Genba Scientists and Scientific Thinking

Scientific thinking has become very popular within the Lean community since the publication of Toyota Kata in 2009. If something is popular in the business world, it often means that it is recognized as conceptually easy to grasp, easy to do, easy to talk about, or all three. When something becomes popular, it is likely to be understood and practiced in either diluted or rote forms. The question then becomes: Under such conditions, what is the impact?

First, I wish to make a distinction between scientific thinking and the curiosity of a scientist that propels them to think scientifically and place this in relation to the genba. In my blog post “Spending Time with Chihiro Nakao,” I said:

How he [Nakao-san] thinks about the shop floor is similar to how a Nobel prize-winning physicist thinks about the universe: There is nothing in the world that is more interesting!

I have never seen anyone look at the genba as Mr. Nakao does. He truly has the the curiosity of a deeply dedicated scientist. He is a “genba scientist,” skeptical that anything is done correctly and forever skeptical of the status quo. To Nakao-san, the genba is a bona fide laboratory where the output of scientific curiosity and scientific thinking must have meaningful impact. Specifically, productivity improvement: reductions in cost, lead-time, and human struggle, and improvements in quality, safety, and customer satisfaction. The shop floor is “the source of profit.”

Most CEOs view operations differently, as an endless opportunity for budget-cutting, layoffs, outsourcing, and offshoring. They do not view the genba as a laboratory, a place for scientific curiosity and scientific thinking, to learn and improve, and a place that connects design and engineering to marketing and sales and customer satisfaction. Further, most CEOs view the people who work on the genba plainly as workers, employees, shop rats, etc., not as curious scientists or scientific thinkers.

Scientific curiosity precedes scientific thinking. In my experience, having scientific curiosity about the frenzied genba was deeply frowned upon by senior managers. I found that in that context, having a Ph.D. was a significant liability. My scientific curiosity was seen by leaders as impractical and unfairly magnified due to my terminal graduate degree. Thinking was also seen as impractical unless it had a political orientation. Doing, however, was seen as practical — and richly rewarded — even if thinking was weak or nonexistent.

At the time, I could not understand how company leaders viewed scientific curiosity and scientific thinking as impractical, while doing was always seen as practical, even though doing without much thinking made most problems worse, sooner or later. There was a clear bias against scientific curiosity and subsequent scientific thinking. We were hired to do a job and get the job done, and that is all there was to it.

While decades have now passed, it seems to me the situation is largely unchanged in most organizations. Top business leaders still favor doing over scientific curiosity and scientific thinking. The effect of this is to dilute the impact that scientific thinkers can have on organizations, and operations in particular.

Certainly there are some leaders who are different and noteworthy results have been achieved due to scientific thinking. But most business leaders remain unreceptive to the truths that scientific curiosity on the genba reveals.

Original Article: https://bobemiliani.com/genba-scientists-and-scientific-thinking/