Show me the money
Lean in short is this: customer satisfaction derives from employee satisfaction, or, to be more specific, satisfying customers (in their varied preferences) requires personal job fulfillment and continuous learning. In this day and age, few people would dispute any of this, although they may balk at the weird Japanese terms of the “how.”
Still, “show me the money!”, right? Let’s look at the alternative model to Lean. It usually looks like this. A strong leader makes gutsy calls in terms of high-return investments, picks “go-to” people to implement his strategy and makes sure the necessary systems are in place to deliver results. Enough of this “develop people and pray” stuff! Good, direct leadership is easy enough to understand. And if each part of the company is profitable—and this profitability is leveraged by specific return-on-investment projects—profitability will mathematically increase.
Read the post on the Lean Edge.
