Did things get a little tight for you as well?

Is it official?  Is the “Great Recession” over? Should we be launching new executive leadership hiring initiatives now? Are we sure? When will we be sure?  

1. Turn your competitors’ mistakes to your advantage. There indeed are exceptions to every rule and there’s always an exception for why someone might be an executive “in transition” (see above). Voluntary departures, particularly from your competitor companies, may have the potential to become attractive executive hires for you. Put together an intelligence network and do some sleuthing. Figure out why they left, turn it around, and make it a selling point when you go after these individuals.  A common concern I’m hearing is that many companies simply did not communicate effectively about belt-tightening measures. This had the effect of blindsiding mid-level leaders to the point where they unintentionally misinformed and misled their rank-and-file, and lost “face” and trust with these team members. Demonstrate how this will never happen as long as you’re in charge and you’ll win their commitment.
2. Do even more to become the employment brand of choice. Start thinking about your prospective executive candidates as you would of potential customers for your products and services.  Customers have unique feelings and attitudes about what they buy from whom. Chances are very strong you spend tremendous marketing resources figuring this out. Do the same kind of analysis for the executives you want to hire. Explore why they choose to work where they currently do.  Assess and define what they would find in your organization that would make you a potentially attractive company to work for – for them. Translate this information into a message that is in turn appealing and unique to each individual you want to recruit (no batch mass-marketing here; this is tailored one-piece, just-in-time communication flow).  Hint: strong leadership is something which most executives and line workers absolutely crave. Find a way to communicate that this is part of the foundation which underlies your corporate culture. You’ll attract the world-class winners you seek.
3. Plan for the Expected. Visualize for the Unanticipated. It’s hard to maneuver a decelerating aircraft carrier even if you prepare to dock well in advance. But just think how incredibly demanding it must be to turn one around on a dime.  Similarly, preparing an executive recruiting and succession plan is difficult enough in a stable and orderly business environment. Now imagine reacting to an out-of-the blue marketing threat from a major competitor, or responding to a newly discovered technological innovation, or perhaps a particularly attractive acquisition opportunity.  It’s only with deeply concentrated forethought and almost prescient insight that any organization could possibly hope to be thoroughly prepared for such scenarios on a moment’s notice.  And there are very few SWOT oracles around anymore these days.

But visualizing such unanticipated events, and building “executive talent supply chains” or pipelines around them, is a strategic investment which makes a lot of sense for the market leaders of tomorrow. Become just such a strategic talent thinker. Create virtual “Dream Teams” for existing and anticipated leadership roles within all of today’s major revenue-generating business units, as well as those with the potential to eventually supersede them. Fill the pipeline with names and dossiers of “A-players” who will be eager to take your phone call on the day your CEO comes to you and says:  “I want you to ramp up a critical recruiting effort for this deeply hush-hush business venture I’ve been covertly negotiating for months. Let’s get started now!”   

The War for Talent is about to come roaring back any time now.  And the C-suite team will tune in to its effects more rapidly and deeply than before, but this time unsure of any reasonable end in sight. So, HR leaders at all levels who’ve been advocating for their own “seat at the table” are about to get lots of opportunities to demonstrate their strategic thinking skills and their ability to deliver bottom-line business impact. 

I suggest this first quarter of the new decade as an opportune time to rethink and clarify the nature of HR’s outside executive recruiting partnerships.  In what ways are we receiving value from these relationships? How much net value, compared to our investment, are we getting? Are there ways in which we might improve upon both the nature and quality of that return?  Are we asking ourselves: What, really, are our expectations from those upon whom we rely to identify and procure new generations of talent for our organizations?

The word “relationship” itself is fraught with peril (see Dr. Phil, Elizabeth Gilbert), but in limiting ourselves to the context of executive search only, we should be able to steer clear of at least the big rocks in the river.  Or maybe  - in light of massively shifting global business and economic cycles; relentless demand for continuous performance improvement; constantly increasing pressure for innovation in products and services; accelerating obsolescence of managerial talent, and more  -  there is indeed one big rock we can’t ignore: Is our current executive search model broken (doesn’t work all that well) and unsustainable (can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing if we demand different results)?

