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The Limits of Lean?

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Lean

Earlier this week I went to ‘An Evening with Simon Hill’. Drawing on his experience of manufacturing industry and Yorkshire Forward, Simon Hill, Executive Director of Business at Yorkshire Forward talked about strategic business improvement using ‘Lean Principles’. Simon chose not to offer a quick reminder of what these Lean Principles are – leaving a proportion of the audience in the dark. As a reminder they are:

  1. Specify what creates value from the customers’ perspective
  2. Identify all the steps along the process chain
  3. Make those processes flow
  4. Make only what is pulled by the customer
  5. Strive for perfection by continually removing waste

With its origins in the world of total quality management Lean Principles provide a wonderful way to ensure efficient product or service delivery by allowing the whole business process to be analysed and made efficient. It emphasises systems, compliance, analysis and objectivity in pursuit of the perfect process. It really is scientific management for the late 20th Century. It is one of several business improvement tools that can help an organisation with one of its purposes – that of the efficient delivery of a product or service.

However increasingly efficiency is not the only game in town. Indeed it is not even the main game for most organisations. Renewal, re-invention and transformation are increasingly the key drivers of sustainable value creation in modern knowledge based economies. If I heard Simen rightly then after a considerable investment of money and time in implementing Lean his business had just about managed to stand still. Now this is an great achievement for a manufacturer of automotive components in South Yorkshire – but I doubt if it carries the seeds for a major economic re-birth.

My concern is the ‘story’ that Lean tells about the nature of business and enterprise. That it is about analysis, rationality, incremental improvement and mediocrity – giving the customer just what they ask for – when they ask for it. It is that the expectations of the customer should drive the production of the organisation. And Lean is not just a set of tools – it is a management philosophy – a culture. It becomes the way we think and act.

Andrew Mawson – one of the UKs most outstanding social entrepreneurs tells of the first time he asked some members of his community what they would really like to do. It turned out that they aspired to go on a day trip to the coast. Fair enough thought Andrew and worked with them to make it happen. After the trip had been undertaken he asked them what they would like to do next? And the reply came – ‘Let’s go on another trip to the (same) coast’! Let’s do it again! Andrew recognised that the aspirations of his customers were narrow. That he could provide experiences far more powerful and effective in driving community development. He understood that they had no real idea of what was possible. So he proposed that their next project was to be a journey across the Sinai desert. As their supplier he transformed their ideas of what could be achieved based on his on his knowledge, experience and expertise. This would never had happened had been trained in Lean principles.

And now Lean Simon tells us Lean consultants are being engaged by Yorkshire Forward to increase organisational efficiency. No doubt pieces of paper will soon be travelling less far on their journey through the offices, being touched by fewer people and processes generally more efficiently. And many of the employees perceptions will be reinforced that their role is not to facilitate the entrepreneurial re-birth of the region – but to design and administer effective bureaucratic processes.

For me business is about emotion, aspiration, imagination, passion, energy and risk. I am not making an argument for waste (although I do often find myself encouraging clients to ‘create slack’) but I am arguing for cultures that favour action and re-invention over perfection. If the price of Lean is a culture that favours analysis and incrementalism over imagination, re-invention and risk taking then I for one find it a price I am not prepared to pay.

At the end of the presentation I asked Simon whether he really felt that Lean held the answers to sustainable competitiveness in knowledge based business – whether it could drive the creativity and innovation necessary to compete in the future. And he answered ‘ No!’.

Better Time Management in an Instant!

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Time Management

Time management has been on my mind for a while now. Early last year I re-read Druckers’ Effective Executive – the second chapter of which, ‘Know they Time’, is devoted to time management. I recommend it highly!

For the vast majority of managers that I work with making significant improvements in their time management is quick and easy. It simply requires them to:

  • Work out their top priority for the coming week/month
  • Block out at least 2 x 90 minute slots each week when they are going to work – without interruption – on moving that priority forward.

It takes no more than that – get time for your priorities on your schedule!

This is important because so many managers just hope to fit progress on key priorities around a morass of standing meetings, e-mail and fire-fighting. Weeks slip by without any focus on progressing the priority. Yet once it is scheduled – and the time protected – BINGO! – the priority gets time and progress is made.

And while I am at it – unless work is really THE most important thing in your life – take great care about giving up week-ends and evenings to do it. Working longer hours is rarely the key to getting more done. It usually results in getting less done and only serves to slow down the rate of work; why have a sense of urgency to get the job done if you can always stay just another half an hour?

