Wearables
How OpEx / Lean Daily Management Systems Give Us the Vitals...and what (surprisingly) happens when we heed the nudges
Wearables are an interesting intrusion into our daily lives. They give us feedback, alert us, and remind us of what we deem necessary or want to improve. A smart ring collects data on our activity and vital signs, reporting trends or problems so we can adjust. A smartwatch pings us to drink water or tells us we are slightly behind in burning calories today. The euphemism for these pokes and prods is to call them “nudges” (Lowenstein and Chater, 2017).
All Day Long
I wear a smartwatch. All day long, it’s bumping me, notifying me of what I’ve permitted it to bug me for. Like most of us, if you wear a smartwatch, you’ve probably learned how to turn notifications off or on, depending on your situation. I have my notifications down to the bare minimum, though, for the life of me, I get a Yelp notification out of the blue every other week. But, most of the time, I get the same daily notifications that reflect what I (mainly and right now) deem “important.” These are, for example, any call or message from my family and close friends, our security system alerts, and a handful of reminders, including hydration and other health reminders.
The good, bad, and sobering truth about wearables
There are some days—many days, if I am honest—that the bumps and pings come at the worst times.
Remember the trope about the person talking to you but checking their watch? That specter looms large when I get silent bumps and buzzes on my wrist, alerting or reminding me about something, distracting me from what I’m doing.
It’s a concern. Some days, I silence everything. But, honestly, some of those notifications are vital—the call or text from a family member in need, the reminder to drink some water because dehydration keeps me below par even for knowledge work, the stranger on my side porch camera that I caught casing my house.
After an hour of silence, I end up turning them back on. Why? I know I won’t catch something essential or make the improvement I aspire to.
Wearables for organizations: the daily management system
The Daily Management System (DMS) in Lean or Operational Excellence centers on problem identification and problem-solving in daily work. This daily experience is a foundational concept in my approach to operational excellence and serves as a hub for meshing leadership and management daily. I'll discuss how they mesh in a future post.
One aspect of the DMS is its feedback to the manager. If done well, the DMS pings and bumps the manager all day with reminders, like a prompt to do leader-standard work, and alerts, like a problem surfacing at a daily meeting or huddle.
The DMS is like a wearable device on the manager’s unit or team: it tells us how we are doing and where to improve. And, like a wearable, it can be uncomfortable…
Wearables Can Cause Discomfort
I’m not talking about the tightness of your smartwatch band. I mean the discomfort an alert or reminder causes when it hits home and identifies a problem or lack of improvement.
In the same way, if you’ve been managing and leading without a DMS, its application can cause discomfort. If you’ve been in an organization that elevates firefighting problems instead of solving them, the DMS slows you down and nags you to do root-cause problem-solving. If your organization rides the highs and hangs on during the lows, the DMS's longer-range view and pdCA cycles can be jarring.
You can’t turn it off the DMS! You can ignore it, but a well-done DMS includes visual management that tells the team and passersby, including other managers…your manager…what your problems are and what you are doing about them.
As we hear from exercise experts, no pain, no gain.
It takes some learning.
Wearables have a learning curve. When I first got my smartwatch, I mindlessly confirmed every prompt to add notifications. I soon realized I didn’t need constant email pings or wrist bumps. I learned what the crucial notifications were.
Some may argue that a DMS tells us everything we need to know. That may be true, but I coach managers to break the DMS’s cadences into rhythms that make sense for their team’s operational tempo.
A safety problem is vital: it’s at the top of the operational priorities list. While important, a cost problem at the team level has less bearing—both operationally and culturally—than a safety problem.
It takes some learning to let the DMS help you improve: on some days, cost problems feel more important than improving safety.
The unwilling minority
Suppose a manager is unwilling to learn, but the organization strongly emphasizes the DMS as how we do things here: the DMS can drive people away from the organization. We’ve seen this phenomenon happen regularly. Organizations take two to three years to get momentum, and change is cemented at the top, then pressure is placed on the organization to change in earnest. The pressure to change—to use the DMS—causes some managers to head for the door. The DMS sheds light on actual problems, but that revelation is too bright for some.
We always warn our clients to expect some attrition in middle management as the DMS structure stabilizes and strategic leaders keep steady pressure to transform all managers: some managers won’t thrive in this environment. The target condition is voluntary attrition. Equally important is recruiting and hiring managers who will thrive under the DMS.
Wearables and DMSs: Giving Structure to Improvement.
As much as I resist the pings and bumps, they are also super helpful in the long run. They let me know that I’m improving, which makes me feel better. When I get off course, they show me where to improve.
As much as we resist the changes that adding a Daily Management System brings, the organization benefits from it. It points to gaps and shows us where to improve.
Without the structure of the DMS, it would be hard to see.
No (organizational change) pain, no (organizational change) gain.
So, manager: are you building a useful wearable for your team? If you have a DMS, are you “turning off” its nudges?
References:
Loewenstein, G., & Chater, N. (2017). Putting nudges in perspective. Behavioural Public Policy, 1(1), 26-53.
This is a great article!