Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How do I start a continuous improvement program?
How Do I Start a Continuous Improvement Program? For this question, we have created a video response.
Lean Blog-Gotta Go Lean
15 Things Consultants Add That You Should Be Doing On Your Own
There is a bit of a misconception in the Lean community about the value that consultants bring to the table in terms of helping with specific projects. The consensus view is that consultants provide expertise and knowledge to their clients. This is true, but they provide a great deal more Read more…
Lean Blog-Gotta Go Lean
Key Principles for a Lean Business System
One of the mistakes companies make when they try to create a business system or develop a continuous improvement culture is that they focus on the wrong things. They scrutinize behaviors. They spend their energy reacting to unexpected results. They bounce from tool to tool trying to find a fix for their problems.
What they often overlook, though, is that fact that their employees are often not guided by unifying principles. There is no clear corporate identity. Guiding principles are like beacons for the team, and create continuity as people come and go.
While the exact principles you settle on for your organization will vary based on your industry, national culture, corporate mission, and a host of other factors, there is one common thread among all great companies. They have a belief system that is shared by their employees.
Nuts & Bolts Guide: Section
Embrace Facts and Data (Principle)
Far too often, people rely upon gut feel and opinion to make decisions. Whether this is done by leaders directing their teams, or by groups of problem solvers working on their projects, the outcome tends to be the same: poor results.
Nuts & Bolts Guide: Section
Think Long Term (Principle)
One of the problems that we face in business is impatience. We want quick results when we start a new initiative. We want new processes to pay off immediately. As a result, leaders often choose less effective options that provide some return on investment quickly rather than more effective ones that take a while to develop into greater fruition. In large part, this is a function of the pressures of the stock market. Quarterly earnings reports force leaders to think in three month chunks of time.
Nuts & Bolts Guide: Section
Show Respect for People (Principle)
Spend any time around Lean, or any other continuous improvement methodology, for that matter, and you will undoubtedly hear the term “Respect for People.” It is a simple concept that should act as a moral compass in how people do business.
Lean Terms
Scalability
Scalability is the ability to easily ramp up or down to changing requirements. The term is in common use in information technology, specifically in reference to the ability of a system to grow to accommodate increasing traffic. In a continuous improvement sense, it is the ability of a process to Read more…
Nuts & Bolts Guide: Section
Develop Leaders Internally (Principle)
The program leader faces a particularly challenging task in promoting this principle. In a nutshell, he or she will be dictating to the senior staff not only who they hire, but how they spend their time. Many senior leaders spend far too few hours of the week developing their subordinates…and Read more…
Lean Terms
Competitive Advantage
A competitive advantage is a condition through which one organization has to spend fewer resources to get the same benefit as a competitor (or, of course, gets more benefit for spending the same amount of resources.) This advantage can be because of a perception of higher quality products, because of Read more…
Lean Terms
Champion
Making changes can be a rather large challenge. This is especially true when you are committed to making improvements to the value stream as a whole rather than local ones for an individual process. It is common for disputes to occur, especially when a project team recognizes that there can Read more…
Lean Terms
C-Level Executive
C-Level executives are the top individuals in an organization’s hierarchical structure. The most common are: CEO (Chief Executive Officer) CFO (Chief Financial Officer) COO (Chief Operating Officer) There are also frequently c-level executives in charge of marketing or information technology. Some organizations will even go further and assign a chief Read more…
Lean Terms
Attribution Theory
Attribution theory is the study of the psychology behind how people attribute causes to the way they behave and the resulting outcomes. There are two types of attribution. Internal: With internal attribution, the cause of the behavior is believed to be a function of the characteristics and personality traits of Read more…