Only in the last two month alone I have supervised the design of 13 different kanban systems in different companies. After two or three days of work the initial kanban system is hanging on the wall and everyone is standing proudly in front of it. Now and again I hear statements like: “I really hope that Kanban makes us faster.” or “We hope that Kanban will finally be of use to us.” When I hear things like this it conjures up a very delightful image in my head which in the situation of the future daily working routine would look something like this: Some people are sitting in a circle in front of the kanban board. One person writes on a red Post-it “Blocker: test infrastructure not ready”, gets up and sticks the Post-it on a piece of work in the “TEST” column on the board. He turns around again to the group. Questioning looks. A few seconds of silence. And then a colleague asks: “And that helps?”

NO! Of course it doesn’t help. Surprisingly enough it is simply not sufficient to sit banished in front of a kanban system waiting until things get better. It is the same as setting up the newest high-tech home trainer in the living room and then sitting down on the couch beside it waiting for the surplus kilos simply to disappear.

Obviously it didn’t work, did it? However, for people taking action it is not at all obvious. Things are purchased – be it a home trainer or Kanban – with the hope that “it” will make us better. “It” doesn’t make anything better.  Human beings are the driving force in improvement. “It” is a mere tool.

And that is exactly how I want to see kanban taught. Kanban allows you to see weak points and based on this understanding to reflect on improvements and make better conscious decisions. This works only by letting people design their own working system by themselves and not by adopting some “best practices” that prescribe a methodology or framework.  If you take part in Kanban training, you will also come to understand how to improve certain situations – but, nevertheless, you have to do it yourself.

Kanban in itself is neither a solution nor an improvement – just as the mere presence of a home trainer changes nothing in the fitness of a person. The active participation of the individual is always needed to bring about an improvement. Everything else is simply sorcery.