148: Oscar Roche

Listen to full episode:

Joe Krebs speaks with Oscar Roche about Kata being the starting point of the continuous improvement journey, rather than the goal. They found inspiration in an article by Steven Spears and H.Kent Bowen from 1999 titled Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System and Oscar’s hands-on experiences.

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.

Thank you for joining me again for another podcast episode of Agile FM in the Agile Kata series. Today I have Oscar Roche with me, who is based out in Australia. That's where we're recording from. And he is with the training within industry TWI and the visual workplace. He was actually told by a person called Mike Esposito from the historic construction That he makes philosophy and principles consumable.

And we got to talk about Kata. I hope I got that quote we're going to talk about Kata in this episode. We're going to talk a little bit about some scientific thinking. We'll talk about where Oscar is coming from. He is a well known figure in the Kata community. And but before we do that, I want to welcome you to the podcast.

[00:00:56] Oscar Roche: Thank you. Thanks, Joe. Happy to be here. Even at this time of day, 7 a. m.

[00:01:02] Joe Krebs: So the voice needs to be oiled a little bit in the morning hours to get into into the podcast feel. Thanks for joining. And obviously you're in the Kata series here a few things you're very obviously with that statement we just heard about you You make this consumable.

You are, you're thinking about, how could you take these practices that are surrounding Kata and turning them into something that is useful for your clients, for the people you work with, obviously. But you're also a little concerned about Kata community and, there is an article you we were exchanging ideas about by I forgot his Stephen Spears and Bowen in the Harvard Business Review from 1999.

And and that puts a little light spotlight on, on Kata indirectly through the, how Kata influences the world of Toyota, but people out there in the community see Kata and scientific thinking and the way of how. Toyota Works is very different, right? .

[00:02:00] Oscar Roche: Yeah, they do. I don't think that connection has been, I don't think we, we as in our world has made that connection very strong.

I think one of the problems we run into is that people say we don't make cars or we're not Toyota. We're not a big corporation and all we don't make cars. So I think that's one of the problems, but I guess. In terms of that Spear and Bowen article, it was, I read that probably in 2018 or 2019 And I was introduced to Kata in 2011, and it was only when I read that article, I thought, ah, this is what. This is what we're getting at. This is what we're trying to get at with Kata. And what that article said was the Spear and Bowen article, one of the things it said was that Toyota aims It said two things that made the penny drop with me.

One was it says Toyota aims to develop a community of scientists, and I thought, ah, that's interesting. And the second thing it says was that Toyota views every standard as a hypothesis. In other words, even their production standards are hypothetical. If we do this, we expect that. But we need to run it and see what happens.

So every, in essence, every production run is an experiment. And I thought, wow, that is a very interesting way of looking at the world. And that's what Mike Rother's getting at. That's where he wants us to be. He doesn't want us, he doesn't want us to be at Kata. Kata is, the Kata patterns are just a means of getting to this utopian world.

Every standard is a hypothesis and we're a community of scientists. Yeah. And that was when the penny dropped. I thought, ah, it took seven years, or whatever that was, six years.

[00:03:57] Joe Krebs: But I got there. Yeah,

[00:03:59] Oscar Roche: what's interesting is actually, I think I got there. I think I got there. I'll find out.

[00:04:05] Joe Krebs: Yeah, exactly. What's interesting is when you look at Toyota, I don't have any insights into hands on employee experience or anything, but if you look at Toyota, yeah, but if you look at the production facilities of Any kind of carmaker let's not even say Toyota, right?

Any carmaker, let's see some like some construction belt and the products are moving by, but the company, what and how they think, especially about Toyota is very different.

[00:04:34] Oscar Roche: Very different. And I think it, the other thing that attracted me to that thought in the Spear and Barron article was how liberating that is.

Yeah. If you could adopt that philosophy of every time we run production, it's an experiment, then I think you started to, you start to move away from right versus wrong, blame versus not blame and all those sort of things that go with, we are going to run this and we are going to get it right because this is the way we do things.

