A Lean Approach to Collaboration

Robert Sheridan is the CEO of Menlo, a software business in Michigan. If you ask him what he fears most from his employees, he would probably say complacency. Sheridan’s solution is a Lean approach to collaboration: constantly shuffling teams and seating arrangements to ensure that everyone in the company works with a variety of colleagues.

“We borrowed the idea of switching from the airline industry,” said Sheridan, in an interview with Inc Magazine. “The National Transportation Safety Bureau realized many years ago that if a pilot and copilot work together a lot it breeds a complacency that produces danger. Their minds no longer inject questioning.” By shuffling partners, coworkers constantly have to answer the question, “Why are we doing this?” and in doing so, find more efficient patterns of work.

This approach affects how we consider on-the-job training. Traditionally, when managers approached training, it was often through the help of an outside resource. Clearly there may be in-house resources that can be tapped that will comparatively be much cheaper and easier to organize. By breaking down silos and encouraging cross-training, the total knowledge of your workforce increases.

Moreover, people learn by training. True mastery of a subject is not only expertise; it is also in the ability to teach others. In doing so, personal knowledge must be truly refined in order to pass it on to one’s pupils. Through this refinement and teaching, many previously hidden dynamics of processes can be revealed. This includes eliminating waste, improving flow, or any number of Kaizen opportunities.

Consider shuffling the teams in your facility. By investing in a structure that allows your personnel to learn from each other, you will find new ways to save company resources.