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A Lean Connections Community Service project from Adam Zak Executive Search, the Lean Enterprise Institute and others…

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

Morning mail brought a reminder that it’s that season again. Yes, time to hit the Lean conference circuit until you can’t stand (afford?) it anymore.   Not to single out AME (Association for Manufacturing Excellence) for any particular reason, but it was AME’s 12-page color brochure which outlined  five key benefits I would receive (and you too!) by attending their 2009 Lean Conference.  Of the five, networking only placed third. Hmm?   

Quoting AME (emphasis added) on the benefits of networking: 

“Building a social network of like-minded people is an important part of the Lean journey.  It’s well established by over 30 years of scientific research that the best performers and the most profitable companies invest in social capital.  In the world of Lean, establishing relationships is the catalyst for success.  A company with rich social capital produces outstanding business results  - higher sales, better quality products, more satisfied employees and greater profits.  To accelerate your Lean efforts you must continually meet new people, leverage trusted resources and build stronger relationships.  Having the right people included in your sphere of influence will help you cut your way through all of the noise about Lean and provide not only ongoing support but the right support. It’s not just what you know and who you know that counts  –  but also who knows you that is important to your success.”

I’ve got to find out who writes their advertising copy! As an executive search guy who specializes in recruiting Lean Executives for the Sustainable Lean Enterprise, I couldn’t have said this better myself. Networking makes major sense for every Lean Executive, including you.  

Incidentally, the AME flyer specifically did NOT mention that networking is an ideal way to position yourself for long-term career advancement.  Sure, your current employer may not be struggling with layoffs, salary reductions or other recession-induced  issues – now. More about this below. Just remember, “who knows you …is important to your success.”

So, how to maximize the benefits to you from conference networking?  A few observations and suggestions.  Not by any means a comprehensive list, but maybe enough to get you energized.

Plan. Before getting on that plane, think about why you’re attending the conference. What is your purpose?  What objectives and expectations do you have? What outcomes do you hope to achieve? I personally believe that in today’s world of “The Brand Called You,”  building your personal network should be a key purpose in and of itself. But beyond that, is it professional development? Is it soliciting input about a specific business issue you’re facing, and information about how others have tackled similar problems? What will you need to accomplish at the conference so that you receive true value-added for your time and your employer’s financial investment? Get clarity on this.

Prepare. Who do you think you’ll want to meet, and speak with, and why? What will you say to them? Think about what insights and perspectives you can offer your prospective conversation partners. What ideas might you be able to share about Lean, your company’s business challenges and successes, yourself personally and professionally? You don’t need a prepared “sales pitch” but make a few notes in advance.  Most effective of all, think about some questions to ask of the people you’ll meet.  Powerful conversation starters.  Have some.

Bring tools. As the Amex folks say, don’t leave home without…business cards! Your business card is valuable currency because you can exchange it for the other person’s business card. That way you’ll have contact  info so you can follow-up after the conference.  And you’ll want to do that. I am absolutely amazed at the number of people I meet at virtually every event who don’t have a business card. Why did they bother showing up?

Show up; no…really, show up.  You’re at an off-site for a reason. If not for that reason you could have spent less time and money at a Webinar instead. That reason does not include responding to emails and phone calls from colleagues back at the Gemba;  or fine-tuning a future-state map; or sneaking out for a round of golf. Go on the plant tours and to the workshops you signed up for. Attend meals, coffee breaks and cocktail hours. Come early, mingle, and chat (see below). Stay late.  Yes, you can eat too. But only with other attendees.

Mingle.  AME indicated that Northrop Grumman is deploying a team of 30 to this year’s conference. Wow, 30 people!  Here’s some advice for those NG participants and you as well:  Don’t all sit at the same table. Networking isn’t about dancing with the partner you brought; it’s about learning new steps from the guy or gal snapping their fingers to an unfamiliar beat out there on the dance floor.  So meet and talk to people you don’t already know. Then, you’ll get to know them, and they you. 

Say hello. Take the initiative to start a conversation with the unknown colleague sitting next to you at the supply chain workshop or a few of the Medtronic folks lining up at the salad buffet across the room. You might ask the person walking alongside you on the Miller Brewing tour why they chose it instead of the one over at Proctor & Gamble.  Or, even start a chat about the weather (just kidding) with that executive over there wearing a name badge from a customer’s or competitor’s plant. What might you learn? What else might you learn? Go ahead, engage.  

