3 Reasons Organizations Underperform

3 Reasons Organizations Underperform

If your organization is like most, it only performs at its peak sporadically; in specific departments for a few hours or days at a time. Your people think and act phenomenally during periods of crisis or intense focus but return to the status quo once the pressure subsides. You’ll see employees at their best while working on a serious quality issue or jumping through hoops to ship the plan at the end of the month. But what about the rest of the time? How much of your organization’s capacity is engaged when there’s no crisis or impending event? Results vary, but it’s safe to say that most businesses perform well below their potential most of the time. This is a common crisis with enormous consequences.

  • Millions, even billions of dollars are consumed by waste that could be minimized or eliminated with the right focus, skills, tools, and mindsets
  • Customers become disappointed and seek competitors who offer higher quality, better service, shorter lead times, or lower prices
  • High performing employees become frustrated because of the apathy, entitlement, and complacency that surrounds them and either leave or quit without leaving
  • Organizational culture forms around the status quo and renders managers almost powerless because mediocre performance has become the benchmark in the minds of the masses

What’s unsettling is you may not know what your organization is capable of achieving, and you may not believe someone who tells you what’s possible. The risk in this is your people may have become so content with the current state that waste looks like work. It’s a costly tragedy when sub-par performance becomes the standard when twenty, thirty, fifty, or even ninety percent improvement is possible.

With all this wasted potential, you will be one step ahead of your competition when you understand three reasons why organizations fail to consistently reach their full potential.

Managers reward firefighting not process improvement

An organization with excessive waste will experience excessive problems which require firefighting. The problems is that firefighting, while seemingly necessary, doesn’t eliminate waste. In fact, firefighting is waste (overprocessing). When leaders recognize firefighting more than process improvement, people become ambitious expediters reacting to problems as soon as they surface. While quick response to problems is important, over-promoting firefighting will lead to an addiction to the heroic recovery, where reactive behavior appears to be valued more than problem solving and process improvement. Firefighting isn’t working on the business, it’s exhausting time and money in an effort to save the day. Leaders must achieve the right balance of reactive and proactive effort to improve performance.

Managers fail to set the expectation for process improvement

The eighth deadly waste is underutilizing people. We do this when we view people as a means to get work done vs. improve how work is done. This is particularly tragic because employees see scores of improvements they could make but don’t. Instead, they blame management for not fixing them. What’s sad is that most people really do want to remove waste and usually have good ideas. What’s missing is the expectation to work on the work and the support to make meaningful improvements. Managers will only realize the full potential of their people when they set the right expectations and engage them in improving how work is done.

Managers set low expectations for what matters most

It’s rare to find a manager that sets high expectations for mindset, teamwork, and process improvement. The focus is typically on attendance, quality, and maybe productivity. The truth is that most managers avoid the soft side of leading people and stay with safe, impersonal, easy to measure, expectations that only produce the bare minimum. On the other hand, managers that expand their focus to how people think and act, get to the real issues behind performance problems, paving the way for excellence. You might think this is just common sense, and it probably is, but it isn’t common practice. Dealing with thinking is one of the major differences between managing and leading and is the most impactful skill a leader can develop. A team in conflict will struggle to achieve moderate results but an aligned team can do just about anything. When you strip away all the buzzwords and fanfare, what successful leaders really do is align people’s thinking with the company vision. This doesn’t happen with emails, blogs, posters, or video conferences. It happens one on one coaching conversations rich in respect, support, listening, authenticity, and passion.

While this list isn’t complete, it does contain three of the most common leadership problems that we see in working with clients. We understand that leading a high-performing organization comes with complicated challenges. At Lean Partners, we help leaders not only set processes and tools in place to increase performance and reduce costs, we also help guide leaders through the cultural and people issues that impact business success. For more information on Lean Partners and how we can help your company, visit: leanpartners.com.

How to Avoid the Common 5S Mistakes: Business improvement series

How to Avoid the Common 5S Mistakes: Business improvement series

As a plant manager who oversaw two distinct and rather successful Lean transformations, I’m almost ashamed to admit that I missed some pretty fundamental issues relative to 5S. With the benefit of hindsight, I can now clearly see that my understanding of this basic tool was remedial at best and detrimental at worst. It is now evident to me that my limited knowledge of 5S certainly impacted the rate of progress and possibly the degree of improvement attained.