I think you start to move away. I think you would change. You would completely. With that philosophy, that thinking, I think there's a very good chance you completely change the the work environment, if you like, it becomes, we're going to try this and see what happens. And if it doesn't work out as we expect, then we know how we're going to think when that happens.

[00:05:26] Joe Krebs: Yeah. But in that article, they also talking a lot about that there is an absolute detail and emphasis on, let's say documentation in general, it's like about the core production process where. Seats go. And so there's a lot of detail, but the detail is actually evolving over time. So there's absolutely constantly being challenged.

And I think some

[00:05:47] Oscar Roche: because it's a hypothesis because the data is a hypothesis. That's why it's being challenged.

[00:05:53] Joe Krebs: Yeah. And what we see in organization is when an organization is that these handbooks and these processes are, they're just staying

[00:06:00] Oscar Roche: and they get stuck

[00:06:01] Joe Krebs: and they get stuck and they don't challenge those

procedures.

[00:06:06] Oscar Roche: No. And the worst thing is they end up on the shelf.

[00:06:08] Joe Krebs: Yeah. Yeah. So what also is in this article, I want to hear your take on this is there's also a mention on that what you would be observing, obviously, they have studied this for several years. There's no command and control. So if you would look at the production facilities and you look at it.

It feels, it might look like command and control, somebody's being told what to do, but it's not, right? It's not. There's a different system in place. What's your take on that and especially this style of leadership compared or in contrast to scientific thinking and possibly Kata?

Good

[00:06:47] Oscar Roche: question.

So my take on this on that is it would be something that's extremely hard to develop. No, I don't know that it's hard to develop, but it's going to take time. And one of the point, if you got everyone thinking this way, everyone thinking as a, we've developed this community of scientists. So we're all thinking that way.

And every standard is hypothesis. Then you're in it. You're in a point. And management is thinking that way, then you're at a point where it can work, but getting to there, there's going to be, I think one of the troubles we run into is, we recognize that's what Toyota started is doing now or in 1999, but when did they start trying to do this?

About 1952. Yeah. So we, about in 2019, with the Institute, a group of us went to Japan and we spent time with Mr. Isao Kato, who was Ono's HR advisor, and he gave us a timeline of when they started to when they started to, On this journey, and I hate that word when they started on their journey to where they are now, and it was not, it was, I'm pretty sure, if I remember rightly, it was 1952, it was 51, 52, 53.

We've got to also remember that's for, when Speer and Bowen did that article in 1999, let's say there's 47 years of this stuff evolving when they, for them to be able to get to that point. The problem we run into is, and it's a very valid point, that no other organization has 47 years to get to that point.

But, so therefore, I think we've got to, we've got to look at how they might have got there, or what we think we can do to accelerate. Exercise of that process for one of a better word of getting there and one of the things we can do is practice is use things like the Kata patterns to help develop these behaviors and these way of thinking.

So get back to your question. If everyone's thinking that way, then it just happens. Yeah, but how, but when some are and some aren't. Then it's difficult. And if management aren't forget it. Yeah.

[00:09:04] Joe Krebs: That's obviously the challenges with many transformations out there now you're very you're making a strong comment when you when we were exchanging ideas, a little bit of what we could talk about and you have a very strong comment.

Yeah. Opinion about Kata being seen as nowadays with the gaining popularity people started talking more about, about it. Maybe more and more people are trying it. My goal with this podcast is obviously to bring Kata closer to the agile community. But what's interesting is that you see the Kata is wrongly seen as really frustrating for you as the goal rather than the start.

Of that journey. I think we're talking about why. What's your warning to people out there? I agree with you. Obviously, Kata is the starting point. But what's your recommendation for people out there that are trying to experiment with Kata in terms of the mindset, how to approach this?

[00:10:03] Oscar Roche: Yeah, sure. So I think, and it's evolved in the conversation we had before this podcast started, I think one of the we try and explain the, we try and explain the world that Kata can take you to, to people but how can you explain something that can't be seen?

