Shared understanding of a common dash is the leader's first

task. Goal. Yeah, you want the common goal understood by

the leaders.

In order to do more, you have to throttle the funnel. If

you don't throttle the funnel, you will choke. Just

imagine drinking from a fire hose.

True or false, leaders only need to focus on doing the

right work. False. They also have to be involved in doing

the work right. So, I'm going to tell you this story.

Shawn, I don't think you've heard this. So, there was a

mouse once, and this mouse was stuck in a field of wheat.

The wheat was very tall and the mouse just could not find

its way out. It was running all over.

Finally, it saw an owl sitting on the tree. And it said to

the owl, hey, hey, can you show me the way out, because
you're sitting up there. Tell me which way to go.

And the owl said, oh, no. But I can give you some advice.

He says, why don't you grow some wings. Then you can fly

up, and then you can see where to go and you can go out.

The mouse said that's a good idea. But how do I grow

wings? And the owl said, I only do strategy.

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[ LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE ]

So, they have to do both. You have to look...you have to

be there. You have to tell them how. So, total cycle time

can be improved if you reduce the work in progress.

You must reduce the work in progress to the point that

you're not doing three, four things at the same time. And

that's called your WIP limit, your work in progress limit.

Every team must know their optimum WIP limit. Now, that

will change with time because you're getting more

efficient. So, today, maybe you can do four things in a

week, maybe ten things.

Then you optimize, now you're doing 12 things in a week.

Oh, but then, you know, Barbara has taken away two staff.

Oh, now you're WIP limit has come down a bit. That's okay.

But then you optimize some more.

So, there is a technique called lowering the water level.

This is a practice. It comes from LEAN, actually, but it's

a very clever technique.

So, as the teams are...imagine you've got a boat in a lake

in the mountain. And underneath the water is all these big

sort of spikes. You don't see it if you're in the boat,

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right?

But if you lower the water level, suddenly you see all the

rocks sticking out. So, sometimes, when you lower the

water level, the boat people will have to find better ways

to remove those obstacles.

So, as teams get more productive, they actually do more

work with less people. And not by working harder.

Absolutely not by working harder. You actually work better

because you have more fun, you have time and you're not

pressured.

So, true or false, the appropriate strategy should be

devised at all levels in the organization. It's true. So,

at the different levels, you have to look at your strategy

and process it.

Teams should be dash coupled and dash aligned. Loosely

coupled. You don't want them exactly everybody tightly

procedures on how to do this, how to do that, but you want

them all definitely aligned in the same direction. Not one

running this way and one running that way.

Dash cross-functional teams aligned to the dash value are

the best way to structure teams. So, what's the first one?

Self-directing, yeah, that's good. But there's another

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word as well. Small. You want small cross-function teams

aligned to customer value.

They must be focused on the customer value. What am I

doing? What's the value to IBM?

[END OF SEGMENT]

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