Cécile Roche
Transcript (Translated)
So, I am Cécile Roche, I am in charge of Lean and Agile within the Thales Group.
The Thales Group, I won’t advertise it to you, but it’s just to tell you that we have a very broad product portfolio, since we make everything from transport systems, satellites, security systems, to equipment for airplanes. All this is just to tell you that with this product catalog we have, No, no, you are not late. I just started to warm up the atmosphere, which takes some work. I’m not sure I’m up to the task of heating things up.
So with a product catalog like this and teams like these, the advantage of a group like this is that when something doesn’t work somewhere, you can go try elsewhere. There is a tremendous learning field because it’s never the same thing. So it’s really a group where you learn a lot. I am also a member of the Lean France Institute, that is to say, welcome, the Lean France Institute is a non-profit association whose purpose is to promote Lean.
So, I am going to talk to you about Lean.
It takes a bit of courage because the first person I met when I arrived here isn’t in the room now, but... So we introduced ourselves, what do you do? Well, I do Lean. He told me, I had a burnout, my doctor said it was because of Lean. I said, well, that’s a strong start. We must not be talking about the same thing after all. So afterward, we explained ourselves, it was interesting. Indeed, we were talking. is not quite the same thing. And then I took a second buzzword, digital, everyone talks about it, people know what it is, so I’m like everyone else, but I’m just going to try to give you my take on it, because I think there’s a lot to do between the two, but not necessarily what we think. So when you search... When you search for digital on the web, here’s the kind of image you get.
Someone pointed this out to me the other day at Thales, it was a woman. She said, here, when you search for digital, this is what you get. So we probably have a man.
I interpret a fifty-year-old, I interpret because I’m at Thales, in a suit and tie, but especially no head. So I don’t know if you recognize yourself in this, but I don’t really recognize myself. And then if you search a little more, here’s what you get. This one has a head, but it still looks a bit like The Matrix, it’s a bit creepy. It’s not very encouraging. And when you start wanting to see faces, here’s what you find. So, you find this, that is, here, it’s how we try to humanize robots, but we still don’t see people. Then we find this one. So this one, that one, well I don’t know, angels have no gender and neither do robots, it was my daughter who showed it to me, well you probably know it, it’s the famous one who got citizenship. In a country where half the population has far fewer rights than it does, since they are women, since it’s Saudi Arabia. And then where it started to be funny is that my daughter told me, 'I have to show you something, there’s a robot that talks, they wanted to make it human, so at the end of every sentence it gives a little smile, it creeps me out.' Watch the video, it creeps me out too. And the next day, I go to Thales and my colleague who is in charge of digital, the factory of the future, etc. I talk about a presentation on digital, Lean, and the place of humans. And he says, look at the place of humans. And he shows me this. It made me think a lot. Especially about what we were going to do with digital at Thales.
Even the geeks look like this when you search on the internet. Well, I have one at home, he doesn’t look like that. Where is the human in all this? In fact, digital, I did a lot of research because as much as I’ve been doing Lean for 11, 12 years and I’ve also done a lot of research but it left me more time. Digital, well, it’s a subject everyone talks about and no one says the same thing about. So I did some research. And by searching and discussing with people, digital is not really what we think it is. The first thing is that it is absolutely not technology. Some time ago, I had the pleasure of attending a meeting between Yves Cazot, I don’t know if some of you know Yves Cazot, He’s a gentleman who makes really great videos, I recommend them to you. And then Olivier Flousse who is our VP of Digital, since we now have a VP of Digital. And they discussed together for an hour and a half. Well, these are two brilliant people, it was fascinating. And especially, what’s funny is that for 1 hour and 20 minutes, they only talked about one thing, which is how we can work with our clients. How digital helps us work with our clients. So the first thing about digital is that it’s about how we maximize all the data we can have to be customer-centric. A second thing I retained about digital is that it’s about flexibility. To offer a wide variety of products. Today, every customer wants to be unique and would like a product that is just for them. Obviously, companies are no longer crafts.
Digital offers a way to be industrial but to treat our customers as if we were artisans, meaning they have their products. Digital, obviously, is the first thing that comes to mind, it’s data-oriented, and particularly for decision-making. It’s also productivity-oriented, because it’s not a dirty word. All these are approaches that aim to improve competitiveness, because today there is still fierce competition and the only way to face it is to be competitive, competitive in the broadest sense of the term. Productivity is one of the small elements of competitiveness, but above all digital works on productivity through quality.
