Lean Leadership

"I found Jon to be very supportive and an excellent coach. Jon was the driving force behind the successful restructuring of the business to overcome a 300% increase in volume, a 60% increase in product variety, and a 20% reduction in cost with minimal capital spend."
Keith Matthews - VP Operational Excellence - GE Aviation   Read in full... Leadership

The significant market demands of being ‘quicker, better & cheaper’ than the competition require continuous improvements in the way organisations do things; this in turn means that significant changes are required in the way in which organisations are led. All too often this is ignored and senior managers then wonder why, in spite of all their investment of resources in lean change programmes, the results don’t come through or are not sustainable.

Frequently the answer lies not in the tools or methods such organisations are using but rather in a style of leadership that has become ‘stuck in the past’!

Here are ten acknowledged behaviours of ‘good’ lean leaders:

  1. They understand the difference between managing process and leading people...
  2. They recognise that all leaders require supportive ‘followers’ to be successful and that this support has to be ‘earned’.
  3. They spend a great deal of time walking the business and talking to their employees at all levels to ensure they know what is really going on...
  4. They communicate their vision continuously in a way that people find easy to understand - often through the Lean Policy Deployment Process and they spend more time listening than talking!
  5. They abandon traditional ‘command & control’ management practices
  6. They are proactive in solving problems; they see their role as one of ‘problem solver’ but they never seek to solve problems for people at lower levels in the organisation - instead they facilitate, empower and train others to use problem solving tools / techniques for themselves.
  7. They are comfortable with problems being solved through ‘experimentation’ and encourage learning through the making of mistakes! They recognise this is a vital ‘fertilizer’ to enable employees (& organisations) to grow.
  8. They always praise the smallest of improvements in a sincere way and refrain from ‘witch-hunts’
  9. They encourage the right behaviours in all staff by exhibiting exemplary behaviours themselves and remove those who will not follow suit!
  10. They eliminate stupid rules and regulations...
  11. They demonstrate their commitment to employee welfare at all times.
  12. They commit the other leaders in their organisation to the principles and accept that they will always need to improve their own leadership skills.

Ad Manum Consultants Ltd coaches these behaviours through formal one to one sessions and where appropriate, in group sessions - contact us for more details.