The Lean Paradox
How can a growth specialist endorse the principles of Lean? After all, isn’t bigger better? The more the merrier?
BY MARY CONNOR
Lean is a paradox: To grow, one needs to shed useless processes. To succeed, a culture of discipline needs to be established; yet it is a discipline that calls for flexibility and adaptability. To improve, constant changes are implemented—but how can you regularly make changes without creating chaos? How can the answer be to ask more questions?
The seeming contradictions in Lean are something I get asked about regularly when I consult with businesses that don’t know exactly how the principles are supposed to work. I first explain how eliminating or streamlining processes allows for growth. By eliminating the waste of inefficient procedures, an organization can rapidly add capacity. This frees up cash that could be frozen in inventory—and capacity and cash are both are needed for growth. Other growth benefits of Lean are realized when an organization can secure new business from existing or new customers because of newly developed competitive strengths such as shorter lead times, lower cost, and better quality.
For those concerned about how a company can continually improve while retaining some stability in the organization, I respond by talking about Lean culture. Culture is a set of shared beliefs, customs, and practices carried out by a group of people. By following a cultural structure, people identify with the goals of their group as well as further them. It’s true in a business culture, too. An organization should develop cultural structures that promote accountability, compel the right behavior, and remove opportunities for error. By standardizing business processes in this way, grey zones for decision-making are eliminated. Organizations where Lean culture has been fully embraced can begin to extend beyond the organization to grow with other Lean external partners in the supply chain.
Structure is a good thing, especially for those who are overwhelmed by the crises of day-to-day operations. For Lean initiatives to take root, it is essential to stabilize things in the organization before making massive changes. An organization with excess inventory, overtime, and expediting usually has unstable processes and an insecure workforce. Focus first on stabilizing.
Lean has several tools with which to create structure, such as Flow and Visual Workplace, which help to quickly expose problems. Exposing and solving problems are at the heart of the Lean system. Once identified, issues can be addressed and corrective action taken. The simplified model: Standardize the work, find problems, fix them, standardize the fix so the problems don’t recur, repeat.
When first introduced to Lean, I find that it is a common misperception for businesses to think it’s all about learning these sorts of techniques and tools. But in actuality, tools such as kan-bans are often temporary responses until a better solution is found or conditions change. To achieve the ideal of continuous improvement, employee involvement at all levels of the organization is necessary. Understanding critical Lean tools and strengthening problem-solving skills is essential.
The Lean model is grounded in questions. We don’t tell, we ask; we don’t command, we engage. The Socratic style of iterative questioning helps employees reflect on the clarity and completeness of their ideas for improvement. In a true Lean environment, all assumptions are confronted with questions. Can we reduce or eliminate waste? Can we keep the material flowing? How does this activity benefit the customer? By relentlessly challenging processes, we continually find ideas for improvement. In a Lean environment, the notion of the ideal aims for zero defects, on-time delivery, a batch size of one, and a safe working environment. Seeking the ideal can be a major source of the creative tension that fuels further improvements. In this way, the answer really is to ask more questions.
Though it may seem confounding at first, Lean is elegant in its simplicity. But simple does not mean easy. If you settle, you send a message that good enough is good enough—which is the only truly contradictory notion when it comes to Lean.