OK, I know what else you were thinking about… If you are indeed actively seeking a new position, stay below the radar.   Even if you followed my advice and you’re NOT sitting at the same table with the gang from back at the office. Latest statistic I find from the Department of Labor is that 64% of all jobs found last year were through contacts. You’ll be making good LeanConnections, but be discreet about  your job search. That dance is a three or four-step affair, not the one-step typical at professional conferences.  It’s unlikely anyone you’ve met will actually be able to offer you a job. Contacts will lead you to information, other resources and still more contacts. There’s a time and place for everything. For job search discussions that would be during your post-conference follow-up.   More about how to do that in another post, coming soon. 

Oh, and don’t bring resumes; almost no one bothers with paper any more, and it’s the very definition of not being discreet. 

A final conference thought.  Many conference promoters invite you to bring along a spouse and even schedule “significant other” activities.  OK, if it’s winter and you, like I, live in Chicago, and the conference is in Maui, well…  But I’ve been attending conferences for almost 20 years now and for pretty much every situation other than the Maui thing I have one word of advice: don’t. Focus on your purpose, avoid distractions. And treat your significant other to a great dinner upon your return home. 

Post-conference follow-up. Much as Lean must become part of your company’s corporate culture in order to deliver sustained benefits, networking must fuse with your DNA to live up to its greatest potential for you.  

Decide who you want to reach out to after the conference, then do it (rule of thumb: sooner is better, later may as well be not at all). Who will you call? Who will you email? Who would it make sense to meet with in person? after that initial connection, how will you continue to stay in touch?   

Remember that networking is a long-term process which leads you into building mutually beneficial relationships. But  not in just a few days.  You have to work at it continuously and, eventually, you’ll form the networking habit, along with an awesome professional network at your disposal.  That’s how you’ll wind up getting the inside info on all the best Lean ideas, innovations and industry trends before you read about them in Industry Week  or Manufacturing Engineering.  Not to mention those great career opportunity leads.

A final, final note.  I’ve just been Googling on the words “conference +Lean +Six Sigma + TPM” +…(well, you get the idea) and count at least 16 in the US alone before Thanksgiving.  Get crackin’ and happy networking!

Adam Zak

How are you changing the world today?

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.

“Respect for people: Very few businesses start up only on the backs of the sole founder. It takes a team.”  Jamie Flinchbaugh 

Just a few days ago Jamie blogged over at LeanBlog about the Lean Entrepreneur. With layoffs mounting at even the Leanest Thinking companies, he argued that this might be just the time for “lean-minded” individuals to strike out on their own and start new businesses. In fact, some quick research I did indicates that 16 of the 30 DJIA (Dow Jones index) corporations were launched during past recessions, among them Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Walt Disney, for example. Jamie makes a persuasive point. 

And he’s also on target writing that Lean Thinkers’ clear focus on “customer obsession,” “direct observation” and “respect for people” can add tremendous value to the new venture.  But I might have changed the order a bit and put “respect for people” first. So here’s some additional perspective on the importance of the team – people – to the success of your new business undertaking.

In my earlier days I spent some time in Silicon Valley helping start two companies, one which turned out moderately successful and was sold to a strategic buyer, and one which burned to a crisp and was eventually abandoned.  These two experiences qualified me for a very small seat at the venture capital table, and I found myself assessing the viability of entrepreneurial ventures as they were brought to our attention. 

I learned that, without question, the start-up team is absolutely the most critical element in the success or failure of a new company.  Analyze carefully your own strengths and weaknesses and recruit others who can balance and complement these.  Sure, it may be your brilliant idea for a phenomenal product or service, and you may be hesitant to share decision control, execution responsibility and eventual profits with others.  But unless your business is high-powered consulting (think Deming, Drucker, Ram Charan, or James O. McKinsey – well, you get the picture) you are not likely to make the big time on your own. 

It is very likely that you’ll need 3-4 key team members, your co-founders, to help you get this thing off the ground.  Each will bring his or her specialty to the venture: a boss (CEO); an idea guy (R&D, technology); a bean-counter/administrator (CFO or controller); and a chief sales rep (VP/Director Sales/Marketing).  If you get the right people in place things like “who is our customer, what are we going to sell them, and how will we make it” have a way of getting figured out. That’s what talented people do. 

