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The Lean Post / Articles / What are the Three A’s of the A3?

What are the Three A’s of the A3?

Coaching

What are the Three A’s of the A3?

By John Shook and Lisa Yerian, MD

April 23, 2021

John Shook explains the three A's of the A3 in this video clip from the presentation that he and Lisa Yerian, chief improvement officer at Cleveland Clinic, delivered at LEI's Virtual Learning Experience.

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Being a leader of lean thinking and practice requires an in-depth understanding of the process and a passion for guiding others. LEI Senior Advisor John Shook and Lisa Yerian, chief improvement officer at the Cleveland Clinic, shared their experience as learners, practitioners, and coaches at Toyota Motor Company and Cleveland Clinic, respectively, as part of last year’s LEI’s Virtual Lean Learning Experience. In their presentation, “Jidoka 2020: Lessons in Enabling Structures from Cleveland Clinic and Toyota,” John shared, for the first time, the “Three A’s of the A3.” Here’s that portion of their presentation, along with a lightly edited transcript.

 

Here we have the three A’s of the A3. You heard that here first.

Align

So, the A3 is defined by three A’s. We align on the way forward, right? We think together, decide where we need to go. What do we need to do? It’s just a structure to think together to align.

Ask

In that process, we want to ask good questions — that’s what a scientist does. That’s what a curious human does. We don’t force solutions. We say, “what is going on here?” We want to avoid both jumping to conclusions but also avoid analysis paralysis. We can use this [an A3] to help us do that.

Adjust

And we adjust it to what goes wrong and to what goes right. So, we can do on-the-fly quick cycle PDCA, which several of you called out in your breakouts, and a more formal after-action review that I think Lisa was talking about in terms of whenever this thing [pandemic] ends, we can really step back and see what we’ve seen.

Learn More: 

Advance your career and enhance your team’s ongoing learning by subscribing to the Virtual Lean Learning Experience. With an Annual Enterprise Subscription, you can deliver a full year of unlimited access to seminars, practical exercises, and on-demand recordings of all VLX presentations to everyone at your organization. Individuals who register for the Annual Single-User Subscription gain the same benefits for themselves.

Stay in the know about what cutting-edge companies are doing now to solve critical problems. Learn more and subscribe to VLX.

On-demand access to the full recording of this presentation is available only to subscribers of LEI’s Virtual Lean Learning Experience, a continuing education service offering the latest in lean leadership and management.

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Virtual Lean Learning Experience (VLX)

Subscribe to the Virtual Lean Learning Experience, a continuing education service offering the latest in lean leadership and management.

Written by:

John Shook
|
Lisa Yerian, MD

About Lisa Yerian, MD

Since joining the organization in 2004, Lisa has held several pathology and health system leadership positions. In her role as chief improvement officer, Lisa leads a team of improvement professionals who build an improvement culture and drive strategic improvements for patients and caregivers across Cleveland Clinic. Under her leadership, the…

Read more about Lisa Yerian, MD

About John Shook

John Shook learned about lean management while working for Toyota for 11 years in Japan and the U.S., helping it transfer production, engineering, and management systems from Japan to NUMMI and other operations around the world. While at Toyota’s headquarters, he became the company’s first American kacho (manager) in Japan.…

Read more about John Shook

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