How is lean so different? It seeks different kinds of solutions - or countermeasures

To better understand the mess we’re in, we need to look at the kinds of solutions people believe in and look for in practice. With the passing years of practice of lean transformation efforts, we daily encounter four types of preferred solutions: bureaucratic, technocratic, entrepreneurial, and lean.?

Bureaucratic solutions are the easiest to spot and probably the most common in the political arena: make a rule. Bureaucrats believe that good rules make it better for everyone so, one, rules must be applied, applied to everyone and impartially so. When a new problem appear, their response is to make a new rule, and then find the authority to implement it. Obviously rules have three drawbacks. First, they’re usually stupid – a case of applying the lowest common denominator – rules are certainly a way to get things to shift, but in very broad terms and with endless unexpected countereffects. Secondly, any rule creates winners and losers, and immediately opens un an ecosystem for smarty-pants to exploit the new rule in unforeseen ways. Thirdly, each new rule adds to the burden of inflexibility and legacy of previous rules, creating the kind of bureaucratic friction and red-tape that everyone experiences, sometimes to the point of absurdity.?

Bureaucrats therefore are also experts at finding ways around rules that they themselves promote (for others) either by handling exceptions or by creating subrules that trump the intent of the original one. For instance the European Central Bank was originally set up so that it couldn’t print money (and thus risk favoring one nation state over the other), but starting with the 2008 financial crisis found increasingly innovative ways to do so, such as quantitative easing and so on. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. Indeed, we need the flexibility to solve real world problems. I’m suggesting that in a crisis bureaucrats will first defend their rules and argue that as long as we hold the rules, we’ll pull through, and then find a path around them in a way that maintains their power structure.

Technocratic solutions have become so obliquitous we seem to take them for granted, like the pollution in the air we breathe. Technocratic solutions are born of the belief that a technological tool or a bureaucratic process can save the day and make everything else disappear. Industry 4.0 (and now 5.0, or 6.0) is the typical technocratic response to societal changes. It enacts the belief that using digital technologies to further automation and connectivity will create enough productivity to trump any other societal problem. Every known process can be optimized by coding a digital image of every physical process, crunching the data and controlling material events. Technocratic solutions are imposed to people for their own good. Contrary to bureaucratic solutions that seek to stabilize the system as a whole, technocrats honestly believe their processes will make individual lives better.?

Technocrats are often bewildered by grassroots resistance to their bright ideas – Taylorism was just as resisted in its time than 4.0 is now. They blame human short-sightedness for not understanding what is good for them, and usually conclude you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. In real life, technocratic solutions do change things, but rarely deliver the promised results. What do you do if the fabulous river dam you built at great costs turn out to have disastrous impacts on the environment, on agricultural productivity, etc.? You move on and argue for a new dam elsewhere. Technocratic solutions are very portable and so technocrats are masters at escaping the consequences of what they have just implemented by selling a new project somewhere else. Because of their concrete aspect and sense of power over nature and people they projects, technocratic solutions always find buyers. I have not yet met someone happy with how their ERP works, but that doesn’t stop people from purchasing ever more complex ones and the following upgrades.??Everyone knows it doesn’t work, but at least you’re buying something solid.

Entrepreneurs are a completely different kind of beast from bureaucrats and technocrats. First, they are rare. Rather, visibly successful entrepreneurs are rare, most restaurant or shop owners are entrepreneurs. Secondly, as multinational chains take over the world, they are progressively replaced by bureaucrats everywhere. Entrepreneurs want to succeed (or at the very least avoid failing) and are ready to do what it takes. They look for changes, not resist them. They react quickly to situations by fixing issues according to where the fire is burning hotter (don’t be at the bottom of the urgency list, by the time they get there you’ll have found another solution). They also look for dramatic changes, changes that will make the perceived problem go away. Entrepreneurs feel that the risk of not changing is worse than taking a decision, possibly the wrong one, and dealing with consequences afterwards. At least things are rolling again and as long as the game is in play they feel they will find new opportunities.

Entrepreneurs shoot from the hip – decide now, figure it out later. Their feeling of doing what it takes or what is needed, often gets them to side-step existing systems and create chaos. When the new solution works it still needs to get reintegrated with the system, which often proves to be a real headache. Entrepreneurs succeed… until they fail, when they have tried to conquer a bridge too far and the legacy of debt and unfulfilled promises they have left behind them catches up with them. Entrepreneurs, however, are also very good at starting again and getting back on their feet. Any successful entrepreneurs is likely to have failed two or three times before that. Entrepreneurial solutions of radical changes are a key response to large challenges and bring much needed flexibility, but often the cost turns out to be much higher than the gain. Now that Elon has convinced the world we need electric cars, we will have to see what this does to the existing car industry and lithium mining.?

Where do lean solutions fit in with respect to bureaucratic, technocratic or entrepreneurial solutions? Lean thinking is closer to entrepreneurial change inasmuch as it recognizes that external changes have to be met by internal changes. However, it also believes changes can be used for learning and creating learning curves rather than a random walk of let’s see where that gets us. Lean solutions are kaizen solutions: small, frequent controlled Plan-Do-Check-Act steps that enable one to build a more complete mental picture of the situation and the real problem. Lean changes can be major changes, but they will occur when all people involved agree on both what the problem is and what kind of solutions is looked for, from constant and strenuous experimentation.

Lean solutions are often confused with the physical scaffolding of visual management lean people set up to sustain kaizen. In lean, solutions are actually called countermeasures, because no solution is definitive. Lean solutions are both more adaptive and more cumulative and lead to better outcomes. Their main weakness is that they don’t seem grand enough to capture support and funding from people who need political or media wins. The lean approach requires to constantly observe, constantly discuss, constantly challenge and strive for small steps as solutions are assumed not to be known at the outset. Lean solutions are difficult to keep up because they rest on the belief that you do not know what the preferred solution is at the onset. By constantly striving for better here and now, you are confident you will discover the answers to real-life problems, rather than execute fantasy ideas that lead to poor outcomes.

Obviously, bureaucrats will interpret lean bureaucratically, technocrats technocratically (hello, consultants) and entrepreneurs will look for rapid changes. Lean transformation is radically different. It’s about creating the concrete learning opportunities for people to see problems, invent improvements, test them and then share the results of their experiments to construct together larger solutions. Yet, to understand what happens daily at the shop floor, we need to face that others firmly believe in either bureaucratic (stick to the rules and we’ll pull through), technocratic (implement a new system and it will all blow away) or entrepreneurial (change something major now! and see how things are when the dust settles) solutions. To play the game well, first we must understand the players.