After many years and implementations completed, I’d like to provide you with the advantages of the lessons I have learned so that you and your organization can travel to a higher level at a faster rate.

Lesson 1: It’s not just about housekeeping – 5S results in immediate visual impact and eliminates the waste and frustration associated with employees searching for required items. It’s clean and effective.

Lesson 2: It’s simple, but not easy5S organization can be learned and successfully applied if the desire exists. It’s like cleaning a closet…you decide what to keep and what to throw out. Then you clean it up, reorganize, and standardize it. Keep it clean, organized, and readily available.

Lesson 3: It’s a process, not an event – Team members should articulate the expectations of each other and practice holding each person accountable. An agreeable-system has to be established to make satisfying improvements.

Lesson 4: Success depends almost entirely on leadershipA leadership’s real work starts when the clean-up is complete, the event has finally started, and things have been set in place. While a basic understanding of Lean principles is important, a clear image of leadership’s responsibilities in a Lean environment is absolutely vital.

Lesson 5: Each component has a common pitfall, learn to avoid themProvide clear expectations of what’s desired for Lean improvement. Clear standards should include visual examples of both acceptable and unacceptable levels of adherence. Remember, just because you’re excited with the new system, doesn’t mean everyone else is on board. If this problem arises, be sure to communicate with the person and audit from day one.

Lesson 6: 5S isn’t just important, 5S is essentialLeaders who know or learn to standardize and sustain by instilling discipline are equipped to effectively utilize many other essential tools for continuous improvement. Therefore making the 5S program essential to every company’s success.

5S is deceptively simple, appearing to be intuitive and practical on the surface. However, anyone who has tried to implement 5S knows that it brings its fair share of challenges.

Leaders need to understand that 5S is just as much about Standard Work and discipline as it is about housekeeping and organization. Furthermore for 5S to succeed, leaders must accept responsibility to learn and apply new skills and behaviors that help instill Standard Work and discipline in their organization. This is no small task. In fact, failure to adequately utilize Standard Work and create discipline is why the vast majority of 5S initiatives fail.

At Lean Partners, we help our clients continuously improve their operational performance through Lean, Six Sigma, and organizational development. We provide both technical and cultural know-how that allows our clients to achieve substantial and sustained, year over year improvement while they learn to become self sufficient over time. Our 5S portfolio contains virtually everything an organization needs to effectively implement. Contact us for guidance on completing a successful transformation.

4 Best Practices You Must Have For 5S Success: Business improvement series

4 Best Practices You Must Have For 5S Success: Business improvement series

With so many different paths to reach 5S it can be difficult to map your journey. There is not a real ‘cookie-cutter’ answer that works for every company. However, after working with many companies over many years our consultants have identified several commonalities that lead to the greatest success.

Best practice #1: It’s not just about audits. In order to have great results after a 5S kaizen activity, you must also have good leadership and teamwork within your company. Audits can become vastly insufficient when it comes to sustaining 5S. I suppose the reason so many organizations focus on the audit is that they believe that measuring something will automatically cause it to change. The problem is what they are measuring is the result of behavior, and behavior is tough to change.

What is really needed is for supervisors and managers to learn how to change behaviors. Then an auditing system can be effective because what it’s really measuring is the capability of the supervisor or manager of the area.

Best practice #2: Leaders’ behavior must change first; 5S events and auditing systems are not enough. In order to sustain the 5S system, every member of the company must go through change, starting with leadership. If you are ready to start your journey, here are three-steps to get you started.

  1. Make a list of behaviors that need to change in order to sustain 5S. Come up with a plan and engage your plan with other leaders along with other employees. Accountability is a must in this situation. If you’re not holding everyone accountable for his or her parts, 5S will not work.
  2. Communication is key to a thriving 5S system. Use all employee meetings, emails, letters, visual reminders, informal conversations, progress reviews, etc. to clearly communicate your message. Repetition and commitment will gain positive feedback when leadership puts forth the effort to make changes along with the rest of the company.
  3. Change starts with you. People will pay much more attention to what you do than what you say, so you must act in a way that tells them you mean what you are saying. This goes for the entire leadership team. If you walk by a tool board and something is missing, stop and insist that it be put in the proper place. In this case, you must follow through with your plan in order to sustain 5S adequately.

