Lean Summit 2010 November 3, 2010

Kenilworth, Warwickshire, UK

Reflections on Lean Leadership

Jim Womack, Senior Advisor, Lean Enterprise Institute
A Good Time for Reflection
• Stepping down after 14 years founding &
leading Lean Enterprise Institute in Boston.
• LEI has wonderful new leader: John Shook.
• A key dynamic in the advance of lean –
the great ascent of Toyota, Honda, and
other lean exemplars -- is now leveling off.
• World economy is a mess (“mega mura”)
with failure of financial regulation (no “mega
heijunka”!) that we struggle to address.
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A Good Time for Hansei
Therefore Dan and John and I have
unavoidably been doing some hansei
(critical self-reflection) on:
Where lean has been (the background.)
The current condition (gap and root cause.)
Moving forward (experiments & results.)
An A3 for the Lean Movement.

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Where Lean Has Been
• Long history of humans finding better
ways to design and operate processes
that create more perfect value.
(Perfect value; minimum resource = lean.)
• These efforts emerged from industrial
engineering, operations planning and
control, and quality functions, led by
experts, in large organizations.

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Where Lean Has Been
• Attention focused on tools, deployed by
staffs, in organizations with modern
managers who were increasingly
unsuited to succeeding with these tools.
• A fundamental problem: Lean, process
thinking is inherently horizontal (all value
flows across organizations to customers);
modern management is inherently vertical
(oriented toward the top of the org chart.)

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The Current Condition
• We won the battle of ideas about methods
and tools, including the lean management
tools of strategy management, A3
analysis, and standardized work with
standardized management and kaizen.
• We have diffused lean methods to an
enormous range of activities and
industries, but….
• We have yet to win the battle of
sustainable lean practice.
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The Current Condition
• World wants transformational leadership!
• This often becomes heroes doing
organizational rework in crises because
no management change has occurred to
support the vision of previous trans-
formational leaders (each with a program!)
• In sum: We want and need too much
heroic leadership because we don’t have
enough lean management.

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The Work of Management
• Gain agreement on the few important
things. (Strategy management.)
• Deploy on what’s important, address
problems, and evaluate proposals from
below. (PDCA embedded in A3.)
• Stabilize the organization. (Standardized
work with standardized management and
kaizen.)
• Create next generation of lean managers.
(Repetitive gemba learning with A3.)
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Modern Versus Lean Management
• Authority (control) vs. responsibility
(flexibility.)
• Manage by objectives vs. manage the
process.
• Bosses give answers vs. bosses pose
questions.
• Plans vs. experiments (PDCA).
• Formal education vs. gemba learning.
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Modern Versus Lean Management
• Improvement by staffs vs. improvement
by line managers (supported by staffs.)
• Remote decisions, analyzing data vs. “go
see, ask why, show respect” on the
gemba, in real time.
• Standardization by experts vs. standard-
ization by those touching the process.
• Go fast to go slow vs. go slow to go fast.
• Vertical focus vs. horizontal focus.
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The Current Condition
• Deep tradition of modern management
thinking/behavior needs replacement with
lean management thinking/behavior.
• The creation of value for end-customers
now requires more and more horizontal
coordination of extended value streams.
(Brilliant objects vs. lean solutions.)
• And…there is a very weak tradition of
horizontal management.

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Moving Forward
• We now need transformational lean
leadership to teach and sustain lean
management.
• Starting anywhere in your organization!
• For whatever length of value stream.
• By changing your management behavior.
• So no more heroic leaders are needed!

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Moving Forward
In particular:
• We need to conduct bold experiments
with horizontal management, where value
stream managers take responsibility for
transforming extended value streams.
• These run end-to end across complex
organizations and through independent
enterprises, where no one has authority &
gross sub-optimization rules.
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Moving Forward
• We will need to conduct many A3/PDCA
cycles focused on management.
• We will need to find better ways to report
our results.
• As we become a community of scientists
sharing our failures and successes.
• This is the great challenge for the Lean
Community moving forward.

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