Gemba is Japanese for "the real place." It is where the work is and often
where the problems are. In my engineering practice,
I need to see how a product or process is performed and speak with the
operators directly. I try to avoid the managers
since they often don’t know the real story. I try to practice this as a
Salesforce Administrator as well. In my current role, most of the sales force is
remote which makes it challenging. Conversely, I have looked at roles where I
might be remote, making the practice of Gemba difficult as well.
The issues I struggle with is how to do the “Gemba
Walk” remotely. There are several tools which make it easier as compared to
monitoring a process. The first is the ability login in as a user. Using this
access, I can at least see what the users are seeing.
One thing that has not worked has been
relying on emails and phone conversations alone. I use the language of
Salesforce and often the users don’t have the same lexicon as me, which leads to confusion on my part. It also results in me solving the wrong problem.
I am learning
that I need to have them walk me through the steps that they follow while I am
in my instance of Salesforce so that I can see what they are doing. I do this
as a System Administrator so that I can determine if it is an access issue or a
something else. If I can see it and they can’t it is usually a permissions
problem. If I can’t see it, then I need
to dig in a little more.
So while I can’t always be at Gemba, I can
get a sense of the real action going on…