And not through quantity, it’s really through the quality of what is produced. Digital is resource-efficient in many ways. I will cite two as examples. If you take 3D printing, 3D printing is an extremely resource-efficient technology, since the yield compared to working with metal, for example, or others, is much better. We have much better yields. We waste much less. It can also be very well used, and it is, to manage resource consumption, etc. So digital, by its very nature, goes towards resource efficiency. Obviously, if we have fun calculating what digital spends and the way we consider the cloud as a resource, it will be... We can discuss it at length. And we are far from a perfect world.
Digital also helps to have continuity and dynamics in the ecosystem. I added that sentence to please someone at home, it’s not very clear. But basically, what does it mean? It means that with digital, we have the means to work in a much more cross-functional and much less vertical way than in our traditional visions. For those who were at the presentation in the large room downstairs, who talked about the importance of flow, Digital provides the means to work in flow, since we’re talking about interconnection at all levels.
It’s also an approach that aims to be decentralized for more agility. So agility, I think of it in a broad sense, agility or uncertainty, it’s the ability that people and organizations have to deal with what is not planned, in the broadest sense of the term. And digital makes data and connections available as close as possible to the teams, so that we decentralize as much as possible. It’s also about intermediaries, because there’s a question of autonomy. Which means we no longer necessarily have all this hierarchical logic. I really like the quote, we have 21st-century technology, 20th-century management systems, and 19th-century operations. I don’t want to say it’s the case everywhere. But we find it well, digital should allow us to get out of this. And then, of course, we don’t forget the aspect of simplification. Simplification for people, simplification, improvement of the work environment. And at all levels, not just in IT, but in factories, when you implement cobots, exoskeletons, things like that, it’s also done, and it’s done first to help people. So that’s digital in its intention.
But moreover, if we draw a parallel with Lean, in the intentions, I came back to the Buddha quote because it’s not from yesterday, nothing is constant except change. We're talking about a world that, as we've said many times, is volatile, ambiguous, uncertain.
What is changing today? It's that things are moving faster, much, much faster. That said, uncertainty has always been the norm. Uncertainty is the difference between what we want and what we have. From the moment we want something, there's a chance of a gap somewhere. If we want nothing, we're in uncertainty, but that's a bit more bothersome. So, there is nothing constant except change.
And more and more, and it's increasingly true, trying to control the waves by building dikes is not the right way to face the waves. The only way to succeed is to learn to surf. So, I took this phrase from Alan Ward, who is my absolute reference in lean, particularly in engineering. Alan Ward is deceased, but he wrote a book that I recommend to everyone. to read and reread. And truly, he explains how traditional organizations seek to control the wave, to control uncertainty, whereas the only way to face uncertainty and be agile is to learn to surf. It's about learning to navigate in the fog. If we entertain the idea that in our processes, we can include all the ifs and elses, if we must have this, then that, and if this, then that, in the end, as my boss once told me, instead of having the Ten Commandments in our frameworks, we have the Bible. And it's a bit longer to read, to know, and to assume. So, we have a completely opposite effect, which is that everyone hides behind it, and in any case, the case that arises today is never the one that was planned. So, there's only one way to learn to surf: it's to rely on people and particularly on a muscle. That we sometimes underdevelop in people, called a brain.
And that is the foundation of Lean. Lean is above all about how we will use the energy, the brain, and the reflection, the capacity to be rational of everyone in the company, in the direction the company wants to go to please its customers. And I do mean pleasing, it goes beyond simply listening and understanding, but if we want to achieve customer satisfaction, the only way to succeed, and to do so faster than others, while facing everything that comes our way and wasn't planned, is to use people's brains. It's about making them think. So, I've already written about this and received funny feedback from people who say, 'Yeah, if we spend all our time thinking before acting, well, it's not the trend, others have passed us by, etc.' Yes, maybe. Well, I have so many examples where we acted before thinking, and afterward, it cost us very, very, very dearly. So, the main idea of Lean, what we call Kaizen, is at the heart of Lean: we will exercise every day. People's brains. So, to clarify, we don't want to make people smarter. They are smart by default. We simply want everyone to use their reasoning in service of where we want to go to please customers. So, every day, if we use the small problems people face to teach them to solve small problems, they will become more and more skilled and agile in their ability to solve small, then big problems. And thus to innovate, because solving problems, generally, from a certain point and when they become complicated, is innovating. And there, the boundary between continuous breakthrough innovation, for me, is quite artificial. But that's another story. The essential thing we base ourselves on in Lean is that we must know what we don't know. Because that's where the worst lies. That's where we will spend our money, that's where we will fail and go around in circles in the fog for a long time. So, first and foremost, identify what we don't know. And when we are clear about what we don't know, we have already taken a big step. Then, if we are clear about what we don't know, about what we... it might be, and about what we really know and what we need to learn, we can start learning. Because what is competitiveness? It's having the best product faster. And to have the best product faster, we need to learn faster what we must learn. It's a very quick shortcut. But for me, that's where the essence of Lean lies. Learning faster what we must learn to please our customers. And for that, knowing where we start from, what we already know, what we don't know.
