Tips for the Lean Manager

Performance System

The philosophy of Lean is straight forward.  Remove waste from the system and empower teams to run the day to day business.  Implementing Lean, on the other hand, is often a REAL challenge.  Lean is asking people to take a more active role and be accountable for new ways of working.

So, where do you start?  Start by looking at yourself.  The following series of questions mirror the major parts of any performance system and will start you on the road to engineering one that really works.

• What specific major responsibilities are expected of the teams with Lean?  How have I defined them? How have I communicated these expectations? How should I communicate them?

• What does each team need to provide to other people/teams to make Lean effective?  How have I defined this need?

• Relative to Lean, how have I defined “Safely?”  "Correctly?"  "Accurately?" "On time?"  How should I have defined them?

• What resources/systems are required for Lean to be a success?  What resources do I provide?

• What measures and standards will tell the members of the team that they are achieving the proper Lean results?  What measures and standards do I provide?

• What environmental and/or task road blocks which deter Lean have I allowed?  How can I eliminate them?

• What knowledge of Lean and Lean practices have I assumed the teams have?  What knowledge must I provide?  What is the best way to provide it?

• What tactical tools do the teams require to be successful with Lean?  What tactical tools must I provide?  What is the best way to provide them?

• What information (FeedBack) do the teams require to be successful with Lean?  What FeedBack should I provide and what is the best way to provide it?

• Relative to Lean, what consequences both short term and long term am I providing?  What should I provide?  (Ask your employees - they are your best source for implementing consequences that will be meaningful to them.)

If you haven't considered these questions before (and many haven't, so don't fret) the answers you find will be a real eye opener and will clearly point you to gaps in the performance system that you need to fill. And you DO need to fill them: how you design the new performance system will determine how well (or if at all) your team really succeeds with Lean.  If managers do not structure the performance systems to support Lean, the probability of success is low.