Joe has a book “Agile Kata” in the making, if you like to be the first to know when it launches, please visit www.agilekatabook.com.Transcript: Agile F M radio for the agile community. Thank you for joining me again for another podcast episode of Agile FM in the Agile Kata series. Today I have Oscar Roche with me, who is based out in Australia. That's where we're recording from. And he is with the training within industry TWI and the visual workplace. He was actually told by a person called Mike Esposito from the historic construction That he makes philosophy and principles consumable.And we got to talk about Kata. I hope I got that quote we're going to talk about Kata in this episode. We're going to talk a little bit about some scientific thinking. We'll talk about where Oscar is coming from. He is a well known figure in the Kata community. And but before we do that, I want to welcome you to the podcast.[00:00:56] Oscar Roche: Thank you. Thanks, Joe. Happy to be here. Even at this time of day, 7 a. m. [00:01:02] Joe Krebs: So the voice needs to be oiled a little bit in the morning hours to get into into the podcast feel. Thanks for joining. And obviously you're in the Kata series here a few things you're very obviously with that statement we just heard about you You make this consumable.You are, you're thinking about, how could you take these practices that are surrounding Kata and turning them into something that is useful for your clients, for the people you work with, obviously. But you're also a little concerned about Kata community and, there is an article you we were exchanging ideas about by I forgot his Stephen Spears and Bowen in the Harvard Business Review from 1999.And and that puts a little light spotlight on, on Kata indirectly through the, how Kata influences the world of Toyota, but people out there in the community see Kata and scientific thinking and the way of how. Toyota Works is very different, right? . [00:02:00] Oscar Roche: Yeah, they do. I don't think that connection has been, I don't think we, we as in our world has made that connection very strong.I think one of the problems we run into is that people say we don't make cars or we're not Toyota. We're not a big corporation and all we don't make cars. So I think that's one of the problems, but I guess. In terms of that Spear and Bowen article, it was, I read that probably in 2018 or 2019 And I was introduced to Kata in 2011, and it was only when I read that article, I thought, ah, this is what. This is what we're getting at. This is what we're trying to get at with Kata. And what that article said was the Spear and Bowen article, one of the things it said was that Toyota aims It said two things that made the penny drop with me.One was it says Toyota aims to develop a community of scientists, and I thought, ah, that's interesting. And the second thing it says was that Toyota views every standard as a hypothesis. In other words, even their production standards are hypothetical. If we do this, we expect that. But we need to run it and see what happens.So every, in essence, every production run is an experiment. And I thought, wow, that is a very interesting way of looking at the world. And that's what Mike Rother's getting at. That's where he wants us to be. He doesn't want us, he doesn't want us to be at Kata. Kata is, the Kata patterns are just a means of getting to this utopian world.Every standard is a hypothesis and we're a community of scientists. Yeah. And that was when the penny dropped. I thought, ah, it took seven years, or whatever that was, six years. [00:03:57] Joe Krebs: But I got there. Yeah, [00:03:59] Oscar Roche: what's interesting is actually, I think I got there. I think I got there. I'll find out. [00:04:05] Joe Krebs: Yeah, exactly. What's interesting is when you look at Toyota, I don't have any insights into hands on employee experience or anything, but if you look at Toyota, yeah, but if you look at the production facilities of Any kind of carmaker let's not even say Toyota, right?Any carmaker, let's see some like some construction belt and the products are moving by, but the company, what and how they think, especially about Toyota is very different. [00:04:34] Oscar Roche: Very different. And I think it, the other thing that attracted me to that thought in the Spear and Barron article was how liberating that is.Yeah. If you could adopt that philosophy of every time we run production, it's an experiment, then I think you started to, you start to move away from right versus wrong, blame versus not blame and all those sort of things that go with, we are going to run this and we are going to get it right because this is the way we do things.I think you start to move away. I think you would change. You would completely. With that philosophy, that thinking, I think there's a very good chance you completely change the the work environment, if you like, it becomes, we're going to try this and see what happens...
