I was speaking late last week to a real 'Lean Jockey' with a well known American consultancy who are building a presence in the UK.
I found the conversation both interesting and a little disturbing on the basis that the approach being followed appeared to be 'tools only' - a quick 'Value Stream Map' and a series of Rapid Ram-Raids on the business, with no focus on sustainability.
One of the worrying things about the approach they are adopting is that the consultancy concerned it is growing nicely with an impressive range of new clients - and this fact made me challenge what I believe to be true - namely that the 'tools approach' is not sustainable in the long term.......so why were these guys being so successful?
Having spoken to a couple of people last week, including one of whom has been a current client of the consultancy concerned within the NHS, my fears have been allayed - it appears that whilst the price is high and the benefits good in the short term, the results last as long as the consultant is on site, creates bad feeling in the team and does not create an optimal solution.
We are about to extend our research into the sustainability of Lean, the first phase of which led to the development of our PROTOCOLS(tm) approach which assists organisations to prepare for Lean (or any form of transformational change). We will be speaking in depth to up to forty organisations from the service sector who have tried Lean to correlate our findings - although initial feedback says that the same bunch of cowboys who saddle their Lean tools outside manufacturing companies are now putting on their boots and striding into the service sector!
Beware the 'tools only' approach to Lean - unless your people bed it in and believe in the change, it does not matter how good the consultancy presentation is, the project will fail!