Changes start with leadership, and while it may be a lot on you, the long-term effects are worth the time investment. People will notice and they will follow in your footsteps moving your company in the right direction.

Best Practice #3: Holding people accountable for their responsibilities and/or mistakes can be a tough thing to do, but it is something that most definitely has to be done. Accountability is the foundation for results, without it, businesses will not perform at their optimal potential. Leaders need to hold all people accountable in order to motivate the top performers. Accountability instills fairness, which is a fundamental for improving morale. Finally, people want to be held accountable just as they want others around them to be held accountable.

Being given a responsibility is typically something employees take with great pride. It motivates them to do better and follow through with their actions. People like to be praised and rewarded. Although, as a leader, you must be thorough in your expectations, set deadlines, and make sure your requests are clearly understood. Then you need to check in routinely to make sure the progress is flowing, as it should. If you have members that are slacking, then you must approach the situation in a clear and concise manner.

Best Practice #4: Remember, everyone needs a coach, even you, as the leader. Sometimes we have to sit back and reflect on ourselves and think – What can I do better? In order to better serve yourself as a coach for your employees, you must change your mindset. To do this, you need to make sure you’re fit to be a coach to your employees. What are your motives and inspirations, why are you improving your behavior, what is your goal in making a change. Then you have to start the conversation with your employees, be supportive, define objectives, initiate a plan, commit, and confront problem areas…including complaints.

Following this four-step process will allow you and your company to achieve 5S success in a timely manner. With a variety of ways to create 5S success we have found, within our company, that this method is most effective in achieving you goals. Learn more about avoiding the common 5S Mistakes today!

7 Keys to Effective Leadership Coaching

7 Keys to Effective Leadership Coaching

Kissinger, the great thinker, advisor and visionary understands a leader needs a different set of skills than an industry expert or knowledge worker. Just having the most authority or the most industry knowledge is not enough to be a good leader.

“The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.”

— Henry Kissinger

Leadership skills can be developed. In fact improving leadership in an organization is a well-leveraged investment. Every improvement in the quality of leadership can result in great increases in company productivity and profit.

An effective way to bring change is through leadership coaching. Today’s coaching goes beyond the counseling or training model which attempts to correct or manipulate behavior. Coaching is not, as people mistake it, setting expectations and holding people accountable. While those are essential leadership activities, coaching goes beyond.

Leadership coaching impacts the thinking of people for their own good and therefore results in behavior changes. This includes everyone up, down and sideways through the organization. Like other professional skills, developing strong leaders and managers requires education, practice and feedback. Leadership coaching provides the framework to understand how to develop the vision to both work on the business and in the business.

There is no shortcut to excellence, so it’s important to find the best coach and devote the time and attention needed to develop this essential leadership trait. Here are seven keys to look for when finding an effective leadership coach and program.

1. Trust, Credibility and Respect (TCR)

Unless your people can believe you know where you are taking them, unless they believe you can get them there and unless you believe they can do it you won’t have any influence over them. Good coaching can help you communicate not only what you want but help you communicate effectively in a way that helps them want it too.

2. Courage

It takes courage to share a vision. In coaching you also have to have the courage to hear the truth. Sometimes the truth about yourself is difficult to hear — like bad breath, quick temper, previous low performance or indecisive leadership. Your courage along with the courage of the coach to deal with real issues works to elevate your ability to lead well.

3. Authenticity

We all recognize when others are not being genuine with us. We all know someone who we can’t connect with because they’re not open and honest with us. A good coach will help a leader project the authentic, real, and honest in us that others will respond to, be open to, connect with and work with. You should expect a coach to give honest, open feedback so authenticity is an expected part of communications.

4. Support

Project success, organization goals and work focus fall quickly when people have to worry about blame, alibis and excuses. It’s important to keep standards high and expect high performance but people work ten times better when they feel supported. A good coach will help you develop a way to provide an environment where good work is supported.

5. Problem Solving Skills

When you’re working from a new perspective sometimes you fail to recognize old problems or don’t feel comfortable with the tools to tackle new problems. A good coach is prepared to help you keep the course and not fall back to past behavior. The coach should be with you as you work on the business and as you work in the business. A trusted coach approaches real problems with you to understand and deal with problems as an evolved leader.

6. Data Driven

Everyone supports a decision based on good data. Quality data drives high quality decisions and a high degree of success. A good leadership coach will help you develop a thirst for the right data, the right amount of data and the right way to use it for leadership decisions. Your coach should also help you to deal with the times when decisions must be made with less than perfect data.

