Executive Leadership

Why Lean Gets Business Backwards (and why that’s a good thing)

Most executives think their role is to first define a strategy, then the organizational structure needed to implement the strategy, and then the systems needed to sustain the strategy. “And they’ve learned they also need some kind of involvement program,” said Michael Ballé, coauthor of The Lean Manager and The Gold Mine, popular business novels about lean transformations.Lean takes the opposite approach, according to Ballé, who also writes the Gemba Coach column. “The basic assertion of lean is that if every year you are serious about improving your safety, your quality, your flexibility, and your productivity by involving everybody every day, your strategy will emerge, your organizational structure will set itself right, the systems you need will become apparent, and of course involvement will be built in.”Watch the short video to learn more about how this impacts you, customers, and suppliers.