Are we shopping for candidates by roaming the aisles at Macy’s, or do we focus on finding that unique and special gem at Harry Winston’s? Do we choose firms who can simply deliver a candidate as the need arises, or do we prefer working someone with whom we can share our long-term growth strategies? Someone who might then more prospectively cultivate the kind of talent we’ll want to entice with our value proposition a year or two down the road? Are we looking at our recruiters through the lens of purchasing or procurement, as just another one of the vendors in the supply chain? Or do we seek out dedicated professional relationships with specialists who invest their time and themselves in understanding our business and our issues?  And, despite my obvious personal bias, who is to say which of the choices we make about these relationships are the most appropriate for your organization, at your current point in your corporate life-cycle, and within the context of your industry and competitive situation?  More soon.

Tune in for part two of this post –  Recalibrate Your Executive Search Expectations

And that’s the way I see it.  Adam Zak

(Author note: this blog post was originally published this morning on the new Human Capital Institute’s (HCI) Talent Acquisition Community blog.  I’ve been invited to write a guest posting which will appear on the HCI site every couple of weeks or so.  Please be sure to visit the HCI Web site for lots of other great articles related to talent acquisition and many other topics on the cutting-edge of HR thought leadership).

In his article Jim refers to Pareto’s (Mr. 80/20 rule) second concept of economic optimality, and immediatly reminds me of this phrase in the Hippocratic Corpus: “first do no harm.” Some lean practitioners attempting to drive change unfortunately ignore this admonition at their own peril.

If, in our zeal to improve something, we cannot envision how our ideal future state may negatively impact another part of the organization’s currently “adequate” state, then we are indeed not optimizing the whole. Rather, we fall back on the silo-thinking which created the need for making changes/improvements in the first place.  And that’s where true “Lean Leadership” in the executive ranks shows what it’s made of.  Go forth, ye, and make sustainable Lean happen! 

And that’s the way I see it.  Adam Zak

Will you select the right one?

In every conversation with senior leadership I’ve had during the past two weeks this one truth stands out loud and clear:  Acquiring, orienting and deploying the right new talent is an expensive business to get right, and even more expensive to get wrong.  Just think of all that muda!

With each passing day, recruiting and retaining the right executive talent to lead Lean & Six Sigma efforts and Green & Sustainability initiatives poses a greater challenge…

Today’s most experienced Lean leaders hail from those industrial sectors which were pioneers in continuous improvement.  As still greater numbers of companies venture into lean and Six Sigma, the demand for this expertise is beginning to outweigh overall supply. So where and how do we seek out the best of these individuals?  

On the other hand, the challenge in recruiting the right Green leaders is different, but no less daunting. Can we even agree about what makes an executive Green? How do we deal with imprecise definitions and varying skill sets?  How can we focus on targets which are moving due to the evolving nature of executive backgrounds?

In both situations you’re hiring change agents, quite often the executives who will outline a new vision for your company, and then inspire your team to make that vision a reality.  So what does it take to recruit the right Lean & Green executives for your organization?

In this special report from Adam Zak, a top executive recruiter of Lean, Operational Excellence and Sustainability leaders, you’ll quickly learn:

• The key principles and goals underlying lean, Six Sigma and green and why these are important to business success.
• How to identify and differentiate among the various stages through which companies ascend on both their lean and green journeys.
• How to then determine where your own organization currently stands on these two ladders – and evaluate the lean and green status of the companies from which you want to recruit.
• How to identify the common characteristics among the lean and green leaders who really stand out from the crowd—the qualities they bring to the table to deliver impact for their companies, and
• FIVE KEY STRATEGIES you must understand in order to attract and retain the best-in-class Lean and Green Leaders
• FOUR ideas you can implement TODAY to make your own recruiting processes more lean and green… 

To receive your complimentary copy of this timely special report, please email Adam Zak with:  your name, title, company company phone number and business email address  zak@LeanRecruiter.com

If you happen to be an executive or manager with strong Lean or Lean Sigma expertise (in other words, someone who can demonstrate the ability to make Operational Excellence happen in Corporate America), dust off that resume and get ready to take advantage of  the developing talent war for professionals just like you. Oh, and if you’ve also had a chance to help incorporate a Green focus into the Lean equation, then we should probably talk right away…

And the message for all you hiring executives -  CEOs, Presidents, and Vice Presidents of Human Resources  -  start planning now how you’ll go about filling your talent pipeline with the people who can bring these strategic and tactical principles, processes and techniques into your organization.  Because that’s what your competitors are doing right about now.

