The Lean Leadership Industry

- "Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten."

B. F. Skinner

That quote helps explain one reason why tens of thousands of books have been written on the topic of leadership and lean has become its own little cottage industry.

Sure, some people are born natural leaders, but for the vast majority of us, leadership isn't in our genes. This is why leadership should be viewed as a skill: if you don't use it, you will lose it.

Or we get frustrated and impatient, forgetting the fundamentals and seek other rehashed information that has been spun a different way that we might relate to.

Education doesn't solve problems or lead people, people do. This helps explain why the TWI J-skills are called skills, by practicing daily, we have a chance to convert the knowledge we acquire in the sessions into a skill. Use it or lose it!

I suppose the same could be said for many things in life...

A Perfect Lean Article in USAToday

The title link will take you to the full article...

Leansters always say to NEVER lay off people as a result of improvements. The article predictably dances around this dogma - you may be wanting a nice, clean and tidy explanation of why Lean should never lead to layoffs, but you won't find it here:

"In the short term, as manufacturers slash inventories and reduce their workforces, the recovery could be slowed or delayed, experts say. Many, such as Sealy, are scaling back through attrition and cutting temporary staff rather than resorting to layoffs.

Yet industry wide, some jobs will be lost permanently as manufacturers use their new cost efficiencies to wring more output from fewer employees, says Cliff Waldman, an economist at the Manufacturers Alliance, which does research for the industry. But by allowing U.S. manufacturers to better compete against low-cost rivals abroad, the maneuvers are helping them maintain profits and ultimately hire employees, economists say."

"It's survival," Waldman goes on to say, "Our response to the cost pressures brought about by globalization is … to produce cheaper and more efficiently."

And the magic metric responds accordingly:

"'manufacturing productivity, or output per labor hour, rose 4.9% in the second quarter, the highest since early 2005', traced to lean-manufacturing techniques."

So what is good for Wall St. (productivity) is not so good for Main St. (loss of jobs). This was probably one of the more favorable Lean articles, but like many before it, the message is conflicted...but shouldn't it be? I predict that you may see some critical reviews of this article on the lean blogging posts today...defender's of the lean principles telling all of us how the rest of the world doesn't understand lean.

We are all learning, so be careful about seeking the Perfect Cinderella Lean Story...that may signal the end of the journey. Toyota's story is full of conflict, contradictions and put simply - problems. Their story is far from perfect and yet it continues. So why should we expect something different for our situation?

Connect the Lean Dots

I love this photo. This was seen in the genba and can serve as a 5S Learning Lab. It helps us imagine many benefits of practicing lean if we only embrace problems.

How would 5S make this area ready for work? Tools would be easier to retrieve, perhaps even at the point of use. This would free up space on the shelf, perhaps to create a visual kanban system for the rebuilt units.

More space would also give us an opportunity to re- layout the work area, reducing motion, twisting, lifting, walking and stretching.

This type of problem awareness might allow us to see potential problems, like the refrigerator on top of the cabinet. Is this a hard hat area?

Do we need to open the cabinet to know the inside condition? When we talk about "shine", are we thinking about housekeeping, or do we see shine as an action: "cleaning to inspect?" If we remove the doors from the cabinet and made frequent genba walks in this area, do you expect this level of visuality would help us identify and embrace problems more easily?

Assuming we made some 5S improvements in this area, what other Lean benefits could we expect? Would jobs be easier? Faster? Of higher quality? Perhaps. It is also possible that training could be done more easily, thoroughly and of higher quality. This may also lead to safer, easier, faster and higher quality jobs.

There are many small kaizen opportunities here that will help people connect the dots and see the benefits of continuous improvement through the simple act of 5S. Are you helping them see?