10 signs that your Lean Program is failing (and what to do about it) - Part 2 of 2

In Part 1 of this article, I discussed the first 4 of the 10 key indicators that can be used to assess whether an Organisation is on the road to failure on their Lean Excellence journey and, if they are, some advice on what you can do about it.

In Part 2 I've addressed the final 6, which cover the last 3 of the 5 essential elements of effecting successful Change Leadership:

Resources, Skills and Plan

VCRSP Matrix adapted from Knoster, T. (1991) Presentation in TASH Conference. Washington, D.C.

Resources:

5. Too many initiatives and overburdened people:

The organisation has far too many initiatives, projects and ‘must wins’ running, which can be diagnosed by observing a high degree of overdue milestones, constant re-planning, a low quality of outcomes and over-burdened associates.

It is common to have project reviews where status updates are convoluted but ultimately report delays or ineffectual results. Story-telling is the norm, explaining why it’s ‘OK’ that the project is in delay and how it will be recovered by the next review, although the way that it will be done is unconvincing.

Different parts of the organisation; businesses, markets, functions; have differing objectives, often competing for the same resources and sometimes even conflicting in business outcome.

"Student's syndrome" prevails throughout the organisation, with rushed completion of deadlines due to an overloaded workforce.

Remedial approach: A Hoshin Kanri (Policy Deployment) approach must be embedded into the organisation, taking the Strategic Objectives and deploying them throughout the organisation in a balanced and integrated manner.

Associates across the organisation will be clear what their contribution is to the business strategy and be able to deliver, as the resources (people, investments and assets) will have been balanced to ensure that success, whilst stretching, is possible.

Regular Hoshin reviews, tiered throughout the organisation, will ensure that the leadership can see, on a short interval, where delays or coming into play and are able to swiftly react. Students’ Syndrome is not tolerated, so that any delay must have a plausible contingency in place.

New initiatives or changes in focus are allowed only after review of the impact to the existing plans and after due diligence by the leadership. These exceptions will be investigated to understand why the organisation needed to react, rather than having anticipated the requirement.

(See my articles: The secret ingredient of Business Success and The Intelligent No)

6. Too many full time Lean Experts who aren’t able to engage with the business:

The business has hired too many Lean Experts who aren’t able to engage with the business.

This could be due to a number of reasons but the three main ones that I find are:

• Hiring external people who know what Lean Excellence looks like but don’t know how to implement it
• Placing low or average performers in the roles, as they don’t want to ‘lose’ their best people from operational roles
• Utilising too many external consultants who don't have sufficient engagement or vested interest in the long-term vision

The Lean Experts attempt to make change through a ‘Project Management’ approach, ticking the boxes of the elements in the Lean system that they have been taught but unable to truly understand the needs of the business, diagnose its problems and prescribe the right course of treatment.

Parallel improvement projects are running, separate from the main Lean Excellence approach, as Leaders bypass the program due to a lack of belief in its ability to deliver.

There are conflicts even amongst the Lean Experts, who don't appear to have an aligned view on the best approach.

Remedial approach: Undertake a thorough evaluation of the capabilities of the Lean Experts across the Organisation, ensuring that only those that are truly performing at a high level, helping to deliver business results, are retained in those positions.

Use Consultants on a needs basis and ensure that their role is focussed on raising the skills and competencies of the internal resources.

Recruit some of the ‘best and brightest’ of the organisation, making a role as a Lean Expert a career incubator, developing the future leaders of the organisation.

Ensure that external hires are made on capability and not the ‘corporate branding’ of their current or previous employer. Whilst experience in certain organisations might be desirable, having worked in the organisation, even in a ‘Lean role’, does not guarantee an understanding of how to take an organisation through the required change.

The development of the Lean Experts into a learning organisation, working collaboratively and developing their collective business know-how is critical and the team must have its own SOs and Hoshin Kanri, integral to the Business Strategy.

