The Lean Edge: How lean is the Lean Startup?
"How lean is the lean startup? The lean startup movement is growing fast, now highlighted in the HBR yet no one in the lean movement seems to comment or connect - how do you feel about the lean startup? What can we learn from it?"

Posted on May 21, 2013

Archive for July, 2012

Mike Rother: Keeping Your Lean Transformation Focused By Mike Rother, Author of Toyota Kata and co-author of Learning to See - Last updated: Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Question:  How do we ensure constant focus and momentum in our Lean transformation? This may be one of the most discussed questions in the Lean community these days. Over the last 15 years there have been a lot of improvements, but lots of stagnation and slipping back too. In your question you mention you’ve been focusing on training people in visualizing, analyzing and solving problems. Interestingly, depending on what you mean that can be part of the issue. We find that reacting to abnormalities alone isn't a sufficient and sustainable approach to improvement. Better... What's the process team's next target condition, how ...

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Art Smalley: Houshin Kanri & PDCA By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull. Co-author of A3 Thinking and Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement - Last updated: Monday, July 30, 2012

This question centers upon how do you maintain focus and momentum on a Lean journey. In a nutshell that is why Toyota developed and utilized its form of Houshin Kanri and PDCA management. Toyota did not invent these tools but they apply them as well as any company that I have come across. Honestly it is easy for any company in the world including Toyota to get off track at times and falter. It takes strong leadership to stay on course or to intentionally deviate when necessary. The first part of the submitted question uses the word "focus". The term ...

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Dan Jones: Five years into lean By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Five years of lean progress should be rewarded with a vision of how the organisation is going to use the new capabilities of their staff and their value streams to exploit new opportunities that competitors will struggle to follow. By then I would expect top management to be setting the direction for lean, middle management to be focused on streamlining their value streams and the front line to be deeply engaged in problem solving. At this point it should be possible to rebuild the IT architecture of the organisation to mirror and support their lean processes. Then it is time ...

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Michael Ballé: The company learns as long as the CEO learns at the gemba by supporting kaizen By Michael Balle, co-author of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager - Last updated: Sunday, July 22, 2012

The CEO of a construction company once told me that the day he was bored with the gemba, he’d better sell the firm. This, from a CEO who has more than quadrupled the value of his company in the past five years. This CEO has figured out that the company continues to learn as long as he continues to learn, and the gemba is where true fact-based learning happens. Senior management has a disproportionate impact on the firm because of its role modeling role. Chris Argyris, the influential organizational theorist that formulated “double-loop” learning pointed out the distinction between “espoused theory” ...

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Pascal Dennis: Sustaining focus & momentum requires effective connected checking — our organization’s nervous system By Pascal Dennis, Author of Getting The Right Things Done, Lean Production Simplified, and Andy & Me - Last updated: Monday, July 16, 2012

Good question & good reflections. I would add the following. Sustaining focus & momentum requires effective connected checking -- our organization's nervous system. We call it Level 1, 2, 3 checking, Level 1 being the front line. To Sammy's point, it's hard to beat daily asaichi at the front line, supported by leader STW checking what's important. But front line asaichi needs to be connected to Level 2 & Level 3. (Some problems are beyond the scope of a front line leader.  Without a help chain, they fester.) A number of enablers & subtleties here: ·         How to differentiate between Breakthrough vs. Run the Business work & ensure ...

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Jeff Liker: Self development leads to developing others By Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way and co-author of Toyota Product Development System and Toyota Under Fire - Last updated: Sunday, July 15, 2012

Based on your description I cannot tell what you have done in the 5 years, and know nothing about your processes.  As a general rule focusing on training people in visualizing, analyzing and solving problems is a great thing, particularly training managers.  In our new book on Developing Lean Leadership the Toyota Way we describe how to develop leaders and we are arguing that they need to be trained in just what you describe.  The model begins with "self development of managers."  They must want to become leaders of change toward concrete goals and to learn the problem solving approach.  ...

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Sammy Obara: You get what you inspect, not what you expect By Samuel Obara, Co-author of 'Toyota by Toyota: Reflections from the Inside Leaders on the Techniques That Revolutionized the Industry' - Last updated: Saturday, July 14, 2012

Ensuring a constant focus on lean efforts seems to be a current interest in many organizations. I believe that constant focus has always been a reward for constant inspection.   As manager Doug Jennings from NUMMI used to say, you get what you inspect, not what you expect. It would be very difficult if not impossible to keep the focus and momentum along the lean journey, if you don’t have a structure of constant follow up.  Some of the existing metrics/indicators in your organization, provided that they are correct, will have to be inspected daily, weekly, monthly or with the frequency that is ...

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Tracey Richardson: Involvement and engagement of people at their process(es) where the work is being done must be a priority By Tracey Richardson, - Last updated: Saturday, July 14, 2012

It's always music to my ears when I hear a company is willing to invest time in people development from the executives to the floor level of the organization.  I believe that the training of the concepts or values are just the beginning of the lean journey, the more difficult task is the sustainment, improvement and growth of leaders and their practices to ensure the company is doing business in a way that meets customer expectations through people engagement in the value stream of order to customer. As we have all heard throughout time in the TWI realm that "repetition is the motherhood of all skills", ...

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Klaus Petersen: How do we ensure a constant focus and momentum in our Lean transformation after these years and what are the pitfalls we must avoid ? By Klaus Peterson, Solar's Group process manager - Last updated: Saturday, July 14, 2012

Dan Jones: Managing Horizontally as well as Vertically By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Silos are a symptom of a deeper problem in organisations. Getting rid of silos is not the answer to this problem. Traditional management systems organise expert knowledge into vertical functions and departments and use these to allocate resources across the organisation. So does Toyota. However following Toyota’s example, lean organisations also manage the flows of the work (or value streams) that create the value customers are paying for. This is in fact the primary purpose of any organisation, and profits are the result of doing so efficiently and effectively. These value streams usually flow horizontally across many departments and even across ...

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