Lesson 23 of 23 · 7 min read
One full cycle with your team
In Lean: PDCA, end to end
Builds on: One problem on one page, Keep a standard alive, A board the team reads in ten seconds, Lead by asking, Measure honestly
In one minute
This last lesson joins the track into one cycle you run with your team, on a real friction from your own board. Choose one friction, understand it on one page, go and see, find the cause, choose the smallest change, write a prediction, put it in place, check it at intervals, and then either make it the standard or learn from what did not hold. The person who reported it owns it, the lead asks and clears the way, and the team checks honestly together. One real cycle teaches more than any lesson can.
The idea
The cycle, step by step, with the lesson behind each.
- Choose. At a board review, pick one friction that recurs and that the team can change itself within weeks. Not the biggest problem in the company: the first cycle is for learning the rhythm (lesson 18).
- Write it down. What should happen, what happens, with facts, no solution and no blame (lesson 9), kept to one page (lesson 11).
- Go and see. Follow a few real items through people and tools (lesson 8).
- Find the cause. Ask why, check each answer against evidence, follow the branches, and stop at what the team can change (lesson 10). If a chain reaches a person, turn it to the process (lesson 19).
- Choose the change. Should the step exist? Then go down the list: remove, combine, reorder, simplify, automate (lessons 6 and 13).
- Plan the experiment. One change, an owner, a written prediction, a way back, the people affected agreed, and dates to look (lessons 14 and 20).
- Do it, on a small scale.
- Check at about a week, two weeks and a month. Answer held, partly or reverted as things really are (lesson 15).
- Act. Held: write the standard, with an owner and a review date, and keep it alive (lessons 16 and 17). Partly: aim the next small cycle at the part that did not hold. Reverted: take what you learned back to the cause.
- Report honestly. Identified and confirmed side by side, "no figure" where there is none, nothing projected (lesson 22).
- Plan. State the problem and its cause, choose the change, and write down what you expect to see.
- Do. Make the change on a small scale: one team, one form, one kind of request.
- Check. Compare what happened with the prediction, in the work itself, at set dates.
- Act. Held: make it the standard. Partly: adjust and go again. Reverted: back to the cause.
Who does what.
- The owner, usually the person who reported the friction, does the work of the cycle: they know the step best.
- The lead asks the coaching questions and clears the obstacles the owner cannot (lesson 21). The lead does not take over.
- The team reads the board together, answers check-ins truthfully, follows the standard and says when it no longer fits.
Pace. A full cycle takes about a month, because the checks need time to see whether the change survives busy weeks. The active work is a few short sessions. Run one cycle at a time at first; once the rhythm is familiar, several can run side by side.
What to expect. The first cycle will feel slow and slightly awkward. That is normal. The aim is not one fixed friction; it is a team that can run the next cycle without opening this lesson.
Example
Illustrative example, not a real company.
At its weekly board review, an HR operations team picks a friction a payroll coordinator reported, with a figure: contract changes reach payroll after the monthly cut-off.
She writes it on one page and follows a few recent changes. Each was approved by a manager, sent to HR, then forwarded by HR to payroll. The whys show that changes go to HR first only because the form was set up when HR typed everything in; nobody owns the form's routing today. Should HR's forwarding step exist? It adds nothing. The smallest change: route approved changes straight to payroll, with HR copied.
She owns it and writes the prediction before anything changes: next month, no approved change reaches payroll after the cut-off. Her lead asks questions, then clears the one obstacle she cannot: the change to the form's routing, agreed with the person who administers the form.
Held at one week and at two weeks. Partly at one month: changes approved by one director, still signed on paper, go through HR the old way. The next cycle aims at that. She types the time the change now saves her, and the team reports her identified and confirmed figures side by side.
Common mistakes
- Starting with the biggest problem. Learn the cycle on something the team can change.
- Skipping the prediction or the later checks because the change "obviously" worked.
- The lead running the cycle. The owner runs it; the lead asks and clears the way.
Words to know
- One friction, from report to the one-month check (in Lean: a full PDCA cycle).
- Who does what in the cycle (in Lean: owner and coach): the owner runs it, the lead coaches and clears obstacles.
Check your understanding
Try it on your own work
Describe one recurring task that wastes your time, and see these ideas applied to it.
Where this comes from
Seeing a problem, understanding its cause, changing the work, checking and then standardising, done again and again by the people who do the work, is the everyday practice of Kaizen in the Toyota Production System and the Lean tradition; this lesson adapts it to an office team.