Most people know I don’t pull any punches, not even when it comes to myself. Here is a true story that describes the failed delivery of Lean leadership education for executives of a large multi-national corporation. It illustrates why
organizations continue to have limited success with Lean management and provides insights into the evolution of my Lean leadership education. It is a dose of honesty that others would never share.
A while ago I met with the Lean office personnel of a large and very successful company to plan a Lean leadership education session for the CEO and his direct reports. The Lean office learned about me through my Practical Lean Leadership workbook and felt that my approach to teaching REAL Lean and the “Respect for People” principle were extremely important to the company’s future. During the day we reviewed a large amount of material and discussed where changes needed to be made. Towards the end of the day, a few senior executives came to the conference room to review what we had accomplished. I went over some of the learning modules, and, after each one, an influential senior executive gave me the same feedback: “They’ll say, ‘So what?’” Meaning, others executives would say “So what.”
Afterwards, Lean office people became very concerned whether or not the executive team would be receptive to this or any Lean leadership education. I too had a lot of concerns about this customer and worried that a short course might not go well. Despite this, a date was scheduled for a 1.5 day Lean leadership course with the senior management team. In the interim, we continued developing the modules to have greater impact among executives whom we knew would be difficult to please despite the CEOs professed interest in and commitment to Lean management.
At the start of the short course the CEO gave a wonderful, passionate, hour-long speech about the current state of the company and what the future could bring. As with any company mired in decades of batch-and-queue material and information processing and facing increasing competition, the situation was ugly. The CEO did a great job spelling out the need for change in the company and emphasized that this would happen only through personal changes made by each senior executive. The CEO set me up perfectly. It was without doubt the best foundation ever laid for me by a CEO prior to the start of a course.
At the end of his speech, the CEO asked his direct reports to use the Lean leadership course to develop specific personal action plans. I then began the course and things went well for the remainder of the first half-day, during which time the CEO was present. The second day was a different story.
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The CEO could only attend for one hour in the morning of the second day but would return at the end of the day to review the executives’ Lean leadership action plans. The morning began with a review of leaders’ roles and responsibilities in relation to the “Respect for People” principle. It started out well, but some executives began to lose focus and began behaving in ways were at odds with the “Respect for People” principle that they were learning about. Unfortunately, they did not comprehend even the most elementary practical aspect of the “Respect for People” principle.
In addition, many of the executives believed that Lean management was not applicable to the “knowledge work” performed by the employees. The executives were caught in an anchoring trap that affected their ability to process new information. The “we’re different” attitude provided more evidence that they were not interested in having to think and do anything differently. They were satisfied with their leadership mindset, skills, and capabilities, despite overwhelming evidence of the need for personal and organizational change.
The second half of the day focused on the “Continuous Improvement” principle. You might think that conditions would improve as the focus shifted to that which they were more interested in, but that did not happen. The time was soon approaching when the CEO would return expecting to see specific action plans from each executive. Earlier in the day I provided specific actions which they could use in their report-out to the CEO. In essence, I provided some of the answers to them. The executives should have discovered the answers themselves, which leads to much better learning and application, but that did not happen. To my surprise, not one of the dozen or so executives used even a single specific action that I had listed after each of the three modules.
Each executive offered one or two items to the CEO as their Lean leadership action plan, all of which were disconnected from the Lean leadership course. Their plans were unchallenging, perfunctory activities that they had already been doing or had previously committed to do. The executives sandbagged the CEO. Despite this, the CEO accepted what was presented to him by his direct reports and closed out the meeting.
A day or two later the CEO had this to say in an e-mail to his executive team:
“I was personally disappointed by Bob. I had hoped for a strong experience in the room, who could convert the somewhat soft debate on Lean leadership into something very concrete - like what we saw from Joe from BigFoodCo; clear, straight-forward, and strong.”
Unfortunately, the CEO confused Lean leadership education (me, “Continuous improvement” + “Respect for People” - i.e. REAL Lean) with BigFoodCo’s corporate program/initiative narrowly focused on using Lean tools to cut costs and eliminate waste in operations (Joe, operations V.P., “Continuous improvement” only – i.e. Fake Lean). It is an inappropriate, apple- to-oranges, comparison. All the CEO and his direct reports really wanted was a quick training course on Lean tools with a clear explanation of bottom line impact - Joe’s Fake Lean, not my REAL Lean. The CEOs thinking and decision-making was distorted by a confirmation bias, where information that fits his view was accepted while that which conflicted with it was ignored.
