I have a new post published on Assembly Magazine. See the full article on that site.

The CEO must be the champion and leader of a lean transformation, but the board of directors can have a major impact, too….

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I have a new post published on Assembly Magazine. See the full article on that site.

Lean applies to every function within a business. You cannot succeed on your lean journey without engaging the sales organization at some point….

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I have a new post published on Assembly Magazine. See the full article on that site.

Manufacturers have no trouble hanging onto key employees these days, since job opportunities are scarce. But, that hasn’t reduced the need to find new ways to engage people. No matter what type of economic opportunities a company can provide, engagement still plays an important role in employee retention.
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I have a new post published on Assembly Magazine. See the full article on that site.

A great lean thinker has a lens for value….

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I have a new post published on LeanBlog. See the full article on that site.

by Jamie Flinchbaugh, Lean Learning Center

This continues a series titled Leading Lean A-Z. This post is K: Be Kinetic.

Did you ever have one of those days where you just wanted to put your feet up on your desk and breath in and out for a while? The lean journey will still be there. There are still many challenges out there. I don’t need to do it all today. Let’s just take our foot off the gas.

But change requires momentum. That momentum is either gained or lost. And to feed that momentum, the leader must be a continuous provider of kinetic energy.

Consider the example of the flywheel. Once you build up enough momentum, carrying that forward requires little energy. But the energy required to get up to speed is substantial. If you keep pushing, pausing, pushing, pausing, you will never get the flywheel with enough momentum that progress becomes easy.

Why does this matter in real life? Why is it my energy?

It doesn’t have to be your energy. Many of the Leading Lean characteristics are about how you get others to push with you. But you don’t get others to put in energy unless you are. You must create the wake.

Consider the other people in your organization that want to move forward. If they must create motion from stillness, it requires a lot of energy and willpower. UNLESS there is a wake to follow in. If you can create a wake for them, they can follow your lead with dramatically less energy than without it. Your job in being kinetic is to create enough forward motion and energy that people can draft in your wake and help you build that momentum.

But a lean leader also wants to preserve their own kinetic energy, so instead of taking a break, they will slip into someone else’s wake for a bit. This preserves their energy while still moving forward. You didn’t stop. You just found a temporary path of forward motion that required less energy that cutting your own path.

Creating a wake for others to follow makes it easier for them. Being a good follower and slipping into others way makes it easier for you. Slipping back and forth between these two energy modes is a sign of an expert lean leader, one who never loses momentum but knows how to be efficient with their energy over the long haul of a major change.

Being kinetic also requires shifting your direction when you run into immovable barriers. There are plenty of barriers worth breaking through. Just like a stream cutting a path through the earth, it will occasionally cut right through the middle of a rock. But most of the time it finds away around the rock. The lean leader has to sometimes find their way around barriers. If there is a lack of interest, change the story, attach to something that does have interest, or go find the one corner of the organization that does have interest. If the skills aren’t strong enough to success, scale back and focus on just one skill, or get some help. Know the barriers. Know the best way to maintain your forward motion. And sometimes that means bending and flowing around some barriers.

What are your actions to be kinetic? Ask yourself the following:

1. What are you doing to create a wake for others to follow?

2. Who has a wake you can slip into?

3. What barriers do you need to flow around instead of run against?

You can find more from Jamie on his blog or on twitter.

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I have a new post published on Assembly Magazine. See the full article on that site.

Continuing education is key to any lean deployment strategy….

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I have a new post published on StartUp Blog at PartnerUp. See the full article on that site.

This is a guest post by Jamie Flinchbaugh.

I’ve met a number of people who want to start businesses but have been clawing away at the same idea for many years without progress. I’ve met just as many people who have great ideas but never bring them to fruition. These folks are stuck because they don’t approach idea management the right way. Idea management is a discipline that every entrepreneur, present and future, should master.

Here’s how I handle the process. As I generate ideas, either randomly or through brainstorming, I use a spreadsheet to track them. This includes the idea, status, next steps, required financial or time investment, and current or potential partners. When I have an idea, I don’t judge it nor do I start to work on it. I simply add it to the spreadsheet. This gets it out of my head so I can manage it rather than be distracted by it. I keep this spreadsheet updated continuously, color coding the ideas I discard, those I turn into something, and those that have simply stalled.

Why is such a list important? First, the organization of your ideas can be used for further idea generation. If you’ve tracked five ideas but then decided against them, that’s OK because your brain can potentially use those bad ideas to trigger the generation of good ones. The more ideas you generate, the more your brainstorming skills and habits will grow.

Second, and more importantly, the spreadsheet will help you better analyze the viability of your ideas. Too many people fall in love with the first idea they have because it’s their only idea. The list helps you to think more critically than that. It enables you to say no to the wrong ideas so that when the right ideas come along you can say yes with conviction.

Idea management is critical to the development of your business. Businesses thrive off ideas, but if your ideas don’t go anywhere your business won’t go anywhere either.

Jamie Flinchbaugh is an executive coach, consultant and entrepreneur. You can follow more of Jamie’s writing at www.jamieflinchbaugh.com.

I have a new post published on Jamie Flinchbaugh on LeanBlog. See the full article on that site.

by Jamie Flinchbaugh, Lean Learning Center

I recently have had the opportunity to review a wide range of sites and companies and provide feedback on their lean journey. One of the things that really surprised me was how many of them were still trying to follow a prescription for lean. I heard things such as “the book says to do this but it doesn’t work for us, what should we do?”

Simple, drop it or change it.

Too many lean thinkers (I use the term loosely because to me, they aren’t thinking) try to take a prescription or recipe and apply it across all sites within a company universally, or across multiple companies. There are many people to “blame” for this (sorry, hate to even use the word) from authors to consultants to new hires into companies. Here’s an author that we’ve come across that in my opinion is part of the problem. His statement includes:

I reduced applying lean to almost a prescription that you can follow with detailed steps that have been proven, time and time again. I have a number of case studies in the book where the prescription is laid out and you just have to implement it.

That’s a prescription for one thing: failure. We hope that you don’t follow the same approach. Every organization is different. You have different cultures, resources, skills, business needs, restrictions, and hopefully a vision of your own ideal state that you would like to achieve.

Understand your current state, have a vision of where you would like to go, and chart your own course of action. This is a lot more work, and that’s probably why some people avoid it. But it’s working on the hard that separates from the good lean efforts from those that fail. Take ownership. Only you can lead your organization, don’t try to rely on a prescription.

You can also find my at jamieflinchbaugh.com or on Twitter

Please check out my main blog page at www.leanblog.org The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, Mark Graban. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author’s copyright.

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I have a new post published on Assembly Magazine. See the full article on that site.

An action plan is one of the most important parts of an A3 report. Turning ideas and conversations into crisp, focused action plans is something every lean leader needs to do.

I have a new post published on Assembly Magazine. See the full article on that site.

My last three columns have touched on different aspects of applying lean thinking to projects and problems, including different aspects of A3 thinking and methodology. This month focuses on yet another aspect, the target condition.

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