The Momentum Cycle: Leading the Lean Transformation

Tools are not the problem—we have at our fingertips a complete toolbox for the implementation of Lean, garnered from many sources. Human energy is not the problem—every organization is filled with energy, more than enough to implement change.

Much of that human energy is lost to waste, and much more is dispelled because of a lack of leadership focus. We’re all trying to accomplish everything, right now. This creates big batches of things to do, which leads to not getting them all done. We all know the effect batches have on smooth manufacturing operations. It is no different with tasks or projects. A batch is a batch.

In recent years, I’ve also witnessed a trend in leadership toward employing tools without context, often creating larger batches of things to do. This is upside down from how Lean can and should work.

In this article, I make the case that the primary role of leadership is to focus the human energy of the organization, through a set of structures, supported by effective tools.

In other words, it’s not the tools or the energy by themselves. Instead, we seek two things: a comprehensive ‘primary role’ model to follow, and to provide leadership focus through that model. We need a context within which we can work. To that end, I offer you The Momentum Cycle^®. I developed the cycle to fill a gap in my own learning—to improve my ability to effect change in client organizations. I’m sharing it with you as my contribution to your own personal efforts.

What It Is

The Momentum Cycle is represented by a Mobius strip, as displayed here.

The Mobius is a well-known shape, used to represent many things. I chose it as the core image for the cycle because it represents:

The infinite possibilities that we and our organizations have before us
The total interconnectedness of the ‘system’: local, global, universal
The fact perspectives do change, must change, all along our path

However, simply having a symbol is not going to get us there. The Momentum Cycle has four interdependent parts; Leverage (yourself), Lift (organizational performance), Lead (others), and Learn (pursue useful knowledge).

Taken together, and practiced over multiple cycles, these four parts create momentum toward the transformation to Lean. As you may know, momentum is the product of mass (how much of the organization is actively engaged) and velocity (the speed at which we travel, with clear direction). In my experience with Lean transformation, building momentum is key to success. Let’s break the model into its component parts, and take a closer look.

One of my core beliefs is that all organizational success and failure stems from leadership. Every Lean organization I find has ‘good to excellent’ leadership. Every not-Lean organization has ‘poor to adequate’ leadership.

I also believe if you cannot successfully lead yourself, no one else will follow. This is the meaning of the phrase: lead by example. It also means the leader goes first. This is why the cycle begins, ends, and begins again with you. You must start with strengthening your own leadership abilities.

This sounds a lot like work, but the good news is that there likely is no one who influences you more than you influence yourself.

So how do you get started on leveraging yourself? I have a technique I call ‘The BAB’s’ for Beliefs, Attitudes and Behaviors. Most people sequence it this way: behavior, attitudes, beliefs. This is because they think we improve our own leadership by beginning with changes in behavior. Those changes, over time, change our attitudes toward leading, and eventually, the behaviors and attitudes change our beliefs. This occurs in this sequence:

I may not believe it presently, but I behave as though everyone around me regularly creates value for the organization.
Over time, I gather enough evidence to develop an attitude of almost everyone creates value.
Over yet more time, I gather enough evidence to develop a belief that almost all add value.

I recommend changing the sequence to belief, attitude, behavior. In this case, we start by changing our beliefs first. Although that sounds very simple, it’s not. However, through practice, I’m convinced that once we change a belief, we will immediately adopt attitudes that support that belief, and behaviors will quickly follow. It can go like this:

Today, I choose to believe that ‘everyone around me’ regularly creates value for the organization
My belief sets my attitude, which is one of immediate anticipation that ‘everyone’ will add value. I anticipate simply because I believe it to be true.
My anticipation of value encourages others to engage, and they add value. My belief is then supported, and I continue to believe so the loop is closed.

I recently practiced the BAB sequence (again) and leveraged myself from a leadership funk to noticeably increased effectiveness. I can’t recommend this technique strongly enough.

Remember when I said earlier that the primary function of leadership is to focus the human energy of the organization, through a set of structures, supported by effective tools? The leverage portion of this article addressed focusing human energy, in this case your own. This second segment of The Momentum Cycle, Lift, addresses structures.

I’m exposed to a wide variety of organizations, and I have observed the human talent for understanding complexity firsthand. Unfortunately, I have also seen that we humans have a talent for making things more complicated. I make a clear distinction between the words complex and complicated. Things in business are complex enough as they are, without us making them complicated.