So, Lean, if I revisit the Lean vision a bit, is centered on the customer, first and foremost, since we want first and foremost to create value, to please our customer by creating value. It's flexible by offering a wide variety of products, because we are no longer in the era where... We had the same product for everyone; we are completely in the same logic as what I was saying earlier, it's oriented towards decision-making. Here, we have a slight nuance with digital, it's that we really seek to be fact-oriented, and that's why one of the essential elements of Lean is to go regularly, systematically, and with great attention, to the field. Well, facts and data should not be very difficult to reconcile. It's for productivity, through quality, that's the very essence of Lean. That is, in fact, our productivity problems, our long delays, everything we want in all areas, are essentially linked to the fact that we do, redo, and redo. Not at all, in the era when we had the same product for everyone, we are completely in the same logic as what I was saying earlier, which is to focus on decision-making. Here, we have a slight nuance with digital, which is that we really seek to be fact-oriented, and that's why one of the essential elements of Lean is to regularly, systematically, and with great attention, go to the field. Well, facts and data should not be very difficult to reconcile.
It's for productivity through quality, that's the very essence of Lean. That is to say, in fact, our productivity problems, our long lead times, everything we want in all areas, are essentially linked to the fact that we do, redo, and redo again.
It is resource-efficient by nature; I won't go back over the famous waste of Lean that we try to eliminate. I didn't like it at first because otherwise, we only think about that, and it's only one part, one way of working. In the meantime, it is obviously work on resource efficiency. Dynamic continuity of the ecosystem, well yes, because Lean is essentially about flow. So, I use the word because we talked about it a lot today, and because you are in the field and it means something to you. Well, it's not always easy to talk about flow. People ask me, what's your story about flow? What's your thing? It just means what a union representative once told me. We were at a somewhat stormy meeting.
And at one point, someone said, but in fact, Lean is not about making people run faster, it's about making the product run faster. And that's exactly it, the product in the broad sense of what we must deliver to our customer. The challenge of Lean is that between the moment we start and the moment it comes out, it flows smoothly and without interruption. That's what we call a flow. And quite simply, when you see that, you quickly understand that what is important is not silos, not vertical thinking, not resource thinking, but fluidity thinking. So by nature, we are in the dynamics and continuity of the ecosystem. It is also decentralized by nature, since what we seek is the autonomy of teams to be able to solve problems more and more and better. It is simplification and improvement of the work environment. Also, intrinsically, Lean is based on this, since in any case, in the order of improvements proposed by Lean, the first is to take care of people. It is useless to think that people will be able to put their brains and reflection at the service of the company if we do not take care of them first. Then, we protect the customer. Then, we control our lead times. And then, we reduce our lead times. And finally, hallelujah, we reduce our costs. In the end. Because we did all that before. So what we see is that in intention, Lean and digital are still very, very close. How to ensure that facts and data converge? There isn't a huge amount of work to do on that. In any case, the reflection is interesting. Knowing that today, data is a bit of everything and anything. We talk about big data. Someone mentioned 'not so big data' to me the other day. I liked that because before doing big data, there is quite a bit of 'not so big data' to do. But what's the problem with all this? It's nice to analyze data, but generally, it's worthless.
Our data is bootstrapped, it's worthless, it's outdated, it's not the right data. So, ensuring that our data makes sense and can help us, that's where we clearly see the link. How to move from disintermediation, which technology allows, to team autonomy, which is really a step beyond, is truly a managerial question; we feel we are on the same wavelength. So Lean and Digital, in essence and intention, go exactly in the same direction. But, be careful, digital should be customer-centered, but we often see it at the center of the company. I don't know about you, but I know two or three information systems. We no longer know who is in charge in the company. Oh well, we can't do it because the system doesn't allow it. But who's the boss in this company?