I know. You’re thinking “Whoa, no way I can do this in the early stages of my new company.” Well, you may be right and you probably won’t be able to recruit all the critical talent at once or at the start of your venture.  But at some point you will need funding to build and grow your business, and the source (banks, angel investors, VCs, and the like), quality and cost of that funding will greatly depend on the excellent qualifications and credibility of the management team you’ve pulled together.  Think and plan carefully. 

Finally, a word about Boards. You may not need a board of directors right away but it wouldn’t hurt to connect early on with some individuals who can help mentor you and your new venture in the right direction.  Do you have family or professional colleagues who can provide a sounding board for your ideas? Perhaps non-competing industry professionals with strong leadership and management track records?  Executives you’ve met through professional networking (LEI, SME, AME…) who can make solid introductions to functional managers within their own companies?  Take advantage of these resources to build an informal “advisory board” or roundtable so you can benefit from their collective experience.

And then get on with it.  As Jamie Flinchbaugh concluded,

“…if you find yourself in the unfortunate position of not having a job, maybe this is a time to take those lean skills in a new direction.” 

I certainly think that might be the case.    Adam Zak

But Lean Leaders cannot allow a purely free market to exist in executive compensation when CEOs of certain American companies are receiving taxpayer (spelled: MY) dollars via U.S. government welfare handouts!

LEAN is about performance.  And rewards, any way you’d like to define them, should go to those who perform well. And those who do not deliver performance should also receive a strong message: NO rewards.  President Barack Obama was quoted earlier this week in the New York Times:

“This is America,” Mr. Obama said on Wednesday. “We don’t disparage wealth. We don’t begrudge anybody for achieving success. And we believe that success should be rewarded. But what gets people upset — and rightfully so — are executives being rewarded for failure. Especially when those rewards are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.”

So let’s silently visualize the news headlines of the past few of months.  Are you thinking of a company or two that has failed miserably in the market place?  Even if you can’t remember the CEO’s name?  We all know about at least some of these folks (though we may not yet know ALL of them).

Now, think for a moment about some of the concepts which define LEAN performance-driven companies, and see if  any of these all-star concrete-heads (automotive, financial services, transportation, etc.) looking for a hand-out could ever be connected with ANY one of these principles or practices. 

Leadership? Value-added activity?  Accountability? Employee engagement? Respect for people? High quality, fewer defects? Flow (well, I guess there was some cash out-flow in the form of toxic mortgages, but that doesn’t count)? Customer value? Continuous or constant improvement? Lower cost?  Going to Gemba (as in, knowing what the hell is going on in my business)? Corporate social responsibility? Transparency?  And how about just good old-fashioned plain honesty?

See many (LEAN) connections? Neither did I.  Many of our “modern” executive compensation systems are built around rewards and incentives that simply don’t do what they were supposed to do. That in itself is a performance issue, and a topic for another day.  I’m sure we could apply loads of LEAN improvement strategies and practices in the compensation arena.  But how about doing something right now?

Solutions?  Well, I’m not an economist and I’m not a political activist, but I’ve sure met a lot of top-performing executives who’ve gotten LEAN religion, then transformed their organizations and their corporate cultures. And then delivered performance, and been well-rewarded for it.

So in the spirit of LEAN I offer a simple suggestion which can be implemented right now: Every company receiving assistance in the form of our tax dollars MUST send its Chairman, CEO, CFO and all business unit (division, subsidiary, etc.) leaders to an intensive (say 3-5 days, perhaps 10 for the CFO)  hands-on LEAN EXECUTIVE training. 

I’ve got a short list of appropriate Senseis in case anyone’s interested.

Developing a strategy that focuses on global sustainability can ensure future productivity and strong consumer confidence – but only if companies do it right. As we move forward into an increasingly interconnected world, companies that have chosen to operate with LEAN & GREEN (sustainable) practices will begin to break ahead of the less innovative. How do you decide where to dedicate your resources to achieve the most return, economically and environmentally, in the future?

The Executives’ Club of Chicago is sponsoring a half-day conference at the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago.  The program begins with a 7:30 breakfast and networking session and runs through lunch, and should conclude around 2:00 PM.  The conference focus is sustainability and I expect to hear quite a lot of information about the connections between GREEN and LEAN.   Contact the Executives’ Club directly for registration, or download the program invitation by clicking on the link below.    As a long-time supporter of the Executives’ Club and frequent participant in their outstanding programs, I encourage you to consider attending. 