Way back in May, 2009 this ominous news from  BusinessWeek:  ”In the midst of the worst recession in a generation or more, with 13 million people unemployed, there are approximately 3 million jobs that employers are actively recruiting for but so far have been unable to fill. That’s more job openings than the entire population of Mississippi.”  No statistics, unfortunately, on how many of these unfilled positions were at the executive or managerial level. 

My own unscientific research project over the weekend, focusing on Lean Leadership vacancies, turned up these well-known corporate names in search of Manager, Director or Vice President level candidates:  Genzyme; Medtronic;  Tyco Electronics;  Florida Power & Light (FPL Group);  Siemens Energy;  Pentair Corp;  Textron Systems;  B/E Aerospace;  Johnson & Johnson;  Cooper Industries;  Accenture;  Merck;  Ecolab;  Baxter.  

And of course Marvin Windows & Doors, for whom we seek a new Vice President of Manufacturing.

Whether as a potential new job-seeker or prospective hiring executive, will you be ready for this rapidly-approaching and dramatic shift in the American executive recruiting picture ? 

I am.

This is Adam Zak, and that’s how I see it…

Do you have the Lean Leadership team necessary for your company to survive, and even thrive, during the current economic downturn?  Do your Lean Leaders have the expertise and experience to build a stronger foundation for growth and profitability during the coming rebound?  

As a recent message from Jim Womack’s Lean Enterprise Institute emphasizes, great Lean Leaps are made during tough economic times. Taiichi Ohno pushed the Toyota Production System through the entire Toyota Motor Company in 1950 during the great crisis that had left Toyota teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

Short term, the right Lean Leaders will create immediate benefits:  freeing cash through elimination of excess inventory, protecting profit margins by improving quality and productivity, strengthening ties with customers by improving service, and converting orders-to-cash faster by reducing lead times. But just as importantly, strategic Lean Leaders will also help your company build for the future and create long-term competitive advantage. With the right Lean team in place your company can advance its Lean transformation using a systemic approach across the enterprise:

• By developing employees as problem solvers;
• By changing the management culture from command and control to fact-based and flexible;
• By extending the Lean transformation beyond the manufacturing shop floor to finance, engineering, marketing, and other critical support areas;
• By implementing Lean principles across the supply chain at your key suppliers and at their key suppliers;
• By transitioning from a tools-based implementation path to a course that applies Lean Management as a complete business system;
• By changing the very culture of how the organization thinks and conducts business on a daily basis.

You know it makes sense.  Do it!

Extraordinary times call on us to look again to the core of the Toyota revolution and how we can make it our own

Strange things happen in a crisis. Consider, for example, that some companies, in retrenchment mode, are cutting back on investments that not too long ago they were eager to make in learning and implementing the principles of the Toyota Production System. At least part of the market for improvement seems to be shrinking, in other words, at precisely the moment when just about everything in the marketplace seems to need improvement.

This is more than just strange. After all, Toyota’s management system was forged as a response to severe economic hardship, its basic mindset tempered by the threat of catastrophe. Circumstances have changed over the years, of course, but the Toyota system has proven to offer a potent and strikingly reliable way to survive-and even thrive-against fierce competition, in hard times as well as good. Its signal strengths – relentless cost cutting, commitment to people and dedication to long-term vision – are made for crisis.

Clearly the message is not lost on some businesses, where leaders are intensifying their focus on learning lean. But other companies remain a puzzlement. Why, when they stand to profit from it most, are some retreating from efforts to reap the benefits of the Toyota revolution? 

One reason may be that, over the years, we have allowed ourselves to misconstrue Toyota’s achievement and how we might best absorb and extend it. Despite our best intentions, we have sometimes treated it as we vowed we never would: as a commodity, a set of “tools” or techniques, a “program.” We have bought and sold it in the form of workshops and how-to books, training regimens, acronyms, certificates and prizes. No matter how sophisticated our grasp of lean’s deep roots, we have nonetheless been willing to shape it to the market’s eagerness for surefire recipes, delegable formulas and instant gratification. We have busied ourselves with superficialities and too often found convenient distractions from the hard work of criticizing ourselves, nurturing others and contributing to society. 

