Getting Senior Leadership Engaged in Lean Improvement

Lean Nation,

I have written many times about the necessity of senior leadership to be "leading" lean enterprise transformation.  I have several posts in this blog and I have several chapters in both of my books dedicated to this topic.  (Taking Improvement from the Assembly Line to Healthcare, and Lean Leadership for Healthcare).  Today's blog will bring another lens to this topic.

I have discussed  that the key to long term sustainable success is getting leadership to think act and behave differently.  In fact check my previous post to review just that topic. So to have leadership begin to think act and behave differently,  you will need your leadership to (or if you are a leader) commit time and energy to the change process.  But what if your change initiatives are part of their time management problem? 

"Huh,  I thought we wanted leadership engaged." How is this possible. 

Many, many, many organizations falsely take a project approach to transformation.  This approach will fail every time.  You can not change an organization's culture by executing a series of projects.  As I have said repeatedly, organizations should pursue improvement along the lines of creating flow and pull, and designing products and services to be defect free along value streams.  Perform a value stream analysis along your key strategic core processes, and execute rapid cycle improvement to change the culture.  

So let's assume that my organization is engaged along the lines of improving four value streams.  A different value stream is running a kaizen event (or rapid cycle improvement) every week of the month.  This seems logical: level the improvement across the month.  From a process improvement perspective, this is ideal.  The workload is leveled across the month.  But from a leadership perspective this is not ideal.

Leadership is now required to be present at four kaizen kick-offs, be present at 3 team leader meetings each week, and attend four final report outs.  Under this format, I have frequently seen each leader assume another leader is present at the various activities, and the corresponding learning will be lost.  Additionally, attendance will begin to wane.  This can be mitigated with a schedule of which leaders need to attend what, but we are still limiting the learning. 

You might consider getting your organization on a rhythm of improvement. By getting on a rhythm lean organizations pick one or two weeks each month that become the designated improvement weeks.  In this format leadership can prepare , well in advance, to be present at the kick-off, daily team leader meetings and the report out.   No excuses.

If your leadership engagement is spotty, check your improvement rhythm.  Get on a cycle of improvement focusing on a single week each month.  I recommend you pick either the second or the third week each month.  Many organizations are usually distracted the first week of each month with month end close, and are distracted again at the end of the month meeting customer requirements for the month or the quarter.

If you can establish an improvement rhythm, you might see your leadership presence and engagement pick up.

Lean Blessings,

Ron

Ron Bercaw
President and Sensei
Breakthrough Horizons Ltd
www.breakthroughhorizons.com
Shingo Award Winning Author