Be careful, digital seeks flexibility through product variety, not through mass production. Here's an example, I was in a nice factory the other day, with a magnificent line of robots producing at full capacity stocks that we saw everywhere. Then they introduced a new product, and I told them, it's great, with your super product line, you'll be able to make both products on the same line. Oh no, we reinvested in another line of robots.
And does my feminine intuition tell me that you have neck problems? How did you guess?
When I went to Japan, in a factory, they were very proud to show us on one line how they had 90 different references on the same line. Because there, digital brings something fantastic. The ability to reprogram very quickly is something very powerful. But if we use it poorly... Mass production is no longer in fashion at all; we are completely in the 20th century.
Big Data or Big Brother? The problem with tools is that the more powerful they are, the more harm we can do with them. When you have a hammer and a nail, at most, you can smash a corner, it's annoying, but it doesn't last. As soon as you start using more powerful tools for DIY, you take much more risk.
Digital is much more powerful; you can do much more harm. And we must recognize that when a technology or a tool allows us to do something foolish, generally, we do it. Digital can allow us to monitor and control everything. We have the means to do it; there are sensors, there is data, there is everything we want. That's not what we're looking for in intention. But the risk exists. And if we are not careful, we can very well go in that direction. So, it's already harmful in itself, but it's ineffective. Because that's exactly what we saw in the presentation earlier.
Certainty... When it's bad, when we are sure to do wrong and when we want to control everything, we have certainty in the end. So we need to see what this certainty costs us. So it's a double bad idea.
The poor quality of data, I won't go back to it. We have all faced it in all digital systems.
Automation of waste. That also makes me laugh. I was at a site again recently, and there was a very nice flow, everything was working well, the products were coming out. And then there was a stockpile. And the guy told me, that's my fault, it's because I'm not available, it's me who has to sign. And since I'm not available, it's useless. And his boss came by right away and told me, don't worry, soon we'll automate the signature.
What's the point? And it's so easy to go faster, to make mistakes faster, to automate waste by saying, 'yes, we save time, that's for sure, but what's the point?' And that's a huge risk. Verticalizing operations, well yes, we all know the syndrome of the hyper-centralized planning, I don't know about you, but at our place. The hyper-centralized planning that one guy spends full time updating every day because it's obsolete every day.
With digital, we can do it.
Centralized in service of the machine, that's what I was saying, we sometimes gave the keys to the truck to the system. Oh no, we can't do it. It's hardwired like that in the ERP.
And so? Well, so what? We do nothing. Don't you realize? A little, but...
Reducing autonomy, well yes, we can also perfectly reduce autonomy with digital. You can do everything with digital. But we have plenty of examples where, look, we have a centralized travel management system.
And besides, we have a somewhat serious travel policy, because it costs a lot in an international group.
Very quickly, all the people working with the system demonstrated to us with A plus B that the system prevented us from being smart. That is to say, we pre-wired a certain number of rules, thinking, 'this way, we will force people to follow them.' And that forces you to do things. For example, look, someone on my team who lives in Bordeaux and comes to Paris on Monday—the system suggests they go via Lyon.
Well yes, the meeting is at 2 PM, they arrive at 6 PM, and they spent their day on the plane. But it's cheaper. The system can also prevent people from being smart. And we can't do anything about it; that's just how it is, it's in the system. So we always manage to work around it, but that's not really where we should be spending our energy. Robotization of activities—we can also make people completely stupid with digital technologies. So all of this is not the intention of digital, but these are the risks. So what can we do with all this? Last topic, I did something a bit separate on artificial intelligence, because it's still a subject—it's also a buzzword, and then... It's still the first time in history where the systems we bring in are not there to assist human power, but to assist human intelligence. And the risk we have with artificial intelligence—I don't believe it's so much that the machine will be smarter than us, but that we will become increasingly stupid.
It seems, by the way, that this is more or less the case.
I've heard it said, but like studies, I haven't looked into it closely. In any case, for me, it's a real risk—abandoning one's capacity for reflection to the machine. I don't think that's a good idea overall. And I think now is the time to ask ourselves what we want to do with these systems. And let's be clear, I'm all for artificial intelligence. I think it can help us in many cases and that it's not at all the monster we're told about. But I really think, seriously, that if we don't ask ourselves where we want to place humans in all this, the answer won't come by itself.
