Respect for people, the translator's edition

In the spirit of Lean my colleague and friend Mika Pehkonen writes how they are able to respect people, get them to do what they are best at and most motived to do. I'd say that's a win-win-win situation!

we pay our translators by the hour, not by word count. This means that the translator gets fair pay for their work, they do not need to spend time on proofing computer propagated translation matches that are by default out of context and they get to concentrate on their key expertise, translating concepts from one language and culture to the other. This, combined with assisting scripts and tools, allows the translator more ownership over their own work in ways that are more meaningful than just reviewing and translating words in a software.

That's a message that is often missed in the frenzy of Agile or Lean adoption. An example of that is the testing work, espcially regression testing, that is mostly done manualy and where the question "how many test cases can you execute an hour?" is the most asked question. That kind of approach clearly leads to what Mika has managed to avoid: spending most of your money in low-value added work that does not motivate and by it's very nature reduces the quality of the output. I usually compare this to the person in an old-school factory whose job is to make sure that the Coke bottles do not have too much coke in it while reviewing hundreds of bottles against a white screen...

Admitting mistakes is the first step to learning, not just for you, but also for your team and company

Here is an excellent piece from the blog Evolving excellence about how a worker at Toyota battled his fear of admitting a mistake and was rewarded by his pears and supervisor for not hiding, but rather disclosing the mistake he had done.

Admitting you committed a mistake is a very important part of continuous improvement. The andon cord (a sort of error alarm) should be pulled as soon as an mistake/error/defect is created or found.

Finding mistakes is not a blame game in Lean thinking, it is a key part of finding ways to avoid mistakes altogether through poka-yoke or mistake proofing our work methods!

Behind this willingness to show and learn from mistakes we make are some concepts in the Toyota Product System (TPS):

1. If the student has not learned the professor has not taught.
2. Most mistakes are caused by the situation or the system and not by people's incompetence or willingness to do their best.
3. Respect for people (one of the key pillars of the TPS)
   

These concepts together with other key concepts in TPS allow people to concentrate and focus on continuous improvement and not play the very ineficient and unproductive blame game that mostly impedes learning.


Updated: with a link to the Respect for people principle in Toyota's website.

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