The right culture.

"The most important factors for success are patience, a focus on long-term rather than short term results, reinvestment in people, product, and plant, and an unforgiving commitment to quality" Robert B. McCurry, former Executive V.P., Toyota Motor Sales

I copied this open citation from the one of the Toyota Way chapters. I did it because this represents what Toyota see as the factors to explain the success of their company. This is not the thoughts from one executive, or a group of white collars, but a company culture. Most people would not understand this (including me in the past), but after spending the last years working at Thoughtworks, I had the opportunity to actually live this. What I witnessed set me ready to properly understand how important is the role of the culture and how this must be the oxygen of the company. Thoughtworks, being a company distributed in 11 different countries, with more than 2000 people, you can ask anyone, in any office, to explain you the values of the company and every single time you will receive a consistent answer. This is culture.
The culture is present in every aspect of the company and will determine everything, from the people you hire to the decisions senior management takes. This ensures that you have the correct mindset not only on the leaders, but spread in all levels. It is a huge enabler.
Stop now. Imagine how many times you had problems and got blocked due to people with a different mindset (I don't want to use the word wrong here). I, myself,  had an unfortunate number of those experiences in other companies I worked in the past. In Thoughtworks it never happened. The reason is simple. Every person inside Thoughtworks, every decision, everything is guided by a common mindset, a unique culture that enables and empower people to do what is right for the company, at the same time they are doing what they believe it is correct.

"Every person I have talked with has a sense of purpose greater than earning a paycheck. They feel a greater sense of mission for the company and can distinguish right from wrong with regard to that mission". Jeffrey Liker - The Toyota Way
This citation from the book demonstrates a similar trend inside Toyota.
Ensure that you have a culture and values, ensure that your leaders live this culture, and work with people who share and understand the values, are the very first and most important steps towards a lean environment.

If you think of the infrastructure/support area as a supporting area inside the company, it might be interesting to have not only people in the area to share the company values, but to create values that go towards to the company culture and the area goals.
I was discussing with our infrastructure team in Brazil and we came with an example of what could be the cultural tone of our area.

"Unforgiven commitment to quality, clients and company values"

By embracing this, living this, teaching this and using this to support all decisions in the area, we will not only be enablers inside the company but also part of a culture that aims quality and client satisfaction.

We must reflect the culture in our decisions, even at the cost of financial. A long-term culture will bring an unbelievable amount of benefits to the area, but it will take time to develop , and will cost money. It is important to make it clear that this is a two-way relationship. We cannot ask for people to follow our lead. We must be models of that culture, so other people can learn based on our action and not only our words. "So you can't just say human resources are our most important asset; you have to walk the talk every day. And people really watch what you do, rather than listen to what you say. That's the Toyota System". The Toyota Way.

Besides live, teach and help to spread the culture, we must ensure that our decisions will reflect and maintain our values.
The hiring process need to verify if the person we are interviewing is aligned with the culture that we follow.  In Thoughtworks, I went thru 6 interview and an assessment before they made me an offer.
Some of those interview was technical and some was values interviews. Having a hiring process that ensures that the people being hired shares the company, and area,  culture, is very important towards the goal of having every person aligned. It surely have a cost, once all those interviews, and specially all the candidates that are not pursued, requires time and represent an extra cost. But in the long-term this ensures that the people who are hired will adapt well in the company and will find an environment that reflects their beliefs and values (including other people).

"Toyota's strong sense of mission and commitment to it's costumers, employees and society is the foundation for all the other principles and the missing ingredient in most companies trying to emulate Toyota." The Toyota Way

A journey into a different world.

After three years working in a company that adopts the Agile methodology, I decided to try to understand better how lean works and if I could use some of the concepts to improve the work me and the team were doing.
I have seen the teams using Agile inside Thoughtworks and the positive results of the use of this methodology. Just like most people I got impressed by the company's culture and the outstanding results this culture was producing, not only in the projects but also in everything else.
My first step towards understanding more about Agile was seek advice from experienced people from inside the company. People who live the Agile philosophy, and that could put me in the right direction to understand better. My first task was to read a small list of books. The Toyota Way from Jeffrey Liker, The Goal and Critical Chain, both from Eliyahu M. Goldratt.
Those books, plus everything that I've seen inside Thoughtworks in the last years inspired me to try to learn all that I could from lean and try to use this knowledge to improve the infrastructure/support area.
I decided to organize this exercise in 14 blog posts, one for each of the lean principles according to Toyota, plus some introductory and conclusion posts. The 14 principles are:

• Base your management decisions on a long term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals
• Create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface.
• Use "pull" systems to avoid overproduction
• Level out the workload (Heijunka)
• Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time.
• Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment
• Use visual control so no problems are hidden
• Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes
• Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others.
• Develop exceptional people and teams that who follow your company's philosophy.
• Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve.
• Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation (Genchi Genbutsu)
• Make decision slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement decisions rapidly
• Become a learning organization through relentless reflection (Hansei) and Continuous Improvement (kaizen)

What I will try to do is get the very essence of each principle, discuss it and then suggest how this principles could be used or adapted to work in the infrastructure/support area.

Wish me luck!