Genchi Genbutsu: "go and see".

Genchi Genbutsu: “go and see”.

As a manager, it’s easy to rely on your team to tell how things are working, and gradually lose contact with the process on itself. The problems they face, the challenges they solve, the issues they experience in their day to day - will flow through your interactions with them.

But there’s no replacement for seeing it with your own eyes, and understanding it by yourself, from first-party data. The practice of “Genchi Genbutsu” comes from the Toyota Production System, and it’s not meant to “physically observe everything”, but more as gathering data by yourself, and “cutting the middleman” when doing observations about how things are running.

Something I recommend a lot to tech new managers is to find time to continue “getting your hands dirty”. To not lose touch of the craft side of our jobs - but also making sure that we are not in any critical path, blocking any work that the team is delivering (as our schedule will likely not be aligned with deep work).

When doing so, you will get first-data on how things are running. You will be able to confirm that the concerns that you team raises are correct, and need to be fixed; or issues in how tools and processes are working, and will give you a chance to constructively look for opportunities to improve.

You can apply some Genchi Genbutsu the next time that you are working on a problem: go and observe others while following the process that you try to improve; then try to experience the process yourself, and see how it aligns with the information that you gather via your reports.

#kanban #continousimprovement #genchigenbutsu