Too often I see clients leveraging Lean Systems Thinking practices primarily for cost reduction, long-term. We miss out on the true benefits as a result.
In the early days of Lean adoption, we do see quite a bit of opportunity to reduce costs. Let’s be sure though, that we understand the original purpose of those costs. Are the costs truly Waste? Review the 8 Types of 
Waste and be sure you trace the cost back to the valuable experience that it was intended to enable for customer.
Often, over years of more subjective-based informal managing, we’ve likely incurred much untraceable cost and lost track of what Value / Service the cost was enabling. However, the risk is in cutting costs without being thoughtful of what Value we are still enabling. If we stay in the subjective cost reduction mode long-term, we will severely damage our value proposition and relevance in the market that we intended to serve.
The real beauty of Lean is the leadership platform that it enables. Objective decisions based on solid understanding of economic trade-offs are the key to growing the organization responsibly.
Let’s not forget to leverage Lean Strategically. If we grow responsibly, we should have a smaller capacity surplus, tied directly to shifting customer needs, reducing the urgency and the size of any justifiable cost reduction efforts ongoing. (Talk with me about the budgeting and expense management behavior patterns, as they often reinforce severe dysfunction)
Combining the voice of customer, incrementally and iteratively as we deliver against and [in]validate the hypothesis underlying a business viability strategy, is the key to remaining Connected with customer and ALL the talent of the organization. Pairing Agility practices with Lean Systems Thinking, realizes true Adaptive Leadership capacity. (Please attend one of my talks about Adaptive Capacity, if you sincerely wish to have a wonderful experience serving Society well as a Leader)
(If curious about how to pragmatically shift your organization towards Sharing Reality with Customer, contact me)
Ultimately, we need just enough capacity to maximize the value we can offer to customers, based on our near-term strategy (6 months to 12 months out). Ideally, we can mature our organization to be able to flex with the demands of the long-term market, by becoming much more proactive in how we influence solution innovations for the market overall – true market leadership instead of chase strategies. Skill enrichment of long-retained teams should prevail over unthoughtful, anxiety prone recomposition of Teams and massive layoffs. As talented knowledge workers acquire Lean-Agile leadership skills, they will no longer tolerate an organization that does not understand nor embrace Respect for [and inclusion of] People.
Let’s remember that planning and execution Practices exist to ensure we establish and maintain a unified Mindset around our reason for existing as an organization, AND how ‘we’ agree together to fulfill the needs of customers. It’s expected that the unified Mindset of the organization would ADAPT over longer periods of time in response to trends and relationships discovered through short-term events. The days of unilateral decision making and fear-based, haphazzard cost-restructuring will soon be behind US.
Please, seriously ponder …
Shouldn’t we be more intentional about the adjustments we make to the organization’s strategies, disseminated to achieve its vision and mission?
Why wouldn’t we Include and Leverage all of the talent in our organization as part of ongoing strategic adaptation?
Do we not know how to do that pragmatically? Or, is the act of individual virtue and denial of just a few people, preventing us from pursuing a shared reality with society?
Recent Comments