Where's the Exit?- Practical Leadership Tips

When you travel on a commercial flight, the safety briefing always includes a discussion of the exits.  When you go to a movie, the safety briefing includes, "The exits to the right and left of the screen have been checked and are clear exits from the building in the event of an emergency."

Exits are an important part of everyday life.  In addition to safety issues, exits can be a critical tool for improvements.

In the Toyota Kata, Rother (2010) uses the concept of exit cycle variation to determine the focus for the improvement process.  Observers time about 30 exit cycles from a process and plot the variation as the example from the Toyota Kata website displays:

The variation in exit cycle times helps highlight opportunities for improvements.  Of course, you have to actually go watch the process to see what caused the variation to understand what hinders a stable process.

When someone comes to you with a problem or opportunity for improvement, exit cycle observation is a great tool for both learning about the issue and coaching people toward improvement.

david

Rother, M. (2010). Toyota kata: Managing people for improvement, adaptiveness and superior results. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.