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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

It’s Wednesday morning and you are on your way out to the factory to see how the latest improvements are sustaining. You have been thinking about this since last Friday at lunch when the Kaizen Team had their report-out. You just couldn’t believe the impact they had on productivity, throughput, floor space, work in process, and overall organization. You wanted to be out there first thing Monday but as the Plant Manager, you had to attend a quarterly strategy meeting.

As you walk up the new work cell, you are surprised to see it has six people instead of four as the team reported. You are also disappointed to see that some the WIP is back in the area. As you look a little closer and start asking questions you find that many of the improvements that were made last week have disappeared. You are disappointed to say the least. You see Phil, the department supervisor, and make your way over to speak with him. He can see the disappointment on your face and looks a little nervous as you start to speak.

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.

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.