No Rx for Lean
I have a new post published on Jamie Flinchbaugh on LeanBlog. See the full article on that site.
by Jamie Flinchbaugh,
I recently have had the opportunity to review a wide range of sites and companies and provide feedback on their lean journey. One of the things that really surprised me was how many of them were still trying to follow a prescription for lean. I heard things such as “the book says to do this but it doesn’t work for us, what should we do?”
Simple, drop it or change it.
Too many lean thinkers (I use the term loosely because to me, they aren’t thinking) try to take a prescription or recipe and apply it across all sites within a company universally, or across multiple companies. There are many people to “blame” for this (sorry, hate to even use the word) from authors to consultants to new hires into companies. Here’s an author that we’ve come across that, in my opinion, is part of the problem. His statement includes:
I reduced applying lean to almost a prescription that you can follow with detailed steps that have been proven, time and time again. I have a number of case studies in the book where the prescription is laid out and you just have to implement it.
That’s a prescription for one thing: failure. We hope that you don’t follow the same approach. Every organization is different. You have different cultures, resources, skills, business needs, restrictions, and hopefully a vision of your own ideal state that you would like to achieve.
Understand your current state, have a vision of where you would like to go, and chart your own course of action. This is a lot more work, and that’s probably why some people avoid it. But it’s working on the hard that separates from the good lean efforts from those that fail. Take ownership. Only you can lead your organization, don’t try to rely on a prescription.
You can also find me at jamieflinchbaugh.com or on Twitter