Getting Started with Lean Thinking and Practice
Start Your Lean Transformation with Confidence
Launching a lean transformation doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. Whether you’re a senior leader, team manager, or part of an improvement office, Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) can help you clarify the purpose of your efforts, identify your current state, and begin experimenting toward a better future. Schedule call and let’s think through it together.
How LEI Helps Organizations Get Started with Lean
LEI coaches work with you to design a learning engagement that matches your situation, focusing on:
- Starting with a Clear Business Problem to Solve – whether transforming an enterprise or a single operation, you must begin with defining a clear problem to solve.
- Developing Problem-Solving Capabilities in the Organization – developing employees to solve problems every day is the crux of sustainable transformation.
- Learning by Doing – coaching you to solve real problems where the work is done.
Let’s start from your specific situation, get to know you, your business, challenges, and goals and partner with you shoulder-to-shoulder along the journey.
Steps to Start Your Lean Transformation
LEI will lead you through a “Getting Started” assessment in which we collaborate with your leadership team to understand the current state in one, two, or all these pivotal areas:
- Strategy and Management Systems
- Operations
- Product Development
Our process consists of three straightforward steps:
- Scope the Problem to Solve: Determine what to focus on including purpose and who to involve. We also provide introductory training as needed.
- Assess the Current State: Engage in a “go-see” with your leadership team to grasp the current state of the organization. This includes observing value-creating work and management practices. Following the go-see, we facilitate discussion with leadership about the current and future state vision for the organization.
- Create a Plan for Transformation: Alongside your leadership, we develop an actionable plan to close the gap between the current and future state. LEI takes a socio-technical approach, combining process transformation with leadership development to enable sustainable performance improvement.
We look forward to helping you develop your lean thinking and practice!
Case Studies

Learn how a lean mindset and practices are reining in workplace disruptions, minimizing workers’ physical aches and pains, and improving flow at Turner Construction.
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Learn how Turner Construction uses hoshin kanri (strategy deployment) and A3 problem-solving to create a management system that ensures it achieves its strategic business objectives.
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Learn how a restaurant’s management team discovers that enabling cooks to stay focused
on value creation improves business performance and makes them more effective leaders.

A case study in improving an operator’s work
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