(See my articles: Don’t ask Lewis Hamilton to build your F1 Car and Being the Doctor, not the Shopkeeper)

Skills:

7. Insufficient focus on competence development

The organisation relies heavily on 'Heroic activity' to get things done. There are many highly-skilled people but competence management is poor, leaving people to 'fend for themselves' or 'work it out'. The same task or process will be done differently by different associates.

Associates are employed based upon their?skill in whichever field they've been recruited for but are then assumed, after very little training, to be fit to undertake their role and are expected to perform at a high quality level.

Due to the lack of training and the expectation of associates to perform, they either hide competency gaps or, worse still, are unaware of them due to the 'Dunning-Kruger' effect and work in blissful ignorance of the lack of efficacy of their current approach.

Processes are often often slow or have a low quality of output due to associates simply not understanding how the systems work.

Remedial approach: The organisation must put in place a strong Competence Management Process, utilising Competence Matrices (such as an?ILU Competence Matrix), with solid Job Instruction embedded.

The Leadership need to understand the importance of their associates being competent in doing the job and their role in ensuring that competence management is not only paid lip-service but is managed as a Business Critical system.

Leaders will make sure that associates feel comfortable and confident in voicing competence gaps and use this as an opportunity to coach and to bring out ideas for improvement from the associates.

(See my article: Skilled but incompetent)

8. Inadequate Problem Solving skills

The vast majority of problems are 'solved' through fire-fighting, whereby the symptoms of the problem are somehow ameliorated but the root cause is left to fester and recur.

Most Managers and associates jump swiftly into 'solution mode', whereby they will determine that they know what needs to be done, as they've seen it before. However, the quality of solution is normally inadequate and stores up trouble for the future.

There is a high degree of frustration in facing the same problems on a regular basis.

The majority of the KPIs are lagging indicators, with the interval of measure and review greater than weekly, resulting in a lot of 'story-telling' around the reasons why targets were not met but little substance in terms of the root cause and countermeasures to sustainably resolve the problems.

Remedial approach: Problem Solving training, using a PDCA format that covers the 8-steps of problem solving, must be thoroughly deployed to all Managers and Associates. Leaders must be trained in training associates and they must run Problem Solving sessions themselves, solving real problems as part of the training.

Prioritisation of problems is key, with the clarification of the problem, including determining how much of a problem it is, being central to determining which problems to spend time on and which not to.

The Lean Experts must expend a large proportion of their time on coaching people in problem solving, with the mindset of rapid problem solving, meaning that the multiple small problems at the Gemba must be solved in a short interval, preferably within the shift or day, whilst those problems that need to be escalated must be solved in a matter of days, not weeks or months.

Daily Management must be in place, with the onus being on a daily interval, with Performance Indicators that are leading, i.e. they are predictive of the outcome that will be measured in the lagging KPIs. This means that the associates are able, on a short interval, to determine whether they are on track or not and, where not, intervene swiftly.

The Daily Management meetings must be as close to the Gemba as possible and involve facts and data, not opinion and conjecture.

(See my articles: The Problem with Problems and Why?)

Plan:

9. There is no Plan for the Lean Program or it is too flexible

As Alan Lakein famously said: "Failing to plan is planning to fail" and the organisation doesn't have a solid plan of how it will ensure that the Lean Program is successfully rolled out across the organisation.

There might be a deployment 'toolkit' and overall assessment criteria but there is no 'master plan' and insufficient rigour and discipline. Words such as 'pragmatic' and 'focussed' approach are used but disingenuously, with compromise on the quality of anything deemed difficult or controversial being the underlying driver, and typically to close down any challenge of the lackadaisical methodology being used.

The Lean Experts deploying the Program are misaligned and are allowed too much latitude to do it 'their way', meaning that there is a proliferation of differing views and approaches, some of which are simply wrong due to a lack of competence management in the Lean Expert community.

