Since introduction by Toyota, lean business principles are more and more used by some of most successful companies. But, why it is so hard to introduce lean business principles in majority of companies? Because everyone is against them, everyone except owners and market.
Lean business general thought is to cut all actions and procedures that are not proven to directly help production timeline and quality. Lean principles treat all other things as a waste and tend to eliminate them. That exposes key items of productivity and nearly all of them are measurable.
Management, senior and junior professionals will in general tend to do things that are not measurable. To fix that, you have to be really clever with picking people for managerial roles and intelligent in giving your management clear and strict instructions about how to introduce competition, promote learning and sharing of ideas and opinions and how you will be grateful for all actions that are helping in your business goal: quality product on time.
It is easy to say that, but how to know that there is a problem? You will see enormous production of papers and “tasks to be done” full of words like: “increasing visibility”, “making customers happy” and generally never words about how to do it, when and what is cost and expected result of that change. That will show that your teams do not understand that you are not paying them to do things but to have things done.
So why everyone is against lean business? Because lean business is cutting not needed positions, creating competitive environment and decreasing costs. Modern managers behave as they are leading roles in union more than “governing hands of the owner” as they should be. They will kill you with costs, they will kill your productivity and you will be lucky if you survive the market. From three different competitive strategies: first runner, quick follower, legally protected, if you are in first two (as most are) you can forget it.
How to fix it? Again, pick top managers that you will use to run for you and your interest.� Reward them for any move toward business goals (speed and quality) and you will see that lean business will come automatically.