Can you copy a culture? The NUMMI story

In 2010 I came across a brilliant radio show of This American Life - episode 403: NUMMI.
It tells a story that's taught in business schools, of a joint venture by General Motors and Toyota - in 1984 these competitors decided to build cars together, each for their own reasons. NUMMI is the name of the factory, it stands for "New United Motor Manufacturing Inc".



Act one tells the miraculous story of this GM factory in California - it was considered to have the worst work force, always striking, struggling against management, with no work discipline what-so-ever: drinking on the job, drugs, gambling. Then, Toyota stepped in and transformed this plant into a Japanese style plant, using the Toyota Production System (TPS) principles. The real miracle is that it worked - and that 85% of the work force was the same. This a truly inspiring story of human potential and how systems can be designed to bring the best or worst of of people.

Act two is a different story. GM was for decades losing ground to Toyota. It had every reason to want to learn whatever they could from NUMMI and improve their quality across their other plants. This didn't happen - at least not fast enough. In 2010 GM went bankrupt. This part reveals some of the reasons and dynamics that led to the tragic outcome.

I recommend investing an hour to listen to it. Act one tells you how to get it right, and it is really emotionally moving - the interviews with employees who went through the transition reveal NUMMI deeply changed the lives of many. It also describes some of the key aspects of the TPS and how it was successfully brought to the US.  Act two  is a handbook for nearly everything that can go wrong when you try to change an enterprise.

What I like about this radio show is that it demonstrates so well that the Toyota Production System is not a "business process", or "best practice" you can see and replicate. It is a culture, with it's own values. It is not something you can just perform, it is rather something you can choose to become.

Agile transformation often suffer from similar difficulties - you can follow the rituals, but if you don't get the underlying values and mindset, you just end up creating "cargo cults", or simply resistance.


I'd like to thank Elliot Holar who shared this episode with me soon after it was aired - aside from this specific episode, I became quite a fan of This American Life. They rock. Thanks, e.

LEAN is not a way to lose weight. Or is it?

When I was first introduced with the principles of Lean thinking, my coach started off by making it clear we are not talking about a way to lose weight. A few years later, I would like to revisit and challenge that statement. Having learned more about the Kanban principles since, I think there are clear similarities.

Since the eating process is generally defined by our biology, I'll focus on flow. 

The starting point is late 2011, when I realized that unless I seriously change something I will continue accumulating weight. During my adult life I was always somewhat overweight, but at that point my weight was already a cause of grief and low self esteem. 

Establishing Pull

We often eat for all kinds of reasons: schedule, habit, availability, social circumstances, boredom. None of those is directly related to a biological need: first comes one of those reasons, next we eat. A Push system. The result is Fat, the biological equivalent of Inventory. This is where we store over-production. 

The natural Pull system is the Hunger mechanism. Our body needs more energy, so our minds signal "eat now". 
I don't know how it is for others, but I find it hard to free myself from all the social and psychological layers hiding and tempering with the basic hunger mechanism, so I needed to establish an alternative pull system.

To create pull, I needed to adjust the calorie intake to be just enough for the energy I spend. Since I didn't plan to rely on hunger, I needed a forecast of the energy demand, and a way to adjust the estimation.

Smartphones are great. A calorie calculator app provided an easy way to estimate a daily calorie budget, to visualize my calorie intake and my weight reduction rate.   

Keeping within budget meant I have an explicit policy. I would need to plan what I eat, and choose between alternatives in a conscious way.   

Seek Perfection

Once the first signs of success started to show, and some eating habits were established, I was ready to change further aspects of my diet. Here are a couple of examples.

While tracking my calorie consumption against a budget, I noticed it was much harder for me to keep to the plan on weekends and holidays. I realized that some habits are harder to change, but they surfaced only after I got the work days under control. For example, I didn't really have to take a serving of every single dish on the table at family dinners. It is not really an insult to the host.  

At some point I started adding sport to my schedule. It serves a few purposes contributing to value:  

• Increasing the spent energy (while keeping the intake) gets rid of fat
• More muscle mass burns more energy, not just during exercise 
• Sport is another way to support the value of sustaining myself - a stronger body is valuable to me not only because it burns more calories

What Helped

Two things that supported this journey. 

1. Intention - I realized being overweight wasn't acceptable to me anymore while preparing to hold a workshop about Christopher Avery's Responsibility Process. One of the things he teaches is getting clarity on what I want. This was a strong motivator for me.
2. Visibility - I happened to get my first smartphone at the same time, on which I zealously logged everything I ate for a whole year. This made me very aware of the impact of each type and amount of food on my calorie-budget

I managed to lose 18 kg (around 40 pounds) within a year. 
I feel much better, can run faster and longer, and I'm proud of my achievement.

I can't say I decided to lose weight by applying lean principles, but I'm quite sure those principles were there to support me. Elements such as sustainable pace, explicit policies, visualization, continuous improvement, and discipline are common to both.