Lean Leadership Part 2

Lean Leadership, Please refer the part-1 "Lean Leadership"; The Lean Leader leads a very different way : as different form the commonly accepted notion of the " enlightened modern manager" as it is the old command and control;

What is Leadership and amazing quote by Peter Drucker?

"The greatest leaders of 20th century were Hitler, Stalin and Mano, If that is "leadership" I want nothing to do with it" !!!

The 3 Leadership Models:

The Leader as Dictator of old days tried to tell everyone "what to do"?

IMHO and I believe that leadership is best defined by the ability to inspire others to be their best self. ... Managing is a daily function, but true leadership should be focused on creating a vision and inspiring others. When it comes to the Lean Environment, the manager must play a critical role as a leader.

Lean Leadership leads very different way

By Setting the vision (more Why? than How?) with nemawashi dailog, HK planning and setting challenging expectations ( organizational level and individual level)

• By building systems and process that cascade responsibility and
• By Influence and persuasion ( by example, by being knowledge, by coaching and teaching,etc)

True Boss Vs Leader Video.

This is a 2 min video, please go through and embrace to have good lean leaders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_F7ghGTxGY

I am proud to share about the "Great Leader of Indian Space Center and Honourable President , no The Greatest Missile President of India, Late Mr. APJ Kalam"; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4vGwj8KZeQ

Lean Leaders at every level:

A leader need to be visible as a role model do demonstrate His/Her breadth of knowledge and understanding of the business environment and the organizational changes.

A leader should display an aptitude for logic and a desire to challenge the status quo or “alleged wisdom” in order to facilitate free flowing decision making.

A leader must process the ability to be a linking agent (facilitator) with a wide array of knowledge and information coupled with an unquestionable trust, professionalism and an open invitation for dissent.

Lean Leadership Responsibilities

1 Lead the Change:

The second point of Deming's 14 famous points for management states very clearly that management must step up to the challenge of leading the change. It is not enough that your teams become agile - you yourself must lead the way to agility. Everything you do must be a clear signal that the tide is turning! Without your cooperation, it will not turn. You are the key success factor in this change initiative!

2. Lifelong Learning:

Yesterday's knowledge is good to manage the challenges of yesterday's business world - you need today's knowledge to compete in the business of tomorrow!

Knowledge workers learn something new every day. As an agile leader, you lead by example. Grab a book, go to seminars / trainings and/or meetups to learn how the world of work is changing, and how you can participate in that change. Encourage your teams to follow suit.

3. Develop People:

There's a industry old joke: CFO to CTO: "What if you train your people and they leave?" - CTO to CFO: "What if we don't, and they don't?"

To compete in today's market, you need a workforce up to standard. And the standard goes up every day. You must constantly invest time, money and energy to ensure every person you work with has cutting edge skills!

4. Gone are the days of Command and Control.

Nobody possesses the combined intelligence of cohorts of knowledge workers. The best thing you can do for your people is to enable them to go further than you could imagine. And there are three important steps in this:

Inspire - give them reason to do what needs to be done. Use inspiration instead of control.

Align - Today's challenges in industrial development are beyond a single person's capacity. Ensure that people are on the same page.

Minimize constraints - Your organization was probably built to optimize utilization, while maximizing constraints on what people could do with their ability. Now, your responsibility is to tear down all barriers that block people from harnessing their full potential!

5. Decentralize Decisions:

Intelligent people can make smart decisions. And those doing the work know much better than anyone else what the consequences of their decisions are. Once the people with the detailed expert knowledge can make the decision, your processes will be much smoother and change will happen more rapidly.

In some organizations, decentralization is a long journey. Making the change happen is your job.

Just remember: Not every decision should be decentralized. It takes some learning by trial and error which decisions are best left at a central point, and which are best decentralized.

6. Unlock Intrinsic motivation:

The toughest challenge for a Lean-Agile leader is to unlock the intrinsic motivation of people. While Dan Pink's "Drive" is a great starter, the journey is extremely challenging. It's very easy to demotivate people, it's very difficult to help them being motivated. The first step is acknowledging that you can not intrinsically motivate them.

Your keys to unlocking intrinsic motivation will be resolving demotivating factors, coaching, enabling, trusting, empowering - and most of all: getting out of the way.