Join our free Build your Lean leaders webinar on 21 May from 13:30 to 14:30 to discuss the increasingly difficult situation of your managers at all levels and hear about our best practice model for developing “Lean attitude” in your organization. The model is pragmatic, based on common sense, inclusive change management and lean thinking.

The lack of responsibility hinders development

This is a familiar story: the operation is in fire-fighting mode, managers are running all day to solve emerging problems. Semi-solutions are common, and there is no time for anything. The urgent overtakes the important. The top managers spent a lot of time developing Lean, KPIs and motivation systems; new tools, processes and standards were introduced, yet the performance stagnates. The way how middle-managers run the operation is often criticized; when the lack of improvement or bad results are discussed, they do not take responsibility and finger-point at their bosses.

These are symptoms of a problem, the root cause of which is the way managers are trained and led. Most people don’t have the ability to build their own “Lean attitude” based merely on their knowledge of Lean tools; a slightly different management approach is also required to start change.

The lack of “Lean attitude” becomes obvious at the latest when your company gets to a situation where significant productivity improvement needs to be achieved. The first step would be to involve, energize and move managers, and through them, shopfloor personnel. But without a positive “Lean attitude” of the managers, this will not work.

Lean leaders overcome the threshold of knowledge

As the expectations change, the managers strive to do their usual best. But they don’t see their own “threshold of knowledge.” When they reach this threshold, the results start to get insufficient. Recognizing the downward trend, top managers push performance improvement even more. Although their subordinates try to adapt, they are still limited by their own knowledge boundaries. Thus, the improvement is not realized.

Trying hard and doing their best but receiving only negative feedback on the results naturally brings negative attitudes to the surface. This often happens to middle-managers.

The key is exceeding the threshold of knowledge in a safe way.

Management thinking is the key to build your Lean leaders

The bad news is that the way of management thinking needs to change, otherwise the former patterns remain. The same old thinking, the same old results. You should look up at the horizon and see what the outcome will look like in five years. Ask yourself, “How can we improve productivity and operating results?”. One great way is to invest time in changing your cooperation with your team of managers. Help them overcome their threshold of knowledge and speed up learning within the organization.

The good news is that building Lean leaders is relatively easy to learn compared to many other management skills. This is because our Lean leader program is particularly logical, practical and is happening in action.

Welcome to our webinar, where we go through the core topics of the Lean leader program:

  • What is the Lean leader program all about?
  • How do I develop and promote Lean leaders in my organization?
  • What are the typical pitfalls and success factors in developing Lean leaders?
  • How do I connect Lean leaders in our organization’s management culture?

Our goal is to help you strengthen your organization’s ability to learn, innovate, and improve operations and services – faster than your competitors. We will work with you to create a Lean leader model that works.