I had my Senior Management team visit various organizations that have embraced Lean. They found it interesting to see how others use Lean and found that to truly embrace it, we would need to change the look of our offices, culture, collaboration, and measures. And, be be willing to stick with it for a decade or more.
What I found most intriguing was the reference to “cultural change”. Through a brief search on the Internet, I found there is lots of talk about cultural changes required for Lean to take hold. None of what I read specifically answers what the changes in a culture need to be. While I might be too close to it, it reads to me like what we are intentionally fostering as a culture and core value anyway. Am I missing something?
Karl Sigerist, CEO, Crelogix
The question you are asking holds a great deal of insight as to whether the approach to operational excellence (a/k/a organizational excellence, cost reduction, operational efficiency) you are taking will work. The key question is whether your chosen approach is in alignment to your culture.
It is all about “how” things get done. Whether you are using Six Sigma, The Toyota Process, Kaizen, etc. to implement operational efficiency, the better the approach fits to your culture, the better your likelihood for success. All too often, the chosen methodology does not align to the culture and leads to the perceived need to change the culture to align it to the process.
In my experience, it's typically easier to adjust the process than trying to make significant changes in the culture. Very often, undertaking changes in a company’s culture create unnecessary struggles and unproductive conflict. Approaches to any form of continuous improvement will have much higher degrees of success when they are naturally aligned to the culture.
That being said, it will be hard to find information on what specific culture changes are necessary. So where does one begin to assess the alignment of the approach to your culture? I suggest starting with exploring the cultural aspects most apparent in the process. These include:
• How problems are solved,
• How decisions are made (including who is responsible for them),
• How projects and programs are managed (including role definition, resource allocation, outcome measurement),
• How teaming typically occurs,
• How people are rewarded for the outcomes (meritocratic, shared), and
• Communication.
There are other aspects of implementation such as data collection, analysis, solution development, feedback and measurement loops, that allow you to tweak the process, rather than try to apply it verbatim. While this may take some time and energy, it’s certain to give you value and can save you a great deal of time and energy trying to go back to deal with the unnecessary conflicts that could have been avoided.
A great place to always start from is engaging in a more in-depth conversation with the team to determine where alignments exist and where they don't. With respect to the visits your executives are making to companies, they will likely discover that each company they are visiting has a slightly different lens. Or, that the consistency of the cultures of the companies they are visiting are very much alike, providing evidence as to what preference of aspects of their cultures best fit the process. They can also learn about the steps each company took in achieving successful implementation, the conflicts that arose, and how they created the necessary change. Take that learning and then apply it to your company. Assessment and improvement always go hand in hand. That's what continuous improvement is all about… first assess, then act.
Lastly, I often see companies go down the path of continuous improvement approaches and getting short-term gains, only to find that the programs dwindle, are not sustainable, and do not deliver the long-term outcomes and effects. This reminds us to stay focused on the ongoing conversation of alignment.
