My Personal Andon Cord
Have you heard of an Andon Cord? On the assembly line it’s that cord you yank on to stop the entire line when a problem is found. The idea is to stop everything until the problem you encountered is fully understood and fixed. That way we take the time to improve the function of the assembly line so that those sorts of problems never slow us down again. It’s a little example of that “slowing down to go faster” that those crusty old software curmudgeons blather on about.
But who listens to those old cranks anyway?
I was thinking about a recent Product Owner training I was running where I was told that the product owners didn’t actually sit anywhere near the team (that was assuming they had a product owner to begin with, but I digress). It turns out that the product owner for a given team was very likely located in another building or even perhaps another state or country altogether! This kind of colocation issue is fundamental to improving a teams performance. Address it and you will see meaningful improvement quite quickly. Fail to address it and you will be wrestling with the side effects and consequences forever without dealing with the underlying problem.
So what did I do? Well, this was just the start of a two day training, so I had at least a day and a half more of training that I was expected to deliver. So I tossed that issue on the mountain of other issues that I was uncovering and moved on. Trainers gotta train, kids gotta eat. I raised concerns, told the right people, and moved on. Everyone kept moving.
Now in hindsight, I’m not sure if I should be proud of dismissing something that important. However, I know it happens all the time. But it makes me wonder, is there an issue sufficiently important that I would call the whole class to a stop in order to address it? What would cause me to stop the line as a trainer? Where is my trainer Andon cord?
If a fist fight broke out in class, I’d certainly stop the class. So there’s that. But what else? If someone was crying, I’d stop the class. If I found out someone was being hurt, I’d stop the class. But if I found out they were doing something stupid…I wouldn’t necessarily stop the class. I might pause long enough to mention that I wouldn’t recommend doing that. Maybe I’d hand them a Darwin Award (oh, now there’s an idea…). But stop the class? No.
Let’s look at that example of the product owners in a different location than the team. Colocation of product owners or customers is pretty fundamental. You would stop the line if you found out that the car’s tires are missing. If someone told you,”It’s OK, we keep them in another building.” You would probably be well justified in insisting that the tires get brought in pronto. There’s not much point in leaving silliness like that alone. So I’m asking myself, if the customer has paid me a few thousand dollars for the training, but instead of delivering the training, I stop the training to focus on that one problem…what would happen? Fixing that problem could probably mean a huge return on investment for them. Something far beyond the paltry amount they have spent on the training. It’s food for thought.
On the other hand, typically these types of organizations are not in a place where they are accepting or tolerant of radical change. Usually few if any folks in the room are actually empowered to do anything to change the situation. Furthermore, even the folks who hired me may not have that power. You have to have a lot of credibility in an organization before you can even start talking about that sort of change. Credibility takes time, and that’s something that most trainers don’t have. You’re in, you do the training, and you’re gone. Poof of smoke. Vanished.
So in the big picture it probably depends on your context. If you are just in for a quick one-time training, then you really don’t have the credibility to stop and attack problems like this. On the other hand, if this is part of a long term engagement, then there is the real possibility of being able to deal with problems like this in real time. To be able to pull your Andon cord and stop the line. What a marvelous thought.