The West and the rest of the world have been trying to implement ‘Lean’ with hopes of achieving what Toyota did. It has been decades since this started, and lean has been implemented in various industries and processes beyond manufacturing.
There is no doubt that these organizations realized real benefits from these efforts: improved flow, reduced waste, better visual management and many other tangible results.
The main focus has been on tools. But there is something that is often not fully understood. And this was the case when the West first adopted lean, and it still stays so.
The Illusion of Transformation
It is not unusual for us to talk about 5S, kanbans, VSM as if they are synonymous with lean transformation. We focus on waste (Muda), the most easily understood concept as the financial case for it is clear and it is often visible, tangible thing we can easily articulate. We can measure the savings it shows up as savings on the balance sheet and everyone is happy. We declare success and call it a day.
The organization has not changed, the leadership behaviours don’t change nor does the team’s structure to support the improvements.
The result is an illusion of transformation.
We have enough activity going around to make us believe a difference is being made. We conduct morning standups, create SOPs, and participate in Kaizens. This is not bad. But the question is, if something unexpected and disruptive shows up, what will happen to all those activities?
Are you and your team holding those improvements and solving the new problems, or is it all hands on deck, drop everything else that is going on till we solve this new problem?
The answer probably popped into your mind the very second you read the above sentence.
The Human Aspect Most Lean Programs Miss
Most teams implementing lean miss the human aspect. What it takes to sustain not only what has changed and improve continuously, but do this while absorbing any disruptions that come from the usual pressures of running the business.
The problem is not about whether leaders and their teams can handle the pressure.
It is about whether the system is designed to protect them so they can do their work.
The Sequence Nobody Applies to Leadership
The reason for this failure is evident from what we all popularly believe lean is. Removing waste.
The efforts are almost always heavily focused on removing waste from the system. But you cannot successfully remove waste if you don’t address its root cause.
The sequence for addressing this systematically in an operational environment exists and is often not understood. Leadership, as a process, is even less understood.
Waste is generated by unevenness and overburden.
Muda, the waste, is well known, but Mura and Muri are where the work lies if you want to create stability.
For leadership:
The waste (Muda) is making bad decisions, delaying things that could add exponential value, or working on the wrong priorities or at the wrong level.
This is caused by turbulence (Mura) within the business or by other external factors affecting it. Like a change in strategy that demands setting up a new product line in an expedited manner, the loss of key people who run critical processes, external factors such as geopolitical tensions affecting the global supply chain, and the evolution of AI that is reshaping the competitive landscape.
These turbulences, especially when many of them hit simultaneously, create overburden (Muri) for the people. An overburden that is not sustainable in the long run and even in the short run will cause variations in leaders’ output.
An overburdened leader will produce poor decisions, strategies that have not received the deep thought they deserve, and a team that is taught to triage rather than to operate with resilience.
Why the Sequence Matters
That is the reason why the sequence in which we deal with this problem matters. It is what determines if your lean improvements hold and survive the pressures of the business.
It determines if your lean turnaround evolves into a real lean transformation.
Muri first, then Mura and only then can you sustain the reduction of Muda.
Attempting to eliminate waste inside an overloaded, unstable system produces results that will not last. The gains produced are consumed by the instability. The overburden regenerates the waste faster than the kaizen events can eliminate it.
This is not a tools problem. It is a sequence problem.
This is the core argument of why we need to focus on building a system that protects the capacity of all the leaders in a business, as it is not a nice-to-have. It is the prerequisite for everything else in the lean transformation to work.