In that light, let’s consider a simple structure that can enable a successful Lean transformation. This graphic shows that structure:

There are four interdependent components to our Lean transformation structure. In my experience these four parts, which I’ve nicknamed “a Vee and three Eye’s, are critical to developing a core structure for Lean transformation. The process works like this:

First, we envision the relatively near future, and what we want/need from that future. We don’t focus on the distant future but one we can see easily, such as a year or two. We make this vision clear and compelling, write it down, communicate it to everyone we can, and use it to set the overall direction of the transformation.

Second, we develop solid, personal interrelationships that we can count on and build upon. The most effective interrelationships would support our value stream—people we supply with services, information and/or knowledge and those who supply those things back to us. The development of these relationships sets us up to lead, which is the next segment of the cycle.

Third, we determine what interactions between functions and humans we need to succeed. We often call these interactions our business processes, but there is more to it than that. Interactions are the agreements we make to ensure our business processes are effective.

Lastly, we create interdependencies between functions, processes and humans. When we intentionally design interdependence (as opposed to independence) into our processes, it creates an environment where we rely on one another to succeed.

To wrap up this segment of the cycle, our simple structure enables us to:

Know where we’re going together (our vision)
Have business friends who will work with us to get there (interrelationships)
Develop agreements around how we will function within our business (interactions), and
Create an environment where we depend on each other to succeed (interdependencies).

Now we have come to the heart of the Momentum Cycle. We are returning to the focusing of human energy. In my experience, Lean transformation only occurs when a tipping point in individual engagement is reached. This tipping point does not require everyone, but it does require enough people so that our energy can be focused to Leverage and Lift. It is our role as leaders to make this to happen.

Leadership is an intricate endeavor, as is most things that involve humans. But to keep things simple, I offer just two thoughts on what to work on:

Understand and use the current state of your organization’s energy.
Become ever more credible with those you lead.

Because we are limited on space, I’ll address only the first one in this article. There are many ways to assess the current state of your organization’s energy. One simple way is to assess ‘grumbles’—what is the organization complaining about? The beauty of grumbles is that we can observe them every day as part of our leadership. If we listen closely, we can gauge the current state of our organization.

In his book Management of the Absurd (Touchstone, 1996), Richard Farson writes that motivation for continuing change and growth comes not from satisfaction, but from development of a higher order of discontent. In other words, we develop new and different levels of grumbling. Mr. Farson states that this higher order of discontent leads to solutions to more important problems. He also states that if leaders expect the grumbles to go away as improvements are made, they are fooling themselves.

I agree wholeheartedly. It is not that we grumble, it’s what we grumble about that counts. We can tie this clearly to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, as shown here:

If we listen closely we can accurately gauge the current state of energy in the organization and work to move that energy forward. Our goal is bigger, more interesting grumbles.

Learning relentlessly is the last segment of the Momentum Cycle. We are returning to the structural part of the cycle with this segment, which closes the Mobius and prepares us to begin again.

In my experience, it does no good to tackle a project, problem or opportunity unless we learn something, and carry that learning forward. Carrying forward what we’ve learned as individuals is natural. Carrying what we’ve learned as an organization takes a more focused effort. Again, to keep things simple, I’ll put it this way: ‘institutionalizing’ learning has two parts.

First, I suggest we treat every project, problem or opportunity as an experiment. I call this Experimental Learning. Note the distinction between experiment and experience. Experiences happen to us, but we cause experiments to happen. When we’re experimenting, we act with intent—setting scope, making assumptions, developing metrics and posing expectations. This is creating and using structure in our quest to learn.

The second critical part is what I call AERO (after experiment review and optimization). AERO is the consistent and immediate documentation and communication of what we’ve learned from our latest experiment. It completes the structure of experimental learning, and institutionalizes what we’ve learned and what we’ll do with that learning.

In closing, you might recall that the title of this article is ‘The Momentum Cycle’. By its nature, a cycle must repeat. I firmly believe that if we work within and repeat the cycle, we build Momentum (the product of engagement, speed, and direction), toward our Lean transformation.

Ken Branco, R.E.V.V. International has been a professional consultant, teacher and mentor for more than 30 years. He has worked all over the world with companies that range in size from “mom and pop” organizations to those that are listed in the Fortune 10. Reach him at 860.428.6386 or revvint@aol.com.