Finding New Directions, When It Feels Like You’re On the Wrong Path

Have you ever felt like standing up and shouting "We're doing it wrong!"? I felt like that early in my career as a manufacturing engineer, reworking and repairing the same parts every day. We were doing it wrong, but lean manufacturing gave us a different path--acting instead of reacting. I went to my colleague, and we agreed to split the work. He would make sure that parts got fixed and that our shop continued to deliver to our customer, but I would focus on root cause corrective action work. Working that way, we might stand a chance of getting ahead. We never got to perfection, but we made steady improvements and the problems that we saw were, gradually, less repetitive. We were on a different path, and it felt good, strong, empowered, for a change.

Another example of "doing it wrong" was around new product development. In the aerospace industry where I work, cycle times continue to get longer, costs rise, and customers' patience is tried. This isn't a new problem--former Lockheed CEO, Norm Augustine wrote about it in his 1984 book, Augustine's Laws, when he predicted that the entire US military budget would purchase just one airplane by 2054. (We're still on track with his prediction.) Product development is hard, but we make it harder by walking in deeply worn ruts of past practice. Design, build, test, design again, build again, test again. 

In 2015, I was introduced to a different approach to product development when I attended my first Lean Product & Process Development Exchange in Austin, Texas. My LPPDE journey has felt like turning on the lights in a dark room.  

With lean product and process development:

• • We emphasize developing knowledge first, before finalizing design decisions.
  • We capture agnostic, reusable knowledge, rather than constantly reinventing the wheel with every project.
  • We explore solution sets and trade them against each other, rather than picking one solution and struggling to make it work.
  • We create a cadence and flow to accelerate the pace of development, rather than trudging along, always behind.
  • We use visual management to align our teams and create clarity on the work to be done.
  • We develop teams of responsible experts, with the depth and breadth of skills and knowledge to get the job done.
  • We lead with entrepreneurial system designers—chief engineers who know the customer, the technology, and the business from many perspectives and work to solve for the whole system, rather than settling for a local optimum.

Since my first LPPDE conference in 2015, I’ve read a stack of books and articles on the topic, and attended the North American exchange four times. A casual conversation at the networking night in 2023 led to leading a workshop with Carolyn Carter in 2024, and that led to joining the board of the organization. And of course, I’ve worked to introduce these approaches to my daily work all along. This year, I’m helping to organize the Lean Product & Process Development Exchange 2025, October 27-30, in Milwaukee, WI.

It’s not enough to gnash your teeth about how “we're doing it wrong,”  There are solutions. The LPPDE Community was formed to practice, teach, share, and advance them. Gathering each year, we go beyond “doing it wrong” and get straight to improving the work of new product development. Come join us!

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