A Gemba Walk Like No Other

Before I facilitated my first Kaizen event at CITY Furniture, we agreed I should learn the business from the inside. So, I spent a week embedded in their distribution center, shadowing employees and learning the flow.

The culture was strong, engaged, and motivated. But people were frustrated. They hadn’t had a Kaizen in a while, and they were hungry for change. I was there to help reignite that spark.

I spent time in the repair shop, helped planners with order tracking, and eventually got paired up with an order picker named Andy. His job was to locate furniture across a 1.6 million square foot facility and deliver it to the floor for shipment.

Andy showed me how he used barcode scanners and optimized routes to work efficiently. Then he asked, “Want to help me with an order?”

Next thing I knew, I was wearing a harness and vest, clipped into an “order picker,” a lift with a platform designed to retrieve furniture from towering racks.

Up and down we went, pulling product from the sky. At one point, 45 feet in the air, Andy turned to me and said, “I forgot to ask, are you afraid of heights?” I laughed and replied, “You picked a fine time to ask!”

We kept working, and I gained a deep appreciation for the skill, care, and judgment required in that role. It’s easy to underestimate the complexity when you're watching from the ground.

By the time I returned to the office, everyone had heard about the consultant in the air. They also knew I wasn’t there to sit on the sidelines. I was there to understand, serve, and support.

You can’t lead improvement from behind a desk. Real change starts when you walk the floor, get your hands dirty, and show people that their work matters.