Comments on: Developing Your Lean Education Plan

By: Jamie Flinchbaugh

Jamie Flinchbaugh — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:53:14 +0000

John, learning by doing is indeed the best kind of learning.

By: John Hunter

John Hunter — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:19:04 +0000

Actually if you actually let the lean leaders practice lean you are probably doing more to help them learn than anything else. Reading is great, but 10 times better when reading to find solutions you need to deal with issues you have in place. Save for going to conferences. Consultants can be a huge help, but if you just bring in consultants without allowing the changes needed to improve they are not much use.

Far more than not approving training, or giving the lean leaders any time to learn is not giving them freedom to adopt lean practices and actually make improvements in your organization. That is what kills learning.

A great lean education plan. Give them opportunities to apply what they know. As they gain knowledge and success give them more opportunities.

By: Jamie Flinchbaugh

Jamie Flinchbaugh — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:02:31 +0000

Thanks all for the comments. Lester, I agree about your point on the order of magnitude.

Overall, with the focus on training dollars, consider there are other ways to keep learning. It doesn’t always have to be expensive. If a lean leader has a team and doesn’t have a budget, there are many ways from book clubs to brown-bag-lunch seminars that can be done to continue the learning process. It’s important to have the intention and plan to do so. Never let lack of dollars get in the way of having a learning plan. Lack of willingness, that’s a much more dangerous constraint.

Jamie

By: Lester Sutherland

Lester Sutherland — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:03:55 +0000

Jamie,
As always, a thought provoking post. I expect in these tough times you are seeing the drop off in students from companies who feel constrained to spend on training. I think we all understand that the slow times are when we should spend the most, since we have more available time to learn. But measuring dollars is much easier than measuring the importance of knowledge, so we take the easy route and cut spending on training. Some companies have a vision that makes employee training a high priority and we all know who they are. As we come out of this downturn those companies will be even more prepared to surge ahead.
The spending on Lean leaders is even more important by an order of magnitud, since each one of them touches and trains multiple people. I like your reference to servant leaders, the writings have been neglected but are still as relevant as when Robert Greenleaf wrote them in 1977.

By: Matt Wrye

Matt Wrye — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:14:44 +0000

It is very easy to get someone to sign off on education for the people trying to catch up to the lean leaders and much more difficult to get the sign off for the leaders to continue learning. It is very important to keep people out there learning ahead of everyone else. It not only keeps them engaged and shows them the “respect for people” aspect of lean, it also keeps the whole organization from staling in education. If someone is always out front in learning, then others will be always learning more and catching up. It helps create the continuous learning organization.

By: Joseph T. Dager

Joseph T. Dager — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:51:15 +0000

Interesting article and a great slant. We always talk about change agents but do we nurture that crowd enough. Our in-house education has a tendency to be average, maybe because we make it average.

Thanks