Lean is a system that develops people while doing and improving the work. Continuous improvement efforts enable people to be creative while they are growing and developing. Lean product and process development it is a system designed to make creative people more productive while effectively working together. People and products are simultaneously developed with people development integrated into how new products are created.

The lean tools and techniques should be used in a way that enables people to have high performance and be satisfied.  We can enable this to happen by understanding the underlying thinking or philosophy of lean while we are designing our systems and the affect they have on people. Then, on a regular cadence we should reflect to learn and improve how our systems support people. This is easy to say and is very difficult to do. The following frameworks from psychology and behavioral economics can be used as a foundation for reflecting on how people are supported. Hopefully, one or more of these will resonate with you, better enabling you to support people

While we will likely get some success when applying lean tools or techniques, we will not get long-term sustained results unless we understand the philosophy or underlying thinking. When we apply lean with an understanding of the philosophy in mind we can get greater sustained results as illustrated in the figure below from The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement.  

The importance of the philosophy or underlying thinking is also why the foundation of the lean transformation framework is basic thinking, mindset, and assumptions.

So, what is that underlying thinking or philosophy needed? The Toyota Way, Inside the Mind of Toyota, and The Birth of Lean are great books to understand the thinking behind where lean came from, which was Toyota. Toyota’s corporate philosophy notes that their guiding principles reflect the kind of company they seek to be. To enable  employees to carry out their guiding principles Toyota created the Toyota Way 2001, to clarify their values and business methods in 2001. This underlying thinking includes the two pillars of Continuous Improvement and Respect for People. I think about respect for people being what underlies lean thinking and that continuous improvement is in service to respecting people.  Respecting and enabling people are what leads to the business results we desire through lean.

In lean we often talk about respect for people, but there isn’t a common understanding of what that means. It is often understood to be about being nice in how we talk to each other, which is important. This is just the tip of the iceberg on what respect for people really means. To create an enabling system for better performance and personal satisfaction we have to dig deeper. The Toyota Way 2001 goes beyond being nice defining Respect for People as including both respect and teamwork.

These aspects of Continuous Improvement provide opportunities for personal and professional growth that are part of teamwork within respect for people. Often when respect is perceived as being nice, people are not given the feedback they need to learn and improve. This is disrespectful as they are not given the opportunity to develop and maximize their performance. We need to be respectful while seeking to understand each other when we provide learning opportunities. Giving critical feedback without seeking understanding and providing support for where people are at is disrespectful since it does not provide development opportunities.

Teamwork includes a focus on providing opportunities for and supporting growth. A starting point for helping someone grow is to understand where they currently are, which is reflected in that respect includes making every effort to understand each other. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs can be used to understand people’s needs and their readiness for growth.

You need to have your basic needs met before you are in a position to focus on the needs higher up the pyramid. Basic needs start with physiological needs, which are food, water, warmth, and rest. When you have those needs met, you can focus on safety. When your basic needs are met, you can pursue your psychological needs of belonging, love and esteem. You get belonging and love through your relationships. Esteem cones through what you accomplish. When your psychological needs are met you can focus on self-fulfillment needs. This enables you to reach self-actualization through achieving your full potential including creative activities. The first four needs: physiological, safety, belonginess and love, and esteem are deficit needs where you are motivated to have your needs met. As you meet these needs you are no longer motivated to keep meeting them, which allows you to move up the hierarchy to the next level. The fifth need of self-actualization is a growth need where motivation continues to increase as your needs are met driving you to achieve more.

Lean is designed to support people who have had their basic and psychological needs met with an ability to focus on growth. Whether intentionally or not we usually presume people are ready for this growth, which is disrespectful if they are focusing on their basic or psychological needs. People can’t focus on their growth if they are concerned about their safety. We can show respect by understanding where people are in the hierarchy of needs and supporting them there.

It is wise to assume people’s basic and psychological needs aren’t being met. Creating time in our huddles, stand-ups, obeyas, etc. around both physical and psychological safety enables us to know where people are. We don’t need to fix people’s problems, but we need to create an environment that enables people to share where they are and show that we care. This can be as simple as asking people how they are doing, as long as it is authentic and you respond with care.

When you know that people’s basic and psychologic needs are met you can shift focus to helping them achieve self-actualization through supporting their growth. Self-actualization requires intrinsic motivation as your motivation grows the more you achieve. Creative activities can provide the opportunity for this personal and professional growth.

Continuous improvement and product and process development should be creative work. Within the Toyota Way 2001 Continuous Improvement pillar both challenge and kaizen touch on this. Challenge involves meeting challenges with courage and creativity to realize our dreams. Kaizen is always driving for innovation and evolution while continuously improving business objectives. For creative work, we get better performance and personal satisfaction when people have autonomy, mastery, and purpose (Pink 2011). Autonomy is having some control or sense of ownership over your work. This doesn’t mean do whatever you want, but how do we provide a structure that gives a sense of ownership? Mastery is focused on skill development. It isn’t that you have mastered a skill, but that you are developing your skills. What opportunities and support are we giving people to develop their skills? And purpose is needing to see, understand, and align with the reason for the work you are doing. We need there to be meaning in our work. How can we help people see, connect to, and find purpose in their work?

Creating the conditions for autonomy, mastery, and purpose are how we can enable people to reach their full potential and have better performance. How do we structure the work and our systems so that people get their needs for autonomy, mastery, and purpose met? If you want more motivation for the importance of intrinsic motivation beyond respecting people by enabling them to achieve self-actualization the research has also found you get worse performance in creative work with greater extrinsic motivation beyond a threshold that enables people to meet their basic and psychological needs (Pink 2011). This makes sense since basic and psychological needs are deficit needs and self-actualization is a growth need. You can’t extrinsically motivate people to excel at creative work, you have to have intrinsic motivation to achieve self-actualization.

