What Group is the Most Resistant to Change?

In my last few articles and posts, I have looked at how Lean might be improved by incorporating other methods into its overall processes. I asked them to look at the cultural differences between the Japanese and how Toyota used it to its advantage in developing TPS. They believed that American and European cultures would be unable to recreate it in their cultures. How Lean, a TPS copy, failed because it did not understand this cultural difference.

And I pointed out which group they needed to focus on to overcome this cultural difference.

Toyota did succeed in the US when it could control the culture, taking its lessons from NUMMI and only building in the non-union South. Union control plants in the Big 3 thrived on conflict, demanding higher wages from employers who based leaders' compensation on cost-cutting. When times were bad, massive layoffs led to reduced internal costs that failed to save the companies, landing them in debt or bankruptcy.

Lean should have been an improvement process that kept this from happening. It had a rare opportunity with its wide acceptance across all of the Big 3. However, the cultural differences could not be overcome.

If any group should have looked to Kaizen a method that was clearly broken, it should have been leaders in the Lean community. There were many opinions of why Lean was ineffectual. Still, most of the blame fell on the shoulders of leadership, who should have seen the benefits of Lean despite the disconnect with the current culture in American society. “It’s their job to change it!”

And some did. They mandated their employees to implement Lean or face the consequences. “You have to fire at least one person,” one leader told me, “So they have to know you are serious about putting this into place.” It’s true. Fear is an excellent motivator.

?Sooner or later, this leader moves on. This happens more frequently than Japanese leaders, and Toyota’s emphasis on consensus means the next leader is more likely to follow the process their predecessor used. A new leader in our culture wants to make their own mark. So, if a process needs leadership support from the previous leader to succeed, it is highly probable that the method has just lost it.

If Lean has not generated the desired results to date, a new leader would have a method to improve results immediately. Cut costs by eliminating Lean. The previous reasoning of the Lean champion was that “it takes time to change the culture of a plant.” That doesn’t matter to the new leader, who can claim a quick win.

Lean has failed.

This story has become so familiar that I can almost expect it on a Pareto 80/20 basis where I hear the reasons behind an implementation failure. But there is never an inward look at the problem, only a comparison of Toyota vs. an existing company.

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Proposing a change to Lean is of little value. I can tell them five things that would make an immediate difference.

• Use Net Profit as a Goal. Americans are all about “what’s in it for me”, and most people benefit if a company makes money
• Don’t confuse making money with horror movies. You can make money in a responsible manner.
• Use a formula for Net Profit to make decisions, set priorities, and focus on improvements.
• Finding and fixing a bottleneck will give them the quick results leaders need to validate the improvement process.
• Leaders start the Habit of making money. Team members take it away from them, so they are never required to keep it running.

There it is—questions to challenge the thinking of people in the Lean community, not just leaders. But comments will be few or nonexistent. ?Why?

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Because Lean advocates are the most resistant to change. Reasons?

• This method does not follow TPS; if it is not TPS, it is not Lean.
• Lean advocates consensus, and there is no way the Lean community would come to agree on this method
• Yet advocates are also in an American culture and would oppose this. “What’s in this for me if I look at this? How can I benefit? I’ve made my opinions known, and I can’t agree to something that doesn’t reach the same conclusions.”

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My last few Comments and Replies have been sparse despite many Impressions. Comments would require some disagreement in the logic, which I haven’t seen to date, but I am honestly looking forward to seeing it. But I expect few. Why?

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Because Lean advocates are the most resistant to change.