Criticizing, nurturing, contributing-these are not empty words. They lie at the explicit heart of what Toyota’s leaders have been striving to achieve all along. 

Rebranded as “lean” by Jim Womack and Dan Jones, Toyota’s approach to management is notoriously difficult to define, a dynamic infrastructure, at once straightforward and complex, of shared convictions, principles and practices. In order to make lean intelligible (and, some might say, marketable), proselytizers variously explain it in terms of structures (e.g., houses, pyramids), procedures (“First do this, then do that….”) or “tools” (5S programs, kanban, OEE, value stream maps, A3s, etc). All reasonable enough on the face of it. 

But something seems to be missing. While none of these elements is foreign to lean, it seems fair, especially in the current context of economic upheaval, to ask whether some of our representations of lean might not be fragmented or rootless. Do the parts – like the parts of the blind men’s elephant – somehow obscure the whole? Have we neglected common principles and key unifying forces underpinning lean’s success, forces such as commitments to internal and external communities, near-obsessive quality consciousness, relentless diligence or even, tellingly, the motivating fear of failure? 

Questions such as these take us back to a deeper lean, a lean in which techniques are inextricably bound to underlying principles and convictions -  principles of Takt, Flow and Pull, to be sure - but also the conviction, for example, that current methods are deeply inadequate, that enduring commitment to people is essential, and that true competitive strength relies on strategic coherence between everyday workplace decisions and long-range aspirations to collective betterment. 

That such things are difficult to talk about and difficult to package doesn’t authorize us to ignore them. Especially not now. Indeed, this is a crucial time to rededicate ourselves to such basics, not merely because they provide an extraordinarily sound basis for cost cutting in the short term – which they assuredly do – but because they lie at the core of building competitive strength for the long term. 

There is more, too. Lean’s animating convictions and principles turn out to be directly relevant to what appear more and more to be fundamental shifts in marketplace values.

Evolving Values

Consider one example of lean’s connections to the changing nature of value. 

Communications technologies and recent political trends are bringing ever more transparency to the relationship between private and public interests. As this happens, social considerations increasingly enter into the calculations of profit-making enterprises. Businesses are taking greater account of the impact of their behavior on the greater community, the well being of their employees, the health and safety of consumers, the overall energy supply and even the sustainability of the natural environment. As costs increasingly attach to private use of the commons, for example, it is becoming harder to see any advantage in fouling the nest. Social responsibility is newly respectable. 

This trend is already underway in at least two forms. On the one hand, many businesses must increasingly prepare for public scrutiny and regulation of their activities.  On the other hand, positive social contributions are looking more and more like useful selling points. Wal-Mart’s embrace of energy-efficient light bulbs, the flowering of the renewable energy industry and Honda’s quest to improve bystander safety are small signs of this evolution in values. It is not tangential that the president of the United States wants to see American automakers build more energy-efficient vehicles. 

And lean’s role? It turns out that lean’s defining preoccupations – with relentless waste reduction, with nurturing people and with strategic coherence-provide powerful models for cutting - edge thinking and practice in this changing landscape. Examples abound, from the extension of healthcare improvements beyond industrial notions of heightened efficiency, to manufacturing’s emerging recognition that pollution and wasted energy are forms of muda, to new insights on how service industries can meet evolving standards of customer privacy. The opportunities for improvement are rich and potentially enriching. To see them, however, we need to stop thinking of lean as a toolbox and start recognizing its true breadth and depth. 

Learning Lean

How can we most effectively tap into this “deep” lean? 

There are undoubtedly some aspects of effective lean leadership that depend on knowledge; others are expressed by how we reorganize processes and structures. Intertwined with all of these and of far more consequence than any, however, are deeper lean attributes, shared in the community but rooted in each individual: distinctive sensitivities, values, perspectives, convictions, habits, attitudes and reflexes. Even for accomplished leaders, developing these qualities – developing a robust lean “mindset” – requires time, persistence and guided engagement with the workplace in all its chaotic intricacy. This implacable fact applies, indeed, to everyone, because the lean ideal envisions an organization in which all can and do contribute their capacities for improvement. It stimulates the intellect to learn about lean’s “DNA,” but nothing actually changes until we learn how to replicate that DNA through practice. 

