Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Fed Up With Lean!

For every ten genuine Lean Experts, there are 100 people who claim to be experts but are not. The biggest mistakes made by these others is to apply tools blindly without considering the people, who ram-raid organisations creating very short term results but leave nothing sustainable, fail to transfer knowledge to the teams involved and do not engage the leadership in the change process.

I have headed this blog 'Fed Up With Lean' on the basis that there are so many people claiming to be experts who are not that it has started to devalue something, which if applied correctly, is highly valuable. Because some people feel that by having read a book they are somehow been transformed into a Lean expert who can revoluntionise entire enterprises, the feeling among many others is that Lean 'must be easy' without having seen it done properly by professionals.

Lean is not a 'quick fix', although it can generate quick returns, it is not something that can be imposed, it is not something that is purely tactical, it is not something which can be undertaken half-heartedly, it is not something that can ignore organisational culture and it definately is not the answer to all problems by itself.

Lean is a key tool in the business armoury which if applied correctly and professionally will transform an organisation's performance and when coupled with effective leadership development and an aligned organisational culture will lead to strategic change at the highest level.

It is not something to be dabbled in by half trained facilitators at a tactical level - although I am sure they will continue to have short term, unsustainable, success whilst continuing to damage the general view of true and strategic Lean.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Leadership Makes The Difference

Change in business takes many forms and I have worked with many hundreds of businesses and seen all sorts of change processes being used - from the straight 'Lean on the Factory Floor' in manufacturing to high level strategic planning using Hoisin Planning and Policy Deployment. I have also worked with the organisations who think change is about investing many thousands in new machines, buying MRP/ERP systems or purely undertaking training.

However, the thing that sets apart a successful change programme from a mediocre (or damaging one) is the ability of leaders to set the right tone and direction for the change and their ability to inspire people.

In this short statement we see three key issues:

1. How does a leader set the right tone or create the right environment in which people can feel valued and successful during the change process? This is often a function of the individual's levels of Emotional Intelligence.

2. How do leaders set the right direction for the change process? This needs to take a medium to long-term view as although change can generate results very quickly, the reality is that sustainable change can take up to 12 months or more to become 'embedded' in the organisation to the extent that behaviours change, which is what change is al about. We often talk about the '3 Coffee Shop' measures which will be used to describe success a year from now - meaning that you should imagine you are in a coffee shop with a colleague a year from today and they say to you 'I hear your change programme was great' and you reply 'Yes it was, because.....' - these three measures will follow and will be things like 'Our Productivity Improved', 'Our Costs Reduced', 'Our Sales Doubled' etc. Selecting the right 3 measures will set the tone for the entire change programme.

3. The ability to inspire the team - which combines vision with the ability to communicate that vision and which is a key determinant of success. Someone once wrote that 'Leaders give meaning to the work of others' - as true of managing the status quo as it is of managing change.

These thoughts are things that we continue to develop our thinking in and which influence the way we deliver rapid change as change that is not sustainable is not change at all.