7. Zoom In and Zoom Out

How does this decision impact production? Can this program overcome the issue we’re having in several regions? How can I get buy-in from sales on this price increase? How do I communicate short term pain for a long term gain? A leader’s perspective must be agile enough to jump from the macro to micro view and back again without getting stuck. A good coach helps a leader keep an eye on detail while not losing sight of the global vision.

Developing good leaders makes a solid impact on the performance and profit of your organization, we see leadership coaching as a method beyond training to develop leaders. At Lean Partners we take leadership coaching seriously. For more information on Lean Partners and how we can help your company’s leaders contact us here.

Why 5S is More Than Just Reducing Waste

Why 5S is More Than Just Reducing Waste

High performing processes and workplaces are always characterized by organization and cleanliness. 5S is a process for creating and maintaining a clean, safe, orderly, high performance work environment. To deploy 5S in an organization it is imperative for 100% of leadership to be on-board. Without this, it is guaranteed to fail. They must “walk the walk” and “talk the talk” along every single phase of implementation – and often that is harder said than done.

5S originated from the Toyota Production System and stands for five Japanese words that start with “S”. These five Japanese words have been translated into English as follows.

Sort – Move out the things you don’t need and ensure that you have all the things that you do need. It is often helpful to think about things in terms of material, tools, and supplies. Many times we don’t need things any longer, but they still have value to the organization – move those items to a red tag area to be dispositioned at a later time.

Shine – Physically clean the work area from top to bottom. The goal is to bring the work area back to new! This often involves improving lighting, painting ceiling, walls, and machines. Choose lighter colors to show dirt faster which will identify sustainment issues faster. Aim for the “Wow” factor!

Set in Order – You’ve probably heard the expression, “Everything has a place and every place has its thing!” This is essentially what is meant by Set in Order. The goal is to define a location for material, tools, and supplies. Locations should generally be organized by usage; high use items should be closer than low use items. Always keep ergonomics in mind!

Standardize – Create clear and simple visual cues that indicate whether or not Sort, Shine and Set in Order are being maintained. Make it visually obvious for anyone to see where items belong and what the work area should look like. Post simple and effective visual standards to which people can be held accountable.

Sustain – 5S is simple, but not easy. Many organizations have remnants of past 5S activities. As you apply 5S, you must have consistent and persistent leadership to ensure the new behaviors take root. Expectations need to be clear and accountability is key success.

Lean Partners has gained a deep understanding working with companies, particularly those in the manufacturing sector, on the following “Common 5S Mistakes”:

  1. 5S is not (just) about housekeeping
  2. 5S is simple… but it’s not easy
  3. 5S is not an event, it’s a process
  4. 5S success depends almost entirely on leadership
  5. Each 5S component has a common pitfall (learn to avoid them)

5S is one of the most powerful tools a business can implement. Our team at Lean Partners has worked with hundreds of companies in different industry sectors. The success of implementing 5S is game-changing and imperative to business sustainability. We have written a ‘must-read’ whitepaper on ‘How to avoid common 5S mistakes’. If you are thinking about 5S, read this first and it may just help your business achieve your ultimate goal.

For more information on how we can help you implement 5S in your company please contact us. Learn more about the best practices for the 5S strategy today!

3 Leadership Changes that Bring Optimal Results: Business improvement series

3 Leadership Changes that Bring Optimal Results: Business improvement series

Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing what you have always done and expecting different results.”

This couldn’t be more relevant when it comes to sustaining the improvement process. 5S events and auditing systems are not enough. In order to improve, behavior has to change in every member of the company. First, changes must come from leadership.

  1. Identify the behaviors that will be required to sustain 5S. Don’t trivialize this. You should spend time as a leadership team discussing and planning on what you want. It is also important that every leader agree to hold people accountable for the behaviors that you have defined. Communicate the expectations you have defined with great clarity and in different formats.
  2. Show and tell people what you expect from them. Behavioral change is personal and only happens when people decide it is worthwhile. In addition, people will interpret your commitment to 5S in part by how much energy you put into it. A small amount of energy will be interpreted as a small level of commitment. The more employees see your changes, the more likely they will be to follow the improvements.
  3. Change your behavior. People will pay much more attention to what you do than what you say, so you must act in a way that tells them you mean what you are saying. This goes for the entire leadership team. Audits and steering committee meetings are not the tools to deal with non-conformance. Counterproductive behaviors need to be dealt with in person at the instant they are observed. If a manager or supervisor isn’t dealing with behaviors, give them the choice to change or remove them if they aren’t willing or able. In contrast, be sure to recognize and reward people who are doing the right things. Communicate examples of success with enthusiasm and offer praise to the early adopters.