For individuals, as for organizations, learning lean beyond its superficial aspects is less like acquiring tools than it is like knowing how and if and when to use them. One doesn’t become a virtuoso pianist, after all, by buying a piano or attending workshops or reading books. Such activities may have supplemental value, but the core of acquiring mastery lies in disciplined practice. Practice, practice, practice. It lies in taking action and making mistakes and thereby learning to hear and see subtle distinctions that others don’t. It lies in developing new reflexes and in pursuing perfection. To borrow the language of the old joke, there are two ways to get to Carnegie Hall, but only one of them will get you on stage.

Pursuing the metaphor of musicianship a bit further can be helpful. Great musicians – even good musicians – are invariably nurtured by good teachers. This is as true of orchestra or ensemble players as it is for soloists. One can find similar examples with little difficulty: athletes and their coaches, soldiers and their trainers or doctors and their mentors. Self-taught virtuosos in lean, in any case, are rare enough that you wouldn’t want your organization’s success to have to depend on your being able to hire them. 

This truth about learning should recall to students of lean the importance of wisely guided practice and application of lean’s core values. It also underscores a challenge for conscientious lean teachers (who are likely, by the way, to shun boastful labels such as “guru” and “sensei“). The challenge is this: history shows that lean, like music, is most reliably taught through forms of coaching or mentoring. Numerous complementary activities may be valuable and can and should be exploited, but the essential reflexes and convictions that make superior lean leaders – and lean organizations – are best developed though guided, disciplined practice and experience. That good coaching may be difficult to scale, market or commodify is irrelevant or at least of secondary importance to the central fact of its effectiveness. Yes, there are subtleties and complexities to be reckoned with, especially when one considers the needs of transforming large organizations. The basic lesson, though, is pretty straightforward: If you’re serious about getting better at lean, get a coach. If you’re serious about teaching lean, be a coach. 

Moving Forward 

Toyota, facing the same difficult times as everyone else, shows no signs of giving up on the Toyota Way. That hard times prompt some other organizations to retreat from their commitment to lean indicates, perhaps more than anything else, the degree to which we – students and teachers alike – have allowed ourselves to be distracted from the powerful convictions, principles and practices at the heart of the revolution. This is an exciting time for lean, but only, paradoxically, when we return to the basics and only when we remember to apprentice our ambitions to sustained and disciplined practice.

Andrew Dillon, an independent management consultant, is a long-time observer and participant in the lean revolution. In the 1980s he served as Shigeo Shingo’s interpreter in the United States and translated many seminal works on lean. He works in English, French, Japanese and Chinese. He can be reached via apdillon@att.net.

Thomas Alva Edison

Turbulent times provide ample opportunities for success, if we approach things with the right frame of mind.

by Adam Zak 

In my role as an executive recruiter specializing in helping companies with Lean transformation, I’ve been spending a lot of my time lately speaking with people all over the world who are wrestling with complex decisions. I thought I’d share some of my observations with you, and in turn, hope that you will share your thoughts with me. 

Everywhere we turn, there’s advice heralding “How to manage in a crisis,” or “New rules for surviving the crunch.” Just the other day I heard a discussion on PBS involving business writers trying to agree on a title for what the economy is going through. And there was no consensus (imagine that, from business writers). 

Crisis Breeds Opportunity 

Craig Barrett, recently retired CEO of Intel told Newsweek readers, “There is a general rule in business life: market share is won or lost during transitions. You cannot save your way out of a recession, you can only invest your way out.” No one is denying that cutting costs is essential to surviving 2009, but we Lean disciples have always practiced a different philosophical approach. As we look for ways to eliminate waste and improve productivity, we are always focused on getting better. In early February Muhtar Kent, Coca-Cola’s CEO told the Wall Street Journal “I’ve been through this movie in smaller versions a number of times in the past…times like these are not an excuse to sit back and ride out the storm.” And this week, at a global sustainability conference in Chicago, I spoke with Rick Frazier, Coke’s VP Supply Chain, who told me they were leveraging their Lean & Green efforts even more dramatically during this time of uncertainty. 

“A recession creates winners and losers just like a boom,” observed Mauro F. Guillen, a professor of international management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in BusinessWeek. Let’s chose to be among the winners. 

