I think this is a question on the minds of a lot of people in the IT industry at the moment. The Lean operations community have been on their journey longer than we have in IT and from my experiences at Lean 2008 I think that they are starting to really understand what Lean is all about.
So, what is Lean?
Well, it’s a set of tools (JIT, 5S, 5 Why’s…), it’s a production system, it’s a product development system, it’s a business model, it’s a mentality of continuous improvement, it’s about the ruthless elimination of waste.
Right?
I don’t think so. Of course it is all of those things but today I tend to look at these elements as symptoms of what Lean is really all about; a leadership philosophy for business and life focussed on getting the most out of people.
I’m not going to try and describe what I mean by this becasue I think Konosuke Matsushita, the founder and president of Matsushita Electric (the parent company of Panasonic, Technics and other famous brands), put it much better than I ever could in his speach to visiting European and American managers in 1979….
“We are going to win and the industrial west is going to lose: there’s nothing much you can do about it, because the reasons for your failure are within yourselves. Your firms are built on the Taylor model; even worse, so are your heads. For you, the essence of management is getting the ideas out of the heads of the bosses into the hands of labour. We are beyond the Taylor model : business, we know, is now so complex and difficult, the survival of firms so hazardous in an environment increasingly unpredictable, competitive and fraught with danger, that their continued existence depends on the day-to-day mobilisation of every ounce of intelligence.
For us, the core of management is precisely this art of mobilising and pulling together the intellectual resources of all employees in the service of the firm. We know that the intelligence of a handful of technocrats, however brilliant and smart they may be, is no longer enough. Only by drawing on the combined brain power of all its employees can a firm face up to the turbulence and constraints of today’s environment.”
Is your organisational philosophy about getting the ideas of the managers into the hands of the people or about empowering the people to lead the company?
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves” Shakespeare - Julius Caesar.
June 10th, 2008 at 3:36 am
[…] What is Lean? […]
June 11th, 2008 at 10:30 am
I have used this quote in my 20 + years of lean consulting and it has inflicted deep thought in those in the room that could grasp this concept. However, most could not. They don’t know what they don’t know. When US managers went to Japan to see all about this JIT stuff, they didn’t come back with understanding - they came back with tools, QC circles, employee suggestions programs, and teams. They did this because they could not see what was really happening. Why, because they did not know what they were looking at. Their current thinking was trying to fit this into their current mental pattern (batch thinking) and the “we think, workers do as they are told”. Most US Manufacures still look at employess as a “Cost”. It was not the Silver Bullet they were looking for. It was not the tools they needed, it was the thinking. Many are still saying that Lean/TPS does not apply to our company or indusrty. We don’t make Cars. Therefore it has no value. The only change agent that is going to be effective - is the Undertaker!
Most still don’t get it today….
Can you say GM????
June 13th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Great Matsushita quote - resonates. However, many Asian models are similarly limited. In Hong Kong, for example, hierarchy is so much a part of the culture that it hardly matters that Taylorism is not the foundation. What speaks to me in Matsushita’s words is the recognition of intelligence, enabled and directed toward outcomes. That’s a lesson for all - and it seems Finland is ahead of the IC game.
June 24th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
I’m concerned that in the IT community we too are coming away from Lean with a set of tools that we will apply to the beliefs and structures we’ve always had. I think it misses the point.
The Lean Ops community had to go through a ‘tool age’ before they started to grasp the deeper philosophy at work - I wonder if we’ll need to go through the same in IT?