Leading Lean
Elevating the effectiveness of your lean efforts depends greatly on leadership engagement; not just leadership support, but engagement. In this 6-video course, we cover 5 leadership moves that are really useful in a lean transformation. They are the ones that you hear about time and time again for any leadership challenge, but each has a distinct fit and function in supporting a transformational lean journey.
Watch the Leading Lean Video Course on YouTube
In this video, Jamie Flinchbaugh reveals the critical distinction between passive support and active lean leadership. Discover the power of the change formula (HxVxF>R) where hatred of current reality, vision of ideal state, and first steps must collectively overcome resistance to change. Learn why leading lean is an active pursuit available to everyone, not just a title, and how creating creative tension between current reality and ideal state serves as the catalyst for meaningful transformation. Understand why deliberate leadership moves are essential for sustainable change and why many transformation efforts fail by accepting mere buy-in rather than demanding true engagement.
Jamie Flinchbaugh explores why effective leadership in lean transformation requires strong teaching abilities. He shows that leaders must become teachers to ensure alignment, demonstrate their conviction, and shape organizational culture through behavior. The discussion covers various teaching mechanisms—from formal classroom settings and cascade teaching to coaching, strategic questioning, creating learning situations, and facilitating group reflection.
Build Tension Not Stress
This exploration reveals the critical distinction between harmful stress and productive tension in lean leadership. Learn to create the “rubber band effect”—the necessary tension between current reality and ideal state that drives transformation. Organizations often inappropriately relieve this tension by lowering their vision or inflating current performance assessments. Leaders must instead clarify current reality through direct observation while creating compelling visions of ideal states. Action steps emerge as the essential third ingredient in the tension formula, powering continuous improvement without creating debilitating stress.
Eliminate Fear and Comfort
Fear and comfort zones block learning in lean transformations. Jamie Flinchbaugh presents a framework of comfort zones, learning zones, and fear boundaries, showing how leaders must expand the sweet spot between comfort and fear where growth occurs. This video covers three safety types (physical, emotional, professional) that push back fear, how risk reduction enables experimentation, and techniques for deliberately shrinking comfort zones. Learn practical self-improvement methods like advisory boards and forced habits that leaders can use while building learning cultures in their organizations.
Lead Through Visible Participation
Distinguish between leadership support and true engagement in lean transformation. Jamie Flinchbaugh explains why leaders must move beyond proclamations to active participation, demonstrating behaviors rather than just endorsing them. This video covers how role modeling, direct observation of culture change, and aligning actions with words builds organizational trust. Learn the three engagement levels: personal application, coaching staff, and developing transformation roadmaps. Discover why setting specific leadership expectations prevents the common mistake of thinking support alone drives lean success.
Build Lean into Your Personal Practice
Leaders must personally practice lean principles, not just delegate them. Learn to apply the Lean House framework through actionable strategies: minute-by-minute work observation, eliminating daily 5-second wastes to gain annual capacity, standardized decision-making criteria, root cause analysis for missed goals, and structured learning with reflection. Discover why effective lean leaders schedule weekly reflection sessions in varied locations and why personal lean practice forms the foundation for organizational transformation.