So, I'm coming back to Lean. I told you about something fundamental in Lean, which is Kaizen. And behind this logic of Kaizen, there's something that is very misunderstood, at least something I took a long time to understand. It's that Kaizen is the ability we have to use all problem-solving tools to train people in problem-solving. And the essence of Kaizen is that it's training. It's exactly like sports or music. It seems completely natural to everyone to say that if you want to run a marathon, you'd better train for the marathon. You're not going to wake up on Sunday morning and say, 'Hey, there's a marathon, let's go!' At best, you'll run a few kilometers. At worst, you could even hurt yourself badly. No, you're going to train. Well, it seems so. Me, I don't run marathons. But I have friends who do. You train all the time. And when you go running every morning, you gain nothing.
You earn the right to go to the marathon. You earn the right to set a goal that could be 4 hours for one, 2 hours 30 for another, and just finishing for a third. That's up to you to decide. But that's all you gain. On the other hand, if you don't do it, you have no choice. If you want to play music a little seriously, you practice scales. And Kaizen is scales. That is to say, the received idea is that since people will solve problems every day, the problems won't recur, we will have found the root causes, and we will be rid of the problems. But wait, guys, there will be another one tomorrow. We will never be rid of problems. Simply, we will learn faster and faster. To solve them and to solve problems we know less and less about. And thus, to be increasingly innovative. But for that, we consider Kaizen as training. It's training for a very particular muscle, which is the brain muscle.
And for me, Kaizen is really about how to think about the place of humans. And by combining Lean and digital in their intentions, relying on Kaizen, we can truly use digital in the best of its intentions, because we will use Kaizen to think about the place of humans. A company with no one left is a company that no longer learns. The day a company is fully automated and continues to learn on its own, I think the societal question will arise as to what we want to become. But I don't think we're there yet today, and I am convinced that a company where we don't think about the place of humans—because saying there's no one left or saying there are people, lots of people, but who are at the service of a system that answers for them—is pretty much the same thing.
It's a company that no longer learns. No system is valid for more than a very short time.
You know, it's like watches. The only watches that are precisely on time twice a day are stopped watches.
All other watches are never quite on time, but in the meantime, they work. A system that is perfectly adjusted at a given moment will no longer be the next day, because we will come across something we didn't anticipate and that we need to learn to improve. And the only way to do that is to use people's heads for it. So Kaizen is really about how I use problem-solving all the time. I teach people to see gaps and work on gaps, gaps in the broad sense of the term, the gaps between what we want and what we have, at all levels, to give them training to be able to face uncertainty, because that's something you learn.
And to look at what's happening faster and faster, because thanks to digitalization, things are moving faster and faster.
I really think Lean can help us reconcile generations. And when I say reconcile generations, it's not just a joke. The digital divide isn't just outside the company; it's also inside the company. It's not always where you think, by the way, but the digital divide exists. All these top managers who explain that we need to go digital, and when you ask them, what they've seen, the latest thing on Twitter, they don't even know where the button is.
It exists.
I think Lean can teach us to change the managerial model.
Management is still useful, but it's not useful for the same things. And Lean brings managers to become more like coaches. I don't like the word much because it's extremely overused. Managers are there to help grow, to develop their teams, and to teach them to solve problems. And that's an important role. They are also there to give direction, where the company wants to go, where we think it will please the customer. And that's a managerial model that is no longer at all in this vertical, centralized logic, where the manager is the great knower. It's another way of talking about leadership versus management.
How to transform information into knowledge? Do you know the difference between information and knowledge? always useful, but it is not useful for the same thing. And Lean encourages managers to become more like coaches—I don’t like the word much because it’s extremely overused—but managers are there to help grow, to develop their teams, and to teach them how to solve problems. And it’s an important role. They are also there to provide direction, where the company wants to go, where we think it will please customers. And that is a managerial model that is no longer at all in this vertical, centralized logic, where the manager is the great know-it-all. It’s another way of talking about leadership versus management.
How to transform information into knowledge? Do you know the difference between information and knowledge?
