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Brian Kerr
Cover Brian Kerr Brian Kerr Tacoma, WA 98407
Continuous improvement

Options & set-based design

An effective lean method for eliciting & testing out the best, weirdest ideas.

It’s hard to know when to keep your options open and when to commit. Hang onto too many options for too long and you’ll spread yourself thin. But you might regret committing too early—what if the grass really was greener on the other side?

This is hard to do as an individual. It’s nearly impossible within a group. That’s one reason why groups spend so much time examining and choosing between alternatives. But this eventually gets in the way of doing good, and being good. As the Liverpudlian philosopher said:

Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.

When a group is facing a big decision about what to do next, the game is to preserve and explore options, without letting the upkeep of options get distracting or expensive.

Introducing set-based design

Set-based design is a method that’s worked for me and my clients. It’s a key lean method that often goes unused for weird historical reasons.

Here’s how it works:

  1. A group starts with a broad, unproven set of options. These might range from the status quo to the wildest alternatives.
  2. Then they will experiment, quickly kicking out ideas that won’t work.
  3. Feasibility is evaluated in the open using simple, shared criteria. No one should be surprised by the results, even if their own idea is eliminated.
  4. Eventually, the set of options narrows to one everybody can live with.
  5. Take that one option (and maybe one backup) into development.

Benefits of set-based design

I’ve used set-based design to get groups through decision-making and evaluation processes, with some surprising benefits:

  • The method has helped risk-averse teams explore long-shot ideas.
  • Similarly, it has helped rambunctious teams commit to a single, sometimes boring, idea.
  • Set-based design is very fair about letting all stakeholders have their say and seeing their ideas given a fair shake.
  • The conversations about quality, cost, and value that are important for creating evaluation criteria have outlasted the design process. The local answer to “what good means” for a particular design activity can point to a larger answer about “what good is” for a team.

Starting points

Book—for theory and history: read Lean Product and Process Development by Ward and Sobek. Make sure you get the second edition. It’ll give you everything you need to get started.

Lean Product and Process Development, 2nd Edition - Lean Enterprise Institute
In Lean Product and Process Development, Ward presented a basic learning model for development. He not only described the technical tools needed to make lean product and process development actually work, but also delineated the management system, management behaviors, and mental models needed.
Lean Enterprise InstituteAuthor(s)

Just want the overview? The authors published a decent intro back in 1999.

Paper—for trying it out: This 2016 CIRP paper lays out the exact approach that I’ve successfully used to plan set-based design activities for my clients.

April 16, 2024: edited for length.
Brian Kerr
Cover Brian Kerr Brian Kerr Tacoma, WA 98407
Meditation

Splitting your pants & losing your head: an introvert’s guide to facilitation

Two deer walking through an estuary.
Photo by Brian Kerr.

A quick activity before stepping in front of a room.

Have you heard the one about how I split my pants while facilitating in a room of 75 people? Well, I did! And, for me at least, splitting my pants was the way to uncover, in addition to my boxers, a critical realization about facilitation—that it is solely focused on finding and solving problems in the moment. Now if you’re the facilitator, this takes the pressure off. Nobody cares about you. It’s all about the people in the room and the problems, interests, and opportunities they share.

I facilitated with that mindset for a while. Then came a day a few years ago when I travelled to put on a continuous improvement workshop, by myself, in a place I didn’t want to go to, in a situation I felt was unfair. Something had failed with my rental car reservation, so I was riding cabs around this Blade Runner style pre-apocalyptic urban sprawl. Each cab ride was three miles and 30 minutes long. I had a lot to feel grumpy about. I knew I was being grumpy, but this flickering self-awareness didn’t actually improve the situation.

While on a long, expensive cab ride to the morning’s workshop, I realized that while all those feelings were relevant to me, they didn’t mean a damn thing to the people I meeting with—the people who’d set time aside from the demands of their regular work to try to design some meaningful improvements for the clients they serve. I had to figure how to honor that.

When I arrived at the building, I stopped by the restroom. Over the sink, I saw my face in the mirror. And I decided to—for the next few hours, for the rest of that day’s workshop—to leave my face over there, out there, in the mirror, with all of its grievances and worries and causes for grumpiness.

And it worked! I was able to waltz into the room and listen to each person, learning from them individually and as a somewhat newly formed group. They ended up breaking through an annoying performance problem in a way that made work flow better for themselves and marked a substantial improvement for their clients. It was a good day. And all because I was able to leave my head out there, where it belonged.

On losing your head

More recently, I discovered Douglas Harding’s 1961 book, On Having No Head, where he describes the insight succinctly:

It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything—room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snowpeaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world.

While I don’t claim to spend much time in this state, I find it to be an accessible way for me to find an undecorated, participatory awareness. I know Harding’s headless way has worked for many others as well, and I encourage you to read his short, engaging book if you’re interested.

All this is why, a few minutes before the beginning of a day of training or facilitation, I’ll find my way to a restroom and spend a minute fixing my face in the mirror. It can hang out there until I’m ready to find it again.

Thanks for reading & be well. ❦ © 2016-2026 Brian Kerr.