These activities may seem like more work than it’s worth, but they are not. While the process of behavior change is front-end loaded and full of challenges, the returns on cultural change are enormous and almost impossible for your competitors to replicate. Also, keep in mind that behavior changes apply to almost any form of worthwhile improvement strategy.

In fact, I recently had the privilege of meeting with a leader who is making tremendous progress. He said, “If you’re not focused on changing behavior, beginning with yourself, you’re faking it.” Learn more about the 5 must have qualities for a leader today!

Super Bowl Level Coaching for Business Improvement: Business improvement series

Super Bowl Level Coaching for Business Improvement: Business improvement series

No team gets to greatness without an effective coach. However leading a team takes more than just claiming to be a good coach and what is required can be more daunting than most want to admit.

In fact, The Center for Management and Organization Effectiveness (CMOE) conducted research that clearly shows that when it comes to coaching, the vast majority of managers are better at talking about it than doing it. This helps explain, at least in part, why so many organizations have problems sustaining change.

If the bad news is that most managers have some distance to go to become effective coaches, the good news is that coaching is a skill that can be learned. In fact, coaching is actually a process that can be taught, practiced, and improved over time.

Embedding change into an organization requires mindsets to change, and one’s mindset is more likely to change when managers are effective coaches. The bottom line is that good coaching skills, at all levels of management, are critical for sustaining change.

There are many coaching models out there; the most effective model I’ve seen for organizations is described below.

There are two concentric circles with the outer circle representing the work that the leader must do before they even enter the coaching conversation and the inner circle represents the flow of the actual coaching conversation.

First let’s look at the outer circle. There is one question and three assumptions in the outer ring that must be thought through prior to entering the coaching conversation.

Question

  • I AM FOR YOU: Can I actually coach this person?

Assumptions

  • YOUR SUCCESS: Business goals are aligned with the organizational needs.
  • YOU CARE: You are truly committed to the process.
  • YOU ARE ABLE: You must have the authority and ability to influence change.

The inner circle is about the conversation. It’s simple and to the point and that’s what I like about it.

Four-steps to a successful conversation.

  1. Clarify the gap: Effective coaches take the time to clarify the gap before moving on. It is crucial to discuss the employee’s perspective on the gap as well as yours along with any other perspective you may have. They also know that clarifying the needs is critical.
  2. Impact thinking: We all need new perspective at times. A good coach will figure out which approach will be the most effective in impacting the other’s thinking whether it is using “putting the shoe on the other foot” approach, giving them a broader perspective, informing them of information they don’t have, challenging a paradigm, etc. It is always helpful to know the other’s perspective so you as the coach can help them bridge the gap from their perspective to yours. Although remember that coaching is dynamic and it may be your perspective that might change through the coaching conversation.
  3. Create the plan: You will know you’ve impacted the employee’s thinking when they create the plan. Resist the temptation to create the plan for them. This gives the employee the opportunity to contribute to its creation, increasing the likelihood that they will follow through on the commitments they make.
  4. Follow up: If your coaching has been effective you won’t need to follow up for effectiveness. However, at times it may take several discussions to impact their thinking. Whether it’s to praise and encourage or to challenge, don’t allow your coaching go to waste by not following up.

Harry Levinson, Harvard Professor and Director of the Levinson Institute, said, “Coaching and counseling are the most uncomfortable, avoided, and mishandled of all leadership responsibilities. It is good to know that regardless of how skilled you are in your coaching technique or how well you can articulate and navigate the above four steps, if you practice the following three things you can be highly effective.

Coaching effectiveness

Courageous: Many leaders avoid most issues because they lack the courage to even have the conversation. Coaching effectiveness if first and foremost affected by your ability to put the issue on the table with the employee. Not all issues need addressed but have the courage to put the ones that count on the table.

