The LEAN-Leadership Jigsaw

INTRODUCTION

Having been challenged to think about LEAN-Leadership and a LEAN-Leadership development plan I have spent a lot of time thinking and reading, and perhaps not enough time talking to my customers!

Below is a stream of thought which leads me to your door with the promise of a cup of coffee and maybe a croissant as the price I’d pay for your insights to LEAN-Leadership.

MY STEP BY STEP THINKING

Leadership is about “…doing the right things..” whereas management is about “..doing things right…” so if I’m going to focus on LEAN-Leadership it must be about vision and mission, about direction and movement rather than process.

People are a product of “The System”. You can educate and empower all you like but if they are trapped in the system, bound by process and measured by criteria, they are unlikely to change: not least because the system in these circumstances is designed to churn out consistent behaviour and consistent outputs and anything that is exceptional (good or bad) is stopped by the system.

This leads us to conclude that LEAN-Leadership is not about managing people, but designing a system that makes the job easier. In a previous blog I compared this to making a canal for water to flow from A to B (designing a system) rather than set tasks for people with buckets of water (managing a process).

LEAN-Leadership therefore becomes about tools (to able to do what-ever is necessary) as opposed to processes (which confine and restrict to a given output). Logically is it about “why” rather than “how” and bias towards thinking than doing. I remember a great phrase “..don’t just do something, sit there!..” referring to the need to think first about whether what we are about to do is really what is needed.

This leads to the final and perhaps most important point: “Who is the customer and what do they want?” There is no value in designing a LEAN-Leadership development plan if you haven’t got a clear steer from the customer about what they want!

I think that any organisation will have three customers for LEAN-Leadership

·        First, the Leadership Team who will participate in LEAN-Leadership development. What do you want to make you a better Leader?

·        Second, the Senior Management and Staff who are the “customers” or “users” of Leadership. What do they want from their Leaders?

·        Third, the customers, general public and users of the organiation. What do the consumers and users of our products and services want from the organisations Leaders?

NEXT STEPS

So rather than stay at my whiteboard (which is full of ideas) or continue reading more books and blogs (cramming my head with more ideas!) we need  to go and talk with our customers.

If you are interested in LEAN-Leadership, call me

Tim 07797762051 work-time or evening
Or email t.rogers@gov.je


ABOUT CICHANGE

ciChange is a not-for-profit forum for ideas and discussion, about all aspects of Change Management, including people, processes, teams and leadership. It is a place to share and exchange models, papers, ideas and information about change. We’ve run a number of FREE, well attended Breakfast Briefings.
ciChange is sponsored by Total Solutions Group http://www.tsgi.co/

Tim HJ Rogers
Mob 07797762051
Skype timhjrogers


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