Remember the “So what” comments from several months earlier? Now it is clear what was meant by that. It meant that the executive team would be indifferent to the teachings if they were not given the exact financial impact (how much and when) of Lean leadership. Too bad I found out about that after the course was delivered. The dozen or so executives, most less than 50 years old, wanted the process improvements and financial gains from Lean, but without having to think or do anything differently themselves. The leaders had no interest in leading a Lean transformation; they simply wanted to hold others accountable for using Lean tools to cut costs and improve productivity.
The CEO also said in the e-mail:
“While Bob has a nice theoretical background on the topic, I felt he had far too little concrete practical experience.”
The CEO, like most people, misunderstands the word “theory” (read my 4 August 2011 post). More importantly, my work on Lean leadership has never been theory-based, and I never present any theory to executives. I have always been an empiricist, never a theoretician. The CEO also ignored my nearly two decades of practical Lean experience. While any CEO with zero Lean experience can certainly judge others’ Lean experience, they are likely to misjudge it, and, as a result, make the exact same errors as thousands of other CEOs. This CEO had already made his first big blunders. While it is never too late to recover, expensive and time-consuming re-work is assured.
Two obvious questions emerge from what happened:
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My short course on Lean leadership was a failure from the customers’ perspective and mine too. I could have attributed this to a mismatch in expectations between the Lean office and what the executives wanted, or convinced myself that there were no problems with me or with my Lean leadership course. Instead, I pulled the andon cord on my work. This experience gave me much to reflect on, offered important lessons-learned, and showed me new opportunities for improvement (for which I am always grateful).
The outcome reinforced some things that I had experienced before, but with significantly sharper contrast. For example, key details related to Lean leadership are perceived by executives as being at too high a level (hence, “theoretical”). It has taken some time for me to see what they see because direct feedback on this point is often missing. I will do a better job of showing how the perception that the details are theoretical is incorrect, and that the details themselves either are, or point to, specific and practical actions to apply daily to help executives become Lean leaders.
Related to this is executives’ unfamiliarity with Lean management in general and Lean leadership in particular. The large gap between the leadership thinking and daily routines among executives in conventionally managed businesses compared to Lean businesses is well understood. Deep familiarity with Lean leadership can make it easy for me, the teacher, to forget that the gap is more than just large, it is a chasm. Executives do not realize that for them, Lean management is the Grand Canyon of leadership. I must to do a better job of preparing them for that realization. How will I do that?
Based upon this and other experiences, I have once again improved my approach to teaching Lean leadership to executives. In the past, it has always been kaizen (continuous improvement); this time it is kaikaku (radical improvement). You can see my Executive Roundtable process here. It consists of four components: pre-work, Executive Roundtable, post-work, and follow-up. The format is designed to ensure that executives gain a similar base of knowledge at the start to help them understand their challenges and opportunities. It also informs executives of many of the specific and practical things that they must do differently to participate in and lead a Lean transformation.
Pre-work consists of understanding current state thinking and decision-making, the rationale for wanting to adopt Lean management, anticipated leadership roles and responsibilities, and desired outcomes. Next, the executives have to read key works related to Lean leadership and complete homework assignments. The pre-work then requires 10 Whys analyses. All pre-work must be thorough, complete, and neatly organized in a binder.
The Executive Roundtable begins with some strict ground rules, followed by detailed feedback on the pre-work that was submitted to me. Then, we begin the conversation on Lean leadership, followed by the two Lean principles, “Continuous Improvement” and “Respect for People.” Next comes the post-work, which is a refinement of the pre-work, and daily personal Lean practice. Finally, there are one-day follow-up meetings with the executives at 90-day intervals after the Executive Roundtable.
One more thing: What about the up-front financial justification for adopting REAL Lean management and for becoming Lean leaders? This is a prime example of non-Lean thinking that plagues most executives who are in the process of considering Lean management. Executives who apply their conventional management thinking to bean-count everything Lean, timed for quarterly financial reporting to Wall Street, create insurmountable barriers that only serve to perpetuate the status quo. This is a big mistake.
While the financial and non-financial benefits of REAL Lean are well known, the reason for adopting Lean management must be to benefit customers and for growth (non-zero-sum) - not to satisfy narrow short-term interests such as cost-cutting, as Joe from BigFoodCo was doing.
If leaders want big changes in the company, then they must also make big changes to themselves. In particular, they must change their calculi (systems of calculation). It is not sensible to ask what financial savings a new Lean culture will bring. The better question is: What costs (and delays) are you willing to incur by not having a Lean culture? Management cannot get at the savings, not to mention the learning, without developing a new Lean culture. And culture change must be led by the executive team, each of whom has to learn how to think and do things differently.
That is why I say, Lean management is the Grand Canyon of leadership. My new Executive Roundtable process is designed to help those leaders who want to cross the chasm.
