Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System, said “the purpose of Kanban is to bring troubles to the surface.” We bring these troubles to the surface by visualizing the work and the process it moves through, constraining how much work we handle at a time to see what problems get in our way, and continuously improving that flow to get more and more things of better quality completed faster and faster. But, did you know that how you design your Kanban board can shape the information you are able to see and how you process that information?
Today I spent some time listening to an audio version of Peter Drucker’s “Managing in a Time of Great Change” while riding a few trains in England. During a section about teams, I heard something that struck a chord with me. I have heard the term “Individual Contributor” a great number of times – especially as a manager. But, I had never heard the term “Individual Performer” before today and so I’d never heard them compared. It is in this comparison of the two terms that I really found value.