\u201cPlease Don\u2019t Use Japanese Terms<\/a>\u201d (the title of which presents the opposite opinion to what he thinks) where he offers a position on a perennial problem that lean practitioners encounter, ‘to use or not to use’ the original language of ‘lean’. \u00a0This is because organisational sponsors sometimes feel they using them will alienate, or even annoy, their staff. I am completely with Philip on this – I am ‘pro’ using the terms because the Japanese language has a beautiful way of helping the learner to understand the essence of what the concept or tool is trying to instill once you understand the constituent parts of the words and phrases, their syllabary combines together to provide you with clear clues about what the phrase is trying to suggest.<\/p>\nThere\u2019s something quite special about how one tiny little word with two little syllables \u2018kaizen\u2019, a word that if you whisper it to yourself, sounds so modest and meek, but yet when you unpack what these syllables represent, you can start to see the huge phenomenal force that the concept potentially holds. \u00a0Exploring mysterious, small words in this way, with learners, and expanding their significance, helps you as a teacher to explore and expand the word\u2019s potential. Taking the time and trouble to have to explain the word\u2019s meaning helps you to communicate the complexity of what the word is representing and yes, also helps to give a suggestion about how hard achieving \u2018good change\u2019 actually is.<\/p>\n
It’s not just Japanese which offers up words that have a powerful punch when you start to unpack them. I love the Welsh word \u2018Dysgu\u2019 which means not only to teach, but also to learn.\u00a0 This blew my mind when I first discovered it because joining both sides of the knowledge sharing equation, to teach and to learn, together, is genius!\u00a0 To hold them simultaneously in the same small space is tremendously powerful and absolutely accurate.<\/p>\n
Most of my \u2018lightbulb\u2019 revelations have occurred to me when I\u2019m preparing for teaching or when I\u2019m in the process of teaching itself.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s that act of unpacking and sharing … slowing things \u2018down\u2019 to help to catch the people you\u2019re talking to \u2018up\u2019, which then offers you an opportunity to really explore what is happening and to make connections in your mind that you didn\u2019t know were lurking there, waiting to be discovered.<\/p>\n
So I hate it when people see teaching as a chore, or merely just a device to share what you know about the subject with people who don\u2019t know as much as you – a \u2018one way\u2019 transaction. It\u2019s so much more than that, it\u2019s always an opportunity to deepen your own knowledge as you discuss the topic with people who have different experiences and perspectives and as you slow down and seek to explain, so magical connections are unlocked in your mind.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why, when I\u2019m teaching a Continuous Improvement programme, as I am doing now with Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, I am so keen to encourage everyone to have a go at teaching lean themselves with their teams.\u00a0 We ask all participants to undertake an improvement project which encourages them to try out the improvement tools and concepts that we learn in the sessions for real, helping them to examine their work and the work of their teams with a view to improving it.\u00a0 When they do this work, it\u2019s so important that they take some time to teach the participants before<\/em> they take them through an exercise.\u00a0 Doing this not only helps the participants to feel more comfortable with what they are about to engage with, but as a teacher, they\u2019ll also personally<\/em> experience amazing learning themselves. It will help them to have a better understanding of the concept or tool, building their own confidence in their improvement craft, cementing the knowledge as part of their own personal \u2018core operations management\u2019 playbook that gets to live ‘rent free’ in your head FOREVER! (This is a good thing, I promise)<\/p>\nThe challenge is whether people are open to trying out teaching, or indeed, whether they are open to learning as<\/strong><\/em> they teach.\u00a0 Does the automatic authority that is assumed by a teacher with their learner encourage the kind of questioning and openness that holding those two concepts ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ in the same space, demands?<\/p>\nWell it absolutely should, and I hope that you consider the importance of teaching within your own learning. When was the last time you taught someone something? Was it recently, great! Did it teach you anything? Can you not remember? Well maybe it’s time you shared some of your knowledge, and after you do then I’d ask you to reflect, did it teach me anything new?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
p.s. You can hear me talking about how important continual learning is in a recent Academi Wales podcast on leadership<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are lots of times when I\u2019m teaching lean and I share a Japanese word, such as \u2018Andon\u2019 or \u2018Kaizen\u2019 or \u2018Hoshin Kanri\u2019, where I say what the word means […]","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":1077,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,3,6],"tags":[73,72,16],"custom_author":[44],"class_list":["post-1076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lean","category-organisational-culture","category-service-improvement","tag-communication","tag-language","tag-lean","custom_author-sarah-lethbridge"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/554\/2024\/10\/Double-meanings.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1076"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1085,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions\/1085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1076"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=1076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}