Go on...become a LEANtrepreneur

For African business owners thinking about Lean.

When you were a kid, did you conjure a business plan, raid your mom’s pantry and sell product to unsuspecting friends? Maybe you stripped the lemon tree for lemonade or perhaps slime was your thing. My go-to product was chocolate. You can’t go wrong with chocolate. I made copious batches of bite-size, molded delights and sold them to cash-flush eight-year olds. I’ll never forget the euphoria spending my first hard-earned R12 (less than $1). It fueled my obsession for entrepreneurship. If this was you, can you remember the feeling?

I was the youngest of four kids by a long shot. Raised and forged among entrepreneurs, everyone in my family worked in their own businesses or the family factory at one time or another. I experienced both sides of the coin which fellow business owners may relate to: 

The excitement, liberation, confidence and independence you experience when business is good. The sheer pain, disappointment, ulcer-inducing stress when things don’t go to plan.

It’s a landscape of contradictions that takes more than a little gumption to survive. The stats for business failure is heartbreaking – it’s crazy how many new businesses can’t make it past the two-year threshold. But many do, and those that do endure, have the potential to soar if they engage in a way of thinking from the outset or at least somewhere along the way…

I wish I could neatly package Lean in a bottle for you. Imagine selling guaranteed success! But I can talk about some real approaches, that bring real results – backed by some very real hard work. It’s hard to capture it all in a quick article, but I'm pleased if this sparks more questions in you. 

As an entrepreneur, you’re already used to hard work. You probably think about your business 7 days a week, 365 days per year, as your partner or spouse rolls their eyes at your inability to switch off. Thankfully this is not an add-on to your already jam-packed schedule. It’s quite simply a way of thinking that permeates into everything you do from strategy to frontline execution benefiting customers, employees, shareholders and the environment. And Lean thinking is not elite. It’s for anyone, from any industry, for any size enterprise. Google it – you’ll see how many people engage and get results. Does this sound too good to be true? Lol, I hear you...but stay with me. 

Of course, some don’t do well with Lean thinking. There are no guarantees. But those who commit long-term and do it for the right reasons, reap benefits both financially and personally. Those who use it like a quick fix generally enjoy short-lived results, but sadly can’t go the distance. So, what’s the scoop? What is a LEANtrepreneur?

You’re short of time, so here’s a graphic to describe it in a nutshell – if you want to know more and have a few minutes, keep reading and I'll unpack the graphic for you:

There’s value in keeping the thinking simple since entrepreneurs already have complex situations to deal with every day. Why add to that stress? 

To begin, Lean thinking starts with PURPOSE. Ask yourself deceptively simple questions like why you’re in business and why the organisation even exists. There’s more to it than just making money, right? It’s good to know your business economics but what is your raison d’être? What customer problem are you here to solve?

Now dig into where you’re going – the big picture journey. What should you be great at to stay relevant; overcome competition and economic turbulence; keep customers happy and coming back; retain and grow your people; and keep those investors smiling. Maybe you have some nifty business tools you can use to figure out what needs to change, but remember your people also hold intel that you need to hear. 

Having poked the bear, the next hurdle is to get to grips with the nuts and bolts of the business and how value is actually delivered into the hands of the customer. Yes value – not what we think they want, but what they actually need. If you have articulated the business reason for being, be sure to articulate what your current and future customers value too and are prepared to pay for. What is it people do at the frontlines to service customers or make the products? What works, what doesn’t? What are the customers saying about your product or service? (In a later article I will dive into the products and services you offer - this is a whole other conversation.) 

This is where mapping critical processes can come in handy. If you’re clear on the necessary changes to take the organisation to the next level - both the radical stuff and the more conservative cycles of change, you have Clear Direction to set the tone for what business problem you need to solve and why. 

With PURPOSE in hand, you can get serious about PROCESS. This could be a number of things but I’ll narrow it down to a few:  

·      What radical, breakthrough improvements are needed to create leaps in performance?

·      What daily systems help to expose and trigger small, resilient, daily changes?

·      What will you change to do the work better?

