In my teachings about Toyota Kata I have been using the example of Martin Luther King quite a few times in the past years. Today I want to share a first lesson with you that, I think, we can learn from Martin Luther King.
What I would do is to show people a picture of him and ask if my audience knows who this man is. Immediately I get two responses:
- Martin Luther King
- “I have a dream”
And the first lesson is right there! Do you see it?
Martin Luther King is not famous for his:
- “I see 7 wastes” speech. Nor for his
- “I have a year-plan” speech. Nor for his
- “I have a 20-item-to-do-list” speech.
No, he is famous for his “I have a dream” speech.
He was able to draw quite a crowd by articulating his dream! In doing so he gave thousands of people, having similar dreams, these beautiful words to help them express theirs.
There may be many people out there that have similar dreams as you have. Or, if we make it a little less uncomfortably big, people having similar aspirations as you do. If we do not express our dreams or our aspirations, it may be hard to draw the crowd that can help us to make it a reality. If you do not tell the story you will not get the input from others. That makes it hard to refine your story in such a way that more and more people want to put their shoulders under it and work alongside with you.
I think that the use of the Improvement Kata Storyboard, or an A3 if that is your means, helps us to capture the dreams, the aspirations and the concerns from the people involved. Using these tools helps us to tell the story, and create the story, in such a way that we get a common understanding of the direction we want to go. Not without reason the first step of the Improvement Kata!