Support: People have to know that you have good intentions before they will be open to your influence. In fact, your influences will be directly tied to your level of trust, credibility, and respect (TCR) that the other person has for you. The only way you grow your TCR is through real tangible partnership-level support.

Authenticity: People know when someone is being authentic and when they are not. People are very grateful when other are open and honest with them. You will gain significant influence with others when you will have the courage to be authentic in a supportive way.

Good coaching doesn’t result in optimal results every time. Think of your favorite coach, are they leading a team to the Super Bowl this weekend?

What To Know Before You Hire A Lean Consultant: Business improvement series

What To Know Before You Hire A Lean Consultant: Business improvement series

The management consulting industry can be a difficult task, it comes with its disadvantages, but the pros out weigh the cons. In my experience, over 90 percent of the Lean consultants out there don’t know how to transform a culture. The largest need in the small and medium-sized organizations in America relative to Lean is developing the Leadership and culture for the Lean tools to be successful.

Lean requires a set of motives in order to be truly successful:

  • Purpose
  • Empowerment
  • Support
  • Courage
  • Discipline & Accountability
  • Coaching
  • Lean tools

When hiring a Lean consultant, it is important to focus on key details so that your new-hire is successful and driven. Personality and knowledge is key; you need to know your company will enjoy working with your new consultant. Lean consultants need to be motivated to transform a culture and allocate difficult tasks into simple, compelling success for you company.

Here are several things you will want to consider before hiring a Lean consultant:

  • How will they help your organization develop the culture of continuous improvement? If the answer is to do more improvement activities – keep shopping. Their purpose must be to bring others together and support each other as a united team. Being able to work, as team is an absolute must, not everything can be handled by one person alone.
  • What levels within the organization will the consultant be working with? The answer needs to be all for a culture transformation, because leadership defines the culture (intentionally or not). It takes, courage to pursue such a change, and discipline to keep yourself on the right track, being able to hold people accountable for their responsibilities to make sure the job is done right, hopefully the first time.
  • How will your consultant develop Lean Leaders in our organization? Training can’t be the only answer. Training is only 33% effective in most cases. What experience’s do they have? See if they have examples. This is also where coaching comes to play. Coaching is a necessity to leadership skills. A great coach will know how to manage, train, be efficient, and get the job taught and completed right!
  • Will your consultant address the leadership dysfunctions in your organization through all levels? Lean works best in healthy organizations. Hiring a new Lean Consultant gives them the empowerment to create the cultural changes that are required to be successful. Obviously you’ll want someone that qualifies for this type of transition. So, does your consultant bring healthy alternatives to help you make healthier transformations?
  • How does the consultant view the importance of people versus the process side of transforming the organization? How much time does your consultant allocate to people and process? Many consultants recognize the need to work on the people side, but have little to no time planned to actually address the human side of the equation. This is where the client/consultant relationship comes in and why you need to hire a personable consultant. If your using Lean Tools effectively, your consultant will have no problems when it comes to multi-tasking on their daily responsibilities, to clients and your company.

Consultants at Lean Partners get it. Our focus is on developing the leadership, teams, and strategies for the Lean tools to be successful along with applying the tools and teaching them to our clients. We take a balanced approach to transforming our client’s cultures into one where the Lean tools and performance thrives.

Do You Have the Leadership Mindset to LEAD Change? Business improvement series

Do You Have the Leadership Mindset to LEAD Change? Business improvement series

Mindsets are developed over time and they are the unwritten rules that influence behavior. What is important to understand is that leaders create the unwritten rules by their behaviors, which may or may not be consistent with the expectations they communicate.

Edgar Schein is the author of Organizational Culture and Leadership and in his book he writes about changing culture and mindset through embedding mechanisms.

Primary embedding mechanisms:

  1. What leaders pay attention to, measure, and control on a regular basis
  2. How leaders react to critical incidents and organizational crises
  3. Observed criteria by which leaders allocate scarce resources
  4. Deliberate role modeling, teaching, and coaching
  5. Observed criteria by which leaders allocate rewards and status
  6. Observed criteria by which leaders recruit, select, promote, retire, and excommunicate organizational members

The key and consistent message in Schein’s primary embedding mechanisms is that people will pay attention to what leaders do. These are the behaviors that create the unwritten rules, mindsets, and culture.

There are also secondary embedding mechanisms, which will not change mindset or culture alone, but if used, need to be consistent with the primary embedding mechanisms.

