Continuous Flow Consulting: Cut Batch Sizes

This is the fourth post in a series about moving towards a continuous flow model for providing outside assistance to companies that want to become leaner.

What is the "batch size" of a consulting engagement?

I've done 1:1 coaching and I've done large training events. I've even done some events that were so large they had multiple locations connected with video.

Here, as in most places, conventional wisdom says that it's better for both the consultant and the client for these events to be as large as possible: less work to reach the same number of people, everyone hears the same message at the same time, the organization as a whole gets to "kick off" their lean journey at once.

Like most conventional wisdom about batch sizes, these assumptions are wrong.

Large scale events are good at transferring explicit information efficiently. However, as I said in my last post, that's the easy stuff. The hard stuff comes in the day to day slog of making different choices. They are fantastic for rallying the troops, but the inspiration is hard to sustain in the face of the realities on the battlefield.

For that, one needs people on the front lines - leading, managing and mentoring as needed to help people make the right decisions in the moment, ideally cutting batch sizes for knowledge transfer down to one.

What is the role for a consultant in this?

First, I must make it easy for people to get explicit information just-in-time. The Lean Development Resource Center is my start in this direction: every one of my clients receives premium access to the site. Eventually, this will give them access to all the knowledge that I externalize (by writing down my tacit knowledge, making it explicit). They can get it 24-7, on their own, as they need it.

Second, I need to work more collaboratively with the client to bring them into the knowledge transfer process. In the best lean organizations that I've seen, managers lead the trainings rather than professional trainers. My strength is in the content and in the instructional design that helps ensure that the workshop can deliver on the learning objectives, and I can leverage that more effectively by training the managers and then letting them train their people.

The "see one, do one, teach one" model from medical school works well in this context, and helps a large company grow its skills exponentially. A3 Thinking, after all, is not brain surgery.

Although I have more experience with lean, they have more experience with their people When I let go of control and allow them to leverage that into small group experiences, the value of the team interaction and demonstrated leadership makes up for the rough delivery.

Finally, I need to focus my scarce resources to actively teach, support, model and reinforce the kinds of mentoring skills that facilitate that one to one knowledge transfer.