It's a little bit of a problem. So perhaps what we need to understand is what are we moving away from? Because we can see that now. So what we're moving away from is random actions, pulling things out of the air, acting on whim, illogical actions, if you like. So I guess an approach might be, to what extent are we randomly thinking now?

To what extent are we heading here, heading there, depending on what manager walks in the room or, what person of authority or what person with a strong personality? To what extent are we doing that? Because if we would go down this track of practicing or using Dakata patterns, we're going to be moving away from that, and that's not fun.

Random thinking creates waste, random thinking creates frustration, random thinking creates a lot of things that aren't good for engagement at a workplace. Yeah. So perhaps rather than try and describe Where we want to get to, let's try and describe where we want to, what we want to get away from.

That might be more because we can feel where we are now. It's hard to sense, it's hard to sense something that's a year away. Yeah. Perhaps that might be a worthwhile thing to

consider.

[00:11:37] Joe Krebs: And that target out there, like 12 months from now, that's a moving target even more right?

[00:11:43] Oscar Roche: Correct. It is. But where we want to be is not thinking randomly, not acting on whims. Not being pressured into doing something because someone forceful has walked in the room or a senior manager has said, do this. We want to get away from that. Yeah. But that does, the, you mentioned Mike Esposito before he's a he works with, or he's a part owner in Story Construction in Iowa, in Ames, Iowa.

And he, I do, they're my favorite client, and I'll tell a lot of people that, and the reason for that is because he and a fellow owner who's the chief operating officer, Pat Geary, they have a very clear vision of where they want to be, and it's not that far off that 99, that 1999 article by Spear and Bowen but they have that long term view.

And they know there's going to be setbacks and they know there's going to be frustrations and they know they're going to make mistakes. Yeah. And they do. But they, when they do, mistakes are only mistakes in hindsight. They're not mistakes beforehand, they're mistakes in hindsight. So when it happens they learn from those and they adjust so they've got the mindset.

They've got the, those two guys have, and Pat in particular, has the mindset that will get that organization to where they want it to be. Yeah. Unfortunately. That mindset in that level of leadership, I find to be extremely rare. Yeah because you need to have a long term view, not a one year view, or even a two or three year view.

a bit longer than that.

It's very interesting, right? In the agile community, I often hear the separation between agile ways of working and an agile mindset. And I think what you are, what you're describing here is the Kata is the. Not even the ways of working, it's the ways of getting started, right?

It's the ways of getting started, whereas the scientific thinking or the non random thinking is the mindset if you want to establish over time. And that is obviously something the Kharak can kick start us with, but eventually our own Habits are taking over, still in the scientific thinking mode, but it's like it will change, it will move, it will transform into something else that doesn't look like the Kata and necessarily anymore that we started with.

So we want to leave that behind, but it's the starting point for that journey. And I think that's

what you're pointing out wrong.

No, you are right. So as I was thinking as you were speaking, so Kata is the way we start to develop a way of thinking. If we think that way enough, that'll become our way of working.

And I think, I suspect, I'll never know, I suspect that's what's happened to Toyota. Yes. The problem is that people who work at Toyota now can never explain that. There's no chance they're ever going to be explaining it because they just, it just is the way we are. But we have a Toyota guy who works for us and does mentoring in Melbourne.

He left Toyota in 2011 and he poohoos Kata. Yeah. Directly poohoos it. But I've watched the way he works and he works exactly the way that Kata is intended for him to work down the track. So I watch the way he works, I watch the way he think, I watch, I listen to what he says and he acts and works that way.

Yeah. Because he, naturally, because he can't recognize how he's got there because he's, he just, it's just the

way they are. Yeah. Interesting. That's truly.

Yeah. Why would you need Kata to do this? You just do it. Yeah.

[00:15:23] Joe Krebs: Says you. Who has been doing this for a while.

[00:15:27] Oscar Roche: Exactly. Says you. But what about everyone else who is the majority of us?

How are we going to get there? Yeah.

[00:15:34] Joe Krebs: Toyota also has a commitment to learning continuously. There are various aspects of learning going on. How do you manage those expectations when you do work with leaders?