If you find that you must work evenings or week-ends then always make sure that you have a firm end-time for the work fixed – and stick to it. Make an appointment with what you love outside of work (family, hobby whatever) immediately after your work commitment and keep it. This will force you to use your time effectively.

Give Your (Best) People Compelling Reasons to Stay

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This is a time of year when people reflect on careers and opportunities. Your best people will have aspirations and ability to pursue them.

  • Do you know what they are?
  • Are you are doing enough to help them stay?

The Mavericks at Work Blog has just published a post helping those with restless hearts and souls to reflect on reasons for leaving or staying in a job. They encourage potential leavers to reflect on the following:

  • Does my company stand for something—anything—special? It’s hard to be thrilled with your job if the company you work for is struggling to succeed, or feels stuck and irrelevant.
  • Am I excited to see my colleagues when I show up for work on Monday morning? “Working for” a company is an abstraction. The reality is that you work with the people closest to you.
  • Do I have a voice at work—does anyone who matters listen to what I say? There’s nothing more depressing and demotivating than feeling that you don’t matter as a person.
  • Am I learning as fast as the world is changing? In a world that moves so fast, the most dangerous thing in anyone’s career is the sense that you’re standing still.
  • Am I making enough money? Strange as it sounds, this is the worst reason to leave a job.

Research tells us that people ‘join an organisation but leave their manager’.

  • Are you doing all that you can to make sure that your best staff, when they think about these questions, decide that there is nowhere they would rather be?

With recruiters telling us that the cost of making a new hire is typically something like 140% of the annual salary of the post this could a very valuable or expensive exercise!

Action Yearning

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‘Santiago taught me about turning dreams into reality – he taught me how yearning has a dynamic to it that is incredibly powerful.  It is important, simply to be open and alive to possibility, to encourage people rather than to be suspicous of them, and to see the potential for success rather than the potential for failure.  This is where true knowledge and learning can be found…’

The Social Entepreneur – Andrew Mawson 

Much wisdom in this piece – whether you are a manager trying to get the best from a team or whether you are supporting entrepreneurs.

The book is a great read too!

Qualifications or Achievement?

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I am often asked whether I would ever consider linking the Progressive Managers’ training to an external qualification such as a management NVQ or similar.  There are several reasons why I resist this.

I work best with managers who are interested in developing their practice – not theory.  Managers who want to make things happen and achieve outstanding results.  Not managers who want to spend time sharing their thoughts on case studies and texts or preparing evidence of what they can do for an assessor.

Most learning does not happen in the workshops that I run. It happens when people go back to the workplace and start to follow the recipes and routines that they have been taught.  I know that what I teach is useful, practical and effective.  I also know that the best results are obtained when managers take what I teach, apply it and then develop it based on their own experience, context and culture.  It is only those that apply what I teach and learn from it that should be recognised.  Not anyone who happens to show up for training.

Why pay an awarding body or an assessor to make judgements about what you know and can do?  Let your results speak for themselves.  Focus on being recognised by your peers, reports and your boss as an outstanding manager who achieves outstanding results – both in terms of performance and people development.  As long as you keep your CV up to date with clear descriptions of what you have achieved you will be as attractive to a future employer as any MBA.

I know very few people that really trust management qualifications.  Management qualifications are increasingly becoming devalued.  The qualifications are poor proxies for what someone can actually do.  Do any serious recruiters really pay much attention to whether you have an NVQ level 4 in Operational Management or not?  Certainly not the ones that I talk with!

This devaluation is partly because assessment, although expensive in time and effort, is very weak.  Having a qualification is, in my experience, no guarantee that you can achieve results as a manager.

The complexity of most management qualification structures does not help either.  Nearly all have a ‘core and options’ structure that means Sherlock Holmes might struggle to understand from a qualification what you know and can do.  Indeed in the UK if you look up management qualification there are over 400 recognised on the National Database of accredited qualifications.

Now please don’t get me wrong.  There are some great managers who have worked hard to get qualifications.  The problem is that there are also many average and poor managers who have the same qualifications.  If you want to make a positive difference and develop a successful career then focus on developing your practice – not picking up qualifications.

And if you are one of those good managers with the qualifications then don’t rely on the qualification to make you stand out from the crowd.  Emphasise the responsibilities that you have held and what you have achieved in relation to those responsibilities.  If you are a good manager then this will get you recognised by your bosses, peers and recruiters.