Today we began our Leading Lean course, which is one of my favorites. A lean expert who can’t engage other people stands alone. It takes leadership skills to turn a lean expert into a lean change agent.
We do a fun little exercise in the morning of day 1 with the purpose of getting people’s heads around their role as a lean leader. They are required in small teams to develop a recruitment poster to recruit lean leaders to their organization. The artwork varies, and the picture above is an example from this morning. Here is one of these definitions people used during creating their poster:
Inspirational team player willing to teach, coach, and empower people with passion, promoting values, principles, and vision with the goal of creating an atmosphere of continuous improvement through learning and self-development.
That’s long, but does encapsulate a lot. What definition would you use to describe a leader of lean?
Jamie Flinchbaugh helps individuals and companies execute to their ideal state. 
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Jamie,
I love this concept. It is breakthrough. It promotes an excellent passage to deeper career development understanding. That career growth and development is about crafting your distinctive identity – a message of who you are and what matters to you most. You can say “personal brand” till the cows come home. I look at this more as a badge of craftsmanship.
Jim Baran
Owner, Value Stream Leadership
That is a great definition or response to the exercise. I am going to capture that to keep and refer back to in discussions with our central lean group.
For me, being a lean leader means you take on the challenge of raising the bar, then teach — and motivate — those around you to follow.
Hello Jamie,
What is the message below the drawing read? Can you share with us?
The one organization can leverage the true advantages of a Lean initiative. In today’s business environment, maintaining a competitive edge is the only way to stay in business. Project managers who are armed with the right tools, true Lean roadmaps, implementation knowledge and real-world, hands-on experience can drive Lean into the operations side of your business…. THanks