Respect for People = Respect for Reality

In Improve LESS, I define a problem very simply: any time actual results don’t match what you expected. The key is how you respond. When leaders blame people, they shut down learning. When they focus on the process and “go see” the work, they show respect and unlock improvement.

A few core ideas:

• Value is created at the frontline. The people closest to the work have the most contact with your product, your customers, and your systems. They see what’s really happening long before it shows up in a KPI.

• Reports are rear-view mirrors. Dashboards and decks are lagging indicators. By the time a metric turns red, your people have probably been living with the underlying issue for weeks.

• “Go see” is an act of respect. Leaving the conference room to observe the work (Gemba) is not micromanagement; it’s leadership. It says, “Your reality matters enough for me to come to you.”

Daily management, in the system I teach, is built exactly on this idea: teams review what they expected to happen vs. what actually happened, and leaders engage with them at the process, not from a distance.

Conference-Room decisions are not always right

When decisions are made mostly from reports:

• You see averages, not variation and workarounds.

• You hear summaries, not the small frustrations that erode safety, quality, and morale.

• You reinforce a blame culture (“who missed their number?”) instead of a learning culture (“what in the process made this result likely?”).

The result?People stop raising problems. They cope, patch, and work around. That’s the opposite of respect.

Respect for people means:

• You don’t assume you have the full story.

• You don’t ask people to “try harder” inside a broken system.

• You invest your time to understand and improve the system they’re working in.

Three Things You Can Do This Week  (All in Under an Hour)

You don’t need a full transformation to start behaving differently.

Here are three simple moves—each about 20 minutes—that will tangibly show respect for people and give you better information than any report.

1. The 20-Minute Gemba "Listening Walk"

Purpose: Show up with curiosity, not judgment.

Time: ~20 minutes.

How to do it:

1. Pick one area (a line, cell, or team) that’s important to your strategy or currently under pressure.

2. Tell the supervisor in advance: “I’m coming to listen and learn, not to inspect or blame.”

3. When you arrive, ask 3 questions to a few people doing the work:

   • “What’s making your job harder than it needs to be today?”

   • “Where do you feel you’re fighting the process instead of flowing with it?”

   • “If you could change one small thing this week, what would it be?”

4. Don’t fix in the moment. Just listen, clarify, and write down what you hear.

5. Close with: “Thank you. I’m going to review what I heard and come back to you by [day] so we can act on it together.”

Why this shows respect:

• You’re choosing their reality over your assumptions.

• You’re treating their pain points as legitimate data, not complaints.

• You’re reinforcing that problems are process issues to be surfaced, not personal failures.

2. The 20-Minute “Metric Reality Check”

Purpose: Connect one KPI directly to the work and the people behind it.

Time: ~20 minutes.

How to do it:

1. Pick one metric from your performance board—ideally one that’s red or barely green (safety, quality, delivery, cost, or morale).

2. Ask yourself: “Where, physically, does this number get created?”

   • Which process?

   • Which team or station?

3. Go to that spot and say something like:

   • “This chart shows we missed our response time target yesterday. I’d like to see how the work actually happens and understand what got in your way.”

4. Watch the process for a few cycles. Ask:

   • “Does this chart feel accurate to you?”

   • “What there anything different about yesterday?”

   • “What do these numbers not show that I should know?”

5. Before leaving, summarize what you heard:

   • “So, the real drivers are [X, Y, Z], and the report doesn’t fully capture [A]. That’s helpful—I’ll make sure we reflect that when we talk about this metric.”

Why this shows respect:

• You’re not weaponizing metrics; you’re using them as a starting point for shared understanding.

• You’re validating lived experience over “clean” data.

• You’re modeling that “red” is a signal to learn, not a reason to blame.

3. The 20-Minute “Remove One Pebble” Commitment

Purpose: Turn listening into visible action—fast.

Time: ~20 minutes to kick off; (maybe 2 hours to implement later).

How to do it:

1. In a huddle or team meeting, say:

   • “I want to remove one small, daily frustration from your work this week—something that wastes time, creates rework, or just annoys you.”

2. Ask each person to quietly jot down a “pebble in their shoe”:

   • A form that always prints wrong

   • A tool that’s never where it should be

   • A screen that times out too fast

   • A step that forces double-entry

3. Collect the ideas, group the quick wins, and pick one you can fix within 48 hours.

4. Tell the team:

   • “How about we fix this one first. Once it’s done, we’ll pick another.”

   • "When should we start?"

5. Follow through—and when you do, explicitly connect it back:

   • “You told me this was slowing you down. We changed it because your time and frustration matter.”

Why this shows respect:

• You’re proving that speaking up leads to change, not eye rolls.

• You’re using your authority to improve the system, not just demand more effort.

• You’re building the muscle of small, fast improvements instead of giant, slow “initiatives.”

Respect for people is not soft. It’s operational.

When you:

• Leave the conference room and go see the work,

• Treat metrics as clues, not verdicts,

• And use your position to remove barriers instead of add pressure,

you get:

• Better information than any report can provide,

• More engaged problem-solvers at the frontline,

• And a culture where issues surface early—while they’re still small.

You don’t have to overhaul your whole system to start. You just have to change how you show up this week.

Do one listening walk.

Do one metric reality check.

Remove one pebble.

That’s how you improve LESS … and get better results.