Don't we want to be Lean?

Many people talk about Lean organizations, Lean projects and Lean initiatives in society and in organizations, but still, 60 – 70 years after Toyota began to ramp up its car production and started by introducing what we today call Lean principles, there are at best a handful of companies that have managed to introduce this largely in the West. Many managers say that they want Lean in their organization, but they seem to have trouble understanding their own role in this process. To achieve Lean, management must give up power by delegating authority, involving employees and showing curiosity, humility and patience towards their employees every day.

For those who have studied Lean and experienced it a little up close, this is surprising. Lean is so intuitive and of course, while it is based on all known research on leadership, a motivation to effective ways of working. Lean is modern management and organizational culture in practice, in line with modern research. To think that one can become Lean without real leadership involvement in daily life is an illusion.

There is a difference between what science knows and what we do.

A Danish bestseller says that modern leadership is deadly. As we read this, we can reflect on the fact that it is how modern leadership is practiced that is deadly, not how scientists have concluded that leadership should be practiced. There is a difference between what science knows and what leaders and politicians do. Some important principles of Lean are, for example, customer focus, long-term perspective, a vision or direction to work by a goal we are going to achieve, improvement made in small steps and experimentation with solutions. We replace this with claims that the academic community is the most important, the greater the reforms the better, and the investigations and action plans are more important than satisfied customers and users.

We do not have a Vision for Our Society or our organization that we follow in daily decisions and improvement measures, but we do have a series of activities we should do, because we think they are important. We spend a lot of time controlling each other with subsequent carrot and whip, although we know that this does not give any effect. Even those who should go first in the understanding of modern research in universities and upper secondary schools have difficulty living according to the principles themselves. The silos seem to have become too deep, and knowledge as a business idea has become more important than being able to practice and live by it.

Lean is not an academic exercise

Many argue that Lean is something designed for car manufacturing, and it is primarily a buzzword used to promote courses and advisers to make money. Lean is even perceived as something negative by many, without seemingly having their own experience of using it, or having studied to a great extent how it is intended to work. Unfortunately, it is not so difficult to find examples of lean terms used with poor results. There are probably many who see the opportunity to use this as their business idea, without having in-depth experience with the use of Lean principles or have read available literature.

To be Lean, we must train lean. If you find that your son or daughter will be good at something, such as swimming, playing the piano or skiing, then you might not ask how many books they have read about it last week? You would rather ask if they have been to training, don't you? If we are going to get started with Lean, it is nice to have established some understanding of basic principles, but it is only when we start training for daily exercises in our own organization that we start learning, and it is only after some time learning that we start to understand the potentials of Lean. Implementing Lean is about changing behavior, and the precondition for changing behavior in the organization is that management changes their behavior first.

Do you want to read more about this? The book OKTAV is a practical book about how you as an organization become Lean and what steps you must go through in the first phase to build a Lean culture, and mobilize the organization to start its own Lean journey with all employees involved.