How to Stay Lean

When I started helping organisations to apply a lean approach about 20 years ago, I was confronted with questions like: "Where do I start? What will the benefits be?"

Today, the questions I am asked relate to what companies need to do to lead and sustain lean change to the point where it becomes a way of life.

The challenges in staying lean are often rooted in a pre-occupation with lean tools and taking a kaizen blitz approach in order to fast-track results. Aiming for careful and systematic culture change – which is slower in producing noticeable results - is far more durable.

I find it helps to think of lean application in terms of an iceberg (refer to image, right) – it is as much about what you don't see as is about what you do.

The lean iceberg: below the water line

My experiences of organisations that have gone – and stayed – lean made me realise that, in addition to the process improvements lean techniques they've used, these businesses had addressed three people-related areas that are not as visible but are just as critical: strategy and alignment, leadership, and behaviour and engagement.

1. Strategy and alignment

The strategy must be coherent, with a vision and purpose that are fully communicated and deployed throughout the organisation.

A successful strategy should begin with a realistic assessment of the current situation, a coherent vision of the future and an understanding of the transition that's needed to get there.

Alignment then makes sure that everybody understands the strategy, and that everything employees do contributes to the success of achieving the organisational goals.

This can be checked by looking at how key performance indicators (KPIs) monitor and measure progress. A link between the KPIs, the strategy and the lean improvement projects is vital to sustainable success.

2. Leadership

Poor leadership is a deciding factor between success and failure in sustaining lean change.

Leadership needs to be characterised by guiding vision, passion and integrity. A leader must have high energy levels, be innovative, focus on people, inspire trust, have a long-range perspective and challenge the status quo.

A common stumbling block for leadership is that it suffers from confusion with management. Many people talk about managing transformations rather than leading change. Leaders should foster change, whereas managers stabilise the organisation and make sure that the changes are well implemented.

Leadership is not confined to the top level of an organisation: a leader can emerge at any level. Part of the role of managers is to recognise and develop potential leaders so that they can contribute to the business goals.

3. Behaviour and engagement

The engagement of people on a lean journey is essential. It will influence their behaviour and your ultimate success.

For many, organisational change is associated with feelings of insecurity, uncertainly and anxiety, often leading to lack of buy-in and employee resistance.

Getting all employees on board from the outset is crucial to sustaining lean change. Examples of the necessary behaviours to do this include: trust, honesty, openness, consistency, respect, reflection, observation, objectivity and listening. Wasteful behaviours include: blame, ego, distrust, cynicism, sarcasm, ambiguity, subjectivity, insincerity, self-imposed barriers and negativity.

So how do you build an environment for sustainable lean? It involves examining all the elements of the organisational structure with its policies, procedures, measures and rewards, to see if any are acting as roadblocks and stifling progress. Changing behaviours involves changing the culture of the organisation.

The lean iceberg: above the water line

Above the waterline are the visible features of a lean implementation. Organising around key business processes and engaging in process improvement are the cornerstones of a lean enterprise. Applying lean tools, technology and techniques to improve, sustain and maintain business processes is the route commonly taken by organisations attempting to enhance performance.

4. Processes

Many companies applying lean never get past the shop floor, let alone the order fulfilment process. Two things are important when first looking at businesses processes:

• Which processes are key to the core business?
• How do you design and optimise key processes to deliver value to the customer, business or value stream?

Improvement in core processes either focuses on waste reduction or value creation. For example, improving the order fulfilment process is primarily reducing waste as to enhance performance, increase capacity and reduce cost. Focusing on order creation primarily adds value by generating more sales to utilise excess capacity.

I believe the most effective way is to improve both processes at the same time. That way a company can use the excess capacity generated by process improvement on new sales generated through value-adding processes.

Waste reduction and value enhancement go hand in hand. Waste reduction is often considered to be a way of reducing costs, but cost is not the only way to compete – take high value cars for example, the perceived value here is about service, design or quality, not cost.

5. Technology, tools and techniques

Technology, tools and techniques are the fifth element of the sustainable lean iceberg, and the last: this is deliberate. Tools should be driven by the needs of the customer, the business and people within the business. In other words, they should be pulled, not pushed.

A wide range of tools are available, including 5S (sorting, straightening, sweeping, standardising and sustaining), pull systems, various Six Sigma tools, A3 plans, single-minute exchange of die and total productive maintenance.

However, perhaps most fundamental is the visual management that ensures that the workforce will "pull" improvement to them rather than being "pushed" by senior management or lean coaches. In each local area visual management boards that are developed and owned by local teams help to communicate the essential elements of the lean approach, and the results that are being achieved.

Walking the walk

Applying lean tools and techniques alone will not make an organisation lean – they are just things that organisations can use to help solve problems and support their lean strategy.

Real lean organisations that have adopted the lean philosophy successfully: they have a vision and a clear, aligned, sense of purpose; they have organised their business around key business processes; and they have developed the right people, from the top to the bottom of the organisation, who are engaged and exhibit the right behaviours. People who are capable of leading the lean lifestyle.