First find a leader, then think about flow

10 January 2016 / article

This is probably the best example of kaizen I’ve ever seen so far:

A few deep thoughts to think about:

They don’t show you how to find a solution to the problem, they first tell you about George, his will to improve and his leadership skills. Lean is people-centric: whatever solution we’ll come up will be developed with the people on the ground: first find a leader.

Then they look at obvious waste, such as too-large boxes, which is, I believe, one of the most amazing skills – not sure I’d have thought of that one myself, but then again, any obvious waste gets the thinking started.

And then they look at the flow: there’s always a way to

Make the work flow better
Make people’s job easier by flowing work more smoothly (less obstacles, steps, waiting, checking, rework, etc.)

Go through the homework list with the people and then… think of next steps and do it again!

Tags: flow, leadership, lean management

Leading author, speaker and researcher, I work on both the "hard" (improve quality, reduce lead-time, eliminate waste) and "soft" (engage people in problem-solving and improvement to develop them to the fullest of their abilities) dimensions of Lean transformation.

I started studying improvement initiatives twenty years ago as part of my PhD. research on Mental Models. I was persuaded by Toyota engineers that to understand lean you had to practice it firsthand and I have been working with supervisors, site managers and now CEOs to leverage their lean efforts into market share, people engagement and bottom line results. You don't know what you don't know and the most surprising thing I've learned as a cognitive sociologist is the value of: see with your feet and think with your hands!

I co-founded the Projet Lean Entreprise and the Institut Lean France. I have written several books and articles about the links between knowledge and management (Managing With Systems Thinking, The Effective Organization, Les Modèles Mentaux), and more recently, co-authored three business novels published by the Lean Enterprise Institute, one about lean turnaround, The Gold Mine, one about lean transformation, The Lean Manager, and a novel about Lean practice, Lead with Respect as well as a Lean manual in French, Le Management Lean.