Secondary embedding mechanisms:

  • Organizational design and structure
  • Organizational systems and procedures
  • Organizational rites and rituals
  • Design of physical space, facades, and buildings
  • Stories, legends, and myths about people and events
  • Formal statements about organizational philosophy, values, and creed

The most important thing to understand about mindset and culture change is that it will not come from a change in the organizational chart or posters on the wall. Mindset and culture change will only come from a change in leaders’ behavior.

So the bottom line for leaders is this, if you’re not sustaining results it’s likely because behaviors aren’t changing; and if behaviors aren’t changing it’s probably because you aren’t doing what’s needed to change them. Are your employees saying all the right things but doing the wrong things? Learn more today about our pro tips in handling these conflicts.

Five MUST Leadership Qualities For A Successful Lean Transformation

Five MUST Leadership Qualities For A Successful Lean Transformation

Peter Drucker wisely wrote, “Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.”

Great companies are created from great leadership. What makes a great leader? A great leader is one that is actively engaged, visionary, enabling, encouraging, humble, and practice what they preach. Here are three questions to evaluate your own leadership.

  1. Am I saying things that support a continuous improvement culture?
  2. Am I doing things that support a Lean business?
  3. Am I asking my leaders and employees the right questions?

If you answered no to any of these questions or you aren’t confident that your organization’s culture is able to sustain a Lean journey, you will need to move beyond wishing for people to change and begin making it happen. You and your leaders will need to start with changing yourselves first, and then asking the organization to follow.

Here is how to embark on creating those changes.

1. Walk the talk – Go first

Culture is created from its leadership. If there is a disconnect between what is said and what is done, people will always believe what is done. The old adage: “I can’t hear what you’re saying because you actions are speaking too loud.”

There is nothing more powerful for employees than observing leadership doing the actions or behaviors they are requesting from others.

2. Align teams and people in a common direction

Every business environment will have functional groups that each have their own individual views, goals and priorities. Getting everyone to work together while playing by the same rules and reaching for the same goals is a challenge.

It is critical to set overarching goals that each division can tie their goals back to. Teams and individuals must understand how their functional and personal goals relate to the objectives set forth by leadership. Having a common purpose and a shared vision will help everyone in the organization.

Once goals are processes are aligned, look at the results. The hardest part of aligning a leadership team is dealing with those who say they are aligned, but aren’t. Don’t believe the words, look first hand at the actions.

3. Challenge the status quo

Many leaders compare their company to historical performance or to competitors; however, comparing your company to anything other than perfection will result in mediocrity. The first step in challenging the status quo is having a complete and intimate understanding of your current state. Moving forward without understanding your current state, makes it impossible to decide what to challenge.

Once you know where you are and where you want to go, you can begin developing the path and strategies to get there.

4. Enable others to perform at their best

Leaders need to challenge others to think critically. However as a leader, avoid slipping into a mode where you become too analytical and negative. The real goal is to make people feel excited by the opportunity to make a difference. Remember, there’s a fine line between someone perceiving an inquiry as helpful or experiencing it as criticism. Your role is to empower employees to make positive changes and to share their best thoughts.

5. Encourage everyone

Positive people attract others. Great leaders are intentional at giving people hope and making them feel good about their contributions. With every interaction we have with others, we can either zap someone with enthusiasm or sap them with negativity. Are you being a force for positive change?

Many times clients will come to us asking for technical help with a Lean implementation. The tools of Lean are fairly straightforward and easy to learn academically. What is difficult, is that every application of a Lean tool will require some behavior change. It’s the behavior changes required to make the Lean tools effective that is challenging. Behaviors consistent with Lean methodologies require the right thinking which require leadership.

We also help our clients deal with the untouchable leader? You know who they are. The owner’s brother-in-law who has his own set of rules and adds no value. Or the 35 year old survivor who says all the right things in the meeting, but then goes out and tells his buddies what a waste of time it was. Then there’s the technical terror who isn’t held accountable because her manager is afraid of losing precious knowledge. Avoiding poor leaders doesn’t just stop a Lean transformation, it creates a culture of disrespect for the people that work very hard to make positive change.

Don’t underestimate the effort required to change your culture to allow the Lean tools to thrive. Often time it takes a Lean advisor who can help you along the journey so you will see real and sustainable results. Learn more about the 3 leadership changes that bring optimal results today!