Leadership Behaviors for a Lean Organization, Learn the Tools

Lean Nation,

I have been blogging for a few posts on the leadership behaviors needed to create and sustain a lean enterprise.  This week's post will focus on learning the lean tools.  Now the secret sauce of lean improvement is not in the tools.  Never has been and never will be.  Novice organizations do not understand this and describe lean as a toolkit.  If your organization understands that lean is an entire management system, and not a tool kit, you have just learned the first step. (And an important one at that!)


So why do leaders need to understand the tools?  Lean leadership is abut mentoring and guiding teams toward a culture of improvement.  Your new role is to no longer provide solutions to the teams.  The teams job is generate solutions.  That skill might be what got you into your current role, being a solution provider.  However, that skill is less valued in a lean organization.  Your job now, is to ask questions of your teams to help guide their thinking; to be sure the solutions are based on lean principles,  and to be sure the solutions are fact and time based.

So here is the important lesson.  You will never be able to ask the right questions of the teams, guide their thinking, challenge their understanidng of the current situation, and develop people without first understanding and mastering the lean tools yourself. 

Which tools do you need to master?  Here is a great place to start:

1. flow
2. pull
3. defect free
4. visual management
5. kaizen
6. seeing the 7 wastes
7. takt time
8. time observation
9. loading diagram
10. spaghetti mapping
11. communication circle
12. standard work
13. process control

If you do not undersand improvement at this level,  your organization, despite your best efforts will not likley move beyond the lean as a toolkit stage.   Your guidance will only be superficial and this is where many leaders fail. How do you master these tools?  Toyota would tell you to learn by doing under the guidance of an expereinced Sensei.

Lean Blessings!

Ron

Ron Bercaw
President, Breakthrough Horizons
www.breakthroughhorizons.com