Think back to the bigger picture mapping where you visualise end to end service and pick out a handful of really big problems to hammer into shape. You may gather focused teams together, give them guidance, and develop them using a set of useful tools to deliver big results. Some use Six Sigma - I use a hybrid of this, Lean and Theory of Constraints. You teach them tools to help see the right problems and learn by following cycles of experimental changes. Essentially improvement projects that teams take on, but where they make changes and learn in an iterative, personal way. 

Installing a daily management system to keep your finger on the pulse is crucial. It doesn’t take long for big changes to slip back to yesteryear performance until you have hardy systems that expose the problems that crop up, so you can also address them quickly. Left undetected these problems fester into much bigger animals and as they gather momentum it becomes harder to know what caused them in the first place. Aim to detect and strike problems that crop up within a day. If you have reasonable lead times, even better if you do this a few times a day. If your lead times are months or years…you need to get creative! Tip: make the right problems visible so people can intuitively deal with them…that’s the basic thinking regardless of the situation. 

If you know what problems need to be tackled and you’re ready to make radical changes and install daily management systems, that’s a good start. Think about it though…where does this kind of stuff usually fall over?

A desire to improve and a few active projects is sadly not enough. You need PEOPLE believing, living and breathing improvement every day.  

There’s a lot of meat sitting behind this one - the marbled kind that needs massaging. And as an entrepreneur, not all, but many of you may struggle to trust others enough to take on the responsibility. After all, it’s your blood, sweat and tears that built the business in the first place – how can you trust others to care as much? Do it as well? But it’s a leap you must take if you want to go from good to great to enduring. 

Lean thinking is first a cognitive revolution (The Lean Strategy, 2017). It’s a shift in thinking that starts at the CEO and runs throughout the ranks. This part of it is actually quite a big deal. It’s where the boss evolves to teacher and people are equipped and safe to make changes. Long-term personal development kicks in and transforms how people think and act. In PEOPLE we think hard about what should be learned everyday in order to deliver on PURPOSE. How differently should leaders behave to enable problem solving to take place in every corner of the organisation? How will you build the confidence and capability of every person to turn the tanker? This is not just a frontline thing – everyone has to go through the metamorphosis for it to take root. And newcomers also need ushering through the thinking. 

One of the most powerful weapons in the arsenal of change is the ability to follow through properly. Maybe it’s human nature. Maybe as Africans we are so used to chaos and making a plan in that chaos. Whatever it is, many of us are in the bad habit of not following through. We kick off promising projects with great gusto and when we think its resolved, we throw our energy into the next one – all the while the first project starts to trip up. People point fingers and the illustrious “we tried that and it didn’t work” gathers steam. But I’ve some good news. The antidote is a way of thinking that, if followed can truly help. It’s called scientific thinking. We tackle every new project, proposal, venture or change in a structured way. It’s about putting the upfront work into a solid plan, then testing out your theories, checking what has worked and what has not, and finally chocking the improvement into place or revisiting the experiment if needed, so it doesn’t peter out. It’s PDCA (Plan Do Check Adjust) and it’s an important element of PROBLEM SOLVING and in sustaining the good work. 

Finally, we are nearing global awareness for green thinking and it’s up to us to ensure enterprises are preserving the earth’s resources for future generations. How can we bring green thinking into our Lean thinking so that we exist on this PLANET in an environmentally responsible (and more cost-effective) way? Check out your strategy – is sustainability there? Does it have equal stature to other metrics? Look at the improvement projects going on – do they match this grand vision? Do green projects follow scientific thinking as well? If not, there’s work to do. 

It takes a courageous, forward-thinking entrepreneur to adopt Lean thinking early-on in the game or along the way. But in my view, this is what will evolve the already impressive entrepreneur. Someone who cares for more than just profit, but understands that the thinking and behaviour leads to financial prosperity. Someone who is willing to create a business that cares for customers and employees alike. Who wants to own and run a business that nurtures individual talent, understands value, targets waste elimination, makes product and service flow in a way that delights customers, and who has an unyielding curiosity for making things and human capability better every day. I hope that's you.

Stay close – I will publish more for interested LEANtrepreneurs over the coming months. I’d love to hear your questions so I can tailor it for you.