Tag Archives: lean management

Lean Management For White Collar Work – DO NOT Be Fooled By Well Meaning Consultants

November 2, 2018Lean CXcheck in, David McLachlan, employee engagement, error proofing, Lean, Lean CX, lean management, operational excellence, reduce the steps, repeatable process, visual management, white collarDavid McLachlan

Lean Management white collar

When it comes to Lean Management in general, there is a lot of mis-information and mal-practice out there in the world. After all, Lean Management and operational excellence sound good at face value. If it’s been well defined, it will look like “Quality, Delivery, and Cost” – improving quality and tasks being first-time-right, improving delivery times and getting things to customers (and team-mates) faster, and reducing cost. But most companies and leaders don’t even get that far.

Add to this another challenge – that being a manager often involves many parts of a business, not just manufacturing.

These are areas in your business that need Lean Management too – like technology, software or website development, customer service, sales, administration, human resources, quality assurance, projects, training, change programs, communications and much more. They can all benefit from the right approach and start to improve on those Lean Management measures of “Quality, Delivery and Cost”. But it just can’t be done using the old Lean Manufacturing way.

So buyer beware – Lean is traditionally a manufacturing methodology, and few (if any) leaders have gotten it right when applying it to the other important parts of a business – parts that are considered “white collar”.

Every company, even if they are primarily in manufacturing, has these white collar areas to be managed and apply true Lean Management to. Sales have to be made, scheduling has to be done, items have to be handed between departments, customers have to be served.

So how do we adjust this decades-old approach to a white collar world to achieve real success? Simple – we strip the principles of Lean and operational excellence back to their core, to the outcome they are trying to achieve, and take the parts that give us a meaningful result as leaders and applying true Lean Management.

Five Steps to Lean Management for White Collar Work

Before we define Lean Management for white collar work, traditional manufacturing Lean is based on a handful of solid principles, most commonly shown like this:

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Lean CX: Recognise Disruptors Before They Become A Reality

March 6, 2018Lean CXDavid McLachlan, dispruptor, disruptive, framework, Lean CX, lean management, operational excellence, strategyDavid McLachlan

Recognise disruptors before they become a reality.

Lean CX is a step by step framework for Operational Excellence and how it relates to disruptive companies and technologies – especially as they grow and are ready to scale.

Disruptive companies are those that can deliver something a customer wants faster, cheaper, with better quality and sufficient brand recognition. Think McDonald’s in the 1950s, the model T Ford in the early 1900s, the Apple iPod in the early 2000s or the iPhone in 2007, Uber disrupting the cab industry, Netflix disrupting DVD hire and Amazon disrupting retail.

All of them have at least three of these four in common:

Disruptive Delivery Disruptive Quality Disruptive Cost Disruptive Brand

To take advantage of these customer driven measures, crush compliance and regulation, build your start-up to scale and move toward disrupting an industry, use the step-by-step framework of Lean CX for operational excellence.

Lean CX Lean Management Operational Excellence

Get “The Lean CX Score” book by David McLachlan now, and scale your business, crush compliance and regulation, and achieve operational excellence.

Every Time You “Fix Your People”, a Baby Kitten Dies

August 29, 2014Lean NewsLean, lean management, peter principleDavid McLachlan

There is an old principle in management called the “Peter Principle”.

The Peter Principle says that employees and managers will get promoted throughout their career, until they reach their level of incompetence. In other words, until they reach a job that they actually can’t perform that well, and end up doing themselves, and the employees they serve (yes, I said serve: more on this later), a disservice.

If you are reading this, I think it’s fair to say that you are the type of person who is taking charge of your own path in life. So don’t let the Peter Principle happen to you! To avoid it, follow this Lean principle instead.

The Principle of Lean Management

There is a very simple principle in Lean Management that says we must improve our process, or way of work, and build our people. Think about it.

Most managers, bosses, even employees themselves do it the other way around – they try and fix the people they serve instead, and build the processes they perform. Not only is it ridiculously non-efficient to try and fix individual people, but building process upon process merely results in waste and inefficiencies, making the work harder to do. As an example, you might have harsh words with one employee, only to see them leave, ignore you, or even get promoted (probably to their level of incompetence). And yet, this method is the knee-jerk reaction many bosses have.

Fixing the Process

Counter this with the Lean principle of fixing the process instead. When we improve a process, it improves it for everyone. Having an accepted, trained standard way of performing the work, that is made visible at the work station or desk so anyone can see if it is being followed or not is a great place to start with improvements.

We must also support the standard process with a problem solving culture. To do this, Charlie Munger recommends matching the incentives to the outcome that we want. For example, measuring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) based on zero rework, instead of simply churning through as many items as possible with no regard for customer or quality. It may seem simple but it’s extremely powerful stuff.

Once we have looked at fixing our processes, we can build our people.

Building our People

This means we teach them the problem solving tools of Lean, enable them to use it, and support it with leaders who are happy to follow the methods as well. It will sometimes involve stopping when there is a problem (instead of sweeping it under the rug) so you can swarm around it and fix it close to when it happens. This builds a culture that solves problems close to the source will give you results 1000 times better than trying to fix it three weeks or even three months down the track, when information is hazy and there are other fires to put out.

Doing it the Lean Way Will Change Your Life

Think about your own life, and when something goes wrong don’t blame the person. Look at the process they are following (and if one doesn’t exist, then now would be a very good time to buy yourself another copy of Five Minute Lean) and the incentives that surround it. The funny thing is, when you stop blaming your people, they will be more likely to look at doing the right thing by you as well.

Yours in change,

David McLachlan