Ensure Participants Understand the Principles of Lean

Ensure that people using lean tools understand the principles of lean.

Practitioners: tactical, integrative, and strategic

I frequently reference the rate of failure experienced in lean implementations. I also suggest that this failure is due to being incomplete in the implementation, and not simply incorrect. Today’s OpEx TopEx is a significant contributor to this failure. When we practice the use of tools of any kind and failure to understand the principles beneath them, we can cause more harm than good.

When I examine the statistics associated with lean certification, I notice a vast majority of certifications at the bronze level. These bronze practitioners know the tools, techniques, and tactics of lean. They cannot do achieve success on their own. There is also a silver and a gold level participation required for total success. Integrative and strategic practitioners bring an impact that the tactical practitioner can reference but do not have the organizational authority to define. Without this integrative and strategic support, tactical practitioners are often overlooked and over run.

The Lean Certification Alliance offers a document that explains the principles and how the three practitioners are related and work together. The Competencies and Behavior document has been my go-to reference for many years, and it helps me to recognize more clearly the impact of the absence of a sponsor or a process owner in the achievement of the transformation outcomes.

Understand The Principles

You might have wondered if I were criticizing the very practitioners I certify. Certainly not. These bronze level practitioners do the heavy lifting, and they are priceless resources in organizations that learn to apply them appropriately. This is where the integrative and strategic participants play an important role. The bronze work must be integrated into the function and process and must be connected strategically to the business value, resource allocation, and culture. These are all principles of lean that often go unnoticed and are misunderstood.

To ensure that people using lean tools understand the principles of lean, we must reach the executive and board levels of an organization. In my own experience, when the executive understands and communicates and supports the principles of lean, the successful implementation becomes a formality; a matter of doing the work.