Lean Leadership or Leandership
I don´t want to give you the typical Leadership lecture. To start with, here you have this acronym of the word Leandership:
- L.- Listening
- E.- Example
- A.- Attitude
- N.- Natural
- D.- Development
- E.- Excellence
- R.- Risilience
- S.- Surround
- H.- Humbleness
- I.- Innovation
- P.- Purpose
Is Lean Leadership different to any other kind of Leadership? Leadership is just Leadership, but I would like to underline some important differences.
Jeffrey J. Liker, author of the “Toyota Way” book saga (one of the persons who knows more about Lean management and Toyota´s success), has developed The Lean Leadership Model that I am trying to present you.
Before we start talking about the 4 different points of the model, we will focus on the values of Toyota, I will try to sumarise it as much as possible:
- Challenge: “A problem is an opportunity of Improvement”; “Problem Solving, as much as we can find, but let us solve them forever”
- Go and See: “Do not let anybody to tell you” “Do not let them tell you tales”
- Teamwork: “No one is as good as all of us together”
- Respect: “Respect is not about hierarchy» Nobody is better or less than others” “Leadership is respect”
- Kaizen Mind “Here you have the 10 points of the Kaizen spirit”
- Abandon fixed ideas
- Think of ways to make it possible
- No excuses needed
- Go for the simple solution, not the perfect one
- Correct mistakes right away
- Use your wit, not your wallet
- Problems are opportunities
- Repeat “why?” five times
- Seek ideas from many people
Let´s go now with the 4 points of the Lean Leadership model. You don´t need to finish one to start with the next, in fact the best is to work on them all in parallel.
Los 4 puntos del Liderazgo Lean
Points 1 & 2: Commit of self-development and Coach and develop others
Those are key points in any Leadership model, but Why is it different? What does it provide?
To answer this question about what does it provide, I still keep wondering What is lean management if not people development? What is lean if not using the talent of people?
The change is that in the Lean leadership model you need to keep the next behaviors day to day:
- We all need to be coaches
- We all need someone helping us in the day to day; on our way to Improvement we need a coach.
Some tools that can help us are:
- Toyota Kata (Kata Improvement and coaching kata)
- TWI, to develop skills and encourage the training as the improvement KEY
- Harada Method, the spirit of self-reliance… because “Anybody can succeed”
Point 3: Support Daily Kaizen
In theory, we all support the improvement, but How do we do it?
Do we just check the status at the end of the month or term?
An important key of Leadership or Lean Leadership is to set example to others. To Lead seating an example.
We need to strengthen the improvement from above. EVERYBODY has to suggest improvements (read my post “getting involved in 29 seconds”), but also EVERYBODY has to know how to solve problems (PDCA, PDCA, PDCA… this is nothing but to follow the problem solving model “for everybody”) in all the organization. If we don´t do it, How can we possibly expect it?
Another way to “Support daily kaizen”
In organisations (as in real life) “we study if there is an exam”, so the best option is to make an exam to our people every day. In that way, we will probably install the habit of “studying every day” (complicated). We can achieve this “Checking standards every day, everywhere, with everyone in the organisation”
Point 4: Create Vision and align goals
Speaking In Lean Management terms it is called “Hoshin Kanri”
All the organisation has to have clear where they are going at mid and long term, but TODAY is the way of achieving the goals. A customer told me once: “Minute makes the hour, the hour makes the shift, the shift makes the day, the day makes the week”
Everyone in the organisation has to have clear their key performance indicators and the goals, hour by hour (let´s start day to day). The best would be to follow the order I learned when I worked in FORD
How to display goals in the organisation SQDCME:
S: Security
Q: Quality
D: Delivery
C: Cost
M: Morale
E: Environment
The first one is inalienable, safety os staff How could we demand anything if we do not provide security?
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