We support people’s need for mastery by creating the conditions for them to accelerate their learning curves. The Yerkes-Dodson Law (1908) can help us to understand how to create these conditions. Yerkes and Dodson found that for difficult tasks habits were formed most quickly with a medium level of stimulus. It is interesting that this isn’t the case for simple tasks, which don’t require creativity. But when creativity is needed, we need an optimal level of stress.

This research is foundational to the psychological performance zone model that Karl Rohnke developed in the 1980s as part of the challenge by choice research in the outdoor adventure field. This model has since been widely used for learning and training in many other fields including lean, which Mike Rother adapted to support Toyota Kata.

In your comfort zone you are doing work that is comfortable. If we view respect for people as just being nice, giving people work they are comfortable with is nice, but it isn’t enabling them to pursue their full potential which is disrespectful when someone is wanting to learn or grow. Furthermore, being nice can be disrespectful if you aren’t giving the feedback someone needs to learn or improve. But not everyone is in a position to be working towards self-actualization, Given these conditions, the respectful way to treat people working on their basic or psychological needs is to give them work within their comfort zone.

For optimal capability development, which is what people need for mastery, we need to create the conditions for people to be stretched outside of their comfort zone to work in their optimal performance zone. But pushing people too far puts them into their danger zone, which is also disrespectful, as they will shut down and not be learning. What these zones look like for every individual is different. What is in your optimal performance zone could be in my danger zone. The same task that was in someone’s danger zone six months ago could now be in their optimal performance zone as they have developed. What was in their optimal performance zone could now be in their comfort zone, so they need to be given greater challenges to continue developing. It is important to understand where everyone is, which aligns with the seeking to understand each other aspect of respect from the Toyota Way 2001.  By understanding where they are both in having their needs met and what their optimal performance zones are is how we can show respect by supporting them where they are.

People can reach their full potential through having mastery, autonomy, and purpose. These can all be realized through continuous improvement. Challenge with long-term vision provides both a purpose for the work and opportunities for mastery. Kaizen provides both mastery through problem solving and autonomy to improve your work. Genchi Genbutsu provides autonomy for everyone involved in the process through consensus building. When we are mindful about the people aspects of continuous improvement it creates the conditions for people to achieve their full potential, which is the most respectful thing we can do for them. This enables better performance, which can translate into better business results.

Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset ties in well with the underlying thinking of lean and the other frameworks discussed. A few of the relevant aspects of a growth mindset is that with a growth mindset you embrace challenges, see effort as a path to gain mastery, and learn from others resulting in higher levels of achievement. Embracing challenges aligns to the challenge principle of meeting challenges with courage and creativity within Continuous Improvement from the Toyota Way 2001. Viewing effort as a way to gain mastery aligns well with the mastery we need for better performance from Dan Pink’s work on intrinsic motivation, which we need for better performance and personal satisfaction. Having a growth mindset enables people to achieve self-actualization from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Learning from others aligns with both the respect and teamwork principles within Respect for People in the Toyota Way 2001, with the focus of understanding each other and sharing opportunities. The scientific method using plan, do, check or study, act or adjust (PDCA) also aligns well with a growth mindset. Each obstacle is a situation where you need to check and then adjust to keep learning. A growth mindset is a lean mindset. A fixed mindset is the opposite. 

Growth mindsets enable us to successfully navigate uncertainty, persevere through obstacles, and embrace challenges. As long as we are learning we can adjust and pivot to meet the challenges ahead of us.

Growth vs. fixed mindset can also help us to understand the performance zones and how each zone affects our ability to learn. The same person can have a growth mindset in certain situations and a fixed mindset in other situations. Which performance zone you are in will change your mindset.

If you have a fixed mindset you are essentially moving from the comfort zone to the danger zone when you encounter challenges. As you approach challenges with a growth mindset you are improving your capability to handle uncertainty, which grows the size of your comfort and optimal performance zones. This enables you to take on greater challenges and handle more uncertainty. If you push someone with a growth mindset too far you risk pushing them into their danger zone where they will revert back to a fixed mindset approach and stop learning. If you only give someone work in their comfort zone you aren’t giving them the opportunity to develop, which is disrespectful. We best support people’s development and their need for mastery by putting them in situations where they are in their optimal performance zone. This only works if they have a growth mindset.

The great news is anyone can develop a growth mindset. You develop a growth mindset through behaving with a growth mindset. You coach people to develop a growth mindset through the conditions you create that enable them to take on challenges in their optimal performance zone. You coach people to develop a growth mindset through how you ask questions in a way that supports a growth mindset. This is in the same spirit as John Shook’s quote “It is easier to act your way to a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.” Start behaving with a growth mindset and you will develop a growth mindset in yourself and others. Behaving with a growth mindset with the optimal level of challenge enables our need for mastery to be met.

I could keep going on about how growth mindset, performance zones, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, autonomy, mastery, and purpose all fit together to support people to achieve their full potential while being personally satisfied and maximizing their performance. This is the essence of what respect for people is all about. Hopefully, what I have shared is sufficient and not overwhelming to be valuable for you with the different perspectives that connect to show respect for people. The intent was to make this accessible for reflection and use while supporting people.

Reflecting helps us think about the people aspects of lean. When planning you can think through and reflect on how the technical tools you are using are supporting people. Once you start doing, what is your cadence to check and reflect on how people are being supported? Then how do you adjust or act on what you learned for what to do next? These cycles of reflecting and adjusting enable us to support people to meet their full potential with personal satisfaction and better performance.