Training is in a computer, and knowledge is in a brain. That is to say, every time we talk about knowledge management, we are mistaken. Knowledge management in general, when we talk about databases, etc., is information management. We only have knowledge when it is in a brain, that is, when we apply the information. Moving from ballistic to organic. The ballistic era, which still exists in part because models overlap and never completely replace each other, was when we had development projects where we knew what we were going to do, it was extremely complicated, it lasted a long time, and the main thing was to... Master the trajectory to get there, so roadmap, plan, etc. Now we are in an organic model because everything changes so quickly that if we are not able to reorient ourselves very quickly on our roadmap, we are ballistically on a completely wrong trajectory. And that is something we need to learn to change. And we won’t achieve this with plans, reports, and hastily put-together processes.
How do we keep systems at the service of humans and not humans at the service of the machine? How can we acknowledge and use emotional intelligence? There, I said it—it’s not artificial intelligence, it’s emotional intelligence. We all know that empathy is an extremely and uniquely... human characteristic. What makes the difference between artificial intelligence and intelligence, among other things, is empathy. Since you know that the artificial intelligence that Microsoft put on social media became, I don’t remember, in just a few days, racist, fascist—it learned everything there was to learn. The difference between humans and artificial intelligence is that one knows how to unlearn, the other does not at all—it learns everything. The best and the worst. So if we want to keep a learning organization, I think Lean is really the way to achieve it, really the way to best use the power that digital offers us by working on these risks and avoiding them.
There, I’m done, and I’ll give you time for questions if you’d like.
Long before.
Actually, Lean dates back to the post-war period.
And there are some funny things—there are little videos on the web that are amusing, showing that it was Toyota first that invented this. It wasn’t called Lean, and they still don’t call it Lean.
It works very well for them and has for 60 years. And what I think is its essence is that it’s a learning approach. And since it’s a learning approach, it’s always in fashion because it’s always integrating what’s new. Why are we talking about it more today? Is it better or not? I don’t know already, sometimes, because as the saying goes, it’s those who talk about it the most. Those who talk about it the most are the ones who do it the least.
Today, the acceleration of things and the competitive pressure, which is increasingly greater and more globalized, mean that companies are increasingly on edge. So they are looking everywhere. So, we’re bringing back Lean.
Except that we’re bringing it back with the same mistakes as before, which is why a friend of mine told me, ‘I burned out, and it’s because of Lean.’ It’s because this human aspect has been completely forgotten. To do this, Lean has one thing: it sets up a problem-revealing system. And the problem-revealing system is working in flow, in the broad sense. In engineering or production, it’s working in flow because when you put things in flow, Bam, as soon as there’s a problem, it comes out, and you have to deal with it. But people only remembered the flow. And they completely forgot, for the most part, the Kaizen, which is how I teach people to work on this. So when someone tells you, ‘We can do Lean once we’ve stabilized our situation,’ you can be sure they haven’t understood anything.
So why is it coming back more today? I don’t know if it’s coming back more—I’ve been doing it for 12 years.
Because we’re searching, because we’re searching, because the human side—we’ve worked a lot on it, we’ve talked about it a lot, and it interests quite a few people. And people think, hey, maybe there’s something different here. There are plenty of reasons.
Isn’t it the agile methods that have arrived, which are based on you?
Agile methods and Lean were born from the same source and have followed parallel paths. Today, as far as I’m concerned, I’m doing everything I can to bring them together.
Because the agility in agile methods and in Lean is... It’s not even a question—it goes in the same direction. Afterward, in terms of tools and practices, it’s probably because software is taking up more and more space today and these methods are gaining more visibility, which is bringing Lean back into the spotlight—it’s possible. And vice versa, it’s possible.
I don’t have a more precise diagnosis on that.
Any other questions?
And don’t pull that one on me.
I hurried to do 20 minutes so I could leave you 10 minutes for questions.
Actually, Lean is like life. Life is full of paradoxes. You like chocolate, but you should lose weight.
I say ‘you’ in the general sense—I wouldn’t presume to say that to you personally.
Life is made of that. So in business, it’s always the paradox and the balance point—that’s what makes it work. When it works, your boss takes an interest, and when they take an interest, it’s the end of the fun.
But if they don’t take an interest, it’s doomed too. So when you deal with this, you spend your time walking a tightrope, and it’s really fragile. The word ‘lean’ was proposed by well-meaning American authors instead of the word ‘fragile.’ Initially, they had thought of saying ‘the fragile company,’ but then they said it wasn’t very marketable. Even ‘lean’ isn’t very marketable, but ‘fragile’ is even less so. But the truth is there. By essence, Lean is fragile because, in fact, do you know the PDCA? The very famous PDCA—you all know it. You know that representation we like to see on the web.
