Taking Kanban To The Bank

 

Taking Kanban To the Bank 

by Jeffrey M. Bowen

 

For several years our son Seth was a technical writer for a large bank in the Midwest.   He became adept at translating a regular flow regulatory gobbledygook into clear written instructions.  His biggest surprise came when the bank experienced a tsunami of 14,000 federally mandated regulations with a deadline for full processing and compliance within six months.  

 

The bank’s officials realized they would need to think out of the box to meet this bureaucratic demand. Thus they turned to a project management system invented in the 1950s to expedite Japanese car manufacturing.  Kanban is named for a series of cards or signboards which help teams communicate the status of each phase in a process where cost control requires a continuously adjusted balance between inventory and production.  In other words, a project is broken into flexible, customized chunks and all of them moved forward simultaneously without backlogs and delay.  Sometimes this is called agile or just-in-time manufacturing.   Using kanban to process voluminous regulations was an unusual and innovative solution.     

 

This is where our son entered the picture.   A calm communicator and always able to teach and simply explain technical matters, Seth was given a lead role for a team of 15 employees from different bank divisions.  Expected to isolate themselves in a meeting room, surrounded by progress cards and lined with signboards, the group was charged with rapidly churning out 14,000 pieces of procedural guidance in short order.   As the first team progressed, two more teams were launched.   

 

 Project management like this is a world away from my professional experience in public education.  The closest comparison might be a music director or a cafeteria manager.  Perhaps this is why I would fail as a chef who needs to have a multi-course dinner arrive on time.   The salad and dessert may involve only a step or two, but preparation of the main course may entail many more steps.  The ingredients for everything must be purchased, coordinated, be available when needed, and prepared simultaneously. 

 

 Motivation, training, and practice make a big difference.  Not long after diving into the kanban project, Seth became an enthusiastic advocate, often explaining what was going on in his conference room to visiting executives.   Also, he started to use an interesting new vocabulary.     

 

 One day he called to tell us he was planning to take a certification course to become a scrum master.  A what?  I almost told him he was too old to be taking up rugby where the game begins with a scum of two teams who lock arms in a circle and push each other around like sumo wrestlers until the ball gets kicked free.    

 

In agile project management, apparently a scrum is far afield from rugby.  It is a management framework introduced by the Japanese.  The central idea is for teams to be pursue separate, yet completable tasks, each focused on a “sprint” or relatively short period of time to complete and ship out the partial result.   A reassessment of progress, including any backlogs or lack of focus, occurs after each sprint, and changes may be made to improve effectiveness and efficiency.

 

 The scrum master’s role is to serve as a liaison between the product owner and the scrum sprinting team.  Speed is a priority for scrumming.   If something does not work, make it “fail fast” and move on to what works.  Internet literature on this topic describes Netflix as a prime example.   With the user’s experience as a priority, new listings are issued regularly, and video can be shipped or accessed fast.  What is not working can be excised quickly.   Whether it is kanban, or the more structured approach of scrum, all of these methods focus on responding to change instead of following a lockstep plan.  They lend themselves to the use of computer software.  All of them take a Japanese cue known as “kaizen”, in other words a process of continuous emphasis on efficiency, quality and improvement.  

 

 Our son’s kanban team reached their goal two months ahead of deadline.  The bank proved it was able to adjust quickly to new mandates, rely on teamwork, and ensure a continuous flow of productivity.  Agile systems like kanban and scrum  have surely become the cutting edge of our economic future.     

 

2/27/20

 

A Student Exchange Program Produces Memorable Experiences

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

 

We experienced pangs of anxiety as our son Seth boarded a plane for Tokyo, Japan in the late summer of 1991.  He would be gone for his entire junior year in high school.

 

A few months before he had attended an after-school meeting sponsored by the local Rotary, and had come home with the startling idea of going to Japan.  We had no idea he wanted this much adventure.  

 

 Rotary sponsors interviewed Seth to be sure he was mature enough to understand the rules and his responsibilities.  Then we as parents were asked to an interview.   They wanted assurance we knew what we were getting into, and they asked if we would support our son throughout the year.   We gulped and said yes of course.  

 

So began a remarkable experience for all of us.  We were told our son would stay with five different Rotary families over the year.  He would attend a Tokyo suburban high school.   Classes would be taught mostly in Japanese.

 

 His very first task would be to greet his classmates in Japanese at a school assembly.  What?  We rushed to find a tutor.  She tried, but at length he mastered only one simple sentence.    

 

After landing, Seth was greeted by a delegation of Rotarians who worried about whether he would eat Japanese cuisine and not lose weight.  Fortunately, he adjusted quickly to fish and seaweed dishes and even mastered an assembly greeting in the native language.   

 

The high school he attended championed most American sports, including our traditional football.  His tall height made our son a popular recruit for basketball.   The physical education curriculum required students to learn therapeutic massage.  I thought this was a wonderful idea!

 

  A photo he sent of the cafeteria’s perfectly packed and precisely measured steamed lunches in little cardboard boxes looked delicious   Once weekly, every uniformed student had to practice a tea ceremony after climbing into a small teahouse in the school front yard.  Our gangly son found this was a physical challenge.   

 

 

 Seth’s language learning gradually grew thanks to an unusual resource -- television.  After three months, he reported beginning to dream in Japanese.   Actually, he was mastering Japanese tv ads.  When he spoke with classmates using these promotional slogans, girls especially found it riotously funny. 

 

The year flew by even though we were never quite sure when Seth would call.  He shocked us by phoning from downtown Tokyo on New Year’s Eve.  With exchange student friends, he had transferred to several different trains on the way, but assured us it was absolutely safe.  Often he shared Rotary sponsored adventures, which included Disneyland and a climb up Mt. Fuji.

 

Seth’s last host family took him to northern Japan where they purchased a snowboard for him.  In return he gifted his family and their children all his clothes.  He returned to the states with nothing more than that board and the clothes on his back.  He had grown five inches taller, but immeasurably more in maturity and confidence. As a bonus, he even got credit for his entire junior year.

 

I cannot say enough positive things about carefully organized and monitored student exchange programs like those of the Rotary Youth Exchange.  Theirs has been around since 1927, with the year-long program established in 1958.  Rotary clubs annually sponsor about 9,000 students, aged15-19, for exchanges with 80 different countries.   

 

Commitments usually involve not just sending your child to another country, but a child from abroad returning to stay with your family.  Our inbound visitor for three months   was a bubbly young Japanese girl who loved our son’s jokes and enthusiastically shared household cooking chores and country hikes.  

 

More details can be accessed at the Rotary International web site.   Every American student and their parents can gain an entirely new perspective from this kind of eye-opening, culturally enriching experience.    

 

2/27/20