Improvement kata vs coaching kata explained

Improvement kata is a repeated routine for moving from a current condition towards a target condition through experiments. Coaching kata is the routine a coach uses to help someone practise that way of working.

The learner investigates the work. The coach helps the learner examine their reasoning and choose the next check.

The Lean Enterprise Institute's explanation connects the two routines. It describes understanding the challenge, examining the current condition, setting a target condition and experimenting towards it.

Put a process condition beside the target

The PDCA teaching example follows routine purchase approvals. Its fictional trial aims to reduce average elapsed approval time from 24 hours to at most 18, while keeping returned requests at no more than 5%.

The proposed process change assigns the approver when a complete request arrives. That gives the team a working method to test, alongside the numerical criteria. The target condition needs that description of how the work should operate; a percentage alone leaves the method unclear.

The trial reaches 16 hours per request, but 10% are returned. Faster approval has not satisfied the complete prediction. That unresolved result gives the next learning conversation a specific subject.

Use the five coaching questions to inspect the thinking

The coaching routine asks about the target condition, current condition, obstacles, next step and review. In a conversation, those can be expressed as:

1. What condition are you working towards?
2. What does the work look like now?
3. Which obstacle will you examine next?
4. What will you try, and what do you expect?
5. When can we review what you learned?

These prompts are paraphrased from the routine, not a required script. A coach needs to listen to the evidence, not simply collect five answers.

For the approval trial, the 12 returned requests are records to inspect. Their total does not identify which routing or completeness rule caused the returns. The learner needs a check that can distinguish among explanations.

Keep the next step small enough to learn from

Record the expected outcome before the experiment and compare it with what happened. If the result conflicts with the prediction, examine that difference before changing the method again.

The 5 Whys guide helps test an explanation against the event sequence. The daily-management Note connects a recorded problem to response and follow-up.

Watch Vrolen's PDCA walkthrough ↗Use the separate production example to review prediction, trial and follow-up. The approval figures here come from the fictional approval case.

For the next coaching session, bring the current process record and the previous prediction. Leave with one next check, its expected result and a time to review the learning.

Sources

• LEI improvement and coaching kata.