You have the famous PDCA wheel.
And generally, it’s represented like that. And then they put a wedge. And they call that standards. And that’s completely absurd. It’s completely false. The standard is not that. The standard is here. The standard is the horizon point. that we are going to reach, and when we reach it, we will push it further. It’s not the wedge because when you ride a bike, if you stay stable, it’s not because you’re on a pebble—it’s because you’re pedaling. Because if you stop on a pebble and stop pedaling, you’re going to fall.
And that’s what’s complicated about Lean—the system only works because we never stop pedaling. Continuous improvement is not a consequence of Lean; it is its heart and essence. It’s not at all easy to really implement. It’s not easy. That being said, I work at the Thales group, but I... Thanks to the ILF, I get out quite a bit. And I find that I see more and more interesting things, especially in SMEs. Much, much, much more than 10 years ago. There's no comparison. It's not a done deal, but...
A trend that has lasted for 60 years, I say...
Yes?
With big pumps in the... No, sorry, it's a joke.
At Thales, it's a playing field that is wonderful.
So, we started Lean in the production part by saying it's mandatory. Well, I never really said that because I hate it and it has never helped anyone move forward.
In engineering, we also do a lot of Lean, but we have never said it was mandatory. So as a result, the approach is not the same. But basically, the idea is that... I find a manager who is high enough up that when he speaks, I no longer need to say anything, because he is listened to and... And low enough, not too perched, to be able to take effective action with field teams and go work with them. And two or three of them are enough for me.
The day I found those people, something happens. So, I am... I never talk about deployment, because... Well, yes, I talk about it to my bosses because they like me to, but in fact, we don't do deployment, we do contagion. In English, it sounds nicer than in French, because 'contagion' sounds a bit like a plague victim. But the principle is that. It's about finding... and working very seriously in depth with people who have enough legitimacy to be heard by their peers and enough connection with real life so that they act and don't just talk about it. I hate sponsors, the thing I hate, the sponsor. You know, the sponsor is the one who gives you the crew, the boat, and tells you 'Find me America.'
Then he stays in his little sponsor office.
Pardon? Pollination, very good idea. How do you say it in English?
No, but because... No, no, but I'll look it up, it's much better. Pollination is much better.
It will come back to me. When I do press in English, I'm great in French, but then I admit that switching between the two,
Speed over. There we go.
How do you do it? What are the characteristics that will help you identify this or that manager?
Well, that's very interesting. It's that I also stopped thinking there was a typical manager. Well, that's at least one thing I've learned. That is, I go see, I talk, and I look at what interests them.
And already, obviously, I don't know if you know Carole Dweck who wrote books on mindset. She talks about open mindset and growth mindset and closed mindset. Basically, there are people who consider that knowledge is a whole, that they acquired it one day and that's it. And there are people who consider that it's normal to keep learning all the time. It's better to start with that. But the good news is that you can change others. You have to start by understanding what their problem is. Once you start to understand what their problem is, you have to talk to them.
You don't change your speech in substance, but you look for where to shine the light where it interests them. And there are no identical people. That's why I insist on empathy, because you have to put yourself in each person's place, put yourself in each person's shoes. I can't give you a checklist saying, tick, tick, tick, that one will be good, and that one won't be good. Because, well, I gave up on that a long time ago. And then, I've had great surprises. With people who were told, 'That one will never change.' That's not true.
And others, on the contrary, it's great.
So, you have to go for it. You have to spend a lot, a lot, a lot of time in the field.
Any other questions? Yes.
My goal, shared with my bosses, is that I would like the Thales group to learn to become lean to be more competitive.
Why? Why is there a need to be more competitive? We can talk about it later, I can explain. Well, there's no doubt, my bosses have plenty of ideas. Like everyone, of course.
No, but wait, today, business remains business everywhere, very tough, it changes everywhere. We have competitors in areas where we didn't expect them at all. Every time we think we're the best, anyway, we're sure to get slapped. So competitiveness is not a question, it's not an option.
In all these notions, whether it's the line or general methods of action, or both, isn't there something I see with... Don't we need today to introduce a new notion in relation to this forward race, this competitiveness, the fact that it's not done?
