Applying the toyota improvement kata

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A lot of my time is just sharing the best advice I’ve been given which could be useful to others. This time it was a process Andy Sweetman introduced me too, Toyota’s “improvement kata”. More specifically, this charter

If you have any area where you think your organisation can get better then often you will setup a “guild” or “focus group” of interested people to try and improve this. Those groups are an area where this has been really useful. This is due to it often being easy to sit and talk about a subject without nailing down the direction or next steps required to progress anything meaningful.

Have you ever come out of meeting thinking that was insightful but nothing useful is occurring as a result? That’s where this process can help

Basically, start with a blank slate then think about the following:
The problem
Define what the problem is at the current point. What are you trying to get away from? Sometimes people have different views on what the problem you are trying to solve is, and therefore clarity on this can aid us later when deciding upon suitable steps to get there

The definition of awesome
Getting to the point of knowing what the very end goal is can also be useful. Clarity and consensus here ensures that when you are taking any steps they are not taking you further away from your desired end state

The next target condition
What is the next ‘stage’ you want to get to? Can you all agree on what the next milestone you wish to reach is?

The first/next steps
This is the important aspect often overlooked by standard meeting formats. What are the next three tasks that will occur to get you closer to that next target condition. The structure and content of these should be much like retro actions and the skill of choosing appropriate ones can be improved upon with experience.

Hopefully if you can populate this, and revisit it each time you meet to discuss the focus of your summit then I’m sure you’ll get the same positive action we did.

Hope this helps