Lean Leadership Approach
We define Lean as the systematic elimination of waste through a continual effort to decrease inefficiency; the lean leader strives to create a more efficient organization. Lean leadership is a philosophy. It is a consistent way of thinking and being in your role as a leader. The focus of this approach is on raising new leaders and help their team embrace a culture of continuous improvement. Learn what we mean by lean leadership style and its principles.
What is Lean?
Lean is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Lean is the systematic elimination of waste through a continual effort to decrease inefficiency. Lean is centered on preserving end customer value with less work. Lean manufacturing is a management philosophy derived mostly from the Toyota Production System (TPS).
What is Lean Leadership?
Lean Leadership originated in Japan from Toyota Headquarters. The idea of lean leadership was created to systematically eliminate “muda” or waste while streamlining production. While leadership involves soft skills that successful executives develop during their careers, Lean leadership requires us to leverage the “systematic” component of the Lean definition. The role of the leaders within the organization is the fundamental element of systematically sustaining the progress of lean thinking. It is the key managerial values and attitudes needed to sustain continuous improvement in the long run. It is a continuous way of being for all people in an organization, a never-ending search for a better way.
It is the ability of a leader to create an organization, department, or team that has the right combination of philosophy, people, process, and problem-solving that can create a lean organization. It is an environment of teamwork and improvement versus being a set of tools to be implemented. For lean leadership to be sustainable it needs to become a culture. Through a continual effort to decrease inefficiency, the lean leader strives to create a more efficient organization.
Characteristics of Lean Leadership:
1. Continuous Improvement
2. Lean Leader has a long term vision of the challenges one needs to face to realize one's ambition and has the ability to challenge oneself every day to see if one is achieving the goals.
3. Lean Leader understands that no process can ever be thought perfect and hence strive for improvement, innovation, and evolution.
4. Lean Leader has respect and an attitude of taking every stakeholder’s problems seriously and making every effort to build mutual trust.
5. Lean leader takes responsibility for other people reaching their objectives.
6. Lean Leader encourages engaging people through their contribution to team performance and strongly believes in developing individuals through team problem-solving.
7. Lean Leader has the experience of leading lean transformations.
8. Lean Leader has process-oriented thinking and they focus on building the right process to bring the right results.
9 Lean Leader has exceptional relationship-building skills and they focus on building trust.
10 Lean leaders are advocates of change. They are change coaches and know how to implement change.
Seven Types of Deadly Waste:
The seven types of waste that a lean leader focuses on include:
1. Delay:
Delay on the part of customers waiting for service or for delivery, time spent in queues or awaiting a response, or when the item/service was not delivered as promised. Also known as queuing, waiting refers to the periods of inactivity in a downstream process that occurs because an upstream activity does not deliver on time. Idle downstream resources are then often used in activities that either don’t add value or result in overproduction.
2. Duplication/Extra Processing:
When a staff member has to re-enter data, repeat details on forms, copy information or answer queries from several sources within the same organization. This type of waste refers to procedures that are made after the product is completed because of fabrication defects or bad storage and handling. Making too many inspections and not focusing on making new designs that could remove problems is also included in this type.
3. Unnecessary Movement:
Redundancy of movement within a process or poor ergonomics in the service encounter. This type of waste means having too many transports for a certain material or work in progress transportation. It also includes product deterioration or damage which occurs during transports and the prolonged transport times, in which there is no profit.
4. Unclear Communication:
Time spent seeking clarification, confusion over product or service use, and wasting time finding a location that may result in misuse or duplication. Also includes missing or misinformation, confusing goals & metrics.
5. Incorrect Inventory:
When inventory is out-of-stock, when the provider is unable to get exactly what was required, or when substitute products or services are unavailable. This refers to inventory that is not directly required to fulfill current customer orders. Inventory includes raw materials, work-in-process, and finished goods. Inventory all requires additional handling and space.
6. Opportunity Lost to Retain or Win Customers:
This occurs when there is a failure to establish rapport, ignoring customers, or when the staff is rude to customers.
