Most organisations believe learning happens in:
workshops, classrooms, presentations, online teaching, and strategy sessions.

It doesn’t.

👉 Learning only becomes real where work is actually done — when knowledge is put to the test.

What Gemba really is

Gemba is often translated as “the real place.”
That’s not enough.

👉 Gemba is where:

• Value is created for the customer. This may be an external customer or an internal customer — often represented by a business capability further down the value chain.
• Decisions have consequences across the stakeholder groups, including the primary stakeholders, Customer and Shareholder/Owner, as well as other stakeholders, including the local community and the environment.
• Trade-offs are real and must be understood to assess their impact on value created and on consequences.
• Assumptions are exposed as differing opinions, work-based knowledge, experience, and holistic perspectives are tested. The only certain assumption is that new ones will emerge.

👉 It is where reality pushes back.

🧭 In the Guidelines (Adapt, Survive and Flourish)

Learning as a Social Process (SECI)
· Knowledge is created through shared experience and tested in practice, not transferred through instruction.

Adaptive Capacity
· Organisations build capability by sensing reality, learning from it, and adapting — Gemba is where this cycle becomes real.

Shared Vision and Purpose
· Meaning emerges from engagement with real work, not from abstract alignment.

What happens without Gemba

Without Gemba:

• Discussion is easy.
• Agreement is easy.
• Alignment is easy.

It becomes a simple, fully controlled, closed environment — a bubble.  Assuming simplicity is a fatal flaw, don’t fall into the trap of certainty and complacency. (Snowden & Boone, 2007).

👉 Because nothing is being tested

Organisations in bubbles produce:

• Coherent models.
• Aligned language.
• Well-structured artefacts.

👉 But no learning

What actually happens at Gemba

At Gemba:

• Assumptions are exposed as differing opinions, work based knowledge and experience and holistic perspectives are tested.
• Language is challenged, sometimes at the basic level, e.g. what is a ‘Customer’ (see above).
• Gaps become visible as a whole system perspective is being taken.
• Consequences appear as result of holistic thinking with an ethical framework.

This creates something critical:

👉 Schema failure

• The model no longer fits reality.
• Contradictions surface.
• Discomfort appears.

👉 If this doesn’t happen: learning has not begun.

🧭 In the Guidelines (Lead, Transform & Navigate)

Guideline 1: Sensemaking Before Action
· Understanding emerges from engagement with reality, not from abstract analysis.

Guideline 3: Action Emerges — It Is Not Implemented
· Decisions must be tested in practice where consequences are real.

Guideline 8: Collaboration Is a Practice, Not a Structure
· Real collaboration occurs under pressure at Gemba, not in controlled environments.

In Lead, Transform & Navigate, Bruno’s original BCM and Spiro’s marketing plan illustrate what happens when models are assumed to be correct before they are tested against real customer conditions.

The shift

Gemba creates a fundamental shift:

• discussion → consequence ,
• agreement → challenge,
• and structure → reality.

👉 From coherence to consequence

Ba at Gemba

Dialogue alone is not enough.

When reflection is detached from real work:

• it becomes performative,
• and it produces no behavioural change.

👉 Ba collapses into theatre.

When embedded in Gemba:

• dialogue is tested,
• trade-offs are real,
• and consequences are visible

👉 Wisdom becomes observable in action

The real test

Gemba is not just physical proximity.

👉 Being there matters — but it is not sufficient.

👉 The real question is: Do people contribute when they don’t have to?

Voluntary contribution signals:

• The system can tolerate truth.
• Trust is present.
• Learning is alive.

👉 Coherence is visible when contribution is voluntary

Why it matters

You can have:

• psychological safety,
• participation,
• and well-designed models.

👉 And still fail to learn.

If work is not connected to reality:

• Insight remains abstract.
• Behaviour does not change.
• Error repeats.

👉 Result:  Only what survives practice becomes knowledge.

If it hasn’t been tested at Gemba, it isn’t knowledge yet.

 

 

Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007). A leader’s framework for decision making. Harvard business review, 85(11), 68.