Devastating because the failure widens the gap between management and workers on a number of fronts with the most important one being trust. Further more, once the program deflates getting folks to try lean or anything like it again will require a management commitment and involvement far greater than the first. As you were told from an early age, “It’s hard to make a good impression the second time” Lean doesn’t falter because the kanban system didn’t work or because a takt time was too difficult to repeat consistently. Lean crash landed because the organization wasn’t ready to adopt all of the changes lean insists on in order to survive. These are some of the lean killers we’ve heard of recently. Senior management, including the Plant Manager, delegated the entire project and never showed up at a single lean meeting or event. An owner recently told me that “The consulting firm we used was more interested in their business than my business. We couldn’t replicate anything they did after they left”. Or the Supervisors who refused to hold team meetings. All of these companies have earned their place in the Lean After Market.
There is nothing within the lean tool box itself that will solve these issues. Essentially the prescription for all of these issues is leadership. It’s imperative that senior management understand the organization’s capabilities before making the lean leap perhaps into oblivion. Assessments and decisions regarding cultural organizational issues should be data based and not gut feelings.
As the readers of this newsletter are supposed to be more tools oriented we offer you the following. Rate your company with an A B C D or F in the following categories:
Strategic Plan & Business Plan
Communicated & Understood By Everyone?
Goals and Action Steps Assigned To Meet the Goals?
Effective Metrics/Is The Plan Working?
Structure
Does The Structure Support The Strategy?
Process
Do The Processes Support The Strategy?
Recognition/RewardsDoes The Recognition System Encourage Behavior That Supports The Strategic Plan?
People
Do Managers Communicate, Motivate and Provide Leadership Consistent With The Strategic Plan?
Your company is doing fairly well if the management team is fairly consistent in their responses. The gap appears when you ask individual workers to grade the company in the same manner. Management is surprised to learn that we find the front line manager’s responses fall in line with the individual worker’s responses. No surprise then that companies who had these issues before jumping off into lean miss their lean goals and slip into the Lean After Market.
Note: For the above quiz anonymity is critical and it can never be used to assign blame to any one person or group.
A lean recovery is possible but only with a more focused commitment and management retracing their steps in the planning process. Re-visit the strategic plan and business plan and re-certify why lean is in your plan to begin with. What strategic goal is it going to solve? If it’s a core initiative to your strategy and defined in the business plan for the coming months then review the action items below to re-invigorate your roll out. Don’t have a strategic or business plan? That’s a different problem but you can still answer the following and get a positive result for now.
- Evaluate the benefits of launching lean relative to your strategic and business goals. Does it fit? Does it fit now?
- Decide on lean goals in line with the above and assign a time frame
- Create action steps to support the goals
- Assign responsibilities that cascade throughout the company and everyone who is assigned has goals, action steps and timeframes
- Create metrics that let you know it’s working
- Hold people accountable for meeting the goals
- Management must make a commitment to change their behavior before anyone else will to make lean work. Ready to change? What will you different?
Think the grades to the above quiz don’t matter? Think that you’ve got pretty good people and they’ll go along with whatever direction management decides. Going along to get along won’t be enough to make lean a success at your company.
Do your workers have the freedom to disagree with management in an open forum discussing some aspect of lean or other topics without any repercussions? If you answered yes then go the extra mile to make sure you can recall when this really occurred in real life situations before you go ahead thinking everything is okay here. If it actually hasn’t occurred in the past then it hasn’t occurred for a reason and the answer is probably in the gap we've been discussing.
Lean will only create the opportunity for open communication it’s not going to make it happen. When lean falls flat the answer is in the gap, real or imagined, between management and the workers. It's never the tool box. The tools work and work well together the question is whether your organization does. There isn’t a lean tool to make that happen.
Everest Consulting Group may be able to assist you in aligning your organization for success at lean. Please contact us at ecg@everestcg.com or 888-910-8326 to discuss your needs further.
