change management

When people talk about a lean journey, they say the word “journey” as if they understand it will take time to change a culture, however their behavior often reveals they don’t have the relentless patience will actually take to create change.  We talked about the effort required to changing a

I have had many conversations lately where people are asking about the simplest way to get started with process improvement.  The simplest way is to start with one simple question – why.  

Do you feel a little out of control of your lean journey? Good. The lean journey is not one that can be so self-contained that one person or team can keep their arms around it. If they can, it either hasn’t reached that important transitional point, or you are choking

I was a clown. Some might think I still am. Let me return to that in a moment. When trying to create change in the organization, we often struggle with ways to motivate people to change behavior. We certainly often aspire to ignite the intrinsic motivation of individuals, and for

It’s time for another installment of Lessons from the Road, my column for IndustryWeek. In the next few installments, I will talk about the lean roadmap, or how to handle the change management of the lean journey. This month, I am talking about the beginning of the journey, The Lean

In my last Lessons from the Road column, I introduced the the idea that culture is the most important element of lean transformation. I was fortunate to have the opportunity early in my lean journey to see just how important the correct behaviors would be, regardless of how well you

A question frequently asked of me is “what do I do about the people who won’t get on board?” This is too broad of a question, because there isn’t a single answer to the question, except “it depends.” What does it depend on? Primarily, the reason for people resisting is

  Last week I posted thoughts on change management inspired by Batman [Kapow! A lesson on change management from Batman?]. I received a lot of notes back on the post, and thought I would returned to the masked hero for more. A common problem I see with change management is

  There is a line in the movie Batman Begins that reminds me a lesson we teach in lean quite often. When Bruce Wayne returns and is planning his new role as Batman, he tells his butler and confident Alfred “people need dramatic example to shake them out of apathy.”

In my travels from one company to another, I hear many of the following phrases… “We need executive sponsorship.” “We need this to be owned top-down.”   “We need the CEO to champion our lean efforts.” These are phrases that I hear over and over as I talk to companies