Some of the symptoms of a Lean Thinking organisation are ostensibly in place, such as Daily Management, Hoshin Kanri and Problem Solving, but the real underlying basis of these tools; the Lean Leadership, Standard Work (Leader Standard Work, Standardised Work & Standard Work for Flow), Value Stream Management, MCRS (Management Control and Reporting System) and overall rigour are absent.

Remedial approach: The Organisation must ensure that, based upon its strategy (see point 2, part 1 of the article) it has a methodology and plan for the deployment of its Lean Program that will result in Lean Thinking having been embedded into the organisational culture.

There must be consistency across the organisation, regardless of geography or area of the Value Chain / Function, with the tools used varying but not the philosophy and approach.

Pragmatism, in its true guise, must be delicately cultivated to ensure that idealism is not confused with dogmatism and that the business need is always understood and met. However, this will not result in short-term difficult issues being avoided, to the detriment of the long-term vision.

The Lean Experts deploying the program must have been trained to deliver competency, and fidelity to the roadmap must be non-negotiable, with a true belief in the rightness of what they are doing. This doesn't prevent learning and adaptation as the organisation travels its journey, but changes will be consistently applied across the organisation, not simply diverging due to personal preference or prior ways-of-working.

The Plan will be a key part of the Organisation's Hoshin Kanri and be reviewed in-line with the solid Hoshin Review process that has been put in place.

(See my articles: When you're in a (Lean) Hole, stop digging and Expectation leads to Excellence)

10. The Organisation rewards Plans rather than Execution

The organisation tends toward a culture of self-aggrandisement through ideas and plans; presented in long emails or extensive power points.

A strong belief exists in the 'bankability' of powerpoint business cases and aggressive plans for execution, although there is no rigour in reviewing the actual delivery against the business cases and plans, which are commonly late and are under-delivered against.

This should not be confused with a stretch target approach but is rather an over-promising of business cases and speed of execution in high profile meetings but with no integration to the strategy or alignment of business priorities and resources (see point 5).

"Pie in the sky" would be a colloquial way of describing some of the approaches to presenting ideas and plans, without due diligence to understand the risks and opportunities surrounding the plan and the resource reallocation required from other initiatives.

Remedial approach: The Organisation must ensure that Business Cases and Plans are driven from the Business Strategy and integral to the Hoshin Kanri. Those people tasked with the execution must ensure that there is due diligence around the risks and rewards (up- and downside) and have modelled these.

The mindset of setting 'stretch targets' is key to Hoshin Kanri and breakthrough thinking but this must be for the stimulation and challenge of the team and not to impress the Leadership. The delivery of significant business results are what the Leadership must be interested in and not promises made on a powerpoint slide.

In line with the Hoshin Kanri approach, only those ideas that are most likely to solve the Business Problems, to achieve the strategic objectives, will proceed and will be adequately resourced, with solid review and tracking on a short-interval. Deviations from plan will be quickly noted, with problem solving and countermeasures put in place.

Those teams that deliver against their plans will be rewarded, but with strong governance, these will be the norm and not the 'lucky few'. However, success will not be restricted to only those teams that make targets, as the leadership will understand which teams achieved relatively modest targets and which teams made great progress but didn't reach their stretching targets.

(See my article: Rewarding Execution, not ideas)

In summary

Across the two parts of this article you can see that these 10 signs are not mutually exclusive and, therefore, it’s unlikely that you would find only 1 or 2 of them in existence. Instead, view these indicators as collectively providing you with the opportunity to assess how your Organisation's Lean Excellence Journey is progressing and how you can intervene to 'course correct'.

I’m sure that I’ve not been exhaustive in my list and so I’d welcome additions, comments or challenges from the readers.

Interested to learn more? Click on the following links to read the introductions or buy one of my books:

• Leading Lean by Living Lean: Changing how you lead, not who you are
• The Simplicity of Lean: Defeating Complexity, Delivering Excellence
• Leading with Lean: An experience-based guide to Leading a Lean Transformation

Feel free to visit my Website at: LeadingwithLean and my other LinkedIn posts may be found at this link.

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