And we're using it in a coaching cycle to reflect on it. And so we're not forgetting anything. So it's like a tool to support you and your mindset, but it's not the mindset

[00:26:33] Kelly Mallery: itself.

AnD I think you make an excellent point that when collaborating, it is really important to have that information and project work visible for everybody so that you don't run into ambiguity, ambiguities or misinterpretations or misunderstandings. Because that team needs to work together effectively.

And if you're just going off of verbals, you lose a lot of context, you miss stuff. What I think Sylvain is talking about here. Within that context is the artifact is important, especially when you are starting, but that when you have that mindset and more experience, you shouldn't be limited by the artifact that it should not become a crutch.

And as you progress and evolving your understanding and learning the tool needs to evolve with you the artifact needs to evolve with you. Because

[00:27:32] Joe Krebs: thanks for pointing it out. I think that's important. Yes. It might actually have a, it might, be a limit in your thinking if you're relying on the board to have, I think that's also a good, that's a good point for individual use as well as team use of the of the storyboard.

There are actually a Miro and Mural storyboards available if somebody is is interested off that storyboard. So for remote teams now, Kelly, I think we said we would pick three items, but while I have you here, I'm, I think we're going to pick a fourth. Go for it. aNd these are more like it's related to the coaching questions.

There is something going on. It's very interesting about, there's a set of different kinds of coaching questions. And it started with one set of five questions. And since then it's called the five questions of the, in the coaching cycle, but it has more than five in the current versions, but it's still called the five coaching questions, but the original version was five.

And they were from before 2009 and they're called it to Yodakata original five questions. I like those. And so I'm just going to spell them out. So the specific here, first one is what are you trying to achieve? Second one is where are you now? Third one, what's currently in your way? Fourth one, what's your next experiment and what do you expect?

And the fifth one would be, when can we see what you have learned from that step? And that has evolved, mushroomed, or whatever the right definition for that is, into something that is much, much more elaborate and many more questions, detailed questions to certain things. What's the story behind the evolution of these questions?

I personally like those original five.

[00:29:19] Kelly Mallery: I agree. And Honestly, I discovered these original five questions when I read this and it made a really good deep connection for me where I've been practicing the improvement kata and beginning to try to explore. Integrating that more into standard operating practices that, that I have personally and in my work.

And when you take, the five questions that were taught from the Toyota Cotta practice guide, where to your point, it's more than five. And if you practice with Cotta Girl Geeks. Cotta School, Cascadia, Cotta School, Northeast. There may be others. There's also the planning phase questions, which are another set of five that are similar, but still more questions.

And the specific language in the questions that. I was taught and learned from practicing, don't always connect with people, with every process or problem that you are working on and trying to integrate scientific thinking into. So the, these original five questions. Are a little more vague and I think they're a little more relatable if you have no idea what the Improvement Kata is where you eliminate right target condition, actual condition now, and it's just more about what are you trying to achieve and where are we?

[00:30:42] Joe Krebs: So the evolution of the questions is related to the evolution of the community itself, right? So in the beginning, those five questions created somewhat a starter coaching cycle. Thank you. But which was probably easier to accommodate for somebody who's new to color thinking. And then maybe at some point, you might say those five questions don't go deep enough anymore and has evolved into something.

But the current set of questions might be too much might be an overload for somebody who's brand new to just starting with. Incorporated cut off thinking or scientific thinking.

[00:31:17] Kelly Mallery: Yeah. And I think, especially if you have never practiced or learned about what is a target condition, what does that entail?

It's not a colloquial term in the continuous improvement community, or I'm assuming also in the agile community. It is not something that everybody knows about or has heard all of the time. So trying to bring people in. I think this lines up with personal experience where using, do I use the Japanese lean term or do I use an English equivalent and where a single Japanese term may have much more depth.

It's also a bit alienating to people who have no idea what you're talking about. And so I, I see the challenge in starting right away with the evolved questions. Interesting. However, I will because I am a firm believer in starter kata. It is important to start with the current best practices for practicing the improvement in coaching kata.

And it's just important to make sure that you go through that learning of what do those terms mean? Yes. And what is the understanding there? Because there is a lot of Deep learning and connection that can occur when you have that common language in the context of target condition, actual condition, now obstacles, right?

Those words are specific and intentional.

[00:32:52] Joe Krebs: Yeah. And it's also actually a good point, right? Maybe the two of us, we know more about the evolution that somebody who was new to Cata. Obviously, if there is anything where we would say that question originally was a mistake and we have replaced it with something else.

Through learning, we might say this is not a good idea to go to the original one. But in this particular case, those five questions are in evolution, right? They are just refined stated differently, broken down into different sections. This is pretty cool. And I do want to, I do want to say for everybody listening to this from the Agile community, I'm thinking, oh, is this the daily scrum or is this like this daily standup event or whatever you call that?

It's much more than that. And it's different than that. So this is not a one to one equivalent replacement or another term. The beauty is of this podcast was we just jumped right into a book. Looked at segments. You might feel or have felt while we're going through this episode lost as a listener.

It's what are they talking about? But the beauty is that there is a book that explains all that. And that is bringing scientific thinking to life by Sylvain Landry. And so I would say. take those sections we just talked about, but also there's so much more in that book. You can start with Qatar thinking and obviously more background from the author himself.

But yeah, so we didn't jump in and say what is Qatar? There are other agile episodes for that. We have recorded. And there was book material out there. So that's why we took a little bit more of an advanced approach here. Kelly, I want to thank you so much for being interested in talking with me about Sylvain's book.

And also I think we picked great four topics out of the book, different topics makes people think and, yeah. Good luck in your cutout journey and thanks

[00:34:39] Kelly Mallery: for your time. Yeah. Thank you, Joe. I've really enjoyed this conversation. And I just like to add to all the listeners, right? Don't go alone.

There are communities out there. If you go to, you can just Google kata schools and there are maps that say where your local school may be. And there's a wide community of people who are willing and so generous with their knowledge Information and practice. So if you are interested in getting involved, reach out.

[00:35:08] Joe Krebs: That's right. And that is a cut off or anything that is related to Toyota. If you're very specifically interested in how this could be possibly applied in an agile community. We have an additional source. The ones you mentioned are definitely good learning sources, but they can also come to agileKata. pro. Thank you so much, thank you.