The Need for Leadership with a Wartime Mentality 

I think any Lean practitioner will agree with me that in many companies upper management has spent too much time focusing on quarterly financial statements and not enough time on long-term thinking. Executives have to lead “their people out of a psychological funk and at the same time tailor their business to focus on a new reality,” says management consultant Ram Charan in BusinessWeek. 

Cut If You Must, But Keep All You Can 

In discussing both strategy and tactics with my contacts, I hear  that many are focused on avoiding or limiting layoffs by instating four-day work weeks, unpaid vacations and voluntary or enforced furloughs. Others are implementing flexible work schedules, wage freezes, or cuts to 401(k) and pension contributions. By keeping controls on people costs, they’re keeping the people. 

For a strategy that pays returns twice, consider this: a number of Lean companies are bringing back previously outsourced work, thus both retaining skilled team members and removing non-value added transportation and outsourcing administrative costs. 

Certainly some Lean companies out there are indeed using these times to reduce staff and make their organizations “leaner” (obviously a total misunderstanding of the Lean concept – so were they really “going Lean” in the fist place?). But most of my clients seem to “get it” and are letting go and hiring too, with an eye to building a better Lean operation and mustering forces to take advantage of opportunities that will most certainly arise, as well as those they can create. That’s continuous improvement with a long-term view. 

As Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial said in Newsweek, “So many CEOs are so focused on defense that they may be missing real opportunities. If you only play defense, you will not be on the right side as the economy bottoms, let alone turns. For us, for instance, there was an opportunity to attract talent and clients as our Wall Street counterparts imploded. The new blood is helping to buoy profits today and will put us in a whole new position on the other side of the crisis.” 

A blog article from HarvardBusiness.org recently cited three rules that leading companies use to maximize service while eliminating wasteful activities: reduce, redesign and restructure. 

Reduce Wisely and Emphasize Talent

Before making painfully aggressive reductions, it pays to keep in mind some potentially serious repercussions:  You risk losing valuable contributors inadvertently, damaging internal morale or your external reputation as an employer-of-choice. You may also lose sight of the important training and staff-development programs which are helping keep your key people engaged with your execution strategy.  Recently, The McKinsey Quarterly advised “By emphasizing talent in cost-cutting efforts, employers can intelligently strengthen the value proposition they offer current and potential employees and position themselves strongly for growth when economic conditions improve.”  Makes sense to me.

Redesign Jobs and Make Them More Engaging

If you want to maximize morale and involvement, Lean practices prove again and again the importance of engaging people. Now is a great opportunity to redesign jobs, and perhaps even career paths, to totally engage the people undertaking them. Adding more responsibility, a greater measure of autonomy, and improved sense of control all weigh heavily on promoting employee satisfaction.

In addition to redesigning roles, companies cutting jobs should carefully protect training and development programs. Again, not only are these  essential to maintaining workplace morale and increasing long-term productivity, but they also provide your  people with the skills necessary to perform their redesigned jobs.

Restructure the Lean Way

Lean can excel in times of crisis. Focused on basic process improvement, Lean solutions often require no capital expenditures. Frequently, companies turn to Lean after buying new equipment or technology that failed to generate expected improvements. Lean is also scalable — management can tailor the people component to meet specific requirements. 

Looking beyond crisis mode, Lean can accelerate the impact of changes by:

1. Using existing Lean experience and leadership in an organization to jump-start the turnaround.
2. Achieving measurable cost reduction and enhanced value to customers.
3. Establishing a framework for improvement that delivers returns to the organization as good times return.

The key is to remember that you’re managing a crisis. The Lean effort can’t become the turnaround; it must work in parallel with efforts to manage cash and reduce costs.

 High Commitment, High Performance 

A February 9, 2009 article in the Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge series caught my eye. Uncompromising Leadership in Tough Times featured Q&A with author and Harvard professor Michael Beer who has studied the successes of high commitment, high performance (HCHP) leaders in tough times. What he found was that “they shared the view that a firm has a larger purpose than simply profit and increasing stock price, though they were all laser- focused on profitability and saw it as essential to achieving their larger purpose for the firm. They had a multi-stakeholder view of the firm as opposed as a shareholder view. The purpose was to add value to employees, customers, community, and society-not just shareholders.”  

Let’s all of us heed Edison’s advice and find a better way. It will require everyone from the C-suite to the shop floor to think and work differently. But isn’t that what Lean is all about? There has never been a more important time than now.