Seven Policy Questions for Shaping a Lean Future

A Scientific American article from November 2020 looked ahead to how the election would shape the future of the U.S. and the world. The article asked seven questions related to how the election’s outcome would affect policies in science, health, and the environment.

In government, business, or the community, leaders must make consequential decisions during times of change. I’ve adapted the seven questions from the article to turn them into ones leaders must answer when starting and sustaining Lean transformations.

1. Which curve do we need to bend, and by how much?

We’ve all become perhaps more familiar than we would like with the bending of curves over the past year. However, this is a very useful way of thinking. What’s the one thing that we need to monitor, influence, and improve in order to succeed? Often this is not an outcome metric like profit but a process metric like lead-time or customer satisfaction.

2. How much to clean and why?

Continuous improvement almost always involves a fair amount of tidying up at the early stages, and often throughout the whole journey. Whether we call it 5S of materials, tools and equipment or a simplification of processes, procedures, and information flow, it needs doing. The question for leaders is “how much to clean and why?” Sometimes there’s a scientific answer, a rule of thumb like “sing happy birthday.” Other times, it’s clean enough when it makes abnormality or the sources of clutter visible.

3. Who will have reliable leadership support?

When embarking on a lean journey, the intention is to get to a better place and bring everyone along. However, not everyone makes it the whole way. Change doesn’t suit some people. New ways of working can be hard to learn. Sometimes it can feel to a leader like they are giving up more power than they are gaining under the new system. While that may not be the correct perspective, it’s not unusual. Senior leaders need to look across the base of their organization and ask, “Which teams will have reliable support from their leaders, and where do we need to make plans to develop or replace leaders?”

4. How to improve physical and psychological safety?

Physical and psychological safety is a front-and-center theme in society today. There’s nothing like illness and death to focus the mind on what’s important. The changes during a lean transformation are not as dangerous to our health. However, our brains treat loss of status and uncertainty about the future at work as a threat like any other. Physical, social, or psychological safety is safety. Not only must leaders not erode safety as a result of striving for excellence, improved safety must be an explicit outcome.

5. How will we change who we hire and promote?

In the course of a successful lean journey, a leader will find answers to items 3 and 4 above. Part of the answer normally comes from answering the fifth question in this list. Leaders must reexamine the type of people who will contribute and thrive under the new system they are building. Often, as leaders strive to change the culture, they recognize the need to hire for values and mindsets as much as experience and skills.

6. What to do with the surplus space?

A common outcome of a lean transformation is excess space. This is due to reduced clutter, less work-in-process, and faster-flowing processes requiring fewer and smaller assets. Unless a business is growing rapidly and in need of space, it’s normal to face the question of what to do with the surplus space. This may not seem like the most urgent question of this list. However, it’s often the most visible one. Leaders who give this question some thought may find that it inspires business development ideas, or other creative uses. For example, our friends at Kaas Tailored allow their employees to use their break room during weekends free of charge for wedding receptions and so forth.

7. What will we do with our shared resources?

On a more practical level, organizations on a lean journey often come face to face with the flow-blocker known as the shared resource. This may be a person with a limited but highly-sought after skill, a room with the hospital’s one most expensive medical device, a heat treating oven in one corner of the shop, or other asset that’s hard to duplicate. The answer is not to give up on continuous flow and say that it’s too hard for our type of business. There are various ways to pull through shared resources.

The Need for Leaders Who Ask the Right Questions

It’s not unusual for changes in leadership to be accompanied by changes in direction. Even when the leadership remains the same, societies and organizations both must adapt, make changes, and continuously improve. This is necessary in order to survive and thrive in a changing world. Even if we don’t always agree with the answers, we need leaders who ask the right questions.

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