Monday, April 11, 2016

No Capes!


Anyone familiar with the animated movie “The Incredibles” probably remembers the crotchety and opinionated little fashion designer to the superheroes, Edna Mode. Her one rule on the creation of superhero costumes is “No Capes!” She believed that they added a “madly fluttering distraction” and had potentially “lethal consequences”, sighting numerous examples where superhero’s capes where caught or snagged leading to disastrous results.

Does your company have a  “No Capes” rule?

If you are like most organizations, you have superheroes all over the place, flying in at the last moment to save the day.  It’s 4:40pm on a Friday and the product labeler just went down, does the process owner fix the problem? Probably not, send up the “Bat Signal” and the Dark Knight (engineer) shows up in the nick of time to save the day.  Hip, Hip, Hooray!

Almost every organization has some degree of a hero culture. The knowledgeable few that have the skills and experience to deal with the urgent matters to ensure product gets out the door and the customer is satisfied. Unfortunately, they often hoard vast amounts of tribal knowledge because they believe it gives them power. Individuals often feel a source of pride and ownership that the hero culture facilitates; being the problem solver, the fire fighter, the one that saves the day, not to mention the belief that this behavior makes them valuable and irreplaceable, i.e. job security.

Organizations that have a strong hero culture typically have a low organizational intelligence. The critical business knowledge is tied up with only a few key employees. Due to this silo’ed behavior, these experts, “heroes” move from fire to fire, never slowing down to explain or teach how they resolved the issue. As a result, people come to follow this behavior and sit around and wait for someone else to solve their problems. In addition, your heroes spend very little time on value-added work. Therefore, the company can only move as fast as their few superheroes and never benefit of leveraging their diversity.

As we know from the Toyota Production system, this practice is contradictory to the central pillar of “Respect for People”.  One way to help transform your culture is through the creation of self-directed work teams following the A3 process. Having the process owners lead the exercise, leveraging and capturing the knowledge of the hero in standard work helps increase the overall organizational intelligence. This also allows your hero’s to reduce the number of fires they fight, aligning them better with the strategic goals.

As Edna Mode so eloquently stated, Capes add a “madly fluttering distraction” and have potentially “lethal consequences” to your organizational growth. Implementing a “No Capes” rule helps transform traditional mindsets and facilitates a business process culture where all of your employees can contribute.

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