“Business Sustainability in a World in Crisis”  

To paraphrase a popular quote, I believe that the road to failure is paved with misconceptions about engaging employees and motivating them to embrace the Lean aspirations of an enterprise. That’s why I am dedicating this first issue of Lean Connections to this crucial subject.

(Read full article from July, 2008 inaugural issue of LeanConnections.)

Throughout my own Lean journey I’ve connected with thousands of Lean practitioners whose ideas, advice and kindness have transformed me both professionally and personally. So I created LeanConnections to begin a “digital dialog” where colleagues, associates, clients and friends can share their thoughts on timely and important topics.  

Our first issue was published in July, 2008.  Your comments and participation enthusiastically invited! Sign to recieve LeanConnections in your e-mail about 4-5 times a year by logging in to our main Web site at www.LeanRecruiter.com.

At Lean industry conferences in North America, Europe and Asia; in casual phone calls with top management and potential recruits; or in formal presentations to client companies, I keep hearing so many executives tell me that employees are their most important assets. That their organizations strive to become “the employers of choice” in their industries. And that respecting people and inspiring workers to do great things is the true mission of management at every level in the organization.

To paraphrase a popular quote, I believe that the road to failure is paved with misconceptions about engaging employees and motivating them to embrace the Lean aspirations of an enterprise. That’s why I am dedicating this first issue of Lean Connections to this crucial subject.

Respect For People: What It Means; Why It’s So Important; How It Works
From what I have learned in my personal Lean journey, most employers come up short in the respect department. Not for lack of effort but for misunderstanding what constitutes treating employees with genuine respect, as opposed to being polite and considerate. In executing a Lean transformation, this lack of understanding has doomed many a Lean journey almost from the start.

Today more and more leaders are realizing that something is wrong with their current strategies and that focusing on the numbers alone will not produce the long-term, sustainable results they seek. In researching this column, I have discovered a number of experts (Lean and otherwise) who have wrestled with the respect issue and have come to some eye-opening conclusions. Late last year, Consulting Magazine published an article by Oliver Wyman Group consultant Jamen Graves entitled “Getting the Employee Experience Right: What Every CEO Needs to Know.” According to Graves, “78 percent of CEOs realize that financial indicators alone are not an accurate reflection of a company’s strengths and weaknesses; instead, CEOs are increasingly turning a curious eye toward “softer” metrics, such as employee engagement, according to another recent study by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.”

The Successful Lean Transformation
In a widely referenced article in Industry Week, Ralph Keller, president of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, addressed the subject under the title, “Continuous Improvement — What Ever Happened to Respect for People?” I spoke with Ralph and asked him to elaborate on what respect is and why it’s so important to the successful implementation of Lean principles and the creation of a true Lean culture. According to Ralph, “Any time a company decides it wants to do a Lean transformation, it takes a leap of faith. A Lean transformation takes three to five years to see quantum results and your P&L and balance sheet will look terrible for a time.”

Ralph advises, “A successful Lean transformation requires a commitment to the people who make it possible. In this age of Gen Y’ers, when attracting skilled manufacturing people is increasingly difficult, respecting people and treating them as your most valuable resource is becoming vital to both attracting and retaining them.”

Most everyone will agree that one of the problems with the whole issue of respect is placing a value on it. We all know that people in business tend to measure what’s easy to measure. We’ve all learned early on how to do the math for cost of goods sold, value of inventory, EBITDA and many other financial accounting metrics. While it may be hard to calculate what respect is worth, we can measure the expense of recruiting replacements compared to the costs of retaining skilled employees and talented managers, along with their treasure trove of organizational know-how.

Building A Culture Of Retention
Harvard Management Update quotes Frank Brown, global leader for Assurance and Business Advisory Services for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), on the importance of building a culture of retention. “In good markets and bad, there are always opportunities for top performers. The real trick is creating a culture that sustains all employees, and engenders a positive response to questions like these: Is my work valued? Does my opinion count? Are new ideas welcomed? Are people treated with respect? Am I evaluated and rewarded on my performance? Does leadership act with integrity?”