[00:15:46] Oscar Roche: How that fits is that scientific thinking itself is learning. So I'm looking at a definition of scientific thinking I have on my screen here and it says it's a continuous, this has come from Mike, it's a continuous comparison between what we predict will happen next, seeing what actually happens, and adjusting our understanding and actions based on what we learn from any difference.

So if we're thinking this way, We can't help but learn, because we're going to adjust our understanding and actions based on what we learn from a difference. Learning, we don't have to. Learning is not the goal. Adjusting our understanding and actions based on what we see from a difference will mean that we learn.

[00:16:31] Joe Krebs: That's the verification I wanted to hear from you. Exactly. It's an ongoing, it's an ongoing process. It's built in. It's part of, PDCA.

[00:16:41] Oscar Roche: Exactly. Yeah. It will, it just is. If we think this way, we will learn. We can't help but learn. Yeah,

[00:16:49] Joe Krebs: but it's on the job learning, right?

It's not a, it's not a theoretical kind of classroom experience or program that extensive program people are going through and learning about these things. This is very hands on. It starts on day one.

[00:17:03] Oscar Roche: Exactly. And I think also it almost requires two views or two mindsets at the same time.

One is I'm doing this work. The other is, I'm looking at this work from the outside, so I think that's difficult. I'm going to do two things. I'm going to do the work as per the standard, the way we do it today, but I'm also going to look at the way I do the work to see if I can, to see if what we predict is going to happen happens, and if it doesn't, then we've got to work on the difference and learn from that and make adjustments.

So that's where, I think that gets a bit hard too, to do two things. One is do the work. In other words, we're inside it and the other is look at the work from the outside as I do it and question it. That takes time and energy and all the rest of it. That's not easy.

It's not hard if you practice a pattern, yes but that energy of to practice that pattern takes a bit, it takes a little bit of amount. It's, it's a tough one to climb.

[00:18:01] Joe Krebs: So I just want to map this to some folks that are listening, maybe from an agile angle that learning would be some learning that we in, in, in processes such as scrum or extreme programming and so on, have experience in retrospectives where internal learning that's taking place.

I want to ask you a last question here while I have you. Is somebody is listening to this podcast right now, likes what you're saying wants to get started with Kata. Like it's a very practical I want to use the Kata to get started with that kind of thinking Like very practical.

What would be like a very first step? Just a realistic step. We know it's a longer journey for people with longer term vision, right? Of where to take a company or a product or a team. But what would be for you, like something to start with? What would you suggest to somebody listening to this and says, I want to experiment with the approach maybe even,

[00:18:56] Oscar Roche: it's a fine line between reading too many books and just having a crack. Yeah. I think and different people are different. Some people need to read a book or two before they're going to before they're going to jump in. And the original, the original 2009 Toyota Kata book is not a bad place to start.

I think there's been some that have evolved since that have made it more complex than perhaps it need to be, I've spoke to Mike about the practice guide and the practice guide is written from an engineer's perspective with an engineering view and it goes in quite deep. I would imagine that to be a lot of people, non engineers, non manufacturing people would be quite frightened about that.

It's, the reason I'm stalling a little bit on the answer is it just depends. It depends on the person how they best get started. Do they just need to know enough about the improvement model to be able and some guidelines to get it started? Is that a 10 minute conversation? Some yes, some they need to read a book.

I'm happy to be contacted. I think actually, I think. The way I always approach this is I need to understand the individual and the organization before we say, do this, because this might help. Yeah,

[00:20:10] Joe Krebs: Makes total sense. And, there's also conferences out there, they can attend.

Training courses they can attend. There is a hands on workshops they can attend. There's a variety of learning tools available et cetera, just to start with their journey and obviously practicing kata and picking up a book might be another option to just get started.

[00:20:32] Oscar Roche: I don't want to give people the impression of do this and it'll work for you.

[00:20:37] Joe Krebs: Absolutely not. Yes. But what I'm trying to say is there's a bunch of resources.

Oscar. Thank you so much for joining this podcast and sharing your thoughts.

[00:20:45] Oscar Roche:

I hope it's a value to the people who listen.