7. Service Transaction Errors/Defects:
This occurs when there are product defects, service errors, or lost/damaged goods. These are products or services that do not conform to the specification or Customer’s expectation, thus causing Customer dissatisfaction. These factors generate more production time and general dissatisfaction among both employees and customers.
Advantages of Lean Leadership:
1. Through creating a philosophy of lean leadership more and more organizations are able to identify problems quicker, design solutions accurately, and implement them at a rapid pace.
2. Lean helps in reducing their costs and increasing the level of trust based on relationships with their customers and people.
Book to Read/References:
The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development by Jeffrey K. Liker and Gary L. Convis (2011)
Related Links
You May Also Like
-
Emergent leadership occurs when a group member is not appointed or elected as leader, but rather that person steps up as the leader over time within-group interactions. Have you ever faced challenges in getting accepted into your new role of position as a leader? Groups don't automatically accept a new "boss" as a leader. Emergent leadership is what you must do when taking over a new group. Learn more about emergent leadership.
-
Narrative leadership is interpreted as the leader who aspires to construct leadership by telling stories. Leadership is a task of persuasion, of winning people’s minds and hearts. Storytelling is thus inherently suited for the task of leadership. Learn about the narrative leadership style and how to use this style to inspire and motivate followers or to manage change.
-
We define Lean as the systematic elimination of waste through a continual effort to decrease inefficiency; the lean leader strives to create a more efficient organization. Lean leadership is a philosophy. It is a consistent way of thinking and being in your role as a leader. The focus of this approach is on raising new leaders and help their team embrace a culture of continuous improvement. Learn what we mean by lean leadership style and its principles.
-
Power is the ability to exercise influence or control over others. Leadership involves authority and it is very important for leaders to understand what type of power they're using. The 5 Types of Power in Leadership are Coercive power, expert power, legitimate power, referent power, and reward power. Authority is the right to command and extract obedience from others. It comes from the organization and it allows the leader to use power.
-
Have you ever resonated that there seem to be as many different ways to lead people as there have been great leaders? When we recall the success of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon Bonaparte to Steve Jobs and Jack Welch, we also notice that they all used different approaches that were suitable to their specific situations and circumstances. Over the last century, researchers and psychologists have developed simple ways to describe the “Styles of leadership” and in this section, we will explore these commonly known leadership styles.
-
Understanding of how individuals of different cultures interact with each other is very important. Not all individuals can adapt to the leadership styles expected in a different culture whether that culture is organizational or national. In a fast-paced business environment, developing a richer understanding and sensitivity to other cultures is a skill that leaders must possess. Learn to be effective in a cross-cultural setting.
-
Laissez-faire is a style of leadership that affords the group members a great deal of independence. Tasks are delegated to the group members and they are responsible to see the project through to fruition. Research has shown that this style of leadership leads to the lowest levels of productivity. This article explains this style and covers the implications of having a hands-off approach and the situations where this style could be effective.
-
Charles Darwin had once commented that “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” Agility means the capability of rapidly and efficiently adapting to changes and recently, agility has been applied in the context of software development, agile enterprise, and agile leadership. Agile leaders play an important, even essential, role in scaling agility in an organization. Understand how being an agile leader helps in effectively catalyzing organizational change.
-
What are the functions which a leader does to establish as a leader? What are the activities undertaken by them to become great leaders, rather revolutionary leaders? The most important tasks done by a leader in all situations are defining the vision, mission, and goals, leading the team, administrative functions, motivating followers, decision making and conflict resolution, and continuous development.
-
A good leadership style is something that every effective leader must have in order to succeed, but identifying what that entails or does not entails might be difficult to understand. Most of the research on leadership focuses on the exemplary, best practices, and positive attributes of effective and successful leaders. This article talks about a new approach to learn leadership using lessons from bad leadership. That is the lessons to be learned by examining leaders who have not effectively exercised their power, authority, or influence.