The challenge for those of us in the Lean Community is to embrace and explain the true nature of mutual respect for people – managers and associates – so all organizations can move toward a new and better way of solving their problems. I called Norman Bodek, president of PCS Press, for his input on the subject and had a lively conversation that started with his belief, “If you don’t give people work that they can leave with a sense of respect, something is wrong.”

Then he outlined three steps for creating a culture of retention through respect for people:

“Step #1- Empower the worker.“ He cites Jidoka, a clever concept pioneered by the first Mr. Toyoda that permitted one worker to control several machines. “By pulling a cord, a single act stops the production line and empowers any worker to address a quality issue rather than allow it to pass down the line.”

Robert Simons agreed with the power of this concept in his article, “Designing High-Performance Jobs,” published in the Harvard Business Review. Simons says, “Improving the performance of key people is often as simple-and as profound- as changing the resources they control and the results for which they are accountable.”

“Step #2 – Everybody is part of the team,” Bodek asserts. “People get tremendous respect by participating in a team. We need to invest in people. In Japan, after 10 years on the job, you can become a team or a group leader and then all the training begins to pay off and those jobs are wonderful. Then your job is to develop people.”

Ralph Keller puts teamwork and leadership qualities for Lean transformation in this context: “A Lean leader understands that business is a team sport and they get things done through other people. They turn the organization pyramid upside down and realize that it’s management’s job to support all those value-adding people at the “top.” Managers and supervisors are taught that their role is to make sure that their people have the training, tools and materials they need to be able to do their jobs for customers — not to tell them what to do.

“Step #3 – Quick and easy kaizen.” The benefit Bodek describes as, “Instead of waiting for management to change my job, I’m now empowered to change it myself. I am empowered to do creative things at work.” This can translate into getting creative ideas out of every employee. According to Bodek, “The average company in Japan saves $4,000 per year per worker. A year ago Subaru got 108 implemented ideas per worker. People will stay and accomplish if they’re engaged and asked and inspired and if they’re heard.”

In one of Jim Womack’s e-letters, entitled “Respect for People,” he checks in on creativity: “Over time I’ve come to realize that this problem-solving process is actually the highest form of respect. The manager is saying to the employees that the manager can’t solve the problem alone, because the manager isn’t close enough to the problem to know the facts. He or she truly respects the employees’ knowledge and their dedication to finding the best answer. But the employees can’t solve the problem alone either because they are often too close to the problem to see its context and they may refrain from asking tough questions about their own work. Only by showing mutual respect – each for the other and for each other’s role – is it possible to solve problems, make work more satisfying, and move organizational performance to an ever higher level.”

The benefits of respect flow in two directions

Bob Chapman, chairman and CEO of Barry-Wehmiller Companies, Inc., describes the impact of his team’s efforts to foster respect in this way: “Lean has opened our eyes to the impact that we have on peoples’ lives by the way we go about business. Lean asks people to engage their heads and their hearts to do things better so we can create an economic entity that has sustainability and competitiveness.”

Meanwhile, Jamen Graves reports these results in his Consulting Magazine article for companies that engage employees. “Companies that create a highly engaged workforce benefit from having employees who strongly identify with the company’s success. These employees are willing to go the extra mile; that is, to dramatically increase their level of discretionary effort, which, in turn, significantly improves overall performance. Such employees tend to take pride in their company and are willing to recommend it as a great place to work to friends and family members.”

Are we getting closer to answering the big question: “Other than for the money to support ourselves and our families, why do we really work? What’s really in it for us? And how will each of us make this very personal choice in a world where talent is the most scarce of all resources”?

Obviously, the benefits of an engaged, respectful team bear fruit for employees, management, customers, shareholders and everyone else with a stake in the success of your Lean enterprise. It works because people want to make it work. It keeps working because it never becomes just a process; because it remains the key to living and working together successfully.

As I read and researched material for this article, I was reminded of four points that Jan Carlzon, the CEO who turned around the Scandinavian airline SAS, made at the start of his book Moments of Truth (published in 1987, even before Womack & Jones’ Lean Thinking). See for yourself how Carlzon captures the essence of getting people engaged and energized throughout an organization:

“1. Everyone needs to know and feel that he or she is needed
2. Everyone wants to be treated as an individual
3. Giving someone the freedom to take responsibility releases resources that would otherwise remain concealed
4. An individual without information cannot take responsibility.

5. An individual who is given information cannot help but take responsibility.”

(Return Index)