But in fact, it has never been outside of it. Agile methods are the same. At my place, there are...
Artificial intelligence is something radically new in history. Business has always been like that. It's just going faster. It's going faster. But the fact of being able to survive, of needing a competitive advantage,
That's not fashionable.
It has always been true. But I insist on this because at our place, there are places where we have launched agile full throttle. And then after three years, the managers come and tell me, 'Well, I think the teams seem a bit happier, but me...' " I don't see what it brings me. So, I think it's an absolute mistake to do short-term shopkeeping and say, 'Ah, you do visual management, how much will it bring in?' Which is completely absurd. Everything we do is to improve performance. You still need to know which one. But if we don't make the link with performance, and I... I explained this not long ago to some human resources people who launch very generous actions, but whose impact we are not able to measure at all. That doesn't work, that. The ability to state which performance we want to improve. And once again, I'm not saying, tell your agile team how much money it will bring in at the end. Agile doesn't make money. Agile brings other things. It's that we are more predictable, we are on time, we have more... Okay, and that should help us be more competitive. After that, as for saying it will bring in dollars or euros, that's an illusion it's time to stop letting our managers believe. But on the other hand, what operational performance do we want to improve? It is absolutely fundamental to know this. We are in companies; companies are there to make money.
Yes?
So we have an organization by concentric circles, meaning I have a small team, as we mainly work on the product lifecycle, strong in engineering and strong in industry. So I have 4-5 specialists who work together on these topics. Then I have Lean coaches by country and then by site or by project. That is to say, we don't go—I repeat it regarding your question about my mission—my goal is not to do Lean, my goal is for Thales to learn and become Lean. So we only go into the field if we have relays who are learning and who are able to learn and develop the teams. So we work in concentric circles like that.
With clients? Yes. Oh no. It's really internal. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. No, no, that day, I will change jobs.
No, no, no, no, it's purely internal. Recently, this morning, I have a client who would like me to do Lean at their place. It's a bit embarrassing. To be honest, I'm not very comfortable.
I report to two bosses. I have a real dual reporting line, it's not matrixed, it's vertical, the one for industry and the one for engineering.
The Group VP of Industry and the Group VP of Engineering, who is in the operations organization in the broad sense of the term.
No, but the question is often asked of me. And then, they tell me, you see, your bosses don't do Lean. Top management of a group like Thales has an infinite number of concerns and problems. So when they manage to devote one minute, two lines to the same problem, it's a lucky day. So my top managers don't prevent me from doing it.
They haven't prevented me from doing it for a long time, and now, for them, it's not even a question anymore.
As for saying they are on the ground, doing Kaizen, they are far from doing it all. They are far from doing it all. But that's why I was telling you, in the entire hierarchy, I target one level... Operational because above them they have so many other concerns after my boss who is a very good man, he never talks to me but when he goes out he says he has read my books so
Even if it's not true, it shows a sign of interest that he displays externally. I would refuse for this to be put on YouTube. I think things are clear. I value my position.
You talked about coaching, but it was a bit overused. For you, what is coaching?
So, for me, because I also trained in coaching, because I found it interesting for various reasons, and for the posture, but a coach, in the sense of coaching and the French Federation of Coaching, is someone who has no input on the content. You know the joke, how many coaches does it take to change a light bulb?
It doesn't matter as long as the light bulb wants to change. That is to say, the coach is not supposed to give their opinion on the content, which is not the case for a Lean coach. But they are not there to do it in place of the team either. So, for me, I often compare a sports coach. That is to say, a sports coach knows the sport. And when I say that the Lean coach knows the sport, it's not just Lean they know, it's the profession. Because a Lean coach in engineering who doesn't understand what the team is talking about and who isn't able to make a cause-and-effect relationship on decibels, That's a clown. That's a clown. So, Lean coaches are sports coaches in the sense that they know the sport, the product, and they know the right tools that will be the right exercises at a given moment to teach the team to see and solve its problems. But they won't give the solutions either. So when a Lean coach says, maybe you could try such... It doesn't mean that the tool will be the solution to your problem. It means, I think that given my experience, this tool now will allow you to visualize things so you can handle them correctly. Well, it's not easy. It's not easy.
It requires a bit of... That's why a Lean coach fresh out of school,
It's a bit tough.
Anything else?
Listen, thank you very much.